Yeah…if I’d ever hoped to have any relationship with my mother, I’d pretty much blown that. She tolerated me afterward, still let me stay wherever she was staying. But I’m pretty sure she only kept me around because it made her situation more pitiable and consequently easier to con people into thinking she was a good mother just trying to make ends meet and take care of her daughter.
Bitch.
I stripped out of my clothes and sank down into the steaming water, forcing all thoughts of Vivian out of my head, just letting the heat warm the frozen parts of me, the dark, shadowy parts of my past that I tried to keep locked away, so the cold truth didn’t burn so much.
I closed my eyes and let my arms float, wondering if this was what flying was like—weightless, carefree, no worries about what fresh hell was waiting for me the next day. One day I would know. I’d get out from under the fear and hopelessness that gnawed at me whenever I thought about how I was failing my son. Failing myself.
Soon.
I could feel something coming, something that would change my life forever. It was like I was poised on a precipice, peering down into a vast, haze-shrouded cavern, not knowing what was hidden from my sight, but knowing there was something so much better just out of my reach. I was just going to have to take the leap.
I lay there, fantasizing about the home I’d make for Henry—maybe a little place out in the country like Mike’s farmhouse where Henry could be healthy and happy and run and play with all the friends he would make, and we’ddefinitelyhave a dog, maybe three.
The water had just reached the temperature where I’d either have to end my little respite from reality or add more hot water to stave off real life for just a little longer, when the bathroom door creaked.
My eyes snapped open. I turned, expecting to see Henry in the doorway, maybe needing a drink of water or a trip to the toilet—we’d gotten past the bedwetting stage a year ago, but he sometimes still had to get up in the middle of the night.
But no one stood there.
“Henry?” I called softly. “Is that you, baby?”
Silence.
Unnerved, but not yet frightened, I let out some of the cooled water and turned on the faucet, definitely needing that warmth to get rid of the chill making my skin creep. The door had probably just blown open a little thanks to the slight breeze coming through the cracked window. Completely reasonable explanation. I’d left the door open a little so I could hear Henry if he needed me. Next time I’d make sure to close it.
I don’t know how much longer I lay there, but I do know I was drifting off to sleep when I sensed someone else was in the bathroom. “Henry, baby, you should really knock—”
My words died on my lips when I opened my eyes. There was no one there. But in the middle of the floor on the tile was a puddle of what I first thought to be water—which would’ve been weird enough considering I hadn’t been out of the tub, and nothing seemed to be leaking—but then I realized it was thicker, the edges not spreading out the way water would.
I sat up slowly, surveying the entire bathroom, looking for…I don’t know what. I tried not to let my imagination run wild, but that was next to impossible. I stood and grabbed my towel, wrapping it around me and stepping out of the tub to get a closer look at the puddle.
I knelt and touched it. Thicker than water as I’d suspected, almost the consistency of hand soap but didn’t lather when I rubbed my fingers and thumb together.
“What the hell?” I murmured, frowning at the substance.
The instant the words left my lips, the bathroom door slammed, the sound echoing off the walls like a gunshot. I cried out, starting so violently I lost my balance and pitched forward into the puddle, my hands sliding out from underme. I landed hard on my left elbow, sending pain shooting up my arm to my shoulder.
Groaning, I rolled over to my back and lay there for several seconds, squeezing my eyes shut to breathe through it. When the pain from the impact diminished to a dull ache, I slowly got to my feet and grabbed a towel from the bar on the wall to wipe up the puddle before I had a chance to slip again.
I tossed the towel in the hamper and turned toward the sink, half-expecting to see an intruder’s monstrous face in the mirror like in basically every horror movie ever, but to my relief I saw only my own face, eyes wide with fear and confusion, not sure that made me feel a whole lot better.
So much for my relaxing bath…
I turned back to the tub and gasped, covering my mouth to stifle the scream that rose in my throat. A woman floated in the tub, long red—or maybe blond—hair fanned out in the water gone dark with blood. She lay there, eyes wide, vacant, gazing into nothingness. As I stared, unable to move, she sank slowly and vanished. The water cleared in an instant.
Then the trembling began—starting in my legs then climbing upward through my abdomen, my arms, my head… The combined violent jostling of the contents of my stomach when I fell and the shock of what I’d just seen was too much. I lurched toward the toilet, barely making it in time before I vomited with such explosive force that the water splashed up onto my face and hair. My muscles seized, and I heaved again, the acid from my stomach burning my throat, my nose.
Too weak and shaky to do anything but collapse onto the tile floor in the fetal position, I lay there, sobbing—but quietly so as not to wake Henry—the image of the dead woman playing over and over again in my mind.
Who the hell was she?
She wasn’t the same woman from the hallway who I’d come to suspect wasn’t an intruder of the corporeal kind after all. And she wasn’t a figment of my imagination, of that I was certain. Had she died in my apartment? This house? Orhad she just latched onto the first person she thought might see her? Not every intruder who showed themselves to me had anything to do with where I was. Sometimes, it was almost like they just finally sensed an opening to tell their story and jumped right through.
And I freaking hated it.
But there was something different this time, something darker and heavier than what I usually experienced, a suffocating pressure that compressed my lungs, making me gasp for air between sobs. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with the specter in my bathtub. Maybe it was the realization that I was trapped, that there was nowhere I could go, nowhere I could escape to—at least not yet, not when I didn’t even have two nickels to rub together. Who knew how long it would take to get back on my feet.
Before, when I lived with Vivian, I’d always just known we’d be leaving soon, that Vivian would be picking up stakes and moving on to the next temporary crash pad, and that the intruders would rarely follow. But this time, despite my bravado with Whit, I had to stay where I was. I had no money, no options except living in my car or going to a shelter. And I had sworn that I would never do that to Henry.
