Fuck. That was a new one.
I held my breath, wondering if I should scream, wondering how much I was seeing was real and how much was magic. How much was my mind and how much was the beyond. The gigantic inky black snake disappeared under the bed and I tensed up, waiting, knowing it wouldn’t just go to sleep under there.
Fuck, f**k, f**k.
“Li Grand Zombi,” a French-accented voice said from the bathroom. I looked up to see my mother climbing out of the mirror and balancing on the sink, before stepping awkwardly to the ground. She moved with unpredictable jerkiness, as if she wasn’t used to the body she was in. She was no longer in the mirror. She was free.
I wished I was wearing Depends.
The bed beneath me moved ever so slightly. I got into a crouch, ready to spring off it and run if I needed to.
“Li Grand Zombi,” my mother said again, stepping forward. In the blackness I could only make out the paleness of her taut face, the darkness of her hair and eyes. I couldn’t even be sure that she had eyes. “The Great Serpent.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked, but my words came out in a shaking whisper, the air from my breath freezing into a cloud.
“It travels between both worlds, from the Kalunga to here, through the layers, through the Veil, just like me,” she continued. Her voice had grown lower and lower with each word she spoke until it was something entirely inhuman. “Together, we will bring you back.”
From the corner of my eye I could see the shiny black head of the python appear over the edge of the mattress, its long forked tongue slithering in and out.
I dared to look the woman in the eye as she came closer still. I dared to eke out the words, “You are not my mother. I don’t know who you are.”
She smiled, black teeth. “I was your mother. Then she died. But I am a part of you.”
The mattress began to sink under the python’s weight as it undulated across the bed. Now if I were to make a run for it, I’d have to jump over its body.
“How long did you have possession of her?” I asked the creature that wasn’t my mother.
She shook her head. “I was always there. I am in you.” She took another jagged step until she was at the foot of the bed. I could have sworn the shape of her head was expanding, that protrusions were rising out of her temples, a growing monster in the dark. Every single cell in my body told me to look away, to get away while I could. This wasn’t my mother. This wasn’t any one thing. This was evil incarnate and it had come for me. She extended an arm out to me and instead of pale, wrinkled skin, I could see short, dense fur. Her fingernails were now talons. “Come with us. Come to where you belong.”
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This all had to be in my head, in my sick f**king head full of my sick f**king problems. I wasn’t on medication. I didn’t have that wall between reality and the world beyond. Nothing was being kept out anymore.
I shut my eyes, closing them so tight I saw red stars and dots behind them, and though about what Maryse had told me. The energies shared and exchanged can cause ripples, holes in the fabric of the Veil, and where there are holes, bad things can get out.
There were two bad things in the room with me, two bad things that had gotten out. Me and Perry together had produced so much pleasure and love and comfort and bliss, and all the while our radiance was letting the bad things in. The universe had to balance things, didn’t it? How dare it just let two long-suffering people be happy for once.
I kept my eyes shut and chanted to myself, “You aren’t real, you’re in my head, you’re not real, you’re in my head,” but the truth was I didn’t know if I believed that anymore. For all I knew, everything could be real from here on out.
Even so, it was like my chanting, my concentration, had caused the energy in the room to shift. It felt like the room had grown still. It felt like the weight on the mattress had lifted. I couldn’t hear the snake’s tongue or breathing. I couldn’t hear the rustle of my mother’s nightgown. I heard only my heart, threatening to explode, my lungs wheezing from exertion.
I sucked in my breath for strength and prepared to open my eyes, hoping I’d see an empty room as it was before. I willed for the nightmare to be over, to be alone, to be safe, to see nothing at all.
I opened my eyes.
She was right there.
My mother’s demon face, inches from mine. She had no eyes, just cavernous black holes, and skin that scaled like a lizard’s. Her mouth was stuck open, a tiny red snake coming out of it in place of her tongue. Though her face was frozen in vile horror, she was laughing and screaming just inches away from me, sounds from another time and another place, sounds that reached through my ears and pierced my very human soul. There was nothing else inside me except fear and terror like I’d never known before.
The snake in her mouth came out for me, slowly, two yellow slits for eyes. It said, “I always wanted a grandson.”
And that’s when I finally screamed. I screamed bloody murder and tried to gather the strength to run out of the room.
In seconds, the door busted open and the light went on. It was a wild-eyed Maximus, staring at me in panic.
“What happened?” he asked, just in time to see the end of Li Grand Zombi’s tail slither into the bathroom like a tapered black slug. The demonic entity of my mother had already disappeared with the light.
“Holy f**k!” he exclaimed, once he spotted the snake. He didn’t run away though, he marched in, peering at the snake as the black tail completely disappeared around the bathroom door. He looked at me, motioning for me to stay put and asked, “Are you okay?’
“Do I look okay?” I asked, my body rapidly growing cold and starting to shake. “Go after it, but be careful.”
He looked around for something sturdy and picked up an old lady-type vase, as if he was going to knock out the python by throwing ceramics on its head. This wasn’t a caper film.
Armed with it, he went inside the bathroom and flicked on the lights. I heard him say, “Huh,” and heard the opening and closing of cabinets and the toilet seat before he came back out.
“There’s nothing in there,” he said, putting the vase back down on the end table.
“But you did see the snake.”
“I wish I hadn’t.” He suppressed a shiver. “What was it doing? What happened? I thought I heard voices in here, and just as I was about to fall back asleep, I heard you scream like…Jesus, Dex…”