Headlights(90)

She raises her eyes slowly, lets them stop and linger on my chest. Her nostrils flare again. Want. Fear. I see it. She inhales long and slow through her nose and closes her eyes again, dropping her head slightly back in what is either pain or desire. Both. Her eyes come all the way up, and I see the tears in them. The want. The room grows cold again.

“Can you keep going?” I ask.

She nods, gives me a look as if to say yes. As if to say please, just do it, so I don’t have to. I hope I read her right. God, I hope I do.

I grip her tighter behind her waist and pull her all the way in to me.

She gasps, and I think I misread, start to pull back. But she doesn’t let me. Holds me there. Her body, against mine. Her chest and hips and stomach, and her hand holding on to mine so tight I could nearly faint from the pain.

The way she fits against me …

Have I ever felt…? Has it ever been—

Movement, at the edge of the room.

Darkness.

My heart pounds.

Hannah’s eyes squeezed tight, she swallows. That look of pain.

“Hey,” I say. “It’s working. Look.”

She does. And behind me, she must see the same. Because I feel her press into me just a little bit more, and I swear I feel the world spin.

I hold her tighter.

More black. Moving, swirling in the corner. It’s darker than the shadows. Amorphous and thick. Something inky, oily, maybe, sliding along the patterned carpet around us. A split second of telling myself I am imagining it, but at this stage, what’s the fucking point? I can see it, and I can feel it. That smell, from the memory at the park with Rose. Chemical, bitter. It’s back. The cold so sharp that I think it might burn us.

Pressure. Vibration, static.

VOOM.

Like we’ve been taken out of time, like the rest of the world is frozen.

Hannah stiffens, and I think she’s going to pull away, that it’s just too much.

I feel something, coming into the room. Snaking its way toward us from that someplace else.

What we’re doing is working. But if she pulls back, I’ll let go. I’ll do it. I let her lead in that, show me what she needs. My heart is … I’m … We take another three slow steps in our dance, spinning slowly in the room, the black mass starting to lift in tendrils and swirl up and around us, from the floor.

I swallow, my mouth dry. Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe I’m the one who will … We need answers, but just looking at it. Heart racing, blood pumping, body numb. Terror rips through me. Old terror. I close my eyes against it.

And I feel something against my chest. Hannah closes the final gap between us and leans her head on my shoulder.

I almost trip. I can feel her breath on my neck. The tip of her nose against my skin, the way she inhales, taking in the scent of me. And I know what it is, I know what it’s from and that it’s trauma and that she’s stuck in a loop, and that— But …

The feel of it. Of her.

And this thing in the room with us, this thing that makes me feel— She squeezes my hand again, and one of her tears drops to my chest. And I am brought back to myself. She’s doing it to ramp up the response. Of course. She’s doing it to lure this thing all the way in. That’s what this is. We need to feel fear to talk to it. That’s all this is.

VOOM.

I can’t waste it.

“Please,” I say to the room. Louder than I spoke to her. I clear my throat and try once more. “Please. We’re listening. Tell us what you want.” Hannah Lawrence’s cheek against my shoulder. The extreme cold, both of us cocooned, almost, in this swirling black mass. Swirling, stretching, almost up to the ceiling around us.

“What do you want?” I say to the room. Holding Hannah steady, holding me steady, still moving, still dancing, the song still playing. Even as both of us are shaking now, as our teeth are chattering in the cold that is unlike any I’ve ever felt before. That acrid chemical smell on the air. The pressure, like being deep underwater.

VOOM.

The black mass closes in, almost entirely surrounds us. It’s dark, and in the few gaps between the inky tendrils, I can see the lights of the room dimming further. I hold Hannah tighter, and say again to whatever’s in the room with us, “Please—”

BAM!

Something crashes against the window.

BAM!

Again.

“What was that?” Hannah says.

We can’t see through the black now surrounding us. I can’t answer her.

“Please, just talk to us,” I say, to the room, whatever’s in the room. “Just tell us what you want, we’re—”

The black presses in on us, and—

Everything goes dark. I lose vision entirely.

Breaths.

Heartbeats.

Hannah’s hand in mine. I don’t let her go.

I can’t see anything. Nothing at all.

Then …

VOOM.

I feel it. It’s here. Close to us.

Hannah stiffens beneath me, her heart pounding so hard and fast I can feel it.

A sliding, thick, suffocating feeling. The air suddenly clogged with something, though I have no idea what it is. Almost a current, a vibration that is so intense, so overwhelming under and through and around everything, that we are suspended in it.

In a half second of delirium I think of Daphne and her insects, the Lord of the Rings movies she used to make me watch. The giant spider that paralyzes the hobbit with her venom. I think that’s what this is. But it’s not poison. It’s energy, sound, vibration. Even now, it mixes with the song, Lee Hazlewood’s voice. Contorts and distorts it, makes it discordant and off-kilter and even painful to hear. And still it plays.