Chapter 43

FORTY-THREE

Thursday August 13, 2010

Seeing Amy carry my baby into the hallway was the bucket of cold water I needed to snap me into alertness. I chased after her, demanding what the hell she was doing with Heath.

She told me that Charlotte had come to the bedroom, threatening to smother him while I slept. Amy was trying to protect the baby from a ghost. My heart sank. She’d escalated from seeing dead women to taking actions on imagined threats.

I took Heath back and rushed down the stairs to shake Lyle awake. He stared up at me from the living room sofa, looking through dead eyes as I explained what had just happened. Then he closed his eyes for several minutes.

He’s had enough, and I don’t blame him. Our entire lives are spiraling out of control, and I have no idea how to fix it.

I yelled his name over and over until he yelled back to keep quiet because he was trying to think. I told him Amy needs professional help and asked if we could take her to an out-of-town child psychiatrist. We could tell them Charlotte never even existed. She’s an imaginary friend Amy thinks she’s murdered.

Lyle told me I was being ridiculous. His younger brother has mental problems. That’s not how it works. All that talk of sacrificing a baby would have the professionals calling the police. They’d interrogate Amy a hundred different ways until they uncovered the truth.

I waited for Lyle to use his big FBI brain to come up with a solution. All he did was clasp his hands over his face and take deep breaths, looking like a man on the verge of a breakdown.

Heath started fussing, so I sat at the other end of the sofa to feed him, while waiting for Lyle to break out of his fugue.

He didn’t.

When Amy started wailing upstairs, I shook Lyle, asking if he was in a fit state to hold the baby. His only response was a tired nod, so I handed Heath over and raced to the source of the sound.

Her bedroom was a mess. The sheets hung over the window and all her clothes lay scattered across the floor. I searched for her in the chaos, only to find soft whimpers echoing from behind the closet door.

I knew better than to fling it open in case she was hiding there with a knife. Instead, I knocked on the wooden panel and asked if she was alright.

She cried, saying she was only trying to help, which broke my heart. I thought back, wondering how the hell we got into this situation. We were such a happy family until I announced the pregnancy.

That’s when the problems started, I’m certain. That was the week Amy first came to me complaining that Dolly had cut a chunk of her hair while she slept. When I confronted Dolly, her hair was missing in exactly the same place. The next night, Dolly complained her mattress was wet.

Dr. Forster dismissed their antics as sibling rivalry, saying that Amy was threatened by a potential baby. Then his theory changed to the twins working together to stop me from having another child. He told me to speak with them and explain how the baby would complete our family.

I was a fool to have listened to him. Everything he suggested was like putting a Band-Aid on a festering wound.

It took every effort to push aside my resentment for Dr. Forster and focus on Amy. When I finally coaxed her out from the closet, she crawled out, holding a doll and a pair of shears. I asked what those were for, and she told me Charlotte wanted a lock of Heath’s hair.

Charlotte wants to turn the doll into a body she can inhabit to avenge her murder. For reasons Amy couldn’t explain, Charlotte also needed a few drops of the baby’s blood to complete a ritual.

I asked a lot of questions to get to the bottom of the request. Amy said she convinced Charlotte that the true murderer was back at Three Fates. Charlotte wanted Amy to transfer her soul into a doll that she can mail to the facility, to punish Dolly.

Amy has the makings of a master storyteller. I have to admit that it’s an imaginative plot, but I’ll be damned if I hand over parts of my baby to appease a figment of her imagination.

I held out my hand and ordered Amy to give me the shears. She did, but only after stabbing me in the palm and drawing blood. When I screamed, Lyle didn’t come charging up the stairs to see what was wrong.

For the next several seconds, I froze, watching Amy spread the blood on the doll. She believed she was doing this to save the family. I wondered if I’d dispatched the wrong twin. Maybe I failed to notice they’re both disturbed because of Dolly’s flair for the dramatic.

One more incident like that, and I might have to send Amy away, too.