The Deliverance of Desiree Tanner Read online

  “Alex?” I whimpered, wanting so badly for no answer to come.

  Silence for all of a second. My head was jerked back, searing pain ripping through my scalp as I screamed. A push to the back of my head sent me toppling to the slick shower floor, my feet slipping out from under me no matter how hard I tried to regain my footing. I was on my hands and knees now, a slave to the mercy that I knew the invisible force that couldn’t be real wouldn’t grant me.

  All I could hear now was the running water and the metal clang of the shower curtain opening. Then a familiar voice.

  “Desiree?” Luke exclaimed. “Oh my god. Are you okay?” He reached up and turned the shower off, turning to grab my plush, blue towel off of the towel rack bolted to the wall right next to the shower.

  I was shivering, my arms now crossed over my chest, trying to save at least a small amount of dignity. That was if I even had any left. My head was shaking the word, “No.” But the word refused to pass from between my lips. Bile rose in my throat as I sat there and Luke wrapped the towel around my shoulders. I swallowed it down. He wrapped the towel around my shoulders and helped me to stand, my shaky legs barely holding me up as I stepped from the confines of the tub, Luke escorting me to my bedroom as I was barely hanging onto sanity. Once I was sitting on my bed, legs and hands trembling while I tried not to sob, he kneeled down in front of me.

  “What happened?”

  My head was shaking again without my willing it to do so, my chin trembling as I tried to hold back my tears. He wouldn’t believe me. He would think it was just another hallucination and that I needed to go back to the hospital. It had only been a few months since my release. I was not ready to go back.

  “Desiree, please.” He pushed my wet hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ears. “You can tell me. You know that.” He held my face in his hands then, forcing me to look at him even though my eyes didn’t want to meet his.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Chapter 6

  I told him everything. I told him about seeing Alex outside of Doctor Elliot’s office. I even indulged him and shared my entire shower scene, and all he could do was stare at the wall past me as I sat on the bed, him still kneeling before me. He hadn’t moved. By the end of it all, I was a sobbing, sniveling mess, but Luke didn’t seem to mind. He had seen me at my worse. He had been there while I recovered from my physical injuries and continued to be there to assist with my psychological ones. My physical injuries weren’t nearly as hard to recover from even though they included a stitched palm from a broken window, a gash on my head that now left a nice scar at my hairline, and a slash across my abdomen from the knife he had attempted to slice me with.

  He didn’t move for what felt like an eternity, this his baby blues finally shifted to me, and his face fell. He patted my hand on my bare knee and stood.

  “I’ll get you an Ativan.” And that was that. He stalked out of the room, his posture defeated and I was hoping I wasn’t losing him just like I had lost my family to my illness. He was all I had left besides my disturbed thoughts. Those and the shadows.

  Chapter 7

  I was in Hell. Pure and agonizing Hell as I stood in the doorway of our home, my parents on the other side of the threshold waiting for me to welcome them inside. My mother’s long gray hair flowed down towards her waist, brown eyes pleading as she looked at me. My father’s eyes were gleaming with unshed tears. I looked like my mother, but I had my father’s eyes. Those eyes that could rip you apart without a single word having been uttered.

  “Can we come in?” my mother asked, twisting the bottom of her light gray cardigan as she begged to be a part of my life again. My father adjusted his glasses, never once taking his stare away from me. They had abandoned me when I needed them most. When I was broken, afraid, and barely holding together at the seams. I was losing my sanity, and they pushed me out the door and never looked back, until now.

  They wanted me to forgive them. I wasn’t ready to do that just yet. I had left Luke sitting in the living room, and he was no doubt listening to every word that was said. I shook my head and watched their faces fall.

  “You abandoned me when I needed you most. I can’t forgive you for that. Not yet.” I shook my head again. “I’m not ready.”

  With those three words, I closed the door, leaving them behind.

