My mother and I hugged each other and wept, but she reminded me that our time was limited and there was still much to talk about. She told me more about the years since my father’s death, how she had become more and more withdrawn and isolated, at first by choice. But as I had grown older and it seemed increasingly likely that I would be getting the luck soon, Emily had imposed more restrictions on her as well—a security detail that was meant to spy on her and keep her from doing anything rash, threats against both her and myself if she tried to tell me the truth.
She knew that Emily’s plan was likely to gain my trust and trick me into helping kill my mother the same way my mother herself had been tricked, and that keeping the two of us separated was key. Tears returning to her eyes, she grabbed my hand.
“I’m sorry again for how I acted before. For not telling you more before now. I think a part of me wanted her plan to work, wanted an end to all of this for myself. I’ve lived so long with this pain and guilt, and for a time I would go through spells where I tried to kill myself, but of course I couldn’t.”
I squeezed her hand back, intent on listening, but her last statement gave me pause and some low tickling in the back of my brain. “What do you mean you couldn’t?”
She shrugged and gave me an embarrassed look. “Just that. Tried to hang myself, the rope broke. Tried to shoot myself, the gun jammed. Poison had no effect other than a bit of diarrhea, razor blades would literally slip out of my hand whenever I brought it near my wrists.”
The idea of her being so beaten down for so long, so alone, felt like it was crushing me. I wanted to comfort her, but I still felt that low tickling, stronger now, and I knew I needed to press on. “Did you ever try to get someone else to kill you?”
She rubbed her face and nodded. “Yes, twice. Same thing. They couldn’t hurt me. It’s an aspect of the luck we don’t think about as much because it’s much more obvious when something good or lucky happens then when you avoid something bad happening. But yes, I don’t think we can be seriously hurt by normal means.”
“Why are you telling me all this now? What’s changed?”
Giving my hand another squeeze, she let go and sat up straighter. “I realized I needed to stop being a coward. I couldn’t let you fall into the same trap that’s held me all these years. I don’t know how much knowing will help you, but at least it’s something. I’m finally doing something.”
The tickle had pushed its way forward into the forefront of my mind. I had a plan, or at least the start of a plan. I shook my head. “You’re not doing something yet. But you will. We both will. We’re going to end this.”
In the few minutes we had left, I outlined the rough sketch of my idea and we figured out more details. By the time the guard came back in to tell my mother that she was going to be late for a phone conference if we didn’t stop now, we knew what needed to be done.
The preparations took nearly a week, helped along immensely by
Rosalyn, who was able to get us details on both the security watching
over both my mother and Emily, as well as where Emily was going to be
for the next few days. My mother’s security detail consisted of five
guards rotated in and out on a 12-hour basis, with the idea being that
at any given time she would have two to three guards with her. It
wasn’t hard to arrange a night where my mother, myself, and Rosalyn all
fell asleep thinking of a different guard.
The next day, in the aftermath of one guard calling in sick, one dying as he drove to her condo, and one falling and inexplicably breaking his hip while patrolling her home, my mother was ready to head out with us. But as she approached the elevator, the doors slid open and the other two guards appeared. They gave her wary smiles and told her she needed to stay put for her safety.
She shot the first one in the head with the gun the injured guard had somehow lost in his fall. She had never fired a gun before outside of trying to end her own life, but there was no jam or misfire this time, and the bullet struck him dead center in the forehead. The second guard moved to tackle her, but tripped at the last moment, his weight and momentum carrying him headfirst into the wall behind her. When he didn’t stir after a few seconds, she took the elevator downstairs and met us in the parking lot.
I say us, because Rosalyn had insisted on coming along. I told her she had helped enough, but she wasn’t hearing it. She said she’d failed my mother for years by not coming and offering help, but she was done failing her now. When my mother reached the car, the two of them began to laugh and cry as they hugged each other, spinning in a slow circle in the parking lot. I watched for over a minute before reminding them we had a plane to catch.
Emily had a large manor house outside of Enniscorthy, Ireland, and it took some time to reach it. We flew into Gatwick and then onto Dublin before renting a car and heading south. Taking the train would have been nice, but we had picked up some items from a contact of Rosalyn’s when we hit Dublin, and it didn’t seem wise to push our luck by going through boarding on a public train. We needed to save every drop of that luck for what was coming next.
The manor house was beautiful, with thick, leaded glass windows and peaks done in the Tudor-style. There was a large garage behind the house, and some distance away I could see a stable, though I saw no signs of horses or other animals. For that matter, I saw no signs of people either, and I felt my stomach begin to drop.
“I don’t think she’s here.” I looked over at Rosalyn with a questioning look. She was driving, but as she rolled to a stop, she gave me a comforting smile.
“No worries. She’s here. There should be two guards and a housemaid too. But that’s it.” She glanced back at my mother. All the way across the Atlantic and then back across the Irish Sea, they had been talking almost non-stop, catching up on nearly three decades of missing each other. But as we had grown closer to Emily’s house, my mother had grown more and more silent. Rosalyn poked her knee. “You okay? You ready?”
