Crazy Love You (37 page)

But he is late, far too late. He sees Priss and Clara in their beds, both of them still and lifeless as the flames engulf them, the wall of heat driving him back outside, where Martha slumps against a tree, staring into the flames.

“You killed them,” he screams into the night. “You killed them both.”

But she is a million miles and a hundred years away. She doesn't hear him.

•  •  •

I sat outside the house that wasn't there and watched the flames lick the night. I found a spot beside a tree and sat. There was no heat, no smell. It was just a picture in a book. The image of Priss lying in her bed, letting the flames swallow her, stayed seared into my mind's eye like the red impression left after staring at the sun.

And then I was aware of Priss standing beside me. Not the woman I knew, but the girl I first met when I was only a boy myself.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I'm sorry for everything that happened to you.”

I meant it. There was a deep sorrow within me, a well of compassion I never knew existed. She was silent, watching the flames until they disappeared and everything around us turned to quiet night.

I could sense that we were not alone. I knew that the woods were surrounded, as Cooper had promised they would be. I thought I could hear the distant sound of chopper blades. They were looking for Megan, and so was I. I couldn't let Priss make me forget why I was here.

That's what she wanted, wasn't it? For me to abandon the present, to live with her in the memories of her ugly past—and mine. Isn't it easier to wallow in anger and misery over the wrongs that have been done to you than to let go, to forgive, and move forward? What is it about unhappiness that is so comfortable, so familiar? Priss and I had kept each other locked in place—my rage and addictions keeping me in her thrall, her righteous anger feeding mine. We'd both been victims. But we weren't victims anymore; we'd become perpetrators.

“You didn't deserve it,” I said. “I wish I had been there to protect you. I would have.”

She moved over and sat on my lap, and I took her into my arms. She was real, flesh and bone, but so cold, so brittle.

“But you're here now,” she whispered. “And you'll never leave me, will you?”

I felt the tickle of fear. Eloise had told me to find out what Priss wanted and give it to her. Did she mean that I had to give myself over, if that's what Priss wanted? I couldn't do that anymore. Could I?

“Where's Megan?” I said.

She pushed herself roughly away from me. When I looked at her again, she was the woman I knew. I bit back that familiar twist of fear and desire.
You're trying to give her up like people try to give up heroin.
I still wanted her, even though she was destroying my life. I could feel her pull.

“She came looking for you,” she said. She folded her arms. “She thinks she loves you.”

It was the thought of Megan that made me strong. I stood and faced Priss, prepared to stand up to her once and for all. Megan told me that it was time to choose. In my heart, I had already chosen. I just needed to say the words. If only I wasn't so tired.

“We've been together for a long time,” I said.

“Forever,” she said.

“But it's time for me to let you go,” I said. I moved in closer. “I need you to find peace. You can't go on like this. Raging through the millennia. Aren't you tired, Priss? Don't you want to rest?”

She bowed her head but didn't answer. She just took my hand and led me back toward the graveyard. I didn't want to follow her, but I did. All around us I could hear the Whispers, soothing now like a lullaby.

Little flowers in the garden.

“What do you want?” I asked. I wasn't just asking Priss. I was asking the Whispers, too. “What do you want from me?”

“Aren't you tired, Ian?” Her question was an echo of mine. Coming back at me, it was almost hypnotic. “Aren't you tired of fighting everyone and everything? Neither one of us ever really belonged anywhere except with each other.”

She was right. Everything else had always been a struggle—other people, school, work, the day-to-day of life, even Megan. All of it required that I hold big parts of myself inside. But out here with Priss, it had always been so easy. I never had to hide anything from her. She accepted all of me, even my worst, ugliest self. For better or for worse, she was my soul mate.

We had met, like any two souls meet. We had wrapped around each other and never parted. Eloise was wrong. Our relationship wasn't a haunting. It was a love story.

Yellow, orange, violet, blue.

The dilapidated church was a hulking shadow. And the graves had all but disappeared in the wild grass. It was untended and forgotten, which was a shame. The souls there deserved remembrance. I sank down to the ground, fatigue tugging at my limbs. I allowed myself to lean against the thick trunk of an oak. The reasons I'd come here—to claim myself, to find Megan—seemed distant and dreamlike. In my pocket, I discovered a bottle of pills that I knew hadn't been there. I took them out and held them in my hand. How I wanted to swallow them. All of them. Let them take me wherever they wanted.

Little angels in the garden.

“Before your mother came, I was forgotten,” she said. “There was no one who knew my name. She was the first person to see me in ages. No one else had ever wanted to play—not even your father.”

I felt a cold trickle, a sudden dawning.
She's not your friend
, Eloise had said.
Not really.

“She used to come out here when you were sleeping,” Priss said. I could see my mother walking through the woods, remembered what she'd said about following a little girl through the trees. “She was so sad. And there's so much sadness here. It finds the empty places and hooks through, pulls tight, like vines on a trellis. I thought she'd stay with me.”

She knelt down, then straddled my legs and moved her fingers through my hair.

“But she had you,” she whispered. “And then Ella. She wouldn't stay with me. There was too much calling her away.”

The sound of Ella's name on her tongue brought me out of the stupor into which I'd been slipping. I was suddenly awake and alive, listening. “Miriam had such a deep, dark place in her, just like my mother. It opened up and swallowed her.”

Do you know how I love you?

“She went away,” said Priss. “But then you came. And from that first day I knew you'd stay with me.”

She pressed her lips to mine, and I drank in all that warmth. But then I pulled myself back.

Little flowers in the garden.

“I can't stay here,” I said. I put a hand on her white, white face. This was as tender as we'd ever been with each other. “You have to let me go. I don't belong here.”

“You do,” she said. “
We
do.”

