Home > White Trash Warlock (The Adam Binder Novels #1)(4)

White Trash Warlock (The Adam Binder Novels #1)(4)
Author: David R. Slayton

   Bending, Annie cooed at the empty stroller. Robert approached with small steps, trying to make himself small and unthreatening, using the same tactics he deployed with disoriented patients.

   Each lost pregnancy had thickened the gloom until it wrapped Annie like a leaden blanket. A miasma of depression seeped into the house. He watched for letters from the homeowner’s association.

   His mother was supposed to keep an eye on Annie, not let her wander the streets. Robert seethed, but forced himself to calm, to focus on his wife.

   “Annie?” he asked, reaching for her. “Honey?”

   “Shh,” she said, eyes fixed on the stroller. “You’ll wake him. I just got him to sleep.”

   Robert pressed his hand to her shoulder, hoping he could draw her back from wherever her mind had gone. She felt too thin, pliable, like he could bruise her.

   The sunlight was probably good for her, but she wasn’t eating enough. He’d talk to his mother, make sure Annie was getting enough Vitamin D. She needed spinach, kale, foods with iron—Robert forced himself to stop diagnosing. This went beyond diet or vitamins.

   There was some justice in that, he knew, reaping what he’d sown. Adam had grown up talking to invisible people. It had been so easy to convince their mother to sign the papers, to commit Adam to Liberty House, to walk away and start over.

   But Annie was his wife. Tears welled in his eyes. At least the speed-walking women had turned the corner.

   He could keep Annie at home a little longer. She just needed time. She wasn’t a danger to anyone.

   Neither was Adam, a thought whispered.

   Robert squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, forced the past back down

   “Annie,” he said, grasping a little harder. “The stroller’s empty.”

   “Of course it isn’t,” she snapped with a bit of her old strength, a dismissive glance full of her old intelligent bluntness. She drew down the stroller’s hood.

   Robert staggered backward with a gasp. Tripping over the curb, he fell onto his ass. He ignored the pain of contact as Annie scooped up the bloody mess from inside the stroller. Red stained her sleeves as she cradled the glob to her chest. Blood ran down her arms, thick and slow, like paint dripping off the side of a can.

   Maybe she’d found a cat or a small dog hit by a car. It couldn’t be a child, a baby. The shape was all wrong, broken, more of a mass than a body. Yet it pulsed with a faint heartbeat, alive, impossibly alive.

   “Annie!” Tilla called. Her buzz saw of an accent soothed when it should have grated. Robert’s mother came up the walk. Stopping, hands on her hips, she looked down at her son. “I’m sorry, hon. I took a nap. She was sleeping in her room. I didn’t hear her sneak out.”

   “You don’t see it, Mom? You don’t see it?”

   The thing, the bloody bundle, lifted its head and opened sleepy yellow eyes. It yawned, exposing a mouth full of fangs. Its eyes narrowed to slits as it focused on Robert. It sank its teeth into Annie’s breast. She gave a little gasp and smiled, like the bite calmed rather than stung.

   “Of course I see it,” his mother said. “We should cover her . . .”

   Trailing off, Tilla squinted.

   “Oh,” she said.

   Robert found his feet. When he looked again, the thing had vanished. The blood had vanished. Though no cloud hid the sun, he shivered. Annie looked puzzled, lost and dazed.

   “Well, shit,” his mother said, drawing out the cuss until it almost sounded like “sheet.” She reached for the pack of cigarettes in her back pocket.

   Tilla lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and let the smoke out in puffs.

   “We’d better go call your brother,” she said.

   Robert’s breath hitched at the suggestion.

   “Let’s get her inside,” he said.

   He braced for Annie to fight him as he steered her toward the house, but she came, docile and quiet. Her compliance twisted his heart.

   Tilla gave the stroller a nasty look as if it were to blame. She dragged it to the garage like a reluctant child.

   Annie let him lead her upstairs, to the guest room where she’d been sleeping. Robert had told himself that it was better for her, that he wouldn’t wake her when he came home from work, but in truth he could no longer watch her cringe when he touched her. More often than not she responded like she didn’t know him at all.

   He steered Annie to sit on the edge of the bed.

   “Just stay here, okay?” Robert asked her, trying to not beg.

   Annie pursed her lips and nodded.

   He closed the door behind him. They’d have to install a lock.

   The thing, the bloody glob in the stroller, hadn’t returned. But Robert could feel it lurking, like an aftertaste on his thoughts.

   He wanted to tell himself it had been his imagination, the stress, the long hours at the hospital. But no. He’d seen what he’d seen. Something more than depression had a hold of Annie. Something insidious. Something other.

   Robert pressed the back of his head against the door.

   He’d burned all his bridges to anyone who believed in magic and ghosts. He’d locked his baby brother away in Liberty House and cut all ties.

   They hadn’t spoken in years.

   You did the right thing.

   Robert wanted to slam his head back against the door, but he didn’t want to startle Annie. He clenched his jaw and started down the stairs instead.

   He could picture Adam’s life—shit-kicker boots, hole-ridden jeans, and a ball cap that almost hid his dirty-blond hair, a disguise, an attempt to fit in where he never could.

   His mother rattled around the kitchen, taking things from the freezer to make dinner, her usual outlet. He wished he had something like cooking to ease his mind. He pressed his hands to the counter and leaned toward her. He could still smell the cigarette she’d had outside. Wished she’d quit. Knew she wouldn’t.

   “Where is he?” Robert asked.

   “With your Great Aunt Sue. In the trailer park,” she said.

   He’d known Adam had left Liberty House on his eighteenth birthday, but surely he had a job, a life. Twenty was old enough to start living, choose a vocation if you weren’t going to go to college.

   “It makes sense,” Tilla said. Her lips curled as if she’d tasted sour milk. “They’re alike.”

   His mother did not like Sue.

   “Have you talked to him?” Robert asked.

   “Once in a while.” She set a carton of eggs on the countertop, softly, like the granite might break them on principle. “I offered him the choice to come live with me. He said no.”

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