Adermoor Cove: Dissolved Girl - 8. Chapter 8

The rumor of Ramona's return from death spread the way such news does through a place as small as Adermoor Cove: like wildfire.

A stampede of townspeople crowded outside of Ramona's room, craning for a peek at the woman who had been presumed missing and then dead. The staff working at the hospital had a hell of a job shooing them away. The only people allowed to see Ramona were Moira, Carlos, Lane, and Scott and Anne Sterling. Anne actually fainted at the small glimpse of her daughter.

Ramona was weak from lack of nutrition. Dr. Nesick, the man who had overseen Vanessa Stanton's care, suggested she eat only light foods since anything heavy would make her sick.

After a series of X-rays and CAT scans, Moira was relieved to hear no parasites could be found inside Ramona. "The parasites seem to die almost as soon as Ramona vomits them up," Nesick told Moira. "Without a host they can't survive outside the body."

After their second day at the hospital, Moira began to grow frustrated with Dr. Nesick. While Ramona was responding to the stimulus tests and proved to be perfectly aware of her surroundings, she had not said a single word. If this wasn't frustrating enough, Moira could not even touch Ramona. Surely physical contact from a loved one would help!

"I'm sorry," Nesick said with great sympathy and patience. "I know the situation is most trying but we have to make sure she is completely clear of the infection before her send her out into the public. What if the parasites laid larvae? I want to do a few more scans and keep her another few nights for observation."

It was impossible to stay mad with Dr. Nesick. Not only was he truly passionate about his job and patients, Moira knew he had a point. Back in New York, in a past life it seemed, the occasions of encountering such a doctor were rare.

Nesick's assurances didn't stop Moira from worrying. She wasn't just worried about Ramona's physical health, but her mental and emotional health as well. There was no way to tell what Ramona remembered or how she was truly feeling inside. What if she never came out of her silence? What if she never reverted back to the woman she loved?

I'll do whatever it takes, Moira thought. I didn't give up on her before and I won't give up on her now. I'll take care of her.

She was trying to stay positive. It was easier said than done. The time she'd spent here felt disconnected. Her eyes constantly burned from lack of sleep. The staff had managed to set her up a bed in the corner of the room, but with the constant noise and commotion of the hospital it was impossible to truly get some rest. Moira didn't have the help of hospital issued drugs.

Colin, her boss at the high school, kept assuring her she could take off as long as she needed. Moira couldn't escape the feeling she was neglecting her students. She longed to sleep in a real bed, in a quiet place.

She longed to hold Ramona and tell her how much she loved her. She longed for their life to go back to the way things had been before the monster had dragged Ramona away.

She was heading down to the cafeteria for something to eat. They'd been at the hospital for the better part of a week now.

Going down to the cafeteria was a rare venture for her. She hated to leave Ramona's side but she needed a break from the cramped confines of the room, the constant beep of the life monitor reading off Ramona's vital signs.

Stepping out of the elevator onto the bottom floor, Moira was thinking about the argument she'd had with Ramona about going to Ramona's parent's for dinner. Compared to now it seemed so trivial. Meaningless.

The double doors to her right slowly opened. A nurse stepped through them, pushing a hospital bed in front of her. An old man with wispy white hair was laying in the bed. His eyes were focused indifferently on something Moira couldn't see. The nurse was a plump, shapeless woman with a round face. Her beady brown eyes tracked Moira unpleasantly as they passed one another.

Moira had never seen the nurse before, or the old man for that matter. She wasn't a lifer here so it wasn't like she knew every soul on the island. This didn't stop.everyone from knowing about her and her business: the lesbian high school teacher whose cop girlfriend had just come back from the dead.

It wasn't the kind of notoriety Moira wanted.

The dining room was spacious and quiet. There was no one else around but for a few staff members on lunch break, trying to take advantage of a few moments of peace. Moira was ravenous, even if the food the cafeteria served was bland. She wanted something more than the ham and cheese sandwiches the nurse on shift brought her - usually an hour or two after she'd requested one!

She sat down at a small table in the corner of the dining room, big enough for two people to sit. She took a sip of her coffee. It probably wouldn't make her feel more awake, but at least it would stave off the cold from the cool temperatures inside the hospital. She poured Caesar dressing over her salad, mixing the romaine around with her fork. She was taking her first bite when a familiar voice spoke.

"Mind if I join you?"

