Intersections Read online

  Tori's head spun at the implications of all of this. She couldn't begin to figure out what the old bitch had thought would happen; it didn't matter. It was insane. All of it.

  She had to get out of here.

  "He tried to kill you, didn't he? To protect her? That's how you ended up in the chair. He did something to you."

  Mother was silent. Her gnarled hands curved in the air, not quite making fists. The phantom planchette went still, and she looked at her hands as though surprised.

  "He tried," Mother said after a moment or so. "I survived."

  "And then what? You tried some fucking ritual and you killed the baby. Oh, you sick bitch." Tori spat against the rise of bile.

  "Oh, no, no," Mother said. "No, I didn't kill her. Luka did that."

  Tori covered her face with her hands, rocking back and forth to the sound of her daughter's screams. "Why...oh, why would he do that?"

  "Why do men do anything they do?" Mother cried and slapped her hands onto her lap again and again before she twisted the chair back and forth the way she'd previously shifted the planchette. "Why do they snuffle and nuzzle and try to always, always get back up inside the place where they came from? Why do they hate and fear the things they love the most?"

  Tori shuddered and twisted on the bed to soothe the baby, who would not be comforted. The crying raked at her. Tore her up inside.

  "Of all my sons, Luka is the most his father's child. He was the closest I was able to get. He’s the only one with his father’s eyes. I knew he was the vessel, but he ruined the ritual. He ruined it all. And after him and after his little Rose, it was too late to try again…until you.”

  Tori dragged her fingers down her cheeks and looked at the old woman. "What the hell are you saying? You’re going to do some ritual to what, put your old lover inside Luka’s body, to take it over?"

  "He’s been making himself ready." Mother gestured at Tori. “You gave him what he needed.”

  Tori gathered the infant closer to her, stroking the soft skull and trying to quiet her. Her lip curled, remembering the dream that was not a dream. "Oh, my God. Why?"

  "It nourished him," Mother said slyly. “Before I realized I didn’t need him, anymore.”

  Tori closed her eyes for a moment or so, her throat convulsing at the memories. At how it had felt to stand next to Luka. His warmth. His promises of a new life.

  Every muscle in Tori's body went stiff and tense. "If you think I'm going to give up my baby to you for some fucking ritual so you can somehow try to get some demon inside of Luka, you can just take a few steps back, you stupid crazy cunt. I will never let you take my child. Don't you understand that? Never!"

  "Babies are nothing before they're three months old, they're empty," Mother said as though that could possibly ever change Tori's mind. She tilted her head, looking curious, looking concerned. "The way you are empty. And I must admit, it’s not ideal, but I have always been a little curious about the Sapphic pleasures.”

  Tori swallowed a rush of bitterness. “Sapphic…what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you understand, my dear girl? It is not Luka who will be filled. According to the board, it will be you.

  Somehow, Tori found the strength to push herself out of the bed. She tripped on the hem of the borrowed flannel gown and almost went sprawling, but caught herself with a hand on the nightstand. It rocked, sending the bowl of water tumbling to the floor. She stumbled forward again, this time to get her hands on Mother's chair. She shoved it, sending the old bitch rolling backward toward the door.

  The chair caught on the doorframe, but another hard shove sent it rocketing through, hard enough to tip it backwards. Tori didn't wait to see if the old cunt had gone sprawling.

  "I am not empty!"

  Tori slammed the door shut, twisted the knock on the knob, then shoved the dresser in front of it.

  17

  "I'm so sorry," Dad says as Tori crouches in front of him. "Little Bit, I thought it would all be okay. I did. I'm so sorry. I thought you were going to be okay."

  Tori shakes and groans, clutching her belly. Mom told her about periods and eggs and sperms and boys and stuff like that, she said that becoming a woman would hurt, but she never said it would be like this. Wrenching, grinding pain, ripping through Tori's guts worse than a knife. Like a screwdriver, a dull one, tearing her apart. She writhes and cries and falls onto the floor in front of Dad, who can't possibly understand what's happening to her.

  Right?

  "It happened in the desert," Dad says, bending at the waist to put his hands on his knees. "It changed me. I never thought it would happen to you, Little Bit. I'm so sorry. But you're getting older now, and I guess this is what happens to you when you get older...."

  "But what is happening? What is it? How do I make it stop?"

  Dad shakes his head. "You can't make it stop, Little Bit. It's in there, inside you, in your blood. If I had known, I never would have..."

  "What?" she shouts. "You never would have what?"

  "I wouldn't have let you be born," Dad says in a voice so quiet and sincere that she knows for sure he's telling the truth.

  18

  But she had been born.

  And she had learned how to stop it from coming out, that dark thing inside her that made dogs snarl and bite. She had learned to starve it, to keep it weak, so she could pretend she didn't know what it was or what it could do or how it felt to set it free. She had learned to keep it hungry so she could control it.

  Now, fully fed, Tori could no longer pretend she didn't remember how it felt to give that dark thing free reign.

  She had expected Mother to scream the house down, to bring her sons/husband-substitutes running, but so far there had been only silence. Tori had pressed her ear to the door for a bit, as much to keep herself upright as anything. She'd waited for her knees to stop trying to buckle, but she still felt like she was about to fall.

  On the bed, the baby wailed, then stopped. Hitched a breath and sobbed, the noise fading into a whimper. Once again, Rose had lost hope her mother would come to her, and that was what finally got Tori moving toward the bed. By the time she got there, she thought she might pass out, but sitting on the edge of it for a few minutes helped her. Her breasts still leaked, and although it hurt worse now than it had in the first few agonizing days before Rose had truly learned how to latch on, she put the baby to her nipple and urged her to drink.

  "Shh, shh, Little Bit." The baby had a name, but the endearment still slipped from Tori's lips. In the beginning it had been a reminder of her father, but now it felt like she'd made it her own. "Mama will make sure everything’s okay."

  From downstairs, she heard the rise and fall of voices. The scrape of a chair on the floor. Footsteps. Mother's words turned over and over in her mind. The old bitch thought she could hurt Tori's baby in her insane quest to create some kind of incest train of fucked-up sons who might or might not end up being the reincarnation of her dead lover? Worse, to get that demon or ghost or whatever the fuck it was inside Tori, herself?

  It was sickness. But even though Tori knew it could not possibly be true, what mattered was that Mother and all the brothers believed it. And that meant they would come up the stairs soon and try to take her child from her so they could do whatever unspeakable things they'd planned. She would be ready for them.

  Tori wrapped the baby tight. Swaddling, they called it. Keeping the baby secure so she felt safe. And she was going to protect Rose, no matter what it took. It took a couple of tries with Tori's trembling hands, but at last she got Rose's arms and legs tucked inside the bundle. She kissed the sweet cheeks, the tiny mouth. Each fringed eyelid.

  Then she put the baby in the cupboard at the end of the hallway. She shifted the sheets and towels around to make sure Rose would be protected. Safe.

  You have a dark thing inside you.

  Tori stripped down in the hallway, not noticing or caring about the cold. The borrowed clothes ended up in a