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Empty.
That’s how I felt when they lowered Jacob into the ground.
Empty and lost.
My soulmate. Dead at thirty. Shot by a stray bullet.
A self-imposed detour off the jammed highway through the shady part of the city landed him six feet under and plastered his face over the local news channels. A national outcry against gang violence filled the airways and Jacob became the anti-gang, anti-gun, anti-violence group’s new poster boy.
A lot of good that did me.
No one stepped forward.
No one was ever caught.
No one cared that I lost my husband.
And now I have to find a way to continue without him. Even though every dreaming moment replays our lives, our love, our intimacy and I wake, reaching for him, whispering his name. When I realize he’s gone, pain shoots through me like a wrecking ball barreling through a brick wall and leaves me in pieces.
I met Jacob when we were young, and the moment his gaze met mine I lost my heart. My family scoffed at me when I told them I was going to marry Jacob someday. They said ten was too young to know what love was.
At sixteen, he drove to my house daily to pick me up for school, despite the laws. He didn’t want me on the bus with the overbearing football players, the ones who constantly tried to feel up the female population, especially those girls like me who were off the market. Honestly, I’d rather be breaking the law with Jacob than ride on that bus anyway.
At twenty, we attended Yale— he in pre-law, while I labored in pre-med—and we shared a little off-campus apartment, living off crackers and tomato soup. I loved every minute of those hectic days, especially the wild nights exploring each other’s bodies, awakening a shared sexual prowess that left me breathless.
On a beautiful spring day during our senior year, he laid a path of rose petals from our bedside out to the courtyard where we had planted a small tree. It was there he waited on his knee for me with the most perfect diamond ring. One he designed and paid for with a year’s worth of savings he set aside just for that purpose.
I still get butterflies when I think of that moment. His blue eyes shone as brightly as the diamond and his chestnut hair blew in the small breeze, his smile confident and vulnerable at the same time. He knew I’d say yes, but he still held his breath the moment after he asked, as if there was a possibility that I’d turn him down.
“Holly?”
The voice brought me back graveside and I sent a glare in the direction of my brother. Didn’t he understand that the past was the only thing keeping me sane at this moment?
Sure, I saw death every day in the hospital, in my operating room, but not in my home, not in my heart.
Not my Jacob.
Tears blurred my vision and I swallowed. I stared at the small mound of dirt next to the hole. Dirt I was expected to sprinkle over the shimmering cherry casket. Like an out-of-body experience, my slight form crouched down, scooped up a handful of dirt, and scattered it over the casket in a jerking fling. The noise, like thunder in my ears, unlocked the sobs in my chest and I fell to my knees, unable to stand. My brother leaned down, placed his hand under my elbow and helped me to my feet before he led me back to the head of the funeral procession.
He sat with me in the black limousine; he held my hand and said nothing as I shook. Silent tears distorted my vision and I closed my eyes, refusing to acknowledge the devastation in my soul.
* * * *
“SAVE MY SON AND I’LL help you find your soul mate.” The gypsy woman still clasped her teenager’s bloody hand as she staggered next to the rushing gurney.
I bit down on my initial response, knowing she wouldn’t like the sarcasm that crawled up my spine at the mention of my soul mate. “I’ll do my best, ma’am,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to save this child. The steering wheel crushed his chest; his blood pressure was dangerously low and his pulse erratic. I exchanged a glance with Sandra, my favorite operating room nurse, and she gave me her usual reassuring smile before she closed the doors on the boy’s worried mother.
I hadn’t been able to pull out a miracle since Jacob died in my operating room three months ago and this looked like another lost cause. Opening his chest confirmed my suspicions. His ribs looked like someone had taken a steel mallet and pounded them to pieces and one of the slivers nicked the kid’s heart. It didn’t pierce it, but it left enough of a gouge to cause bruising. The heart was not an organ that responded well to bruising. By the grace of God, the kid survived surgery and remained stable through the setting of his fractured ribs.
I peeled off my scrubs and crossed to the waiting room. The gypsy stood, the material of her dress swirling around her like a wisp of smoke as she crossed to me with a gleam in her eye. A gleam as if she knew I patched up her kid, knew he made it through surgery.
