Little Dead Red Read online

  LITTLE DEAD RED

  MERCEDES M. YARDLEY

  Published by Crystal Lake Publishing

  www.CrystallakePub.com

  Copyright 2015 Crystal Lake Publishing

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 978-0-9922414-6-9

  Cover Design:

  George Cotronis

  http://www.cotronis.com/

  eBook Formatting:

  Lori Michelle

  http://www.theauthorsalley.com

  Proofread Joe Mynhardt, Jan Strydom, and Guy Medley

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  PROLOGUE

  Once upon a time, long long ago, somewhere before her second divorce, Marie had smiled. She had simply been Marie then, and occasionally even Happy Marie, and that was a kind and gracious thing. Marie knew of the dangers of the world, but Marie also knew of love and laughter. Marie knew of her tiny little girl, Aleta, who used to hop around on one foot to see if she could keep her balance, and stuck her naughty fingers into Marie’s jam, and would ask for a bedtime story even when it was nowhere near bedtime.

  “It doesn’t have to be a bedtime story, dear,” Marie would say, and her eyes would twinkle. Smiling Marie. Happy Marie. “A story told at any other time is simply a story.”

  Aleta, who had dark eyes like her mother, and dark hair like her mother, and it refused to be tamed and combed, also like her mother’s, would say, “But bedtime stories are the best. Won’t you please tell me one, Mama?”

  Marie often had things to do. There were dishes to be put away and dinner to be cooked and text messages to send to her husband, who seldom came home anymore. There were bags to be packed and an escape to be planned, but this made her smile, too. In fact, it made her nearly happier than anything else ever had, except for her sweet daughter.

  “Of course we’ll read. Which one would you like?”

  Aleta usually wanted stories about brave soldiers and clever girls and terrible, terrible monsters. Marie made her voice deep and heavy for the monsters, scary and dark, and Aleta snuggled next to her in horrified delight.

  “I’m going to EAT YOU,” she cried as a troll or a wizard or a wolf.

  “Don’t eat me all up!” Aleta would shriek.

  “Yes, I’m going to eat you all up!” Marie would scream, and then she’d chase her daughter around the house, kicking over her husband’s ash trays and piles of unpaid bills and pieces of her broken dreams. Then they tumbled to the floor together and Happy Marie would smile and whisper that good always won, and clever children outwitted monsters and witches, and she would never, ever, ever let Aleta be eaten all up.

  Until, of course, the day Marie discovered monsters were not only real, but had been feeding on her little Aleta without her knowing. Aleta had been eaten all up, for years now, and Marie was never Happy Marie again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Grim Marie’s mother was dying. She had been dying for several years now, off and on, but this time seemed like it might actually be THE TIME.

  “I’m not ready for you to go, Mama,” Marie whispered to nobody in particular. She was putting together a basket for her mother, full of treats and homemade breads and jams. Grim Marie liked to cook. It set things right in her mind. She spent the morning pressing flour, salt, eggs, and water together to form noodles. She rolled them into dough. Cut them into strings. Let them dry around the tiny apartment like Christmas tinsel made of carbohydrates. Spider webs of love.

  “Talking to yourself again?”

  Aleta appeared in the doorway. Her dark eyes were lined in black. She’d pierced her nose and lip and dimple. She had tried her tongue but regretted it almost immediately.

  Marie tried to smile at her, but her lips didn’t quite work right. She felt them twist and shape themselves into something almost eerie. She let the attempted smile fall from her face and it cracked on the floor like a brittle mask.

  “At least I know what I’m going to say.”

  Aleta stepped over and kissed her mom on the hair. Quick, neatly. Not like a child kisses a mother at all. More like a distracted parent kisses a child when their silky heads bumble too near their lips.

  “The soup smells good.”

  “Thanks, dear. Most of it is going to Grandma’s, but I have some put aside for us, too.”

  Aleta floated over to the stove, sniffing the chicken soup again.

  “You can buy this stuff in cans, you know.”

  Marie shrugged. “It isn’t the same.”

  Aleta grinned at her then, and her too-round face thinned into something Marie remembered from too-long ago.

  “You look like a kid when you smile,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Aleta’s eyes went scared and then empty. She packed her grin away and tucked it safely into her back pocket.

  “I’m sorry,” Marie said, but Aleta shook her head.

  “Don’t be sorry, Mom. I know what you meant.”

  “I don’t want to upset you . . . ”

  “Stop it.”

  Aleta would always be upset. She knew it. Grim Marie knew it. Talk of childhood and hopes and secrets would always remind her of monsters. Talks of bedroom doors and hands over mouths and footsteps in the hall would bring her back to that place.

  “I’m sorry,” Marie said again for the one millionth time. Her mouth said it. Her eyes said it louder.

  “Don’t be.” Aleta tried that half smile again, where one side hitched higher than the other, but it didn’t work, seemed garish. She pulled her lips back and showed her teeth, and it wasn’t anything beautiful or comforting at all.

  “Come here, baby.”

