“What?” He hesitated, his fingers hovering in midair, twitching a little like the legs of a spider. “I’m … I’m letting her in.” Thinking, I’m talking to a dead man. I’m having an argument with a ghost.
What the hell for? You lost what little sense you had? It wasn’t just that Big Earl was huge in his head. Casey felt the big man’s phantom arms crush his ribs, drive the breath from his chest. She made her bed. She had her chance.
“Casey!” Rima slammed both palms against the window, hard enough that he felt the jolt in his legs. “Please! Don’t leave me out here!”
“I … Dad, no … I have to h-help …” His hand wouldn’t obey. What was wrong with him? It was as if he were a robot whose circuits had frozen. “Can’t l-leave her to d-die out there. What if there really is s-something …?”
This is your problem. You think Eric thought about anything other than getting rid of me? You think he didn’t mean it? Big Earl oozed contempt. He might have killed me, but at least he had the guts to do what needed doing.
“S-stop comparing me to him.” A lick of anger, but his skin was suddenly pebbly with gooseflesh as a dark chill rippled through his veins. What’s wrong with my hand? Then, another and much stranger thought: Is it mine? “I’m my own p-person. I can handle m-myself.”
“Casey!” Rima pounded again. “Open the door!”
Then be a man.
This was the problem with being Big Earl’s son: you hop-skipped right over being a kid. True, he didn’t particularly like Rima; he wasn’t going to put himself on the line for her. But opening the door was so simple. And it is the right thing to do. A man makes his own decisions, too. So why did his hand refuse to move? “Dad, she just n-needs to—”
You giving me lip? You saying no to me?
“N-no, sir … I m-mean …”
Spit it out, boy.
“You’re … you’re d-dead,” Casey stammered. Whatever held him in place, was wrapped around his body, tightened its grip, like the muscular arms of a gigantic octopus. His ribs felt brittle as crackle-ice. His chest didn’t want to move. “Why … h-how can I still be h-hearing you? P-please, I h-have to open the d-door, just l-let me …”
You have to listen to me, boy.
“Casey!” Rima pleaded. “Please, listen, Casey, please!”
“I …” He couldn’t make his lungs work. “Dad, n-no, I n-need …”
I’ll show you what you need. His father’s voice sizzled in his blood. Take you down a peg.
“N-no, Dad,” he gasped, thinking to his hand: Move, move! Hurry, unlock the door, unlock the door! “S-stop. Just l-let me …”
And that was when he saw his hand … glimmer.
“Ah!” he screamed as the skin rippled and wavered as if underwater. Everything around him—the sense of the car seat beneath him, Rima’s terrified shouts, even the numbing cold—suddenly dropped out, as if the soundtrack to this movie had hit a glitch. There was only his hand, which was trying to deform and shift, growing larger, rougher, thicker, and cracked with calluses. Tufts of hair sprouted over the knuckles. It was as if his hand had slid into Big Earl’s skin. Or maybe Big Earl was only turning him inside out the way you shucked a messy glove and what he now saw was what lay beneath.
Or he’s in my blood, eating his way out. This couldn’t be real. Dizzy with horror, he watched as Big Earl’s hand jerked away from the lock.
“N-no.” A sudden cold sweat slimed his neck and upper lip. “Puh-please, d-don’t. Stop, s-stop!” He could hear his breath hissing from between clenched teeth, feel the shudder in his biceps as he tried fighting back, to make Big Earl’s hand obey, to stop moving, to stop …
Casey slapped himself, very hard: a stunning blow, an open-palm crack as sharp as a gunshot. A cry jumped off his tongue. There was a wink of pain as his teeth cut his cheek. Very faintly, above the thunder of his blood, he heard Rima shout: “No, Casey, stop! Don’t let him—”
“H-help,” he panted, his mouth filling with salt and rust. His voice sounded so small, almost not there at all. “E-Eric, help, someone, please …” And then his hand—his father’s hand—was a fist, and Casey couldn’t fight it. He could feel his will draining away, the numb acceptance of a beaten dog, which he knew too well because he’d been here so many times before: kneeling, watching Big Earl advance with that switch, his fist, a belt, and knowing that running only made things a hundred times worse.