I offered her a smile, the kind I reserve for those exhausting cases that still lay on the brink of death. “Your son made it through surgery, but I don’t expect him to regain consciousness for a few hours.” If ever.
“I knew you would be able to save him—”
I interrupted her with a quick hand gesture, universal for stop. “He isn’t out of danger yet. He’ll be under observation for the next twenty-four hours. After that, the danger is reduced, but understand—your son is still in critical condition.”
Her eyes, so full of hope, shot to my soul, and I flashed back to the moment I thought Jacob would make it. That swell of hope filled me, too, but it died just as surely as Jacob did. I gave a nod and turned before my throat closed, and my eyes betrayed me, filling with tears at the thought of Jacob. I made my way to the call room.
Aggravation aimed at the mist covering my vision ripped through me, and I blinked the unwanted tears away. I hate public displays of grief and this wasn’t the time or place to fall apart, especially not in front of a patient’s mother. I closed the door and scanned the empty room. My gaze fell on the cot and I stumbled toward it, collapsing stomach first. I buried my face in my crossed arms. Whether I wanted them to or not, the tears came, and I cried from exhaustion, cried for the child fighting for his life, and cried for my Jacob until I fell into the void.
* * * *
JACOB’S HANDS SLID along the curve of my thigh and created ripples of anticipation through my skin—his touch ignited the feral storm of lust in my soul. His lips followed the same path—fiery hot kisses that left a trail of chilling cold behind—and I shivered. An evil chuckle filled the dark room—illuminating my instincts and I knew what he had in mind even before the sash clasped my hands behind my back.
Tonight’s menu included some light bondage, which made the chill in the room evaporate. Satin covered my eyes and after he secured the knot, his light and smooth fingers toyed with me; they traced lines close to the erotic zones but not quite there. No, he wanted me to beg tonight and beg I most certainly would.
“Jacob, stop teasing me!” I cried after his third pass brushed my pussy.
“Do I need to gag you too?” His haunted breath whispered in my ear. He flicked his tongue, caught my lobe and sucked it between his lips.
“No, I just need you to stop teasing and do something.” My voice shook with desire and I knew the husky quality turned him on.
The bed creaked and he repositioned me. He spread my knees wide before he grazed my clit with his fingers. “There, I did something.” His lips touched my neck and his body pressed against my back. And then the contact was gone and nothing but chilled air caressed my back.
His musky scent overwhelmed me, a combination of cedar, spice, and sweat. I licked my lips. He chuckled as he moved in front of me; he threaded his fingers into my hair and found my lips with his. His kiss, a blend of cinnamon and Scotch, drew my breath from my lungs. His tongue rolled in a lazy circle and explored my mouth, my teeth, my tongue—as if he had all the time in the world.
When he broke the kiss, I whined my dissatisfaction.
“Don’t worry, baby, I’ve got something else to keep that mouth busy.” With that, he pulled me toward him and pushed my head down. Without the use of my hands, I folded over, right into his lap. His hard cock rubbed against my cheek. I turned into it and nuzzled my nose in the fine curls nested around his balls.
He shifted, adjusting so I would have more latitude in motion and his full shaft to play with. Before I had a chance to acclimate to his new position, his hot breath closed in on the inside of my thigh. I was at a disadvantage with my arms tied behind my back, but the moment his mouth latched onto my clit, I didn’t care. I used my cheek, my hair, my lips to caress the throbbing member before me. I sucked and nipped my way to the tip and slid my tongue in the slit. He responded, the rumble of satisfaction in his chest almost as satiating as the salty drops of pre-cum sliding from his core.
His mouth and his tongue probed my clit; every pass sent a tingling sensation through my pussy and an instant rush of liquid to the spot. Jacob always knew how to make me wetter than a hurricane and tonight was no different. I sucked and pulled his hard shaft farther into my throat in response.
Pressure built, starting low in my abdomen and spread until it encompassed my entire body. He knew I was almost there and plunged his fingers inside me, fucking me with his hand and his mouth, alternating at a pace that left me breathless and frantic in my quest to make him cum at the same time.
Stroking the length of him with my mouth, heat swept over my body, boiling the pressure to the point of overflow and I tensed, the beginning of the orgasm taking shape...
* * * *
BRIGHT LIGHTS SNAPPED me awake and I sat up in the cot. Sweat lined my back and it took a moment to get my bearings.
