We can’t stay here. After ambulances come law enforcement, and after that come too many questions we can’t answer. The surest way to survive is to leave first. Just the two of us against the world. Just me and my mom’s failing mind.
Tears prick at the back of my throat. I thought I hated Vegas, thought I hated the neon Post-its and my teenage bedspread. It’s been a shit life, but it’s been mine. Ours, mine and my mom’s. But what’s my life been but an exercise in sorting out what matters, and learning to abandon the rest?
I don’t even consider the possibility that my mom’s killed someone. What that might mean for the odds of them coming after us, what that might mean if we’re caught, how that might change things between us. It’s one of the things that doesn’t matter. Better to hit the road and keep going until we can’t anymore.
Maybe Arizona. I’ve never been to Arizona.
Back in the bathroom, my mom is still huddled against the toilet, eyes half-closed. Dispatch probably already put a call through to LVMPD. They’ll be on the way soon, full of a different, worse kind of hunger than ours. I explain it all to my mom, what’s coming and what we have to do before it gets here, but I’m not sure she hears me.
“I want to take a bath,” she mumbles. Her voice is syrupy.
She says it like she needs this, and I don’t have it in me to deny her one last luxury before we return to our old life, our sad, lonely road life.
“Okay.” I step over her and reach for the faucet. Hot water slops over my fingers. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes. I’ll pack our bags while you’re in.”
When I was little, when we had the luxury of a bathtub in whatever month-to-month place my mom got, she’d run me a bath every Sunday. Bubble bath and everything, and she’d perch on the side of the tub and wash my hair as I babbled about school and friends and whatever else it is kids get excited about. Those were good times. At least, at first. Then we stayed too long in Colorado, and her fingers grew possessive on my scalp.
“How was school?” she’d demand. “Who are your friends? What do their parents do?” Nails biting into the skin behind my ears. “Do you like them more than me? Would you rather I never existed?” And I’d thrust my inadequate hands into hers, swearing over and over again I loved her best.
“I know,” she’d relent, eventually. “You’re my angel. No one understands me like you do, Ellis.”
“And,” she’d add, eyes glassy with warning, “no one ever will.”
As her bloody clothes pool on the bath mat, I murmur, “Let me wash your hair, Mom.”
Maybe it’s a plea for forgiveness. Maybe I want to remind her where we started. Maybe I want to remind myself that we’ve done this before, and that we can do it again.
Maybe it doesn’t matter why. Just that I want to do it for her, and she lets me.
I massage the shampoo into a lavender-scented slick in my hands. Her hair is getting thinner. She’s thinner too, skin folding around birdlike bones that look like they’re one bad fall away from snapping. Her joints are purple and swollen, small cuts like wailing mouths kaleidoscoping out around each one.
“What happened, Mom?” I try to say it softly.
She sighs, eyes closed, and my heart sinks, thinking that’s all the answer I’ll get. Then, hoarsely: “He came.”
“Who came?” I ask automatically. But I already know. I drop my voice to a whisper. “The flayed man.”
She grunts assent. “He’s going to eat me alive.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
Her smile is a fault line. “You don’t have a choice. He’s coming.”
She’s only saying it because she lost control, because the story goes that once you transform, even for an instant, he’ll catch your scent. But Brian didn’t mention that in his version, and anyway, she just feels guilty. She knows, somewhere, that all of this is her fault. At least, that’s what I tell myself. I don’t have time for fear. I have an apartment to pack up.
I grab my mom’s hand out of the soapy water and squeeze hard. “Feel that?”
She nods. Her skin radiates warmth from the hot water. Her fingers squeeze me back.
“I’m here. Is the flayed man here?”
Her smile cracks at the edges, and she shakes her head.
“That’s right. I’m real, and he’s not.” I take a deep breath through my nose. If I breathe through my mouth, my voice will shake. “I’ve got you.”
I don’t care if it’s a lie.
20
