There Are Limits Read online

  “It did.” He angled a glance over his shoulder, and there on the table beside the stairs, where she’d placed pictures of Dusty, Daryl, and the children as a memorial, she saw there’d been one addition.

  “My mom? He killed my mom? Why?” There was no rhyme to this change; nothing made sense.

  “Because aire eriferus ruof sseccus.” He shook his head sadly as he spouted more of his nonsense words, the sound of them twisting as they passed through her ears and into her head, becoming interchangeable with the knowledge that she’d killed her own mother. By trying to alter the past, she’d destroyed even more.

  New memories filtered their way into the old, proving to Misty that the only changes had been destruction. Ellie had covertly phoned her father from the bathroom, worried about Misty’s behavior, believing she was calling for help, unknowing that her actions would lead to the annihilation of their family in the end.

  “There are limits.”

  Misty didn’t know how long she lay there, racked by cramping shudders of pain that crawled along her bones. The man, angel, whatever, brought a blanket, soft and smelling like detergent and nothing more, and covered her gently. She relaxed into his grip when he lifted her head to slide a thin pillow underneath.

  The shadows elongated much as the orderlies’ arms had when she’d been drawn back while they touched her.

  “Are they okay? Those men in the hospital?”

  He nodded from his seat by her feet.

  She breathed through her mouth, nose clotted with mucus and bitter fluid. Head aching, she closed her eyes for an instant, opening them hours later to see the thin shine of dawn seeping in the windows. There was a watery maroon stain on the pillowcase around her head, and when she licked her lips, they were cracked and dry, split in a dozen places.

  “Am I going to die?” That’s what she meant to say, but it came out a garbled mess, much like the insides of her head. All the sharp anger she’d had in the instant of her return tangled and lost behind the slowly ebbing pain.

  He shook his head.

  Time passed, the second hand on the mantel clock loud in the silence of the house, and she remembered her relief when she’d heard music before. She wanted that again. That peace and respite—and belief that she could make a difference.

  “Do you have a name?” Another head shake. “That’s sad.” That earned her a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth, the closest to an emotional reaction she’d seen from him. “Are you an angel?” Another twitch and a shrug.

  Still and unmoving, she watched the light wax and wane, fading to darkness again. He watched her with the caring intensity of a lover who wanted to impress every moment together, gaze following every movement.

  Dawn had returned when she finally decided to sit up, pushing against the floor with arms that shook like a newborn foal’s legs. “Water,” she croaked, and he flickered, offering a glass filled to the brim. He held it to her lips and she sipped, lapping like a cat as she tried to take in enough moisture to make breathing bearable.

  “You need more.” He tipped the glass against her mouth, carefully controlling the flow of liquid. With every drink, she felt stronger. The water was half gone when she gripped the glass and took it from his hold, the fragile container rattling against her teeth, tapping out the Morse code of despair.

  “What happened? Why didn’t he stop? I told him to stop. I even told them what he was going to do.”

  The angel-man stared at her without speaking.

  She had laid everything out to the officers who’d arrived at the hotel in response to Daryl’s alarm. Shouted it at the EMTs who’d followed close behind, their straps tightly constraining her wrists and ankles. Relayed the information to the ER doctor who’d, in turn, referred her upstairs. Beseeched the doctors, nurses, and orderlies, even visitors walking the hallways, pleading with them to make sure it didn’t happen, because she’d seen that look in Daryl’s face. The look that said yes, he’d been thinking about doing that very thing, and maybe her words had tipped the balance inside his head. Maybe acknowledging his flaw opened him up wider to whatever evil influence hid inside his psyche. The expression on his face of pure evil when he’d first called her crazy, and she’d known he’d decided to use it as a carte blanche offer to do whatever. That was why she’d watched the clock, counting down the final moments of her family’s lives. Why the visit from the doctor hadn’t been a surprise.

  “How did it get so bad? Why couldn’t I stop it?”

  “There are limits.”

  She threw the glass at him, sobbing in anger when he caught it without spilling even that last swallow. “There are limits. You say that and you say that, but you don’t explain what it means.”

  He leaned towards her and reiterated, “There. Are. Limits.”

  “To what you can do?” He hesitated, then shook his head. “To what I can do?” Another shake, something she was getting frustratedly angry with, this unspoken brand of communication that didn’t share much more than his words did. A flash of inspiration hit her and Misty blurted, “To how I can change him?”

  The nameless man froze for so long she thought he’d broken somehow, but then that rushing buzz came, and she closed her eyes in anticipation, having been caught unawares before. She turned her face away as the room exploded around them. The blast embedded bits of shrapnel in her skin, stinging pinpricks across every exposed inch. When the brilliance faded, she blinked weeping and swollen eyes to look out into the contrasting darkness. He stood in the shadows, arms outstretched, palms up as his mouth moved and moved, no sound escaping, and waves of something that curdled her stomach rolled over her. She lurched to her knees and bent over, forehead to the floor as she retched, strings of bile trailing from her bottom lip.