“Dr. Robbins?”
Instant irritation slammed into my frustrated body and I glared at the nurse in the door. “What?”
“You asked me to come get you if there was a change.”
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I swung my feet to the floor and nodded. I pushed the feel of Jacob away and focused. “What’s happening?” My voice lost the chastising tone I used before. I got to my feet and stifled a yawn.
“He’s awake.”
Of all the responses, that was the last one I expected. “Awake so soon?”
Rebecca raised her eyebrow. “Holly, you’ve been sleeping for six hours.”
That really threw me for a loop and I guess it showed because Rebecca laughed. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”
Her hands found her hips and she shot me a knowing glance.
She knew damn well I hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night since Jacob died. I said as much one night when I succumbed to the pressure and agreed to go out with the OR staff. I had a few too many drinks and blubbered about my dreams and how I couldn’t stand waking to the void. A drunken blackout wasn’t exactly the rest I needed and it hadn’t kept the dreams away. I’d still woken expecting Jacob beside me, and the empty cold bed that greeted my reaching hand had renewed that awful, empty pain.
“I get it. I’m coming.”
Rebecca didn’t say anything; she just led me to the boy’s room. The teenager offered me a grim smile. His deep brown eyes shimmered with tears of drugged pain.
I picked up the chart and glanced over the latest vitals before I looked back at the boy. “I know you’re probably not feeling like it right now, but you are one lucky kid. You’re going to be a bit uncomfortable for a while and we’re going to keep you in the intensive care unit overnight to make sure you’re out of danger. Do you have any questions?”
He shook his head slightly and I turned toward his mother. “Do you have any questions, Mrs. Albright?”
“How long will my boy be in the hospital?”
I could tell there was more of an underlying agenda with the question and my guess was it had to do with hospital costs. Before I opened my mouth and inserted my foot, I looked at the chart. “Honestly, it depends on how Adam does tonight.” I finally used the kid’s name. Now he was real; he had a name and I was invested in the case. In the past, if I didn’t feel confident the patient would pull through, I generalized.
Husband. Wife. Son. Daughter. Mother. Father.
Anything not to create an attachment.
That’s not to say the death of my patients didn’t impact me, but if they have a name, they take a piece of my heart with them. And after Jacob, I didn’t have much left.
Mrs. Albright smiled and crossed the small space to take my hands. “Your soul mate is no longer with us, is he?”
I found myself shaking my head, confirming her statement, and I sent a glare at the nurse as she stepped from the room. How else could this woman know?
“She did not tell me. I saw it in your eyes. In your heart.”
“Yes, my Jacob died a few months ago.” Again, I found myself compelled to acknowledge this woman’s statement. I took a moment to study her dark lined skin, her deep onyx eyes, and the equally dark lashes—all of which pulled me in, almost as effectively as a pocket watch to a hypnotist. “I miss him.”
The gypsy tilted her head to the right and offered me an encouraging smile. “What would you be willing to give to have him back?”
“Anything.” The answer came with no hesitation.
“Would you give up your soul?”
“Yes.” After all, my soul was empty without Jacob.
“What about all the skill found in these hands?” She squeezed my hands and I hesitated, not understanding the question. “Your surgical skills,” she clarified with a whisper.
I looked at my clasped hands. Hands that saved countless lives. Hands that longed for the feel of Jacob’s warm skin beneath them and without lament, I nodded.
The smile that spread over Mrs. Albright’s face should have terrified me, but instead my heart fluttered with hope. Hope: a strange sensation I vaguely remembered, something I had been absent of since Jacob died, and now it slithered under my skin, taking shape in my mind, in my heart.
She let go of my hands and dug into the pocket of her gypsy garb, producing a worn piece of paper, one that looked like it had been opened and closed countless times, and she placed it in my hand. “If you are willing to follow the directions written on this paper, your lost love will return.”
Whatever spell she had on me broke and I laughed. “What kind of cruel joke is this?” I stepped away and tossed the paper as if it burned the skin of my fingertips.
She retrieved it out of the air with the speed of a cobra strike and planted it in my palm. “Keep it. Time may change your mind.”
