The Border Part Four by Amy Cross Read Free Book Online Page A

nodded, too upset to speak.
    “Three, at least,” she continued. “One by one, you’d have planted those seeds in my belly, and we’d have had three wonderful, beautiful, healthy children. Two boys and a girl, I think.” She smiled as they both stared across the dark, filthy room. “Megan,” she whispered. “The girl would have been named Megan, I’d have insisted on that. The boys, you could have chosen their names, but the girl would have been Megan. Megan Baldwin. She’d have been my little princess, and she’d have gone to ballet classes and…”
    Her voice trailed off, and a moment later a little girl appeared in the doorway, dressed in a pink and white dress. She was smiling, as if she was waiting to be told how pretty she looked.
    “The ghost of the child we never had,” Caitlin said after a few seconds. “One of them, anyway. Can you see her?”
    He nodded.
    “It’s like she’s real,” Caitlin whispered. “I think that’s really what she would have looked like.”
    “I wanted that,” Joe sobbed.
    “We’d have lived long, happy lives,” she continued, “and we’d have grown old together, and our children would have become strong, good people. It would have been perfect, but -”
    He waited for her to continue.
    “Tell me,” he said after a moment, sniffing back more tears. “Please, Caitlin, tell me what it would have been like. Don’t leave any details out.”
    “He took all of that away,” she replied, “he -”
    “Don’t talk about him. Talk about us.”
    “There’s no us,” she continued, her voice suddenly sounding cold and scared. She was watching the door, and the little girl had disappeared, replaced by a patch of darkness and the looming, imminent threat of some other visitor. “Not after that night. Not after he cut me open.”
    “I should have stopped him,” Joe sobbed.
    A moment later, a figure stepped through the doorway. Tall and dark, he wore a crown of broken antlers, and although the light in the room was low, the side of his face was picked out just enough to see a rough, rippled surface covered in creases and dents, seemingly sewn together from the flesh of some long-dead animal. For eyes, he had nothing but a pair of gaps in the fabric, revealing the faintest glistening whiteness beneath, and his mouth was just a slit with tattered strands hanging down. There was no nose, just a slight bulge with clear, well-defined cheekbones on either side. It was the antlers, though, that struck fear into Joe’s soul. Twisted and bone-white, they jutted out from several spots on the top of the figure’s head, most of them broken near the base but a few of them reaching up a little further with sharp, jagged edges that could cut a man’s flesh, like a crown of death.
    “Do you have any idea,” Caitlin whispered, staring wide-eyed at the stag-headed man, “how terrified I was when I died?”
    “I’m sorry,” Joe replied, his head bowed low in shame.
    “To see that face as the life left my body,” she continued, “was just… It was the most horrifying thing in the world. And the smell, too. When he leaned close to me, he stank of sweat and something animal.” She paused, meeting the stag-headed man’s gaze for a moment longer before turning to Joe. “Did they tell you that I peed myself?”
    He shook his head.
    “My bowels emptied too -”
    “Don’t,” he hissed, squeezing his eyes tight shut.
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t want to know.”
    “You want to remember me as pretty little Caitlin?”
    “Please don’t tell me the bad things.”
    “Look at me, Joe.”
    He shook his head again.
    “Look at me,” she said firmly. “Respect me enough to look at me. You’re one of the few who can now, so look at me.”
    Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at her, and this time he saw that she was how she’d been that night, with bloody wounds all over her body and a thick, open hole in her chest where her heart had once been. Reaching down, she took his