  Chapter 8

  “You called them, didn’t you?” I asked Luke as I stood in the doorway of the living room, waiting for his answer. I knew he wouldn’t lie to me, and the timing was just too perfect. He stood from the couch, walked towards me and stopped within a couple of feet, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “I didn’t. I’ve been expecting them to show up sooner or later.” He sighed when he saw the unbelieving expression on my face. I believed him but didn’t at the same time. “Look,” he dropped his hands to his sides, “It was one incident. It was a lot worse before and Doctor Elliot told me to expect that you would take a step backward every now and then no matter how well you’re doing or how much time passes. I know how you feel about them, and it’s not my place.” He picked up his empty water glass from the side table that was beside the couch. “You’ll go to them when you’re ready.”

  He passed me in the threshold and walked into the kitchen. I chose not to press the subject of my parents then. Something was happening around me that I couldn’t explain. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to try. While the possibility was there that this was all in my head, there was the possibility that it wasn’t. That was the side of the spectrum that I was hanging onto. I followed him into the kitchen and stopped right before the kitchen island, placing my hands on the polished surface as I watched him clinking ice into the glass.

  “What if I’m never ready?” I meant the question.

  His eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t look away from his task. “Then you’re never ready. You can’t force yourself to be able to get along with them.” He placed the ice tray back in its rightful place in the freezer, pulling a bottle of dark red cranberry juice from the fridge.

  “Does that make me weak?”

  “Absolutely not.” His eyes shot up to me as he said it while pouring the juice over the crackling glass, nearly spilling it. “There is nothing about you that is weak.” Leaving the bottle on the counter, he walked towards me, drink in hand, placing the coolness in mine and kissing me on the forehead. “I think you need this more than I do. You look a little flushed. Go get some fresh air while you’re at it. It may help.”

  I took it and took a sip to appease him, letting the cold tart juice roll around in my mouth as it warmed. Things would look up. They had to. Even if it meant admitting that something was happening to me that I couldn’t see, but I could feel and that that something wasn’t going to go away quietly. And this was only the beginning.

  I stepped outside, glass in hand and taking a few tentative sips as I moved to sit on the porch steps. I decided against sitting. We had a sizeable yard, and I wanted to go for a walk. Just me, the juice, and the quiet. Hopefully. There were two beautiful weeping willow trees out front closer to the road, both bending stunningly in an arch towards each other like lovers reaching towards one another. I shook the thought away. I didn’t want love. Not right now. I wanted to heal, and that was becoming increasingly hard to do with each breath I took.

  Stopping underneath them I watched the distant road, cars passing by with a slight hum and a whoosh as air pushed over and under them. The air around me was slightly chilly, but I wasn’t cold. I took a deep breath in and let the air chill my lungs, pushing it back out with a content sigh at the silence surrounding me then. The only sounds were the few cars that passed in the distance and the crunching of leaves under my feet as I shuffled and adjusted.

  Once I had stopped moving the quiet greeted me once more, and it was strangely pleasant, but then a sound stopped my heart. Crunching leaves behind me that signaled someone else there, but Luke hadn’t followed me outside. Right? At least, he hadn
’t when I had come outside to begin with. He had suggested fresh air, but did he want to join me? Did he need the cold air too? I didn’t want to turn around, couldn’t turn around. Frozen with absolute terror was never a good position to be in, no matter what the circumstances.

  Forcing my legs to move, I turned around, finding a dark figure wearing a long jacket sending just beyond the leafy fronds of the trees I was standing between. Nothing was said. Only silence stretched between us, but I knew who it was. Nothing had to be said. No names had to be spoken. My heart fluttered in my chest, skipping a panicked beat as I stared at him, the glass slipping from my now sweaty palm and shattering on the ground and red cranberry juice splattering on my shoes. It looked like watery blood as it soaked into them. My breath came in ragged pulls, the chilled air not having a chance to warm in my lungs before being exhaled back into the autumn air. My chest fluttered again, my heart racing as it tried to force its way from beneath my rib cage. I blinked, and he was gone, but I knew this wasn’t going to be it. He wanted to scare me, to torture me for ending his life. He was doing just that.

