Immortal Clay

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I SAT hunched on the upholstered and over-padded couch, cradling Sheila’s grandmother’s beautiful cut crystal vase in my hands, staring into the fractures of light within it and trying to remember everything Sheila had ever told me about it, desperate to remember her every word. It had been a wedding gift. From her new husband’s sister. Shipped out from a fancy New York City store with a long name, one that didn’t hadn’t existed for fifty years or at least wasn’t known out here in Michigan.

The doorbell’s first deep tone, the only solid noise I’d heard since Absolute freed me, startled me enough that I tossed the vase a couple inches into the air. My guts dropped away as I fumbled at the cool smooth crystal, and I didn’t breathe again until the cut edges dug into my palms. I fingered the vase for a moment, reassuring myself that I hadn’t broken it, then set it on the glass-topped table.

The doorbell’s Westminster chimes echoed through the house, and I stared at the door. Frayville had been good to Kevin and his family. I didn’t want to know what it had become. How many people were out there? How many monsters like me?

The door shuddered under frantic pounding. I faintly heard a shout. The voice sounded vaguely like Julie’s. I knew better—I completely knew better—but the similarity sufficed to launch me towards the door with sudden hope scrabbling against the walls of my heart. Maybe I hadn’t actually killed my daughter. Maybe she’d survived. Or, if I was really lucky, some horrible creation of Absolute’s had come to destroy me as it had killed Kevin.

I knew I was lying to myself as I wrenched the door open, but I still felt crushed to see a young brunette girl on the small concrete porch. She looked about Julie’s age, just in middle school, and wore jeans and a yellow blouse. Tears trailed down alongside her nose and over her cheeks, tracks clearly visible in the morning sunshine.

“What?” My voice sounded rough. I hadn’t spoken in days. Maybe weeks. Maybe never.

“Mr. Holtzmann?”

“Yeah.” I didn’t question the response until the words left my mouth. By then it was too late.

“I’m Alice?” Her voice lilted up at the end of each phrase, making every statement a question. “Alice Tander? Julie’s friend?”

My mind froze, nailed in place by memories of joyful mayhem and laughter. Memories from another man’s life. Chaotic sleepover parties. A houseful of preadolescent girls. Gleeful pop music sing-alongs until two in the morning, ten girls around the breakfast table, piles of frozen waffles and scrambled eggs and gallons of orange juice.

“You said we could ask you if we were in trouble?”

Always find a police officer if you need help. Knock on my door if you have to, I won’t mind. That’s what you told kids, even if it wasn’t exactly true. You’d mind, but you had to pretend you didn’t. Policing wasn’t a nine-to-five gig. You did it over dinner and at neighborhood barbeques and even woke up in the night thinking about it.

“That was before.” The words came from my gut, without conscious thought. No sweet barbeque smoke in the air today. Nothing but the fresh air of rural northern lower Michigan, cleaner than I’d ever smelled it before, with a faint hint of the girl’s too-sweet shampoo. After the end of the world, and teenage girls still had scented hair. “I’m not a cop. Not anymore.”

“I don’t think there are any,” she said. “I tried the police station. But nobody’s there and the windows are all busted out. But something’s happened to my Dad?”

I blinked at her. My brain sputtered, trying to assemble words out of the dull sludge of my emotions.

“Please? There’s other people around, but none of them are police?”

“Were.” Was I going to spend the day standing here correcting a fourteen-year-old girl, who already couldn’t speak without questioning herself? My heart beat more quickly.

“You’ve got to help me.” She brushed one foot unconsciously through the wind-blown dirt scattered on the porch. “Dad said to treat people like I always had.”

My grip tightened on the doorframe until the wooden trim dug into my palm and I felt my pulse in my fingers. “Help? You think anybody can help us?”

“You have to,” she said. “We have to, that’s what Dad says, because if we don’t nothing will ever get better. And it’s got to get better.”

My jaw tightened. How had this girl survived? In this moment, I would have been happy to see even a copy of my Julie. I would have set Alice on fire for five minutes with the ones I’d lost. The ones Kevin set free.

Seeing something in my face, she stumbled backwards. Her heel rested half off the edge of the porch. Her eyes watched mine.

“How,” I started. I peeled my hand from the doorframe, consciously stretching and relaxing my fingers. “How did you come through?”

She swallowed. “I was asleep,” she said.

“And what do you remember? About the time...” I rolled my hand in the air. “The time after.”

She stepped back again, wobbling but catching herself. “I—I don’t really remember.”

“You remember pieces,” I said. “I remember pieces.”

Her voice quavered. “You said you’d help us.”

“That was someone else,” I said. Sorry, kid. “I’ve never spoken to you before.”

The wooden door closed smoothly, the deadbolt clicking into place. I sagged against the glossy red paint, feeling my heart skip. You could have been a bigger asshole. Slap her around a bit, maybe hook her on crack. That sullen anger still burned inside. She’d survived. Julie was dead. Because I’d killed her. If I’d let her sleep through Absolute’s incursion, she’d be like me. Here with her friend.

I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Opened my eyes on the living room. The overstuffed blue corduroy couch. Framed photographs of vacations in the national forests, days on the Lake Huron beaches, birthdays on the deck in the backyard. Sheila put the crystal candlesticks on the green-enameled fireplace mantle when she’d packed away the Christmas decorations. A hardwood floor that gleamed of varnish beneath motes of dust.

All that remained of my family.

I’d looked at this same scene many times, on my way out to work in the morning. Memorized each detail, stored them in my heart, always with the niggling worry that I maybe I wouldn’t come home again. Frayville was a lot safer than Detroit, but a police detective always ran that risk.

I’d come home, but nobody else had. Like a hermit crab, I lived in an empty shell abandoned by its owner.

“Dammit,” I said, turning around to fling the door open. “Hey, kid, wait up!”