NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(8)

“Did you know that ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats?”

I change the subject and Calla laughs, shoving her long red hair out of her eyes with slender fingers. It’s our thing, these stupid death facts. It’s my thing, really. I don’t know why. I guess it’s from all the years of living in the stupid funeral home. It’s my way of giving death the finger. Plus, by focusing on death facts and learning Latin and making my stupid mental lists, it gives me something to focus on. Any time I focus hard on something, it staves off the voices.

Trust me, I’ll do anything for that.

“I didn’t. But thank God I know now,” Calla answers. “What would you shave off for me if I died?”

I would plunge to the bottom of the ocean for you. I’d comb it for shells and make you a necklace and then hang myself with it. Because if you aren’t here, I don’t want to be either.

I can’t show her how panicky the mere thought makes me, so I shrug. “Don’t give me the chance.”

She looks horrified, as she realizes what she said, so soon after mom died.

“I didn’t mean to….” She starts to say, then trails off. “I’m sorry. That was stupid.”

Calla and I are twins. Our level of connection can’t be understood by those who don’t have it. I know what she means even when she doesn’t. Her comment had come out before she remembered mom. It sounds stupid, but sometimes, we can forget our loss for a second. A blissful second.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her, as I turn onto the highway.

Fuck her. She has no right.

The voices are loud.

Too loud.

I close my eyes and squeeze them hard, trying not to hear.

But the voices are still there, still persistent.

She doesn’t deserve you. Kill her you f*cking * kill her now. Push her off the cliffs. Lick her bones. Lick her bones. Lick her bones.

I grip the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white, trying to force the voices away.

Lick her bones, suck her marrow, show her show her show her.

Today, the voices sound real, even though I know they aren’t. They’re not my voice, they’re just masquerades, a scary mask, imposters. They’re not real.

My voice is real.

Those voices are not.

But it’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart.





4


QUATUOR



Calla



One thing about this mountain in the summertime, is that time seems to slow to almost a stand-still and days blend into each other. Before I know it, one day bleeds into two, then three, before somehow, I find myself on Group Therapy duty again.

This time, however, I’m quick enough to call driving rights. I ignore Finn’s indignant look as we get into the car, and I smile smugly at him (real, not fake) as I drive away from the house.

As I steer the car down the mountain curves, the tires squeak on the rain-soaked gravel. Finn stares out the window, lost in his thoughts as we pass ‘the spot’. The place where our mother crashed and died.

A near-by tree hosts brightly-colored ribbons and a small plain cross. It’s lonely here, reverent and quiet. It’s a place that I usually ignore, because otherwise, it makes my heart hurt too much.

Unexpectedly, though, Finn lifts his head.

“Can you stop?”

Startled, I brake, then pull over. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I just need to be here for a minute.”

He gets out, his car door creaking as he closes it. I’m uneasy as I follow, because we’ve never stopped here before, not since we hung the ribbons and staked the white cross into the ground. It’s sacred ground here, but it’s also emotional ground. And emotional ground is dangerous for Finn to tread on.

“Whatcha doin’?” I ask as casually as I can, following him to the side of the steep incline, to the place where mom plunged over the side as she was talking to me. Balancing here, with our toes poking over the side, we can still see where the trees are knocked down and damaged from mom’s car hitting them. I feel a wave of nausea.

“Do you think she was dead before she hit the bottom?” Finn asks, his voice emotionless. My heart squeezes in my chest.

“I don’t know.”

I’ve thought about it, of course, but I don’t know. Dad didn’t tell us and I can’t bring myself to ask.

“What do you think about the other car?” Finn asks, his gaze staring down into the ravine and definitely not looking at me. I inhale, then exhale, pushing the guilt away, far away from me, over the mountain, over the cliffs, into the water.

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.

It’s the truth, because afterward, Dad wouldn’t tell us what happened to the occupants of the other car. Who they were, how many. He thought I was feeling enough unwarranted guilt, enough pain and torment. He wouldn’t talk about any of it and we were banned from turning the television on for weeks, just in case the news carried coverage. You’d think it would be maddening, but at the time, I was so immersed in grieving that I almost didn’t notice.

The problem is, it didn’t stop the guilt.

Because I killed people.

Staring down the side of this mountain, looking at the gouges carved into the trees from the metal of the crashed cars, the destruction of the forest…it’s all evidence. Whoever mom hit is dead. That’s apparent.