  Marie held out her arms and Aleta walked into them. She smelled like incense and new floral deodorant and herself, that smell that was more familiar than baby powder. It pulled deep and guttural at Marie’s stomach, reminding her of something older than time. Like frankincense. Like a strange piece of music that makes you weep when you hear it, missing your mother and your father and everybody else who knew you before you even technically were.

  “You’re kind of losing it, Mom.”

  Aleta pulled away and studied her mother with eyes that shouldn’t have to show such concern at age 12.

  “You’re tired.”

  “I’m always tired.”

  “You’re afraid Grandma is really sick this time?”

  “How do you know so much?”

  Aleta grinned, and it was real, and it was wonderful.

  “I’m a mature and astute child, mother.”

  “Smart aleck,” Marie said fondly, and threatened jokingly to swat her daughter on the behind with the wooden spoon.

  “When are you going to have time to run everything over to her?”

  Marie sighed and her hand fluttered to her brow. A headache was gnawing at her temples, winding steel bands around her forehead. She wanted to gouge out her eyes with the spoon, to relieve the pressure. She wanted to bash her face against the counter again and again and again until the rotten pumpkin that was her head simply exploded and the pain was no more.

  “I’m not sure, sweetie. I want to get it to her by dinner, but I just have so much to do. I was planning to spend tonight in the hospi
tal with her. You don’t mind, do you? Or you could come with me, if you’d like, but there really won’t be anywhere to sleep.”

  Aleta rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t make it so hard. I’ll bring it to Grandma for dinner. You come after work and we’ll stay. It isn’t a big deal.”

  Marie thought. “I suppose I could run you over and . . . ”

  “Run me over? It’s over half an hour away. I’ll take the bus.”

  Marie opened her mouth to say something, but Aleta cut her off.

  “It’ll be fine. You worry too much. Give me a few minutes to pack a bag and I’ll do it, okay?”

  She stuck out her tongue and ran up the stairs, her legs looking frail in her skinny jeans, the flash of red Converse looking like fire flowing up the steps.

  She wanted to do this. She wanted to smooth the worry from Marie’s eyes and push at her cheeks until they were sweet and soft and happy. Marie swallowed hard.

  “Let her go,” she whispered to herself, and ladled the soup into a thermos. “She isn’t your baby anymore. Let her go.”

  The extra few hours would be nice. Perhaps she could even slip into the bathtub before she went to the hospital, with its scent of bleach and plastic tubing. Her stomach lurched at the thought of it.

  “Do you think they’ll let us bring Grandma home?”

  Marie hadn’t heard Aleta creep back down the stairs. She turned and saw her daughter shrug into the bright red hoodie that she always wore.

  “I don’t know. Sweetheart, she might not come home this time. It feels a little . . . different than before. More serious.”

  Aleta nodded, a wise little sage.

  “Will you be okay if that happens?”

  Her daughter shrugged, but it wasn’t the shrug of indifference. It was the shrug of not knowing, or not being able to predict the future. “I’ll be okay” and “I’ll miss her” and “Why do people have to leave” and “There’s one less person in the world I’ll trust” pressed their faces to the space behind her eyes, but all she did was shrug.

  “We’ll get along all right” Grim Marie told her. She nudged Aleta with her elbow, teasing out a smile. “We always do.”

  “Take a nap,” Aleta told her, and she slipped the food into her backpack. “Maybe a bath. You love baths.”

  “Maybe.”

  She kissed her daughter’s cheek. Aleta slipped her earbuds into her ears, flashed her eyes at her mother over her shoulder, and walked out of the door.

  Grim Marie thought about that moment often. The red hoodie. The dark eyes. The door closing

  Closing

  Closing

  And then it was closed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Marie did, indeed, take a bath. Such a luxury, time spent on herself when she should have been cleaning, or catching up on that night’s batch of work, or taking the soup to her mother with Aleta. But she didn’t. She did neither of those things.

  She pinned her dark hair up. It was thick and streaked with gray, but sometimes it still managed beauty. She liked to think so, anyway, when she caught unexpected glimpses of herself in mirrors and store windows.

  “I don’t look half bad,” she sometimes mused, and very nearly tossed her head. If she did so, perhaps her hair would fall over one eye. Perhaps it would hide the heavy circles under it, the weariness that peered out of her irises. Perhaps somebody’s eyes would be drawn to that rather foppish section of hair instead of the worry lines around her mouth.

  Worry lines. Not laugh lines. Grim Marie knew this, knew there was a difference. She knew she wore her station and her sorrows on her face like other ladies wore fine hats. Her eyes would skitter away from her reflection, and she’d continue on, her head down, her fingers counting the few dollars in her pocket.

  But now, she thought no such thing. She pinned her hair high on her head. The water was decadent, almost unseemly hot, and she had put in a little hand soap to create bubbles.

  “Mom,” Aleta had told her before, rolling her eyes. “I have some real bath stuff. Good stuff. You should use it. Stop acting so poor all of the time. If you do, it’ll stick.”

  “One day I’ll buy my own,” she had promised, and she meant it at the time. She still did. But now was not that time, and the “good stuff” belonged to Aleta. She didn’t want to use it. Besides, the hand soap smelled good, as it should. She had made it herself. And it didn’t remind her of working, as dish soap did. This bath was enough luxury without completely losing her head over it.

