Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [69]
“With a sleeping pill? A mild one at that?” “You never know how this stuff works,” Mel said. Then she regaled Julie with the story of a teenaged daughter of a friend who was drugged with something called the date rape drug and was conscious through the whole horrible ordeal. But the family brought charges, and the boy responsible was behind bars. Then, Mel interrupted herself, “I’ll be over in half an hour.”
Mel came by and Julie reluctantly popped the video into the machine and pushed play on the remote control. When the video played, everything was the same as before—with the clock reading three a.m.—but there was no dark figure coming into the room at all. Instead, Julie threw off the covers and began taking her nightclothes off. Once she was naked, she began stroking her nipples. Then, she lifted her left hand and reached with it down between her legs.
“Oh my God,” Julie said, and turned off the tape.
Mel sat there and stared for a few seconds at the television screen. She looked over at Julie.
“Mel, I swear to God, that is not what was on the tape before.”
Mel offered up a warm look, and she looked too much like their mother at that moment. “Julie? What’s going on?”
“That was not what I saw. I saw a man. I saw…Hut,” she said it aloud, finally. Something in her mind cleared. “I slept through it last night. But I know I saw him.”
“You know what we both just saw on that tape,” Mel said in a too-sympathetic tone. “Why would you tape yourself like that?”
“Mel,” she said. “You know I’d never do that.”
“All I know is I didn’t see Hut in it, Julie. Hut is dead. He was murdered. I know that’s hard to face. To look at. And I love you. You’re my sister. We’re best friends. I have nothing against anyone getting their jollies from innocent stuff, but…I didn’t expect this. Are you doing okay? Is that therapist even helping you through all this? I’ve seen the house. I know it’s a lot to keep up with, but have you looked around? I can only come over and help so much, Julie,” Mel said, her hand laid gently on Julie’s arm.
2
Mel told her to rest, that she’d take the kids for a few days, but bring them over after supper so she could get some peace and do whatever it was that “will make you whole again.” She lectured her that she needed to somehow face herself, deal with life as it was, “the hand that the fates dealt.” Mel talked a blue streak about responsibility and shirking and getting back on your feet and her work at the hospital and planning on the future happening even if Julie wanted to remain behind, and it just went on and on. Julie listened, nodded at the appropriate times, but began to resent Mel—resent her family—resent Hut and his death and the cops who couldn’t catch the guy who’d killed him and a few others and even Rick and Joe and their oh-so-perfect coupledom and finally she just told Mel to leave, that she was getting a headache and they could talk about this later.
Then Julie wandered the house, room to room, looking at it in a way she hadn’t in a long time. There was dust and dirt where the kids had brought it in from outside. Hadn’t she cleaned up for Joe and Rick? Perhaps she’d been preoccupied. Then the kitchen, with dishes and glasses piled in the sink, and three dirty saucepans on the stove, with some stains around the counter, and empty soda cans near the toaster. That wasn’t too bad. She wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but she hadn’t even called in the cleaning service in weeks to help out. She saw the piles of clothes on the washing machine, and more of them as she passed the kids’ rooms—in the corner of Livy’s room, her T-shirts and shorts from the summer in a heap. The whole house seemed dull and gray.
She went into her bedroom and for the first time felt as if it were stuffy. She went to open the windows, and then saw her own clothes on the other side of her bed. In her bathroom, the medicine cabinet’s mirror was still broken.