And she was a little girl again, sitting on my lap, desperate and sad. I could see what she wanted suddenly, what she had needed all those years ago. What she had needed when she'd been alive. I ran my hand down the back of her hair. It was brittle, strands coming away in my hand, little slivers of copper wire.

“But it wasn't me that you wanted, was it?” I said. “It was my mother.”

Whatever it was about this strange haunted place, whatever lived here, it had taken her mother. And she had wanted mine.

“I loved her,” she said. “She saw me and she would have taken care of me. But she left and you stayed.
You
wanted to be with me.”

“Because I had nothing else,” I said. A flicker of anger came alive within me. “Because this place took everything bright and good in my life.”

That was the vacancy that Priss had occupied. If my mother had been whole and well, if my sister had lived—I wouldn't have been vulnerable to Priss and the energies that had us both trapped here. There would have been no room for her. But isn't that true of all addictions? It's just a way to fill the dark places some of us have inside. The hole in me was the size and shape of my mother. Priss expanded to fill it, became that and so much more.

“You love me,” she said. She said it simply, without her usual flair for drama. “You always have.”

Of course, it was true. I had always loved her. But it was a love that grew from loss and sorrow. I'm not sure if that made it any less real. Maybe it was even more powerful because of that—it clung, held on, fought for its own survival.

My love for Megan was something different. It was tame and healthy—not wild and thrashing, not desperate and smothering. It was grounded and right, a foundation on which we might build a real life. But I could see I wouldn't be able to make Priss understand that. She was a child's spirit. She wanted to be loved. She wanted to be cared for in the way that every child deserves. She raged when she didn't get her way. And her rage was a feral, dangerous thing.

“I do,” I said. “I do love you.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck, sank into me, sweet and soft. And I knew that I could stay here with her. A part of me even wanted to. Except that now there was something calling me away as well.

That's when I smelled smoke. I spun in the direction of my childhood home. The area where it stood glowed a harsh white beneath the tree line. Then, far in the distance, the thin music of approaching sirens. My heart clutched, and the real world came crashing back.

“What did you do?” I asked her.

She pulled herself away and moved into the trees with a smile.

“What I've
always
done,” she said. “Exactly what you wanted me to do, whether you'll admit it or not.”

And then she was gone.

With everything I had in me, I ran. The ground was soft beneath my feet and the woods seemed to slow my sprint toward the house. I tripped twice, but finally stumbled into the clearing. Where was Cooper? Where were the cops? I thought they'd all be there, waiting. But no, it was just me and the burning house.

The flames were eating through the roof, great orange, red, white, blue fingers clawing at the starless sky. The heat and the roar of the fire were living things, wild beasts growling, warning me to come no closer. But, for once, I overcame my inherent cowardice and ran toward the house and up the porch steps. As I burst through the door, the blistering air and heavy, choking fumes knocked me back. But I pushed my way in, immediately starting to cough.

“Megan,” I screamed. But my voice was already lost to the fire, my throat crackling with it.

Distantly, I heard a rhythmic banging. I pulled the collar of my shirt up around my nose and pushed my way toward the back of the house, where the sound seemed to originate.

The whole structure was creaking and groaning, and the sound of the flames was the sound of the Whispers, chattering with malicious glee. Curtains were curling, linoleum tiles cracking; the couch was on fire. And the heat was a presence, settling on my skin, snaking up my nose and down my throat.

Priss was right, I realized suddenly. I
loved
watching this ugly, sad little place burn. It was so much better than having it demolished while I sat in New York City, far from the action.

I watched my childhood and all its shitty, mean memories be consumed. The smoke was insidious, a drug, the ultimate quaalude. I felt myself grow wobbly and weak, taken over by the poison in the air. I could have easily laid myself down among the flames and let them take me. I would have died like Priss died nearly a hundred years ago. Physically able to save myself, but so wrecked inside that I just let the flames have my body. There was a kind of poetry in that. It was an apt ending to a sad, sad story.

But it was the banging that brought me back to myself. Slow and rhythmic, right beneath me. I pulled myself back from the quicksand of my self-destructive thoughts—just barely.

I tried to scream for Megan again, but I couldn't get enough air in my lungs. This was how it happened, I realized. It wasn't the flames but the smoke—just like they always said. Priss just let it take her, because she was a little girl who had lost everything, because she didn't have any fight left in her. But I wasn't Priss. I had a lot to live for, and I was going to fight for once. For once I was going to act like a man.

In the kitchen, I stopped and listened past the raging noise of the fire. The banging had stopped. I called Megan's name again, or tried to. It came out as a strangled cough. I made it up the staircase and moved from room to room—my parents', mine, Ella's old nursery. I pushed my way through thick smoke, then went back downstairs.

Back in the kitchen, I heard the banging again, this time faint and weak. That's when I remembered the door to the basement. I rested my hands upon the surface; it was cool to the touch. I threw it open to see a yawning darkness and climbed down the steps. It was another world down there, free from flames and heat. It was as quiet as a tomb. I could breathe, the air blessedly clear. Upstairs, I heard something heavy fall and the very foundation of the house creaked and shuddered.

My father had refinished a room down there, the guest room for a family that never had any guests. I remembered that it had a twin bed and a high small window. Sometimes in the summer, he slept down there.

I saw his workbench and tools off to the right. He used to bring things back here from building sites and fix them—or he'd build cabinets for some of the jobs. He'd make the occasional table or rocking chair. He was good at it; he liked fixing broken things. Giving something that didn't work a second life. I was one of those people he always complained about.
People just throw things away nowadays. They just replace, never repair.
I couldn't wait to get rid of the old things.

It was so quiet. “Megan,” I said. “Are you down here?”