Something in her stark stare made me shove the paper in my pocket. I turned and marched out of the room, forgetting the boy in the bed for the moment. I walked out to the emergency bay, stepped outside in the cold, and welcomed the frigid wind slapping at my cheeks. It cooling me down and cleared my head.
I thought about the gypsy’s proposition—the impossibility of it—but tendrils of hope itched the base of my skull and brought with it a shiver. I crossed my arms and rubbed them to ward off the chill. But it persisted and I pulled out the paper from my pocket and studied the way it folded in on itself.
I unfolded the sheet, staring at the foreign incantation. Latin. I recognized a few words, but not all. My gaze dropped to the instructions. No eye-of-newt, no lizard skin, but I did need blood and bone. Human blood and bone. I shuddered at the thought and kept reading. Candles, crystals, birch bark, white lotus, graveyard dirt, and rose oils. Not quite as bad as I thought, especially for what obviously was black magic. Then my focus dropped to the details. I would need to mix these ingredients together in a silver chalice along with something of his. Something of personal meaning, preferably something he touched soon before he died.
Once the mixture was complete, the instructions said to read the incantation and drop a match into the cup. If done right, the dead would rise with the next full moon. I looked up at the sky at the waxing crescent and calculated. The full moon was at least a week and a half away. Before I could entertain the thought of actually trying this ludicrous idea, the beeper in my pocket went off. I traded the instruction sheet with my beeper and stared at the words that scrolled across the screen along with the room number. My heart lurched: I pocketed the beeper and ran inside.
I slid into the room and stared in dumb fascination at the flat line on the monitor. My gaze snapped to Adam and the emergency staff surrounding him.
“Clear!”
The staff took a step back as paddles were placed on his chest and side. The electrical pulse lifted the failing body from the sheets in a graceful arc, one that brought me back to Jacob—to his death—and I blinked back my reverie to focus on the situation before me and wonder what the hell went wrong.
I stepped into the melee and ordered an adrenaline push.
“Already done. No response,” Dr. Harrington said from the other side of the gurney. “Where have you been?”
“I stepped out for some air.”
“We’ve been paging you for fifteen minutes,” he snapped. He diverted his gaze to the display and waited for the paddles to charge again.
“That’s not possible.” I instinctively pulled my pager from my pocket. Only one page showed and it blinked in and out like the unit had a short. “Shit.” I pocketed the pager and stepped to the side of the bed.
“Clear,” Dr. Harrington said when the indicator turned green. The staff stepped back and he shocked Adam again. The line on the monitor didn’t change. It remained ruthlessly straight, accompanied by the monotone buzz.
“I need to open him up.” I stepped to the side of the bed and kicked the brakes off.
When no one responded, I glanced at Dr. Harrington. “Unlock your wheels so we can get him to an OR.”
Dr. Harrington glanced at the clock and shook his head. “It’s time to call it.”
“Look, he was awake the last time I was in the room.”
“And when was that?”
“I came in here a little while ago. It couldn’t have been more than a half hour. Now let’s get him to surgery.”
“According to the chart, you were here at seven. That was a couple hours ago.”
My gaze snapped to the clock on the wall and the room suddenly sparked, heating my skin from the outside in. I lost two hours. Two hours. There was no way I was outside for that long. No way.
“I’m calling it. Time of death: nine fifteen.” He snapped his gloves off and left the room, his last glance one of disgust, as if I was the one responsible for Adam’s death.
My heart pumped hard in my chest as adrenaline-laced despair rocketed through my veins. Fingers groped my pocket, felt the soft paper folded in the confines, and I exhaled. I didn’t dare pull the instructions free, not here, not with the wailing cry coming from the hallway followed by the gypsy flying into the room and throwing herself across her dead son. At first she didn’t acknowledge me, her words muffled sobs, pressed into her son’s chest; each rasping sound shot straight to my heart and pressed the weight of the loss on me like a ten-ton boulder.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Albright.” The words tumbled from my lips and gained her attention.
Her eyes narrowed and she spewed a Latin curse in my direction. Her hands balled into tight fists—fists that pounded on her son’s chest with her exclamation and I stepped back, away from the venom in her words, in her eyes, as if she could strike me dead with her steel-tipped curses.
Her hand shot out, palm facing toward the ceiling. “Give it back.”
I blinked at the order, not quite understanding what she was asking.
