Other than giving her mother the best few days possible of her life? You drowned her in the motel pool before you left town. But then you began to feel guilty about it. You kept seeing those eyes staring at you, so you invented the story of her drifting out at sea and losing them…adding yet another layer of self delusion that you just kept telling yourself over and over with the hope it would one day make it true.
You only went back to town and stole her from the morgue and buried her in the desert because you thought it would ease your mind. But it never did. She followed you. Left pool water in every car you owned, until you gave up and switched to riding trains. Haunted you day and night. Until you thought the only way she would ever rest was if you gave her what she missed the most-Ann…
Cyclops still hadn’t let go of the knife. She watched him raise the blade and gaze at it in the phantom light. He was still too far away from her. She began to wonder if she would ever be able to find a clean shot at all.
And then something happened she couldn’t explain. The black cloud drifting around Cyclops began to break apart and turn into the shapes of dogs. With human faces.
Ann wanted to scream and run. But there was no where else she could go. He had her backed up against the cliff edge.
She pressed her back against a rock and tried to steady her pounding heart. What was she going to do? He knows you’re losing it, that the fever’s got hold of your mind.
Something moved next to her legs. She knew it was stupid to look away from him but she did anyway. One of the dog-shadows had broken away from the others and was approaching her. She saw a whitish form hovering where its head should have been. A woman’s face framed by a fluid sheet of protoplasm. She smiled when Ann looked at her. Ann thought she was beautiful.
“Who is she?”
“You don’t recognize her?”
“No…”
“It’s your mother Ann.”
“It can’t be. You’re lying.”
“Then take out your locket and you’ll see.”
How did he know I had it with me? And then Ann recalled how she’d awakened on the beach without her clothes.The bastard had had plenty of time to see all that he’d wanted. What else did he have time to do? Thinking about it made her sick to her stomach.
She reached down the neck of her damp sweater and pulled out her mother’s silver locket with a trembling hand. It felt like ice against her palm. She pressed the tiny clasp on the side and it clicked open and she held it up close. Inside she saw a cutout picture of her mother as she remembered her, smiling, with the sea behind her.
Ann looked back at the image floating in the night mist. No, it can’t be.
“What did you do to her?”
Cyclops had moved several steps closer. “I ended her suffering, Ann.”
“No…”