I turned around in my seat to look at my mother. She looked small and frail, all pale skin and big eyes. She swallowed before she spoke. “I…I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ll mess up. I’m so scared of her. She…she’s not really human anymore I don’t think. She’s lived so long.”
Rosalyn shook her head. “No, that’s bullshit. You won’t mess up, and whatever she is or isn’t, this ends now. You can do this.” Her tone softened as she added. “We’re here with you. We’re all in this together.”
My mother nodded and looked at me. I tried to smile, pushing down my own fears and worries. “Let’s go fuck this old bitch up.”
As I turned back around, I saw that the front door of the manor had
opened and a burly looking man was coming towards the car. I got out,
ready to talk to him, but then I saw the knife in his hand. I let out a
small yelp as I tried to dodge to my left, my hands fumbling with the
gun I had tucked at my back. But he was fast and anticipated my dodge,
and in the same moment my gun came free from my waistband I saw the
knife coming up in an arc that would likely gut me.
I couldn’t think of anything else in that fraction of an instant, so I pulled the trigger. The gun was behind my back, in my non-dominant hand and not even remotely pointed towards the man, but in the moment there wasn’t time for rational thought or consideration, just instinct and reaction.
I heard the crack of the gun, a dim “tink” sound to my right, and then the man’s head caved in, the force of the bullet turning him just enough that the knife passed by harmlessly a couple of inches away from my belly.
I stared at the man’s lifeless body for a couple of seconds, but was startled out of my reverie by a second gun shot. I looked up to see a second guard falling just outside the front door as Rosalyn began to lower her gun. She shot me a glance and shrugged. “No need in letting him get close. Not everyone can be fancy like you.” She gestured to the left bumper of the car where there was a new dent. It took me a second to realize that is where my bullet had ricocheted before killing the man attacking me. I swallowed and gave a weak smile.
My mother was out of the car now, her hands trembling slightly but her expression set and grim. I thought about making a Charlie’s Angels joke, but suppressed the urge. The three of us shared a look and then headed into the manor without another word.
It only took a few moments of exploration to find Emily in a large room off the main hallway. All of the furniture except for one chair had been moved to the perimeter of the room, and I noticed that a large floor rug had been rolled up and tucked into a corner as well. It looked like she was expecting us, and when we entered, she stayed seated in the plush chair that occupied the center of the room. While her overall appearance was pretty much the same, this was the first time I was seeing her without the false mask of love and warmth. Her dark eyes glittered with a strange, almost insectile malignity, and her mouth, normally smiling and expressive, hung slack as dead meat. When she started talking, I found myself imagining a bone puppet covered in corpse meat dancing, causing the lifeless flesh to jiggle and sway.
“Welcome, children. I see you’ve all come to visit. Decided to gang up on me, eh?” She gave a wet and unpleasant chuckle as she took us all in with her cold glare. “Have you two been wishing me dead in your jammies last night?” She pointed out two fingers at me and my mother, waggling them mockingly as she spoke. “That’s real cute.” She paused, seeming to consider something for a moment before continuing. “But I can tell you, it won’t work. I’ve been at this a lot longer than any of you, and I’m a lot stronger. It’s not all about who you wish bad luck onto, you know. It’s also about willpower. I’ve shown what I’m willing to do to survive. All any of you have ever done is eat scraps and cry over spilt milk.”
Her eyes raked over us. “So this is it. Last chance, last warning. Go home. Live your lives and enjoy that wonderful luck. Because if you stay, I’m going to eat you all up.” Her mouth stretched into a crooked, yellow leer. I had a second to worry that my mother would cave, but then she was walking towards Emily, gun out.
“Fuck you. You’ve taken enough from all of us. You’re going to die
today, and we’re here to help it along.” She began to fire, each shot
seemingly aimed right at Emily. Yet somehow the bullets would miss her,
sending off sparks on the stone wall and marble floor behind her,
tearing small chunks out of the chair she was sitting in.
Rosalyn and I joined in, both moving out in different directions so that between the three of us we were all shooting at her several feet and over 100 degrees apart. Still nothing. Her chair was a ruin now, but no bullet, no wood shrapnel, not even a speck of dirt, seemed to have touched her. I could feel my heart thudding now with confusion and fear, and this only intensified when she stood up. We were all reloading, but I didn’t know if it would matter. It was clear that she wasn’t afraid of our guns. As I slammed home the clip and racked the slide on my gun, I saw long curved knives appear in both of Emily’s hands.
She looked at us each for a moment before settling her gaze on my mother. “My turn.”
I’ve never seen a person move so fast. I could barely make sense of what I was seeing. She lunged forward towards my mother, who tried to move and fell in the process. The fall saved her from the first blow, but I didn’t know how long her luck would hold out. Emily pivoted and struck out again, with my mother rolling to the side at the last moment. A third strike and a near miss. Then a fourth with no hit.
