Left foot, right foot, breathe. Left foot, right foot, breathe.
There was a trick to the little saying he learned only later. It was meant to distract you from how shallow and stunted your breathing was by giving it the weight and duration of a single footfall. A normal breath should take two steps, not one. But by saying all three of them in rapid sequence, by giving them all the same illusory value and duration, you tricked yourself into believing you weren’t edging on a state of shock. And so that’s what Blake Henderson is doing now.
Nova is in the kitchen washing her hands at the sink, and for a second it’s possible to believe that she has somehow missed the whole thing. That she was watching television in the other room as some otherworldly force tore through the floor of the house, devouring flesh and bone, then retreating before a cloud of furious insects collected and absorbed Caitlin Chaisson as if she were a cloud of smoke. But there is steam billowing from the sink that says the water is as hot as it can go, and the bottle of soap she just used is lying on the floor next to her, and as Blake approaches her slowly, he can see her chest rising and falling, her slack, her lips sputtering with each strained breath.
“Nova?” he whispers.
And she jumps at this soft, unobtrusive sound as if it were a gunshot. Suddenly her hands are beside her head as if his slight utterance is something she must physically contain, something she must beat back before it reaches her ears. “I would like a… I w-would like a… I would like a…” Tears are spitting from her eyes. Her tone, though, is brittle but casual, as if she were about to ask him to pour her a glass of iced tea. It’s one of the worst cases of shock he’s ever seen, replete with repetitive gestures, hyperventilation, and a half-formed question that can’t find its latter half.
This has been a survival skill of his for as long as he can remember, to avoid full impact of a trauma by pouring himself into concern for someone else’s well-being. No matter who it is: a lover, a family member, a patient. Anyone nearby. Anyone at all. And now he and Nova are stitched together as only survivors of the wretched can truly be.
“Nova…,” he whispers again.
She cocks her head to one side and hisses, as if he’s just done something dangerous and it’s too late to stop him but she can’t quite bring herself to look away. Then, she’s shaking her head, and the sounds are in her throat now. No words, just stunted groans that might turn into sobs if he keeps at her, keeps doing little things to draw her back into the terrible present.
“I would like a… I would…”
Like a what? he wants to ask her. A Bible? A gun? A Valium?
There’s only one thing he has for her, so he gives it to her fully. When she feels his arms close around her, she starts to scream and her knees go to the floor and he goes with her, holding her to him as the shudders feel like they’re coming from her bones, and then there’s a terrible shrill clarity to her words as she screams, “What’s happening? What’s happening?”
He knows better than to answer. Instead, he adjusts his pose so that he’s kneeling before her, without freeing her from his embrace. As her screams turn to sobs, he rocks her, knowing full well that he is using the deafening evidence of her hysteria and her terror to avoid his own, that he welcomes her screams because they drown out the memory and the implication of the last words he said to Caitlin before she was taken, swarmed, eaten—each word fires through his head like a cannon blast: I said no. You asked me what I wanted and I said no.
They sit like this for what feels like forever, but Blake knows that it’s not nearly enough time—that there will never be enough time to get over what’s happened here tonight. But they have to move, and she’s stilled a bit, so he slowly lifts her off the floor. She doesn’t resist, and without thinking, he’s collected her in both arms, bride-over-the-threshold-style. He carries her out the back door and toward the small but welcoming shadow of her father’s house in the distance, and it seems as if all those hours in the gym trying to armor himself against another assault by shadows has strengthened him only enough to carry a girl lost to terror across a dark and muddy expanse, beneath which an unknowable evil, freshly sated, now slumbers again.
Blake wonders if there is a lesson there, and more important, will it still be there, ready for him to wipe the dirt from it and study it more closely should this madness ever come to an end.
28
He wants to play music, but he’s afraid it will drown out the approach of monsters.
He wants to hold her again, but that might upset her, and the only thing he’s sure of right now is that he can’t bear any more of Nova’s screams. So he leaves her on the sofa in her father’s tiny house while he sits on the footstool a few feet away, trying to ignore the fact that he’s rocking back and forth like a senile person who only feels at home on park benches.
Nova’s eyes are slitted and vacant. Her fetal pose is that of a thumb-sucking toddler, only her hands are balled against her chest and trembling. Blake fears there’s a very real chance Nova Thomas might not come back from all this. It’s an irony so cruel as to be vicious—she was the one who tried to convince him something terrible had awakened underneath Spring House, after all.
Blake jumps when he hears footsteps outside. Nova is still.
The screen door whines on its hinges, and a pleasant smell hits Blake. It can’t be anything as ordinary as cologne, he thinks. It must be the cloying musk of some impossible new creature composed of flowers and insects. But then Willie is standing in the living room with them. Something about him seems different, and Blake finds himself perfectly willing to accept the man before him as a hallucination.
The smell of cologne is stronger now. The older man’s chest is heaving with frightened breaths, and Blake realizes Willie Thomas looks different because he is scrubbed and coiffed and dressed to impress. A powder-blue long-sleeved dress shirt, the top few buttons undone, showing off his shaved chest, silk pants the color of café au lait. He’s come from a night on the town, Blake realizes, and he looks like he’s had a good time. But one glance at his daughter and he’s down on one knee next to the sofa, stroking her forehead.
Nova clutches his shoulder, but this isn’t enough to reassure Willie that his daughter still walks among the living and the sane. He grips her face in both hands, studies her as if the secret to her condition will be written in her sclera.
“Where were you?” Blake asks.
“She didn’t answer her phone. I was callin’ and callin’…”
“Your sister said you came here.”
Willie shakes his head. “I got a lady… in N’Awlins… Nova, she don’t… I don’t like to talk about it in front of…” It’s clear Willie isn’t sure whether or not his daughter will hear these words even now. “I didn’t tell my sister where I was, ’cause I didn’t want her in my bidness… She jes thought I came back here, but I was at Dooky Chase with a lady. That’s all. That’s all…” His final words become a gentle cooing assurance his daughter can’t seem to hear.
“Willie…”
“What happened here?”
“I—have you been to the house?”
“No. No… I came right here. Then I saw your cars, so I—Mister Blake, what happened here?”
Nova is crying silently. It’s her father’s voice, no doubt, and her father’s gentle touch. The feel of both have pulled her back inside her body, and while the return might be painful for her, Blake is relieved to see it.