She looked up at Dr. Nesick, dressed in his white doctor's coat. Caesar dressing dripped onto her sweater. "Shit!" she blurted, wiping furiously at the spot with a bunched up napkin. "Sure."

He took the chair across from Moira. In one dark, long-fingered hand he held a Styrofoam cup. Coffee probably. "I was wondering if we could talk for a moment."

The tone of his voice caused Moira to forget about her lunch and the preoccupations on her mind, and give him her full attention. He'd spoken loud enough so only she could hear. To anyone who might be looking from a distance, his expression appeared congenial. But up close, where only Moira could see, there was a belying graveness in his coffee-brown eyes that made her feel slightly uneasy.

"Yes." Her heart had sped up a few beats. She thought she could feel it pulsing in her throat. She wasn't hungry any longer.

"Do you realize how lucky Ramona is to be alive?" His bushy eyebrows knitted together inquisitively. "How in the name of God did you cure her?"

It took a few sputtering attempts for Moira to remember how to speak again. "I didn't. How do you know about...it?" She couldn't think of the right word to use. The plague? The darkness? Does it matter? He knows!

"I've lived in this town thirty years," he said. "For as long as I've been a practicing doctor. There was a time when this town wasn't as prosperous or populated - believe me when I tell you it's grown since then. In those days I wore multiple hats. Home visits. Surgeon. Coroner. You can't live in this town and be a doctor for as long as I have and not notice just how out of place things are. The parasites. I've seen them before. Ramona is the only person to have survived and been cured of them."

Moira gulped. "How many other people know?"

"Mayor Richardson for one. Sheriff Enzo knew. Vanessa Stanton. Ted Magyer. They're all dead. Most of the people who've known are either dead or have left the island. There aren't as many people on the island who know as you would think, but there are a few. And no, I will not tell you who they are."

Moira watched a mother lead her young daughter into the cafeteria. She waited until they were both out of sight before asking, "Why are we having this conversation?"

"I don't know," the doctor said musingly. "Suppose I'm just a foolish old man. It gets lonely knowing too much. There are times I think pretending not to see what's right in front of me will drive me insane. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Before she could respond, a woman's voice came on the PA station and told Nesick to head to room 5626 immediately.

That's Ramona's room! Moira thought.

She forced the terror down as she got.up and followed Nesick out of the dining room. She hadn't bothered to throw away her lunch.

Moira wanted to scream the whole time she was on the elevator. Wouldn't it have been faster to take the stairs? She watched the buttons light as the car passed each floor: first one, then two, then three until they reached the fifth floor. Moira resisted the urge to shove past Nesick. The heavy, panicky weight crushing her chest in was impossible to bear.

Please let her be okay, please let her be okay, please let her be okay. The thought was a mantra inside Moira's head, a prayer.

Nesick moved very quickly and gracefully. He was already in the room by the time Moira reached the doorway.

Ramona thrashed about on the cold tiled floor wildly, a terrible screeching noise sounding from her throat. Her eyes were wide and glassy with fright beneath the pale elastic of her forehead. She kicked with her legs at the nurses trying to restrain her; the gown of her thin hospital skirt was hiked up so Moira could see her legs, covered in scrapes. Then she saw Moira and stopped struggling almost at once.

“Moira,” she begged, “help me.”

Moira wanted to go to her but couldn’t figure out how to unpeel herself from the wall. Nesick spoke in a soothing voice as he pushed the needle of a syringe into her shoulder and pushed the plunger down. The sedative took hold of Ramona almost immediately. The nurses - there were three in the room - worked together to help her back into the bed.

Moira didn’t realize she was crying until one of the nurses was leading her to the other bed in the room. As if the sedative was shooting through her veins and not Ramona’s, she felt heavy with exhaustion.

Relief swept over her as she saw Ramona's relaxed face, as she sat down on the bed. As the lyrics of a Carly Simon song went through her head: I had some dreams there were clouds in my coffee...clouds in my coffee.

She didn't remember falling asleep. One second the lights were on and then they weren't. When she woke up sometime later Ramona was already awake, sitting up in bed. It took a moment for Moira to realize that she could see Ramona because someone had removed the partition.

Ramona no longer looked like the bad ass cowgirl who had taught Moira how to go horseback riding, how to shoot a gun, how to do things she never would have learned back in New York City; she looked like a little girl. Subdued. Dissolved. A stranger.

