I can’t look, but my eyes won’t close as he ties his knots and slices through the string with his fingers. When he straightens and surveys his work, one hand cradles her head like she’s a doll. He bends close to her face, maybe to whisper, or to kiss her on the cheek. Then his jointed arm snaps back into the air, and I see that his fingers have sharpened into points before he shoves them deep down into her gut.
“No!” The scream rips out of me as her body contracts, her head whipping back and forth, her eyes sewn shut against tears, mouth sewn shut against noise.
The Obeahman twists his face upward. The look of shock is unmistakable, even though his eyes are sewn shut too, crisscrossed slits laced through with black string. The crosses of black seem to hover over his face in a psychedelic scribble and the eyes behind them bulge and bleed. It wasn’t like that before, when he was just a ghost. What is he now?
I flash the knife and he roars with a sound that only machines make; it has no discernible emotion, so I can’t tell if he’s afraid, or enraged, or just insane. The sight of the knife backs him off, though, and he turns and disappears into the rocks.
I don’t waste any time, scrambling off the rock like a crab, afraid to let Anna out of my sight, not wanting this place to swallow her up like it did Jestine. My landing has no grace, hard and mostly on my hip and shoulder. It hurts, a lot, and there’s a tender spot in my gut that feels like a bad bruise. “Anna, it’s me.” I don’t know what else to say. My voice doesn’t seem to be easing her mind. She’s still thrashing, and her fingers twitch at her sides, stiff as a bundle of sticks. Then she slumps back and lies flat.
I glance around, and take a deep breath. There’s no scent or sign of the Obeahman, and the passageway where he disappeared into the rock is gone. Good. I hope he gets lost as shit. But somehow I don’t think he will. This place feels like his place, like he’s cozy here as a dog in its own backyard.
“Anna.” My fingers trace lightly over the string and I consider the athame. If she thrashes again, I could end up cutting her. Dark, almost black blood is spreading around the wound he made in her stomach, staining the string and the white fabric of her dress. It makes it hard for me to swallow, or think. “Anna, don’t—” I almost said, Anna, don’t die, but that’s stupid. She was dead when I met her. Focus, Cas.
And then, almost like I wished it, the string unwinds. It snakes back off of her body, like it was never there at all, and the blood goes with it. Even the string zigzagged across her eyelids and lips slides free and disappears, leaving no holes behind. Her eyes open and focus on me warily. She pushes up onto her elbows and pulls in a breath through her mouth. Her eyes stare ahead. They aren’t panicked. They aren’t tormented. They’re vacant, and don’t seem to see me at all. Her name. I should say her name. I should say something, but there’s something different about her, something disconnected. This feels like the first time I saw her, coming down the stairs in a dripping red dress. I was in awe. I couldn’t blink. But I wasn’t afraid. This time I am; I’m afraid that she won’t be the same. That she won’t understand me or know who I am. And maybe part of me is afraid that if I move too quickly, those granite fingers of hers will shoot out and squeeze the words from my throat.
The corner of her mouth twitches.
“You’re not real,” she says.
“You’re not either,” I say. Anna’s eyes blink once, and swivel my way. The instant before I look into them there’s a flash of panic, but as her eyes travel up from my stomach and over my chest, there’s so much skepticism in them and so much quiet hope that all I can think is, there’s my girl, there’s my girl, there’s my girl. Her eyes stop at my chin and one of her hands lifts, hovering over my shirt.
“If this is a trick,” she says, and starts to smile, “I’m going to be very, very angry.”
“Anna.” I shove the athame into its sheath in my pocket and reach out to pull her off the slab but her arms wrap around me and squeeze. I draw her head down to my shoulder and just stand; neither of us wants to let go.
She has no temperature. The rules of this place have taken that away, and I wish for the press of her cold skin, the way I remember. I suppose I should just be glad that she still has the right number of joints.
“I guess I don’t care if you’re real,” she says against my shoulder.
“I’m real,” I whisper into her hair. “You told me to come.” Her fingers dig into my back, pulling at my shirt. Her body sort of jerks in my arms, and at first I think she’s going to be sick. But then she draws back to look at me.