Page 89 of When the Snowman Whispered
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ddie Mae had clearly lost her patience. “I’m close to slapping you, Daniel.”
“I’m not in shock.”
“No, I was just going to slap you.”
I opened my mouth and closed it.
“I can’t read your thoughts, but I can somewhat hear them in here,” she said. “In this garden, there are no secrets. I’m just good at blocking my thoughts. It’s why I don’t want you asking me too many questions. I can’t lie in here. I couldn’t lie just now. I’m thinking of the lies to say, but my mouth is just saying what I’m supposed to tell you.”
“Then what else is there to say?”
“We have to go.” She pulled off her boots and socks.
“What did the tea do?”
“It linked you two. I saw you and Faith becoming close, later in life. I’ve known forever. Since you were a boy at that playground that you were the one. Thank God you both met years later. When you two started dating, I loved it. I got impatient and used the tea on you. It linked you two together.”
I tasted those words. “The tea linked us.”
“The more you drank it, the more weeks added on.”
“Brett didn’t drink it as much as me?”
“No, that’s why when the tea wore off a couple years ago, and his heart wasn’t in it for the right things anyway, he had no problem leaving.” She slung off her hat and unbuttoned her shirt. “Turn around.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help asking so many questions. It was hard to get an understanding of everything. “You’re getting naked?”
She undid more buttons. “Even worse.”
I couldn’t turn around.
“Daniel. Daniel. I don’t have time for this. You’ll just have to take the crash course in the craziness. Just try not to throw up. Okay?”
My voice cracked. “Okay.”
She touched the center of her forehead with her index finger in closed her eyes. The whole time she mumbled some incomprehensible chant.
What is she doing?
I edged away. Everything seemed okay. It was just humming and touching her forehead.
And then things did get worse.
Inch-by-inch, she dug her finger into her head. No blood appeared. Just light. A haunting green light. Sweat dripped from my forehead. I couldn’t lift my hands to wipe it away. I couldn’t pick up my feet to run. All I could do was stand there.
And the hole around her finger expanded, but didn’t tear all the way open. Instead, a line appeared and zipped down her face, sliding over her nose, separating her lips, and peeling away at her face. Her body looked like a costume with a zipper in the center and it was slowing unfastening. Her flesh peeled away, folding under itself around her shoulders as the light continued to slice down to the center of her chest.
Her body was a costume, detaching from this center filled with light.
Holy fuck! Holy, holy fuck!
And I would’ve been fine, had it just been light under her body costume. It could’ve been anything and I would’ve gone less mad. But instead, it was horrifying. Madness. Utter lunacy. Her face was no longer a face. Her neck and chest was not bones or muscles, veins, or blood.
She pulled her finger out of her forehead and shook the skin away.
And she was a monster!