They looked at each other for a long time. No one said anything. The antibacterial air was filled with a subtle tension. Moira knew she should go to Ramona and try to comfort her...but she was afraid to. She realized, with a stab of pain, she was still afraid of Ramona. How could she not be? Ramona had attacked her and the people she cared about, had killed Ted Magyer, infected him and turned him into a monster. And while none of these things were her fault - not really - it didn't mean they hadn't happened.

For Moira, the memories of all that had happened, and the terror that came with them, were still very much there.

Moira had fought too hard to get Ramona back for things to change this much between them.

"Will you sit with me?"

Ramona's was a little girl's voice, barely audible above the beep of the monitor, still reading her life signs.. Her legs were tucked up before her, forming two mountains beneath the blankets. Only her eyes, set deep within her starved face, were steady, just the way Moira always remembered them to be before this whole nightmare had begun. But she could see the fear of rejection etched into her face.

"Sure," Moira heard herself say.

She got out of the bed and crossed the room. She dragged her blanket with her, wrapping it around her shoulders like a cloak. The tiled floor was cold beneath her bare feet. She didn't remember kicking off her shoes - must have done it in her sleep.

There was just enough room in the narrow hospital bed to be able to fit. The fit was tight but not uncomfortable.

It was strange to be this close to Ramona again, to feel the press of her bony shoulder. To hold her hand. But Moira did it because she knew if she was truly going to get the woman she loved back, then she would have to fight harder than ever before.

"I remember everything," Ramona said. Her voice trembled. Her eyes looked down at her lap. Her red hair, always so luscious and vivid before, looked like greasy red straw. "I remember what it felt like to die. What it felt like when the darkness took me. I remember everything."

"Tell me," Moira said.

Ramona began to tell her.

                                 …

She remembered the terrible sounds Winchester made, the horse she had loved since she was a little girl. She remembered the blind terror that had come over her, the helpless madness that came with it. She remembered Moira grabbing a hold of her, telling her not to go out there.

I'm a cop, she thought. I need to do something!

In that moment she didn't feel like a cop - all the training, what you do to keep yourself and the people around you safe when in the middle of a crisis, had gone out of her head. This wasn't New York City where crazy shit happened all the time. This was Adermoor Cove, where bad things weren't supposed to happen.

Moira knew more about what to do than she did. Already she was on the phone, telling Melvin to send someone out to Donovan Road.

Ramona went to the window above the sink and peered outside. She could see a slice of morning sky above and the trees of the forest behind the house, but she could no longer hear Winchester. She tried not to imagine what had been done to her horse. What kind of bear just comes onto your property and kills your horse? She knew, of course, bears ventured onto people's property if they smelled food but this was downright abnormal.

She strained her ears. Silence. Maybe it was gone. She turned her back to the window, said the same thing to Moira, then stopped when she saw the look of terror on Moira's face. Moira dropped the phone reached to her.

There was the sound of shattering glass. Moira reaching, reaching, reaching. Her lips were drawn back in a grimace of terror. Ramona knew something terrible was happening, that she was in terrible danger, but not from what. Their fingers brushed just as she felt the jaws of a monster close in on her and drag her away.

She flew backwards - no, was dragged backwards. The floor raced past her in a blur of linoleum and shattered glass. Droplets of blood were falling.

Who's blood? My blood.

She hadn't even felt the glass cut her.

She managed to catch the edge of the sink before the monster dragged her back.

She screamed. Screamed Moira's name. She was in the maw of the monster, being dragged away from the Sterling house by her leg. It was pulling at her with such force it pulled her leg from its socket.

Somehow she managed to wiggle free. She hit the grass hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She scrambled forward on her hands, scrabbling towards the house through the wet, dewey grass. She was so frightened she didn't have the presence of mind to get up and run.

She heard the monster roar. The bear was coming after her. The bear from Moira's nightmares. Now it's coming after me. Why does it want me?

It tried to grab a hold of her by its mouth. She screamed, managed to turn over on her back. Another glimpse of sky. A beautiful sky on an ugly day. The bear had her by the middle, picked her up as if she was nothing more than a toy. She could feel its damp, hot breath on her flesh. Its smell was foul; it smelled like death. There was no getting away from it.

It bounded for the trees, huffing. Carrying her away from the trees. Away from Moira. The world shuddered, full of colors and pain. Each step the bear took rattled Ramona's whole body. She couldn't breathe.