“Give what back?”
“His heart. Give me back his heart!”
I didn’t know what to do, but I knew enough to take another step back and put distance between us. “His heart is in his chest, ma’am.” I gestured toward the boy and swallowed hard. I planted my hand in my pocket and pressed the sheet of paper against my leg in an effort to safeguard the contents.
“Give me the instructions.” She converged on me like a hungry leopard.
Her face took on a feral quality and my hand grasped the sheet; I pulled it out and tossed it in her direction. She had no way of knowing I had a photographic memory and the words were burned in the flesh of my brain like an obscene Braille storybook.
The minute the cloth-like parchment was in her hands, she turned and stormed out of the hospital room; the curses still flowed from her lips, fading with her. I glanced at the dead boy and blinked back the tears that warbled my vision. His chest looked like a concave plate and I gasped. Whoever had administered CPR had crushed his broken ribs. I covered my face. If I had been here, I could have stopped it. I could have saved his life.
Instead, I was in some sort of time warp, studying that damn paper and entertaining the thought of enacting black magic to bring Jacob back to life. Nothing good could come of it and yet, the idea festered.
* * * *
IN THE MORGUE, I OPENED Adam up and sighed. All the bones that had been set earlier in the day fractured under the pressure of CPR and one of the jagged pieces pierced his heart. I pulled the shard out, inspecting it as a layer of regret clouded my mind.
I should have given him a more thorough check when I was in the room. I should have gotten that page. I should have been there to oversee the resuscitation.
I dropped the shard into a small metal bowl the size of a loose powder container, watched the blood drip off the bone and fill the base of the pot. I refocused; I cleaned out his chest cavity, suctioned the coagulated blood and removed the rest of the broken shards. Each plunk into the container cracked my core and pushed me deeper into the hole of depression that started when I lost Jacob.
I glanced at the collection of debris.
Bone and blood.
Human bone and human blood.
Despite the shiver, I screwed the top on the small container and set it on the table behind me with the rest of my notes.
I took extra care in stitching Adam back together. Each pull of the thread through his flesh pressed a sob deeper in my chest and when I was done, I pulled the sheet over him and left with my notes.
The dark entryway of my house welcomed me. I locked the door and stumbled to the living room, too tired to climb the stairs. The couch beckoned but I don’t remember crossing the room or my head even hitting the upholstery.
A clap of thunder woke me from the first dreamless slumber I had in months. I blinked and moved my head from my folded arms. The pungent odor of sulfur struck first. On the heels of the scent, the fact I was sitting at my kitchen table caught my attention and jump-started my heart. I pushed away from the table in a violent rush. The chair tumbled behind the force of my legs and slammed onto the tile floor with an echoing clang.
Arranged on the table before me, a string of flickering candles lit the morbid cluster of ingredients: a silver wedding chalice, a small pile of dirt, a few shimmering crystals, a strip of bark, a white lotus, and a bottle of rose oil. But that wasn’t what tripped my heart into overdrive. No, what set my heart into near heart-attack pace was the shredded, bloodied shirt I cut off Jacob at the hospital, the one I thought I destroyed in the hospital incinerator. Positioned on the tattered fabric was the small metal bowl—the one that held Adam’s fragmented bones.
I gasped and slid away from the table, horrified at the collection and the implications. My gaze fell to a piece of paper, worn and old just like the one I had given back to the gypsy. The instructions screamed at me and propelled me into motion. Without thought, I hastily mixed the concoction in the silver flute.
Words tumbled from my lips. My Latin was rusty as hell, but I read the incantation, wondering if my pronunciation was off. If so, I might be raising the devil instead of my dead husband.
“Spiritus mortuorm. Offero tibi anima mea. Ego praecipio tibi ut sugere.”
I dropped the lit match into the silver flute. Nothing happened at first, but then the flame licked the rose oil. A plume went up into the air and devoured the contents in a whoosh. Black smoke tinged with embers drifted to the ceiling and dissipated, leaving that odd ozone stench behind.
The shakes started in my hands but soon they encompassed my whole form to the point my legs would no longer hold my weight. I sat on the floor next to the tumbled chair. My breath wheezed from my chest, each inhale drawing the invisible strap across my chest tighter until white spots filled my vision and I fell back and welcomed the light, welcoming the nothingness that came with it.
