Page 131 of Roses Are Dead
An hour later, Carl stopped his truck in my path.
“Are you going to walk the entire way to Harrisburg?”
If I have to.
I remained mute.
He swore and shoved the vehicle into park. Then he jumped out of the truck and opened the passenger door. He stood by it, patiently waiting for me to acknowledge him.
I didn’t even have to look to see him. His aura was a murky purplish black. And dark gray like soot. Marbled through the cracks in his essence were crimson streaks mimicking blood, but decaying rapidly into dusty tendrils of death. It was wrong, deeply wrong.
His aura had settled. The swirling madness of varying colors ceased, replaced by a fixed solidity. I peered at his face for clues.
“Do you have my money?” he asked.
“I gave it to Bear. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” In the subtext, I let him see how that act had broken me. Taken my hope and destroyed any future I’d imagined.
But he hadn’t broken my will. If anything, it was as solid and fixed as his. We were two unbendable beings trapped in a mortal battle on a spiritual plane. One of us would die soon. The miasma of that fate clung to the air between us.
Strangely, it didn’t frighten me. Nor did it thrill me. It was just… inevitable. Like the tides, the seasons, the sun rising and setting. It was a thing carved into the bones of the earth. We’d formed that entity, and it doomed us both.
Carl’s grin spread warily. “How did he react?”
My eyes struck his. “Badly,” I said, my heart dead to the pain raging inside.
The grin disappeared, but the satisfaction in his eyes did not. “Get in. We’re going to visit Beth.”
“No hair shirt this time?”
The corner of his mouth flicked upward. “You’re already wearing it.”
His laugh was not comforting.
I buckled the seatbelt and ignored him.
Carl prattled as he drove. “I hope you don’t mind if we stop at my house first? You’re not dressed to visit.”
“I’m dressed just fine. Beth has seen me like this.” I was in black from head to toe. Betty Jo’s tight bodice held me stiff when I wanted to collapse from the weight of it all.
“Mom hasn’t.”
I fired back, “Like I give a shit what she thinks.”
Carl’s fist hit the side of my head too quickly to counter. Blood trickled from my brow where the force of it broke my skin. I blotted at it with my sleeve. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Your dad’s going to have a fit when he sees me like this.”
He slowed the truck down and pulled to the side of the road. I grabbed for the door handle, readying to jump out, but the seatbelt slowed me down. Carl pounded on my head and hit my arms as I tried to defend myself.
Somewhere in that beating, I blacked out.
I came to, but my left eye was swollen shut and my right was blurry. I saw a lot of leaves, trees, and the darkness of wooded land, not the urban decay of Harrisburg.
My mouth fared much worse than my eyes. The swelling around my lips and the slow tickle of blood dripping down my chin was the first indication he’d beaten me even after I’d fallen unconscious. It hurt to move my jaw, so I stayed still and mute as I blinked at the grayish haze in my cyclopean vision.
The truck dipped as he drove off the paved road onto a gravel path. Branches brushed at the truck, scratching it like ragged hag’s claws.
Carl hummed as he avoided the worst dips.
I recognized the hymn. The words all too familiar.
