The girl’s long dark hair cascaded in ringlets down her back. She was a stunning young woman with chiseled arms and thin fingers. “That I was in here?” The girl didn’t look Sandra’s way. “I don’t speak a bit of Spanish, so there is no point in trying to talk to them. They think I’ve come back damaged in the brain.” The girl finally turned to look at Sandra. “Wow, you’ve really changed, but not as much as I have, huh?”
“I’m not sure I understand…” Sandra took a step back.
“You don’t recognize me? I’m hurt, baby.” The girl blew smoke.
“I’m sorry… I don’t…”
“Let me fill you in.” The girl’s voice was bitter, causing Sandra to step back into the hall. “One minute I was in a Jeep with three other journalists. We were doing a story in Hanoi and were given assurances that we’d be safe. We were just telling the story without any political ties. I was a fucking photographer.” The girl laughed. “As if that’s possible.”
Sandra’s stomach began to twist. In her head, she did the calculation of the date of Hugh’s letter and the night that the girl’s body was brought to Pangea. “Rick.”
Ignoring her, the girl continued. “Next thing I know, I feel something heavy in my back, like I’d been stung and then stung again. Strange thing is that getting shot doesn’t hurt like you think it would. It doesn’t hurt at first and then it comes in waves.” She inhaled. “Anyway, for me it was painless but maybe it’s the shock, I don’t know. I saw the other guys in the Jeep, their bodies twisting as the shots hit them, and I knew I must be twisting, too, my body was getting hit from all angles. I was reacting like you do when you’re a kid playing with toy guns. It was only when I saw the blood that I knew I wouldn’t make it out. The final shot must have been to my head because after that what I saw was a white sheet with a light behind it.”
The girl rubbed her arms, seemingly surprised they were there.
“I’m sorry,” said Sandra. “I don’t understand.”
“This went on for a while. And I saw the craziest things. I was painting in a little studio with a stone floor and then there was this opera and you were there, but it wasn’t you really. I mean you looked a little different than you do now. And I could see that I was making you cry. You were trying hard to hide it from me, but I knew that what I was saying was making you cry. And then there were these flickering images of the sun, like a damaged film reel. Then there was a goddamned racehorse and you different again, but crying in this bronze dress, you looked like a goddess. Then I really felt pain. It was like someone was trying to put me in a heavy raincoat and it hurt so badly getting shoved into it, like I was being pulled out of my raw skin and into this raincoat.”
Sandra felt her legs wobble. How was this girl describing her lives? What was wrong here? “I—”
The girl cut her off, her voice husky. “When I woke up, I was on a floor… in a bag.” She paused and looked at Sandra as though she were waiting for an explanation, putting her cigarette out in the nearby ashtray and immediately lighting another. Something in the way she lit the cigarette was familiar.
“I thought I was still in Hanoi and then I looked down and I didn’t understand. I thought I saw you, handing me a blanket, and I thought to myself, This is the most absurd vision of heaven I can imagine. Sandra is handing me a fucking blanket. And then you sent me away the next day, handed me over to this man who didn’t speak a word of English, and I realized that it wasn’t a dream—it was a horror show.”
Sandra closed her eyes, the feeling of bile rising up in her throat. “Oh, Rick.”
“Yeah, but I don’t look like him anymore, do I? How the fuck am I here, Sandra? You know I saw what you did to Ezra.” The girl swung her legs off the sill and onto the floor, planting them with a tiny thud. She took three steps toward Sandra, who towered over her now. “How?”
Sandra spied the edge of the toilet in the room across the hall. She ran, heaving into the bowl, choking on her own vomit. She slumped to her knees and squared herself with the rim of the toilet seat before vomiting again. She could feel the girl—Rick—behind her, looming.
“Is this what you did to me before?”
“I didn’t do this to you.”
“After my car accident. You brought me back.”
Sandra nodded. “But not like this. That was different.”
“Well, someone brought me back again and put me… in this.” The girl tugged at her skin.
Sandra stood, not bothering to flush the toilet, and pushed past the girl, staggering from the house into the truck and driving off. After missing several dirt roads, she spied a patch of cottonwood trees and pulled off the road. This was a nightmare. Finally, a motorcycle passed her and she pulled onto the dirt path, following the motorcycle out onto the main road. When she got back to the Pangea Ranch, she found Luke in the kitchen on the phone.
“Get off the fucking phone.” She paced the floor in front of him, grabbing at her hair. Finally, she pushed down on the lever to hang up the phone.
“What is it?” He wasn’t angry. After putting the handset back on the wall, he folded his arms in front of him. “This should be good.”
“How could you?” Sandra spat.
“How is Marchant?”
“He’s a fucking mess. How do you think he is?”
“Well, he’s not dead at least.”
“He’d prefer to be.”
“Oh, they all say that. None of them mean it.” Luke started down the hall. “Marchant was always such a fucking prima donna.”
“Don’t walk away from me.” Sandra took off after him.
He spun around, sending her reeling backward. “Tell me. What is so bad about what I did for you? This version was different, right?”
“You were jealous?”
“That you loved him… Lord knows I’ve heard that enough, so I found a fucking loophole for the two of you to be together. You’re welcome. Go and be happy together.”
“It isn’t natural.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” He laughed. “And you and I are both natural, are we? We’re the fucking Addams Family, Sandra, in case you failed to notice.”
“You had no right—”
“Don’t lecture me on right. Would you rather he was dead? Would you?”
Sandra took her time answering. “Have you stopped the curse by doing this to Rick? Will it end now?”
“Oh honey,” laughed Luke. “If only it were that simple. But I assure you, as the administrator of this fiasco we live in, I could pull that bastard Marchant out of his body at any time and put it in that cookie jar over there and guess what? He’d still bounce back to meet you in the next life. I’m powerless to alter the spell, but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy fucking with it—and him a little!”
“You’re an awful man,” said Sandra. “How’d you do it?”
“What do you mean how did I do it? How do I do everything? How do we do everything we do? I’m a fucking demon. You keep saying so, reminding me how bad we are.”