The One That Got Away

Chapter 3

"E-than." The warped and distant, disembodied voice sounded through the blackness like a towline back to lucidity. "You didn't kill all of me, Ethan," she chimed, sing-songy. "I'm still here! And now, so are you!"

Ethan groaned with all that his partial consciousness would allow. "I'm not," he mouthed, a throbbing headache punctuating his words. "Not for long."

"You're mine now," she stated lightly, deciding with no hesitation. "You'll think every thought is yours, but they won't be. You won't even be able to tell a difference. Maybe now you'll play nicely."

He opened his taut, swollen eyes and expected to see the gaunt young girl lurking by the doorway, or the wheelchair bound woman sitting by the bedside, but no physical manifestation of Eveline accompanied the voice that rung in his head. She was there, he thought, somewhere. Not around the house like before, but up there in his brain with the mold that was never purged away, that was reintroduced unnecessarily. The instinct to escape rose within him as a wordless abstraction.

"You're not going anywhere," Eveline said before he could act, a calmness washed over him so that he was trapped by his own immovable deadweight. He glanced around the room from his static position as if anything nearby might give him an indication on how to break the spell. Mia had kept Eveline's influence at an arm's length for two years. How'd she do it, he implored, squeezing his eyes shut and straining to lift one arm, how'd she keep her control? His black eye screamed the tighter he shut it and a cut on his brow split slowly open.

He opened his eyes and looked up toward the headboard. "You can't do this, Eveline."

"I can," she retorted. "I am. And you can't stop me this time, daddy." A dim lantern floated past the doorway. "It's not fair that you took my mommy away! Both of them! You messed it all up, so now all I have is Jack, and you. And you will be a part of my family."

A grey light flashed in his peripheral vision so brightly that he winced, and he turned his head from one side to the other in an attempt to source it. His mind felt clearer as he lifted his head off the bed and peered to the doorway, seeing if anyone or anything was close. If he was fast, he could make a run for it, or see if there was any hatch in the floor by which to navigate the house from underneath. He dragged his body piece by piece, lifting his weight up onto an elbow, then bending one knee for balance, dragging the other leg off the side of the bed. Eveline felt subdued in his mind, at least for now, as he sat at the edge of the bed and racked his brain for what his options were, and what his capabilities were.

"There now," a matronly drawl spoke as a light waxed golden in the hallway outside. "Good of you to be sitting up. It's not good to eat lying down, you know."

Ethan nearly fell back to his previous position, if only to cover the fact that he had overcome Eveline's weakened volition. His elbow bent part way and his eyes narrowed. "You're dead" he stated slowly, denial pulsing through his pain-bleared eyes. "You weren't like him." Jack's howls of his wife's name swept through his mind with the image of his mutated form thrashing and writhing. In a low voice he muttered, "You could have kept her alive, Evie, if you had just given her the power. Jack and Lucas both got it, Mia seemed to, " he tongued his molars as Marguerite's likeness drew closer. They were no longer loose or tasting like iron. "Seems like I do, too." Trigger fingers twitched and drummed against the bed sheets as he places both feet on the floor.

"You eat on up now," Marguerite smiled, her face contorting under Ethan's glare. "No fussing about it now."

Ethan stood up, his vision fading with the sudden movement but only temporarily as he made for the door.