  Well. Maybe a little. She could perhaps go a bit wild.

  She took down a candle, precious to her. Something small and meaningless, perhaps, to somebody else. An extra gift for Christmas. Something that came free when you ordered something in the mail. She couldn’t remember exactly, but she knew this candle meant time, and it meant a touch of elegance, and it meant that she was doing something for herself because she, Marie, was a good person and deserved good things.

  This made her sniffle and rub at her face with the back of her hand. And that made her laugh. Then it made her cry. Who was she to believe she deserved so little? She had been full of dreams, once. She and her husband and Aleta, all.

  Misplaced dreams. Ill-suited dreams. Nearly unseemly in her unabashed, wide-eyed dreaming of them. She should be embarrassed. She should be ashamed to have dreamed such feral dreams at all. They weren’t for little people and nobodies. They weren’t for her.

  Her refuge, reward bath turned into a cold comfort for an undeserving woman. Marie covered her face with her hands and cried. Louder and louder, less and less controlled, she sobbed until she howled, like the ecstatic howl of The Wolf, and these noises covered the scream and cries of her sweet little Aleta as she floundered and eventually fell under The Wolf’s snarling jaws.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Marie arrived at her mother’s hospital room with her hair slightly damp from the rejuvenating-bath-that-wasn’t.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Her mother’s gentle face lit up. It was like opening the window and leaning outside into the morning air. Marie fairly breathed her in.

  “Darling! What a nice surprise!”

  “Surprise? Didn’t Aleta tell you I was right behind her?”

  “Who?”

  Marie sighed.

  “They’re giving you too many medications, Mom. Where is Aleta? Did she run to the restroom?”

  The old woman reached out and grasped Marie’s fingers.

  “I love when you come to visit, darling. Brightens up my day.”

  “I love coming, too. So tell me how you’re feeling.”

  Marie leaned back in her too-stiff hospital chair and listened to her mother chatter on about things like the life cycle of Painted Lady butterflies and who was doing who wrong on her latest soap opera. It killed her to hear this . . . this prattle, because this wasn’t who her mother was. Talk on international travel politics, sure. Discussions on feminism and empowerment and gun control and evolution and creationism, definitely. But who won a toaster oven on The Price Is Right? Simple things for a simple woman, which is who her mother had become. She wouldn’t be coming back, either. Marie could feel this deep in her bones, in some primal way that she sometimes knew when it was going to snow days in advance, or when her skin prickled and she knew danger was close.

  Funny how these ancient knowings kicked up sometimes and not others. How they bubbled to the surface like swamp water when it wasn’t important, but when it was important, she never felt anything at all.

  She kissed her mother’s cheek and her mother chirped in delight.

  “What was that for, dear?”

  “Just because. Mom, I’m starting to get worried about Aleta. Even if she’s taking her time, she should be back from the restroom by now.”

  “But I told you. I haven’t seen her.”

  That oh dear no feeling in her bones. It leached out of them like calcium and rode her bloodstream. It zipped through her system, turning on alarms and raising flags and
causing her to inhale far too sharply.

  “But the soup.”

  Her mother gestured at the cafeteria tray by her bedside.

  “Turkey and gravy today, dear. It’s Monday. It’s the only time I’ve ever looked forward to Mondays.”

  Grim Marie became Worried Marie. No thermos of soup. No backpack at the foot of the bed. No red hoodie tossed over the chair or the bed’s railing or even balled up in the corner of the room.

  She had never desired so badly to see something balled up in the corner of the room before.

  “Aleta isn’t here,” she whispered, and her hair rose, her eyes dilated, her breath hitched.

  “Of course not, darling. You look unwell. Shall I call the nurse?”

  “She never made it.” Her skin crawled, blood froze, her heart stood still.

  They were true. All of the clichés were true. The way her heart pounded, her mouth went dry, her blood boiled, her mind shut down when she saw her second husband hovering over her tiny, little, shivering Aleta so long ago.

  “She never made it.”

  She said it again, and then she was up and out. Retracing her steps, looking at the route on the street and bus with new eyes. Had she missed something before? Something small and insignificant, almost, except that it was so incredibly important. Some breadcrumbs she could fit together and follow home until she found her little little oh-so-little girl safe and sound and at home.

  And then she found it. On the third bus stop, something so every day and mundane that she had stepped right over it the first time, her eyes full of useless tears of self-loathing and the stardust of seeing Aleta and Mother again.

  There, in the gutter. The concrete gutter full of cigarette butts and shredded newspaper and stagnant water and old coffees tipped and tossed aside. Joining the mess was a splash of something familiar. Homemade chicken noodle soup with made-from-scratch noodles. Carrots diced almost-but-not-too finely. Celery and bay leaves and pieces of chicken, spilled from a thermos that had somehow fallen from a little girl’s hand.

  Grim Marie, who was now Terrified Marie, looked left and right. At the buses and cars whizzing past her, at the people who walked by like they only had somewhere to be, not like somebody was feeling her universe grind to dust around her.