She gave a huffing sigh of disgust. Her breath smelled like old meat left in the sun. “Your mother’s body is dying.”
I stood up straighter, my own body tensing. “I’m well aware of that.”
“So you might ask yourself what happens to me when she dies.”
A chill swept over me as she stared me down, her black eyes locked on mine. For a terrible moment I had the sense that she was moving closer to me, that her body was floating up, stretching out into a snakelike shape, writhing its way toward me.
“You know, don’t you?” she said at last, a grin turning up the corners of her pale lips, her tongue flicking out, lizard-like, to moisten them.
“You need to go elsewhere?” I guessed. “Into another… host?”
Wasn’t that the way it happened in movies? A demon moving like a parasite from one innocent victim to the next?
“That’s right.” She nodded weakly. “Keep going, follow the thread.”
I closed my eyes. And just like that, I was back in my childhood bed, my mother beside me, whispering in my ear.I should have spared you. Drowned you at birth, maybe, not let you suffer the things that are to come.
The heavy truth I felt in my chest blossomed into something huge and dark, taking my breath away.
Even then, she knew.
She knew I would be next.
I understood then, why she’d asked to come here. To be with me at the end of her life. She didn’t want reconciliation or forgiveness.
She wantedme.
My body.
My soul.
“It’s me,” I said, opening my eyes, looking right at her.
She nodded, a sickly smile spreading across her face. “It’s been you all along.”
I grabbed the railing on the side of her bed to help me keep my balance.
“Do you have any idea what I can do for you? What I can give you? The places we can go together?” There was a terrible gleam in her eyes:excitement, hope. Color seemed to rush into her pale cheeks. She sat up again, leaning forward, reaching for me.
“N-no,” I stammered, stepping away.
“You think you’ve had success with your silly little puppy book? You don’t know the meaning of success. Imagine it, Alison: your name at the top of best-seller lists, people lining up for hours to get your autograph, more money than you could ever spend.”
I shook my head.
It wasn’t real. This was a sick old woman trying to spread her sickness to me.
“It’s your mother’s dying wish,” she said.
“And if I say no? If I refuse?”
She barked out a laugh.
“There is no refusal. It’s not achoice. It’s not like picking out your outfit for the day. It’s not like saying you don’t care for steak and would rather have chicken.”
“No,” I said, voice shaky. I thought of my girls, of what would happen to them if I wasn’t me anymore, if I became someone—something—else. I stopped the thought because it was absurd. I was playing right into my mother’s hands. For surely she was not truly a demon named Azha but my mother, playing the cleverest and cruelest trick, one final terrible game to leave me reeling while she died. I remembered what she used to say to me when I was little:You need to be less gullible. You can’t believe everything you hear, Alison.
“There’s nothing to refuse,Mother. None of this is real,” I said, my mind spinning as I fought desperately to stay in the land of the sane. A land without demons. A land where my mother was just a sick old woman in a rented hospital bed hoping to pull off one final mind-bending trick on her only daughter. “You’re making it all up. Admit it.”