* * * *
LIGHT FILTERED IN THROUGH the sheers and blinded me. I rolled, burying my face in the back of the couch and cursed the arrival of sunrise. The strange dream surfaced, and I snapped my eyes open, glancing around at the living room. Was that bizarre ritual only a dream?
I rolled and stared at the ceiling for a moment before dragging my tired butt off the couch and into the bathroom. The mirror showed me more than I wanted to see. Dark circles surrounded bloodshot eyes and the smear of soot on my cheek gave credence to the ritual. I didn’t need to venture into the kitchen, but I did. The macabre scene at the table sent a chill from my heels to the tip of my cranium and I shuddered.
It was real and despite the blood and bone and ash scattered on the tabletop, hope’s bright light edged its way into my heart. Was it possible?
For a moment I believed, and then reality crashed down and obliterated hope like a broken dam annihilates everything downstream. I shook my head, disgusted with even entertaining the thought. I grabbed the Clorox wipes and scrubbed the blood from the light surface, sweeping the contents into the garbage. I wrapped my fingers around the silver flute and the smell of smoldering skin filled the room before the burning sensation shocked the nerve endings and produced a yelp from my lips. Pain gripped my hand; the glass tumbled to the floor and the ping of silver bouncing off the tile rippled through the air. I stepped back, held my wrist, and stared at the red flesh and the surfacing blisters.
“Damn it.” Operating with my hand in this condition was out of the question. My fingers throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I crossed to the sink; I slid my hand under the cool stream. The minute I turned the faucet off, the pain flared again and I hissed. Swearing under my breath, I grabbed the oven mitt and picked up the silver chalice. I dropped it into the stainless-steel sink and the beads of water in the basin boiled on contact.
Fear crept up my back and brought a metal tinge to my mouth.
I doused the glass with water from the spout. A billow of steam rose and the water sizzled, making a sound close to a scream of protest.
I let the water flow and went in search of a salve for the blisters. An aloe plant flourished on the living room windowsill; I snapped the tip of a branch off and squeezed the sticky liquid onto my burns. The heat in my fingertips dulled, but even the minute pressure of the gel created a stab that cascaded up my arm like wild-fire.
Before I could inspect my wounds, the shrill ring of the phone broke through the silence. I scooped it off the base, pressed the on button and brought it to my ear without looking at the caller ID.
“Hello, baby.”
I blinked, unable to focus, unable to believe the seductive timbre flowing through the phone line. The scratchy laugh that followed turned my stomach into a cold rock, shriveled my insides, and turned my intestines to jelly. I barely made it to the couch before the world swam and the phone slipped out of my fingers. The last thing I remember was the dial tone beeping in time with my frantic heartbeat.
* * * *
I ROLLED INTO THE HOSPITAL later than expected with my hand cradled against my chest. I had canceled my surgeries for the day and alerted Rebecca of the nature of my injury. When I walked into the emergency room, she bolted to my side, took my hand and inspected the angry red blisters covering the surface of my palm and fingers.
“What did you do, put your hand on a hot burner?” Rebecca’s brow furrowed with worry.
“Actually, that’s exactly what happened. I was reaching for a glass in the cabinet above the stove and lost my balance.” A lie was the only sane choice. If I told the truth, they would lock me up in the psych ward faster than I could blink.
“Jesus, this is going to take a while to heal. You really did a number on it.” Rebecca led me into the burn unit, where my hand was treated and wrapped.
I walked into the chief of surgery’s office. Dr. Mark Richards leveled an unhappy stare in my direction. His lips pressed tightly together and his gaze dropped to my bandaged hand and back to my face. “You look like you need a week of sleep, Holly.”
“More like a month.” I waved his comment off.
“I’m taking you off rotation until you’re given the all-clear from Dr. Soronsky and I’m ordering you to get some rest.”
My jaw fell open at both the directive and the edge in his voice. “But that could be as long as a month.”
Dr. Richards nodded. “Yes, I’m well aware of that but you haven’t taken any time off since before Jacob died. And the death of that child yesterday could have been prevented if you were at the top of your game.”
A slap would have been more humane. I inhaled at the sting of his words. I opened my mouth to argue and his hand came up to silence me.