  The world blinked, and she sat up and back to lean against the bathroom cabinets, the shining porcelain radiating a welcoming chill. He sat on the edge of the tub, looking as unruffled as before. Puzzled, she studied her hands and arms, finding them unmarked when she knew they’d been tattered and bleeding before.

  “There are limits to what you can say.”

  His eyes closed in what looked like relief, the stark lines of his face softening sweetly. “Yes.” Drawn out, the sibilant nature of the word expressed pleasure as great as anything she’d ever heard.

  “But no limits to what I can do once I’m back there.” His mouth closed, corners curling down a miniscule amount. “You can get me back, but it’s all up to me, and you can’t tell me what would be successful.”

  “The human form—”

  “The flesh is weak, I know.” The results of so many summer mornings spent in Bible study had stuck with her far past other childhood memories. “I’ve heard that before. But I know the rest of that saying. My spirit is strong. So strong. Can you do it again? Can you?”

  He huffed a sigh, that tiny expression of annoyance as telling as a shout on another man. Angel. Whatever.

  “Can you?”

  “Yes.”

  She surged to her feet, hands slapping at supporting surfaces until she was upright and leaning into him, looming over him. “Do it.”

  “Aire sseccus.” He stood, crowding her backwards towards the door. One step, then another until they were in the hallway and he pointed towards the bedroom at the end. “Aire sseccus.” Arms out to the side, he herded her until her back pressed against the door. “Aire sseccus.” Unfamiliar sounds still ringing up the hallway, he settled back on his heels and conducted the ritual she’d seen him do once before, when he first appeared. The man—angel, whatever—pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes, then his ears, then his eyes again in that rigid pattern of movement. Bowing slightly, he lifted his chin towards the ceiling and said, “Biocac aire tamma. Aire sseccus.”

  This has to work

  Agony was all she knew. It had been years. Surely centuries had passed while she endured this fire pouring through her veins. Every muscle frayed and was ground to particles of light by the atomic deton
ation happening inside every cell of her body.

  Her mind was lost, free of its mortal mooring, until it could have been decades between each individual thought.

  Her children were what brought her back, finally. She found an image of them at the lake that last summer, piled on a log as they held out sticks to her, eager to spear marshmallows to toast. Each feature of their faces, every facet of their personalities, every word they’d uttered grounded her and drew her back. The weight increased, pressing and compressing and crushing. Her skin split until she was bursting at the seams with the effort of moving back through time.

  Somehow she knew it would be the final attempt. Things happened in threes for reasons she didn’t understand, but there were enough instances in folklore that it had to be grounded in reality somehow. She’d summoned an angel, so what was believing in the sanctity of threes compared to that?

  She sank into herself on the couch, that very couch where her sister had lain dead, the banished couch, now returned to this house twice.

  The belling laughter of her children called to her like a siren, drawing her off the furniture even before she’d started breathing again. She stumbled as she tried to run, feet dragging through the thick molasses that covered the carpeting. Hacking coughs doubled her over. The only thing keeping her upright was a hand on the arm of the couch, and as she struggled to take in air enough to stand, to walk, to love, she heard Ellie.

  “Mom? Are you okay?” Her daughter bounced into view.

  Vivacious, sparkling with life, with rounded eyes that questioned everything, she wore her gorgeous hair in a bundled mess on top of her head. Ellie. Ellen Juliet. Crowding right behind her was Michael, his bedhead not yet tamed, pajama bottoms four inches too short because he’d grown that fast. On Ellie’s other side was Chad, peeking around his brother and sister, sweet eyes narrowed in worry. Michael Easton and Chad Thomas.

  Misty pushed herself upright and took a limping step, then another, and then she was running the few strides that separated her from her children. They swamped her with their hugs, arms going around her and each other in that way they had, and Misty’s breaths evened out as every touch of her children against her skin soothed the pain away. Their scents surrounded her and filled her up: Ellie’s sweet berry shampoo, Michael’s sweaty boy smell she’d always thought she hated, and Chad’s blameless trace of cereal and milk, sweet and cloying and so right it was as if she couldn’t think. Couldn’t move for fear of sending herself hurtling back through that needle’s eye and into the future where these darlings, these weighty burdens of love in her arms, no longer existed.

  “Mom?” Moooooom, her mind supplied, and Misty smiled in deep relief, the agony of too many regrets falling away.

  “I’m okay.” She held her children in her arms. “I’m very much okay.”

  “Well, in that case…” Ellie began to untangle herself from the group hug, and Misty wanted desperately to hold tight but wouldn’t let herself. She couldn’t frighten them more than she had already, the fleeting vision of their terrified faces in the hotel room echoed persistently in her mind. “I’m going to be late for school if I don’t go now. Whoever wants a ride”—both boys’ heads lifted at that promise of escape from the dreaded bus—“needs to be in the car, stat.”

  It felt like only a breath later and her kids were gone, the music left playing in the kitchen, a rockabilly song of love and loss—and revenge.

  “We did it.”

  Misty dressed carefully before leaving the house. She checked the contents of her purse twice and grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. Her hand hovered over the power switch of the radio, then withdrew. She stared at the device, then turned her back, leaving that tiny bit of familiarity behind her. Her drive was slower, more cautious, her life intersecting with strangers in other cars briefly, some for a second time, and them all unknowing.