  Then he was in front of me, black coat moving in the slight breeze moving around us, center of his chest bloody around a large piece of broken window glass. The same glass I had ripped from my hand and shoved into his chest to save myself when he had attacked me so long ago. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, but the silence between myself and the specter spoke volumes enough. My head started to shake a silent plea.

  “Look what you did, Desiree,” he said to me, his voice sounding like it was being filtered through water, echoing like a thousand other voices were trying to be heard through him at the same time. His pale hand gripped the glass in his chest, pulling the large shard out with a sick, wet sound that caused me to cringe and nausea to rise in my throat, bile following closely behind. “Look what you did,” he yelled.

  I screamed as I backed up a couple of steps, trying to avoid his wrath as best as I could, but stumbled over a tree root. I fell to the ground and felt hands grip my ankles, beginning to pull me to only God knew where. I reached above my head, trying to find anything to grab onto when his face came into view over mine. I cried out again and tried to push him away, my feeble attempts doing nothing to stave him off.

  He leaned back, determination in his eyes, and lashed out with the shard of glass. My arm went up over my face instinctively to protect myself, the glass slashing my arm and cutting through my shirt down to the tender flesh underneath. There was searing pain and then the sensation of warmth running down my arm and soaking into the fabric of my shirt, turning cool as it hit the autumn air. A pained shout ripped from my vocal cords, filled with terror and panic.

  Alex’s skin began to gray, black veins emerging underneath his flesh as he raised the piece of glass over his head for a final blow. I screamed again and then I heard a sound that I knew possibly could save me, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable strike.

  “Desiree!” Luke yelled from towards the house, the sound of leave crunching somehow able to be heard over my cries as he ran towards me. He’s too late. A weight lifted off of me, and I opened my eyes to find Alex had disappeared, and Luke slid to a stop and kneeled beside me, brow furrowed and fear written all over his face.

  I sat up and wrapped my arms around his neck, sobbing uncontrollably as I felt my warm blood roll down my arm and soak into his crisp shirt, staining it just like my life was now tainted. With blood.

  Chapter 9

  We were sitting in the emergency room, my arm stitched up and bandaged up and waiting for my discharge papers. They doctor had cut some of the sleeve of my shirt away so he could get to the incision easier. I had told Luke that I had fell, dropping the glass and slashing my arm on the one large piece I had managed to fall on. I wasn’t sure if he truly believed it, but he was keeping up appearance. I didn’t like lying to him, but how could I tell him that I had seen Alex, and he had even attacked me? How could I let him know that I was losing myself without him sending me back to the hospital? I just couldn’t.

  “How are you doing?” Luke’s voice pulled me from my dismal thoughts. I turned to him, seeing his face for the first time since we were taken back to this room. I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I looked at anything but that.

  I shrugged and replied, “I’m alright. Arm just hurts a little, but nothing I can’t manage.”

  “What happened out there?”

  “I told you, I…”

  He held a hand up to stop me, irritation and fatigue in his eyes now. “I don’t want the story you gave them. I want the truth.”

  I turned away from him, staring at the blue dots on the sterile white linoleum of the floor. Could I tell him? Could I handle being locked away again? Something told me Luke wasn’t going to give me a choice.

  “Hey.” His voice was softer this time.

  I looked back at him, and my body sagged when I saw the hurt in his face that I couldn’t tell him what was truly happening to me. Or what I felt was going on, at least.

  “I know what you’re worried about, but you don’t have to worry about that. You’re coming home tonight, and we will work on this ourselves until it gets to a point where we can’t anymore. You have a great doctor that will help me help you. You just have to trust me.”

  I did trust him, for the most part. Since the incident with Alex trust was a hard thing for me to come by, but Luke had never once given me a reason to be skeptical of him. He had always been honest, and I didn’t think that would ever change. Not even now.