“No arguments. Now go and I don’t want to see you back at this hospital until you get the thumbs-up.”
* * * *
TWO DAYS AND I WAS climbing the walls. Daytime television sucked and there were only so many books in the place that were worthy of being read a second time. I had already blown through the four books I pulled from the shelves.
When Jacob was alive and I had time off, we would go for a bike ride or a hiking excursion or take a trip into the city to see a show or go to a museum. I was in no mood to trek into the city on my own and the outdoor activities were not suited for winter.
No, when I had time off in the dead of winter, Jacob took a few hours at lunch time and we spent the afternoon in bed, exploring each other and then eating cheese and crackers and ripened grapes. Those memories burned inside and created a dull ache in my heart.
“Oh Jacob. Why’d you have to go and die on me?”
The house didn’t have an answer for me. I scanned the book shelves for something, anything to occupy my mind. Medical books and law journals lined the shelves and I sighed. My gaze landed on some old theology books and I arched my eyebrow. I pulled When Bad Things Happen to Good People from the shelf, sat down on the couch and flipped through the pages.
My vision warbled and my eyelids slid closed. I blinked, my body jerking from the dream fall. The dark room met my surprised stare. The book lay on the floor next to the couch and I sat up, arching my back in a stretch to work out the stiff kinks.
“How long have I been asleep?” My scratchy voice filled the room. I headed to the bathroom to relieve the pressure in my bladder and then headed for the kitchen to calm the growling in my stomach.
The kitchen was bright under the full moon shining through the skylights. I looked up, stared at the old man in the moon and sighed. I scanned the meager pickings in the refrigerator. I hadn’t been shopping in a while. I reached for the juice and an unfamiliar sound upstairs gave me pause. I closed the refrigerator and stood, frozen to the spot; my ears strained to hear above the knocking of my heart. My glance shot to the digital clock on the stove.
Midnight on the dot.
The witching hour.
A cold breeze snaked over the skin of my arms and they altered into a Braille relief map of goose bumps. A scraping sound like a branch dragging across the wooden planks of our bedroom floor came again and my bladder squeezed in fear. Someone, or something, was in my house. If I hadn’t already relieved myself, I would have been standing in a warm puddle.
I grabbed the butcher knife out of the cutting block and tiptoed toward the stairs. Each step forward caught my breath in my throat; my heart throbbed in my chest and set every nerve ending on alert.
My vision had the fuzzy quality of a nightmare. My mind screamed for me to run, to find refuge at the hospital where it was safe. My muscles trembled, wanting to listen to the panicked mantra in my mind, but under the fear lay a stubborn resolve. This was my home. No one had a right to rummage through my things, through Jacob’s things. That resolve moved me forward in the dark.
I slid into the doorway of my bedroom and held my breath at the sight of the dark figure illuminated by the window. I flipped on the overhead light switch. Bright light swept through the room and washed across the back of the stranger.
I recognized the suit—the suit I buried Jacob in.
The knife slipped out of my fingers and sliced into the wood floor with a clang. The world warbled and I followed the path of the knife into darkness.
I woke lying in the middle of my bed, dressed in my favorite negligee. My head was propped on the pillows and the stranger sat on the edge of the bed with his back to me. I scrambled back into the headboard and he turned in my direction.
Oh, how I wished he had never turned toward me. This wasn’t Jacob; it couldn’t be my Jacob. Oh Lord, what have I done?
His blackened, rotted lips and blood red eyes scared the snot out of me. A gravelly voice whispered my name. The sound reminded me of the hiss of an exhumed grave. I shivered. Fingernails with a year’s worth of dirt underneath raked across my leg and created a sensation of a thousand spiders. I clamped my lips on a scream of terror.
I pulled my leg away and he laughed that dark, haunting laugh I heard through the phone line.
“Sweet thing, I can play games just as well as you can.” His partially decomposed hand clasped my ankle and yanked me toward him.
The shriek peeled from my throat and left it as raw and tender as my fractured soul. I tried to wrench out of his grasp, but he was too strong. I kicked; my foot connected with his chest. Bones broke under the pressure and his grip on my ankle faltered enough for me to roll away and off the side of the bed. I hopped to my feet and spun to face the possessed body of my dead husband.
“You’re not Jacob.”