The bear was running for the trees. The woods.

There was no breaking free. There was no escaping the pain. She felt as if every bone was breaking, turning into dust.

She wanted to die rather than feel this fear and pain.

She thought she heard Moira scream her name but couldn't be sure. She managed to scream Moira's name again before the bear plunged into the trees. She was lost in a world of green and brown. Her pain was red and black and blue. The color of blood and bruises.

She felt a branch cut into her cheek, felt more grab at her hair. The bear plundered on, a beast of destruction.

Ramona had lost all sense of time. Pain and fear has a way of distorting things. It seemed as if this nightmare had been going on forever, even though it had truly only been a few minutes. She thought she heard Moira call her name once again. She was in too much pain to care.

There was a moment of bliss when everything was black. If this is death, just blackness, then it wasn't so bad. It was certainly better than the pain the bear had inflicted on her. But just as the bear began to slow, Ramona could see the sky again. The pain drove into her. Fresh, all-consuming pain. She couldn't tell where it came from because it came from everywhere.

The bear had slowed down to a steady walk. They were approaching the dark, yawning mouth of a cave, set within a craggy rock wall. Ramona was confused. She had been in these woods a million times, hunting with her father during hunting season. She’d seen every inch of these woods and had never seen this cave before.

So what was it doing here now? Or had she just crossed it at some point and forgotten about it?

The bear was heading straight for the cave. Raw terror brought her back to reality. The mouth of the cave stretched open, ready to devour. From upside down, if you squinted, the crags around the mouth looked like teeth. Already she could see her fate before her eyes: The bear taking her into the cave, devouring her while she was helpless to do anything. She was going to die in the dark, in the cold.

She was hanging at the waist. She felt lightheaded, felt as if all the blood had rushed to her head. She didn’t have the will to fight anymore. She prayed she went unconscious again.

The bear carried her into the cave. Through the cold and damp air. The light was receding, weakening. Its laborious breath bounced off the earthy walls. It wasn’t long before she was blind and shivering. Ramona knew she should be fighting, doing her damnedest to escape, instead of just playing like a toy in the mouth of a dog, but she was too tired, in too much pain. The world of light was a long way away. How would she ever find her way out of this place anyway?

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she saw a light at the end of the cavern they were in. Daylight. What? Where was the bear taking her now? Just how big was this cave?

The daylight was weak, like morning light on a cold winter day. Once her eyes adjusted and they were close enough to the entrance, she could see it was snowing.

Snowing? Already? It wasn’t snowing earlier.

They emerged from the cave, into pale daylight. Somehow winter had completely replaced autumn. The needles of the douglas firs were covered in white snow which fell steadily from the grey sky. Birds flew through the air, gracefully circling the bear’s head. Ramona tried to lift her head to get a better look at the birds but her neck cramped painfully. She thought they were vultures or crows but couldn’t be sure.

She shivered in the frigid air despite the warm clothes she wore. She closed her eyes, tried to will heat into her body. If the bear was going to kill her, she wanted the damned creature to just get it over with already.

There was another merciful moment when she went under. The blackness was so absolute she didn’t feel cold or pain; the moment, of course, was short-lived. When she woke up again, it all hit her again. Her legs were numb. Her entire body was numb. She was still in the bear’s mouth.

The sky had darkened to night. They were passing through the street of some city or town. Here the snow was thick, piled several feet high. Someone really needs to plow it, Ramona thought. This is crazy. The familiar shapes of cars were parked haphazardly in the middle of the street, covered in snow. The buildings around them were deserted. The windows of shops and businesses were frozen over underneath sheets of ice, or shattered completely.

What the hell happened to this place? It looks like it was hit by an apocalypse.

And then it dawned on her: This was her town, the island she had spent her whole life on. This was Adermoor Cove. Something horrible had happened to her town. She wasn’t just afraid for herself anymore. She was afraid for her mother, her father; she was afraid for Carlos, her best friend; for Sheriff Enzo, Carlos’s father. Most of all she was afraid for Moira.

That there was The Billard. Over there, just across the street, was the domed courthouse. Everywhere she looked were places she had known her whole life, now deformed. She began to sob, tears falling down her numbed cheeks. The bear stopped in the middle of Main Street. Wind whistled down the street blowing flurries of snow in their direction; it was a desolate sound that made the ghost town all that more hollow. Wherever she looked there was only stillness.