  “Alright,” I sighed. “You remember when I said I had seen Alex outside of Doctor Elliot’s office?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, it started then. The incident in the shower. This.” I gestured with my hand around the room and then to my bandaged arm. “It’s all Alex. I can’t prove it, and I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. He’s haunting me.”

  “How do you know he’s really there?”

  “I feel it. This doesn’t feel like before. This feels,” I paused, waiting to choose my last word carefully, “different.”

  He didn’t say anything after that and, after a few silent moments, a nurse came in with my discharge papers and a prescription for amoxicillin, telling me to take Tylenol for the pain. He assured me wouldn’t be much, but did say that if it was worse than expected to call my primary care physician for a prescription.

  Luke didn’t say a word on the way out of the hospital or on the way home, leaving me to go rest once we walked into the house to prepare dinner. I stood in the foyer alone for what felt like an eternity before I let myself drift towards the living room and lay on the couch, drifting off into the darkness of sleep.

  Chapter 10

  I was standing on front of the mirror in my old home; the bathroom was brighter than it had been when my world was shattered. There was a surreal air about it that caused me to squint against the light that seemed to be bouncing off of everything in such a way that it looked like fairies were glowing in the space. Then pain. Only pain as I was dragged by my hair into my bedroom, the same bizarre feeling still very much present as my back scraped across the tiled floor and the metal bar in the threshold that separated the tile from the wood I was being moved to. I was screaming, and Alex was mumbling, but I couldn’t hear the words he was saying over my cries.

  Alex released his grip on my hair, walking around me to stand above me, one foot on either side of my hips. He was still muttering to himself, his eyes unfocused and hazy as he started down at me, pulling a menacing blade from within the confines of his long black coat. Fear licked at my soul like fire, spreading wildly through my body so quickly I could swear even he had felt the spark as it ignited.

  “Alex,” he didn’t respond to his name as his eyes fixed on the knife in his hand. “Why are you doing this?”

  Had I asked him this when he had attacked me? I couldn’t remember. All I remembered was the pain, the terror, and the sting of betrayal. And the confusion.
/>   Still no answer as he watched the light reflect off of the metal with reverence. It was menacing, and the only thing I knew to do was to escape. To flee. Especially once his eyes flicked back to my face, a vicious smile playing over his lips. I turned onto my stomach, trying to army crawl away but he pulled at my shirt, dragging me back towards him with an animal grunt as I kicked out at him. My foot connected with his chin, sending him sprawling. As soon as I was on my feet I knew that there was no escape through the door. He was blocking it as he stood, his looming presence a genuinely terrifying sight.

  The window. I made my way to the window, but he was on me, his free hand trying to grab anything he could to bring me back to him so he could inflict some damage. In my attempt to reach the window and his own to grab me with his strong arms, I ended up falling into the window, breaking it and sending glass everywhere. I dropped to the floor and felt the sharp sting of glass as it cut into various parts of my skin, one enormous piece digging into my hand. The shard was as large as the knife that Alex was brandishing, thick and strong inside of my flesh as I cradled it against me trying to seek refuge. A large hand gripped me and turned me over, slashing the knife across my belly, but I moved just in time for it to only send a thin line of agony and blood across my midsection. I cried out as he knelt above me, a small rivulet of blood cascading down his cheekbone from beside his eye from our tumble into the window.

  “Oh, Desiree, I’m going to miss you,” he whispered, more to himself than to me.

  What had I done? Nothing as far as I could recall. I wanted to live, and I would do whatever it took to survive. I struggled beneath him, jerking my knee into his manhood and he fell to the ground, the knife skittering across the floor just far enough to where I couldn’t easily reach it. I straddled him and saw my only weapon. The large piece of glass in my hand that would be my only defense. I pulled it out as quickly as I could, the pain beyond anything I had ever felt before. It ricocheted through my entire body, the glass making small cuts on my other hand as I held it above my head, ready to strike. With one final cry I plunged it into his chest, the glass just thick enough to where it could stand up to the blow. Then everything went dark.