Gogo picked up Howling and laid him on the couch. “Bridget, get me my bag,” she ordered, and Bridget quickly complied.
Vern withdrew the skeleton into the scabbard that was her carapace back. “Help him! He can’t breathe!” she said.
“He’s going to be fine,” said Gogo. “Go to the freezer and get out some ice packs. Frozen veg. Ice. Whatever.”
Vern rushed to bring back the requested items. By the time she returned with them, Howling’s cries had softened to whines. “You’re doing great, Howling,” said Gogo.
Bridget returned carrying Gogo’s medical bag, and Gogo fished inside. She removed a bottle of pills and placed one on the table. “Knife,” she said. Bridget brought her a knife. Gogo cut the pill delicately in half. “Permission to give him something a little stronger than Tylenol?”
Vern nodded forcefully. “Yes. Give him anything he needs,” she said.
Gogo dissolved half of the pill in a small glass of milk. “I know it might hurt, but do your best to drink,” she told Howling, and pressed the cup to his lips.
Face scrunched in a mix of agony and disgust, he sipped the milk until the glass was done.
“It hurts,” said Howling.
“Not for much longer,” Gogo said, propping several pillows under his back and head until he rested in a more upright position. “Soon you won’t feel a thing, and you’ll be dreaming away asleep in no time.”
Vern paced around the sofa, unwilling to face her firstborn directly.
“Vern?”
She turned toward Gogo’s voice.
“Look. He’s already drifting off. He’s going to be fine.”
“What about pneumonia risk?” asked Vern.
“We’ll keep an eye on him, but with pain relief, rest, and chest support when he needs to cough, he’ll be fine.”
“I can’t let this happen again,” said Vern.
“We won’t.”
“There’s no we. This is about me.”
“There’s always a we,” said Gogo. “You hear me? We’ll figure this out.”
But the scope of Vern’s transformation could not be denied. With each passing day she took a step further away from hu man. Not long ago, Howling had witnessed Vern’s passenger as a novelty. Today, he saw the fungus’s other side. There was no denying the monster in Vern. There never had been.
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” said Vern, her words left purposefully vague to draw Gogo in.
Gogo’s pouty bottom lip wobbled a brief moment before she bit down on it, whipping it into line. “Do what?”
“You know. Me-and-you stuff.”
Vern expected Gogo to ask for clarification, but instead she shrugged. “Whatever you say, Vern.”
“I got distracted. Nothing like this would’ve happened had I been paying attention. This is what the world does to you when you look away.” Vern despised how self-pitying she felt, but not enough to take back her words. She dreaded the return to constant vigilance and pathological distrust.
“I should get Howling some more pillows,” said Gogo, and turned to leave.
Vern was used to pushing people away, less used to them actually going. At Cainland, everyone chased.
“Wait,” Vern called out, but Gogo was already out of earshot. Vern had too much pride to call for her again.
20
FOR MONTHS NOW Vern had sequestered herself at the cabin, playing house with Gogo like some sitcom newlywed. Vern shook her head at the preposterousness of it. How for months she’d abandoned her vigilant guard. Now her legacy as a mother would be breaking her child.
Between Reverend Sherman’s visit and Howling’s rib fractures three days ago, Vern could think of little but the devastation the compound had sown and would continue to sow. Carmichael remained in its clutches, oblivious. Lucy, perfect Lucy, had perished. At whose hands? Ollie’s? Vern spent her hours skulking outside the cabin in brooding silence.
Her unspooling body, the ravings of the hauntings, summer’s sticky-hot approach—each was a clue toward an end Vern could not see or imagine but knew was coming. The antlered beast stalked her with increasing frequency, though she never saw it head-on. Its shadow emerged in the corner of an eye, ballooning as incomprehensibly as the universe, but disappearing by the time Vern worked up the nerve to turn and face it. Only the smell of it belied its presence. Like wet, like mud.
Bridget brought her cups of chamomile tea to calm her. This would’ve usually been Gogo’s job, but she and Vern weren’t talking. “So,” said Bridget. She was hovering just outside the radius Vern had claimed as her pacing patch.