I felt hope begin to bloom that even if we couldn’t kill Emily, she would be unable to kill us either. Then my mother screamed. The fifth blow had struck home in her stomach, and now Emily was straddling her, jamming the other knife in beside the first. I screamed and ran towards them, shoving my gun against the side of Emily’s head. I pulled the trigger over and over, but nothing happened. Emily turned to look at me, her lips peeled back from her teeth, gray spittle flying out of the corners of her mouth. She was about to say something when my mother interrupted her.
I looked back to my mother in time two register two things: First, that she was telling me she loved me. Second, that she had just pulled the pin on a grenade. In a blur of motion, and before Emily could react, my mother pulled herself up to wrap her arms tightly around Emily, digging the blades deeper into her abdomen and wedging the live grenade between them. A moment later me and Rosalyn were flung back by the concussive force of the explosion.
I think I blacked out for a moment, but when I came to I realized I was unharmed. I rolled over and sat up, and some distance away I saw Rosalyn doing the same. We both turned to the smoking center of the room, where the remains of my mother lay smoldering. Emily was a couple of feet away, slowly crawling for the door as she left a slug trail of blood and burned flesh behind her.
I wanted to cry and scream, but more than that, I wanted to finish Emily. As I stood up shakily, I saw Rosalyn pulling out a thin piece of serrated wire with wooden handles on the ends. She looked as shaken as I was, but I wasn’t sure she looked as shocked. In any case, there was no time to wonder now. Any moment an ambulance would pull up to save Emily, or some other improbable coincidence would intervene to her benefit. Rosalyn handed me one of the handles and together we looped the wire around the front of Emily’s neck, tugging lightly as the saw teeth found purchase in her flesh. We both put a foot on one of her shoulders, stopping her struggling as we began to saw rhythmically, back and forth, as she gurgled in bloody protest. Five passes and we were to the spine. Another five and the head was off entirely.
I went to the kitchen and found some lighter fluid along with a frightened housemaid that I sent away with a shooing gesture. We burned the head until it was just black bone.
When that was done, we sat against the wall of the room in silence for some time before I spoke. I tried to make my words even and non-accusatory, but I could hear the anger in them when they came out.
“You knew she was going to sacrifice herself, didn’t you?”
I was staring ahead, but I could see Rosalyn shift uncomfortably
next to me. “Yeah, I did. Your plan, it was a good one. But it is
what Emily would expect, and we didn’t really know how strong she was.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Apparently pretty strong.”
Shaking her head, she continued. “But she wouldn’t expect self-sacrifice from your mother. The idea wouldn’t even occur to someone like her. So you were directing it towards Emily, which weakened her protection, but wouldn’t allow her to be killed. But instead of joining you in wishing Emily dead, your mother was wishing it on herself. She knew that Emily would be wishing her dead too, both because she hoped to still use you in the future and because she would hate that your mother was defying her after all this time. She wouldn’t be able to help herself, even if she didn’t think it would amount to anything.”
I shook my head. “She didn’t have to do that. My plan would have worked. You should have stopped her. Or told me so I could.” I glared at her, feeling my anger and grief building as the reality of it all began to sink in.
Rosalyn sighed. “Sweetie, maybe your plan would have worked. I don’t know. But I know she seemed confident in being able to take all three of us, luck or no, when she was pushed to it. There aren’t any guarantees in life, much less in something as fucked up as all of this. But your mother wasn’t going to take that chance. She knew that her own luck would be neutralized enough for the grenade to go off, and that Emily’s own luck should be weak enough for her to be hurt by the blast if she was close enough. She relied on us being okay from it and our own luck being enough to help finish Emily off. Which we did.”
I understood the logic, but it didn’t make me feel any better. “But she’s gone now. I was just getting to know her again. Or maybe know her at all.”
Rosalyn scooted over closer to me to give me a hug. At first I resisted, but she was determined and I finally gave in. After a few seconds, Rosalyn spoke again. “I know, honey. And I believe you’ll see her again some day. But she needed to do this. She loved you so much, but she was so ashamed of herself. Blamed herself for so much. This was her way of protecting us and atoning a little at the same time.”
I nodded, crying harder. Rosalyn called someone to come gather up my mother’s remains so we could get them transported back home, and as soon as that was done, we left. We’ve spent the last few days in London, and as I write this we’re waiting to board Rosalyn’s plane back the U.S. I don’t know what comes next in all of this, but that’s okay. Hopefully the worst is over. I still have my luck, and I can tell I’m much stronger now—a byproduct of us killing Emily I suppose. For now, I’m going to go home and start preparing for my baby to come. And when she gets here, I’m going to make sure she knows how lucky she is. Not because of some magic we don’t understand, but because of the people that love her and the sacrifices they’ve made. I’ll try and teach her to value what’s really important, and hope that it's enough.
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Credits
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