His chuckle filled the room and he crossed the space between us like a velociraptor cornering its prey. His eyes gleamed murderous intent and I backed into the wall. My gaze darted between the animated corpse and the door beyond.
The incantation flew through my mind. I said exactly what was written in the gypsy’s note. Word for word. And this is what was raised in response? How could that be? The truth slammed into me harder than a two-by-four and the memory of the gypsy’s sputtered Latin curses came back. The clarity of the words rang in my ears, along with the literal translation: May the devil rise and drag your damned soul back to hell.
Sweet Jesus, the gypsy cursed the ritual.
“What are you?” My voice shook and my heart thundered in my chest. Somehow I broke my paralysis and slid to my right, closer to the door and out of reach of this monstrosity.
“I’m the king of the demons, darling, and you are just as delicious as promised.” His rotting hand beckoned me forward and I fought against the strong pull to give up, to step into his grasp, to end my misery.
My feet didn’t share in the resistance and I went to take a step forward.
“Holly, don’t.”
That voice I knew. My gaze darted beyond Jacob’s dead corpse to the shimmering space beyond. There, in a haze of ambient light, stood my Jacob. His azure eyes pled with me to keep the faith and not give in to this beast.
Movement caught me by surprise and before my gaze traveled from Jacob to the demon, his hand clamped on my throat; his fetid breath filled my nostrils and his decomposing body pressed against mine. Bile rose in my throat and I struggled under the rough assault of bone and flesh invading me, violating me in ways I couldn’t imagine. My chest burned with the scream caught behind the pressure on my larynx. His dark chuckle filled my ears and I met Jacob’s gaze over the shoulder of the creature.
Help me!
The apparition stepped forward and disappeared into the dark shadows. The demon stiffened against me: his clothes billowed as if he stepped over a subway air grate and then settled a moment later. The grip on my throat loosened and he stumbled backwards, away from me. The red eyes pulsed, morphing into the blue eyes I loved for so long.
“Holly, get the knife.” Jacob pointed to the butcher knife in the floor, his face a knotted mess of muscle and bone and tattered flesh. “Hurry. I don’t know how long I can hold him.”
I didn’t question the instruction until I had the knife in my grip and turned to him.
“Stab me in the heart.”
His words didn’t compute and I stared at him, seeing his ratty corpse transform into the body that visited my dreams. Perfect, strong and beautiful. My Jacob—whole again.
“Baby, you have to destroy my heart. It’s the only way.”
My mouth dropped and my eyes misted with tears. My chest constricted with the thought and my lungs reacted, squeezing the air out in a flood of words. “Jacob, I can’t. I lost you once—I, I, I can’t do it again.”
“It’s the only way to send this bastard back to hell, baby. Just do it before he wins, please!”
He fought to hold onto the transformation but his form wavered between my perfect Jacob and the thing that crawled out of the grave. His eyes blinked like a lone warning light, transitioning between blue and red. His hands balled into fists; the muscles rippled under the strain. “Please, Holly...”
The plea in his voice jump-started me into action and I raised the knife. “Forgive me.” I plunged the blade into his disintegrating chest.
Light flared and the roar of the blast filled my world. I was lifted off my feet and tossed across the room like a flung ragdoll. The drywall met my flight with the resolve of a brick and my head bounced from the force. Right before the black veil descended, I saw my Jacob reaching for me.
* * * *
“I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG she’s been...” Rebecca trailed off and traded a glance with the officer. She crossed her arms across her chest and rubbed her biceps to ward off the shakes. “She wasn’t answering her phone and I got worried, so I swung by on the way home from work.” She swallowed both the fear and the bile lining her throat. “The door was unlocked and I knew something was wrong the minute I stepped inside.” Her gaze darted toward the stairwell. “What the hell could do that to a person?” She waved her hand toward the forensic team cataloging the bloody carnage.
“I don’t know, but the blast nearly killed your friend,” the officer said.
The EMTs rolled the gurney past Rebecca and she sighed at the sight of Holly, covered in blood and gore, catatonic and unresponsive—her gaze fixed on a spot in the distance and only one word repeating every few seconds like a skipping record.
The continuous mantra chilled Rebecca more than the frigid winter wind.
“Jacob...Jacob...Jacob...”
The End