The bear gently set her down in the snow. She remained still, resting on cold powdered sugar. She could feel the cold seeping through the legs of her pants but didn’t dare move, afraid the bear would start to devour her. She kept her eyes focused on the bulky shape of a car. There was something sitting up against the building next to the car - no not something, someone. A man. He wore a familiar looking black jacket with the word POLICE written on the front. The skin of his face was blue. Icicles hung from his nostrils and mouth, which hung open in a silent scream. The eyes seemed, frozen over, seemed to be looking directly at her.

She recognized the face, couldn’t not recognize it.

Carlos. It’s Carlos. But how? Moira and I just had lunch with him the other day.

She wanted to believe this was a dream but she couldn’t fool herself into believing it was. Dreams never felt this real. In that moment Ramona knew she wanted to die.

Movement caught her eye. She lifted her head, looked up. A cramp seized in her neck but she ignored the pain.

Someone was coming towards her, from the other end of Main Street. It was impossible to tell who it was, whether it was a man or a woman. It moved stolidly, a being made of the darkest shadow. The snow fell around it. Crows - she knew these were crows this time - appeared in the air, flapping around the being. Two wolves appeared from the left and right of the four way intersection in the middle of the street. Like the bear there was the same black growth covering their sides, their eyes like obsidian. Black fluid dripped from their eyes, nostrils and muzzles. They flanked the shadow person while watching Ramona avidly, but remained a respectful distance away.

Snow crunched beneath the shadow person’s feet. It had no features. No face. No defining characteristics whatsoever. It was almost beautiful in a frightening sort of way.

The shadow person began to morph. Fair skin replaced the darkness. Blonde hair sprouted from a bald scalp. Eyebrows grew, a nose formed. Pretty lips. A soft, rounded chin. Beautiful blue eyes. Glasses. Breasts took shape, bouncing pertly with every step. Moira. It looked just like her, even though in the back of her mind Ramona knew it wasn’t her.

Moira-

No, it’s not Moira! Ramona’s mind screamed at her, but Ramona didn’t know what to believe. Should she trust her eyes or her instincts?

-stopped in front of Ramona, so close she could have reached out and touched her. Ramona wanted to touch her, to make sure she was really there, but she couldn’t make herself move.

“Moira?” she managed to say. Her voice was a raspy squeak. Her teeth chattered together. Her throat was so parched it hurt to speak. “I-Is it really y-you?”

In reply, Moira opened her mouth wider than what was humanly possible. The creak of her jaw was audible in the deafening silence. Ramona’s eyes bulged from her head in terror. A stream of the inky fluid spurted from Moira’s open mouth, onto Ramona. She was drowning in it, choking on it. She could feel it getting into her eyes, her nose, her mouth.

She tried to breathe, but she couldn’t. The sludge was sliding down her throat, seeping in through her ears and the corners of her eyes. She could feel it changing her. Turning her into something else, something not human - a minion of this evil creature, like the wolves and the bear and the birds.

Dissolving her.

…

Ramona stopped. It seemed she’d been talking forever.

Moira was too stunned to think, too shocked to know what to believe. After everything she’d seen and been through over the past month she knew she shouldn’t be skeptical, but what Ramona had experienced was too terrible to imagine.

“The place I was in,” Ramona said, “it was Adermoor Cove. Something had happened there. Something terrible. I saw Carlos’s body, I know I did. He died and he’d looked so frightened. The look was frozen on his face. But now I’m here and everything is normal again. I would say it was all a dream, but I know better. I remember everything. I remember what it felt like to have that monster inside of me, using me. But I wasn’t completely under his control. I had my own thoughts, my own memories.” She looked at Moira. “I wanted you. I wanted to infect you. I wanted to share with you what I was experiencing more than anything.”

Moira shivered.

“There were times when it was better than sex. Better than the best orgasm you’ve ever felt - anyone has ever felt. But I know he was making me feel that way. An illusion. Because when I was me, like when I showed up at your apartment to warn you, I was in the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. It was like being sucked into the blackest void. There are no words that can describe it.”

Moira took her hand and squeezed it gently. “But you’re back now.”

Ramona nodded. “I am. I’m me again and he has no power over me.” Her eyes widened, full of fright again. “But I can still feel him. I don’t know how but it’s like...some sort of telepathic connection. He’s getting stronger, Moira. With every second I can feel him getting stronger.”