“No,” Howling snapped.
“It’s all right, Howling,” said Vern between floundered breaths. “I’m going to be right here. Just having a little rest.”
Feral whined, then teared up. “Please don’t make us, Mam,” he said.
“You’re only going to be a little ways from me. I’m still right here,” said Vern. “In no time you’ll be calling out to me to tell me to stop moaning so loud.”
Neither child laughed, but they obeyed. Reluctantly, they let themselves be pulled from Vern’s side to a pallet Bridget was making them. Vern tuned her ears closely to their little sounds: their steps against creaking wood and the swish of their cotton-covered thighs touching as they walked. Their breaths were heavy with angst and tears.
Bridget returned to Vern a few moments later with a bag of frozen corn. She laid it on Vern’s forehead. “This should cool you down a little,” she said. “You’re burning up.”
Vern nodded. “I need to tell you something before I forget,” said Vern. Lucidity was fast leaving her.
“What is it?”
“It’s about Lucy. The hauntings,” Vern said, panting. Her thoughts outpaced her tongue.
“The what?” asked Bridget.
Vern wasn’t sure she’d remember the details of the hauntings on the other side of her fever. “The night terrors. Remind me, if I get better—”
“When you get better.”
“Remind me when I get better about the day me and Lucy met, okay?”
“Of course,” said Bridget.
“How she sauntered in, in her red-and-white outfit. A boy on the compound saw her and said she was ugly and bald-headed. Lucy strangled him.”
Bridget smiled, a tear in the corner of her eye. “Sounds like her.”
You’ll have to excuse my Lucy. She’s a wild one, Evelyn had said.
“They’re real, Bridget. They’re memories.” Hers? Lucy’s? She wasn’t sure.
Vern couldn’t have recollected the day she first saw Lucy with such clarity on her own. The exact details of Lucy’s outfit, her smells. Until today, she’d forgotten about Brother Carver’s son Thelonious calling her names.
The hauntings weren’t hallucinations caused by the poisons Reverend Sherman and Dr. Malcolm had injected her with. They were fragments of the past. “Don’t let me forget.”
Bridget nodded, brows furrowed. “Okay.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Fever clutched at Vern. She was falling and falling. Her last thought as she faded was that she’d waited too long to leave the woods.
15
VERN STARTLED AWAKE at the sound of the front door whapping the wall. Bridget’s niece had arrived.
“How bad is she?” Gogo asked, voice stern as she charged inside. She flung the door shut behind her, but not quickly enough to prevent the intrusion of cold and snow from outside.
“Bad,” said Bridget. “She’s been knocked out the better part of three hours. She’s had four Tylenol but she’s still on fire.”
“You said she had kids?” asked Gogo.
“I moved them to my room when she started moaning and lashing out in her sleep. Didn’t want to scare them.”
“Any sign of drug use?” asked Gogo as she shed her coat. The heavy fabric fell with a thump to the floor.
“She was talking a little crazy, but I think that was just the fever. I’m guessing she’s been sick for a while. Look at her. She’s gaunt as a foal.”
“Noticeable injuries?”
“Just that on her neck. It came out of nowhere,” said Bridget. “Like fucking magic.”
Gogo strode over to where Vern lay on the sofa, and knelt down on the floor in front of her.
“I don’t do drugs,” Vern spat, winded by the effort of speaking.
“I wouldn’t care if you did,” Gogo said, voice hard, and Vern sensed a reprimand in her tone. “Many of my patients do, and there’s no shame in it.”
It wasn’t what Vern expected, to be chastised for—she wasn’t sure exactly—but what she guessed was, in her mam’s words, her judgmental nature.
“Whatever you’ve done or not done, I’m going to take care of you,” said Gogo, the matter closed. She spoke and gestured with such surety of purpose, it was hard not to trust that in her care lay the means to survival.
“I take care of myself,” said Vern, panting.
She braced for protest, but Gogo nodded. “It’s a job we all have to outsource occasionally. Just for tonight, let me be the one you outsource it to.” She grabbed Vern’s chin and held her gaze with unblinking ferocity. “Okay?”