  This time would be different. She knew the parameters within which she worked, and she wasn’t dumb. She’d been the top student of her nursing class and was poised to take the next step within a year to finish her doctorate, with plans to teach down the road.

  “I wish it had never happened.” The words felt right in her mouth, the ones that had summoned the angel—not a man—and she was okay with thinking that now. If those sounds were powerful enough to bring him to her and set these events into motion, then they were the right words for now.

  She pulled into the parking lot for the hotel and drained the last of the water, bleeping the locks behind her. Through the rotating doors, her long cardigan swinging around her legs, she strode down a lengthy hallway towards the ballroom where Daryl was speaking. Bypassing the first set of doors, she moved through the next and angled to the side, setting her shoulders against the wall as she waited for him to finish. Smatterings of laughter heralded the end of his presentation, and she watched as he paced towards the edge of the stage, crouching down to place himself within reach of his thralls. The slides projected against the screen flicked off and the room dimmed, columns of people streaming out and into the hallway.

  Misty started moving then, around the edges of the room and up the side stairs to the stage. She took a deep breath and positioned herself next to a door she saw partially hidden behind the drapes. This has to work.

  “Daryl.” Low and urgent, she hoped her familiar voice would break through whatever discussion he was still fostering with the remnants of the crowd. They were like dark crows clustered at the edges of his realm, fighting for his attention. “Daryl.”

  His head snapped up, and he looked out over the crowd as he scanned slowly, side to side. With a laugh, he shook his head, then glanced over his shoulder, and his gaze fell on her. “Honey?” He stood. “What are you doing here?”

  There were no security guards, no panicked calls from children, no raising of alarm to the police—nothing to interrupt her upcoming conversation with Daryl, where she had to change the future in order to save everything.

  “Can I talk to you?” She reached behind her and felt for the handle, separating the fabric until the metal lever fit into her hand. “Privately?”

  He said something to a man near the stage, and she heard the low, conspiratorial tone of the laughter received in response. Men bonding over the neediness of women.

  She walked through the door until the ballroom disappeared behind her. Daryl appeared a moment later, hair tousled, a forced smile on his face. He tugged his tie crooked, then straightened it in a move she’d seen him do a hundred times before, a way to keep his hands busy when he was off center. Good.

  “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

  She ignored his question. “How long have you planned to kill us all?”

  His eyes widened and he paled, but there was the barest flicker of excitement in the expression. He was pleased she’d recognized what he was going to do, found pleasure at being caught out, exposed. Then he shut down, blanking his features as he asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “Why, Daryl?” That was what she needed to know. More than anything, she wanted to know if what he’d told her was true. If there was something missing from their lives that she could have supplied, if she’d but known. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  Blank, impassive, he stared at her. There are limits.

  “How can I stop you?” He blinked at her question, the movement slow, languorous, like after they made love sometimes, when he was exhausted and fulfilled. “Daryl?”

  “You’re crazy.” That flicker was back, and she stared at him. He nodded, as pleased with the words as he had been the first time. “That’s crazy talk, Misty. You need help.” Hand to the inside pocket of his jacket, he dug for a moment, then pulled out his phone.

  She matched the movement, digging into her purse.

  She pulled the trigger before he could dial, but it didn’t matter. The noise brought the masses to the tiny hallway where he lay in a pool of spreading blood.

  Courtroom


  The arraignment was two days later. She sat quietly in the provided ladderback wooden chair, picking at the seams of the orange jumpsuit layered over her naked form. The plea of not guilty by reason of insanity under the M’Naghten rule was entered by a lawyer her sister had hired for her. She shuffled out of that room and into another, where a bailiff processed her release to the secure clinic for evaluation. Two interviews later, she was admitted to the psychiatric ward for a second time in her memory. A month later the courts accepted the mental disorder plea and found her incompetent to stand trial.

  That day, after saying their goodbyes, as she stood in the courtroom and watched her children herded towards the exit by her mother and sister, all of them alive and breathing, she took her first unfettered draught of air.

  “I wish.”

  There was a flicker at the corner of her eye, a distortion along the edge of her vision, and she angled her gaze in that direction to glimpse the image of a man standing underneath a window. The sunlight flared and glared, and when her eyes stopped watering, the man and her children were gone.

  Her lawyer had explained it all to her. A minimum stay of six months, but no maximum limit on how long they could hold her. She could be incarcerated for the rest of her life, or released within the amount of time in which her family had been dead, in another life.

  “Worth everything.”

  ***

  The man sat at a tiny table in the corner of the shop’s patio, a cup of coffee cooling at his elbow as he flicked open a newspaper with a practiced movement. He knew demanding an actual printed paper was old-fashioned, but then that truly described him in a nutshell. He turned to page six and read the article about the woman who’d killed her husband, claiming he’d murdered her entire family, even as they stood at the rail of the courtroom. Already demoted far back from the front page. Within the months she would spend convincing the good doctor she wasn’t crazy, people would entirely forget the story.