ASTRAY by LB Sobolik

[LBS]

Astray is a psychological suspense novel featuring the story of a young woman who returns to Alaska to confront the family she believes to have abandoned her and to reopen the case of her mother's supposed death by overdose.

 

Aurora blinked hard, squeezing her eyes tightly before squinting into the darkness of the poorly lit trailer she called home. The living room was a foreign blur, and while the ashtrays and open bottles of her mother’s party littered every surface around her, the only image she could pull into focus was the huddled mass on the stained and faded carpet.

Mama. Daddy.

Their heads so close and their limbs so intertwined that for a moment Aurora couldn’t tell where Mama ended and Daddy began. It was only by focusing on each limb, each feature that she was slowly able to make any sense of the jumble of bodies on the floor.

Daddy’s thick arm was under Mama’s back, pulling her up from the carpet and one of his knees was between her long thin bare ones. But her legs were splayed and somehow not right- like the hair on Aurora’s dolls, these Mama legs were limp and dangling. One of Mama’s snow-white arms was thrown over her head, and Rion was running his hand over her wrist- his fingers pushing and prodding there for some reason Aurora couldn’t understand. She didn’t watch and wonder at Rion for long, as Daddy’s other hand reached up and pushed back the pieces of Mama’s long blonde hair that had spilled over her face and neck.

She blinked again, confusion muddling her brain.

A black, sticky looking substance was oozing out from the seam where Mama’s white-blonde hair met her even whiter skin. Aurora watched a black line, slither down over Mama’s open eye and down onto her cheek like a worm. Mama didn’t even blink.

The glow of the orange light above flickered, and Aurora took a step back- bumping into Aly.

Aurora felt Aly’s hands come up and hold her by the shoulders, her older sister steadying the small girls frame as they both began to shake.

Daddy tried to wipe the black away, his thumb leaving a deep dark smear across Mama’s pale cheek as his voice boomed distantly in the background of Aurora’s awareness.

Aly’s hands squeezed gently, then pulled Aurora back against Aly’s legs. Aurora leaned back heavily and felt her swimming head begin to settle.
As more of the room came into focus, Aurora could see that there was a mess of the same black on the already-stained carpet.

The overhead light flickered again. The smell of chemicals burning flooded Aurora’s nostrils and she shook her head at the assault of the acrid poison. She could smell again.

The foul, thick odor sent Aurora’s stomach flipping and once more she tried to force her dizzying vision to settle. Daddy looked up at the exposed bulb above them, then looked to Aly. Aurora heard and felt Aly take a deep breath behind her- as if her older sister had just been shaken out of a nightmare, or had suddenly resurfaced after being underwater too long.

Aurora brought her eyes back to Mama.

What was the black stuff? And why was Mama just lying there? Why was she letting Daddy touch her and hold her when they’d been screaming and fighting just a second ago?

Had it been a second ago? Aurora touched the place on the back of her head where the pain was throbbing from, she felt a strange squish- than a stone like knot on the back of her skull. 

Was that what was making her hurt?

Mama opened her mouth suddenly, then closed it again- and everyone's faces snapped to watch what she would do next.
Aurora swallowed hard and dropped her hand away from her head. She hated it when Mama and Daddy fought, when anyone fought really, but right now she wished with all her heart that Mama would stand up and get back to screaming at Daddy. Even hitting him would be better- anything would be better than this.

With a jolt Aurora felt herself pulled up from the floor by her sister; Aly worked quickly, flipping Aurora towards her and pushing the little girls face into her chest.

Aurora didn’t like it. She couldn’t see at all now. She needed to see.

But the loss of her vision did something strange- the sounds of the room suddenly grew and grew until they were exploding all around her, as if they’d been coming down the slide at the playground, had lost control, and now slammed into her full force just like she would do with Mama on one of the good days.

Daddy was talking to Mama, begging her to do something; Ryan was crying, the loud party music Mama liked was still screeching in the corner from the staticky boombox that everyone hated. Aly was talking too, her voice slightly raised and quaking, something about the hospital.

It was all too much- the silence of the last several moments made the deep tones of Daddy’s voice boom like a firework against the trailer’s thin walls as Aurora heard him start to scream.

“LILY! LILY-COME ON! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!!!”

Her father's screams sent Aurora into a strange sort of panic, and the little girl began twisting and squirming as she tried to free herself from her older sister’s arms. 

Aly’s hand grabbed Aurora’s head by the hair, and with an almost painful amount of force pushed the younger sisters face back towards he chest. Aurora heard as Aly raised her voice, screaming at their father as she struggled to keep Aurora’s squirming body from escaping her grasp.

“DAD! Stop! Stop shaking her! You need to get her to the hospital!”

For a moment, Aurora heard nothing over the sounds of her own struggles, then Aly spoke again.

“It’s ok, I’ve got Aurora…but you have to go! Now! She’s still bleeding!”

There was a sick, sticky coughing sound. A retching, then a groan.

Aurora knew those sounds, the sounds of the person she loved more than anything else in the world when she needed Aurora the most.

Mama.

Aurora fought harder, wrenching one small fist free to beat against her sister’s arm, shoulder, face, anything she could reach- but Aly didn’t let go. Instead she held on tighter, her voice rising again.

“DAD! WAKE UP! YOU HAVE TO GET MOM TO THE HOSPITAL NOW!”

Aurora froze mid-strike. She’d never heard Aly so loud before.

Aly’s arms loosened as she felt Aurora go slack, and the teen whirled in place to face their older brother- who sat motionless on the filthy carpet against the trailer’s wall only a few feet from his parents.

“RION! Snap out of it! You’ve got to help Dad!”     

The quick movement had given Aurora more freedom, and the little girl recognized her chance.

Using all the strength in her frail body, Aurora wrenched her other arm free, reaching out to push against her sister’s chest with everything in her.

It was easier than Aurora had  prepared for, and somewhere Aurora recognized that not only was she stronger than she thought possible, but that her older sister could be weak.

Still, Aly reacted quickly and twisted again, trying to shield Aurora away from the scene. But Aurora thrashed and angled her head until she could just see out of the corner of her eye…

Aurora heard her sister pleading as she fought to restrain her.

“No, Aurora! Stop! Just…please stop!"
But it was too late.

The light remained steady for once, but still all Aurora caught was a moment- a snapshot in time.

But it was an image Aurora would carry her entire life.

Daddy was walking towards with Mama in his arms- a limp bundle of white limbs and black blood matting her hair and staining her face and neck.

Rion held Mama’s head up in his hands, his mouth and jaw set as he stared ahead as Daddy kicked open the opened the door and the full sunlight of the midnight sun flooded across Aurora’s family and their filthy, dingy home. The full light did something odd to her family and the scene that was unfolding before Aurora's eyes, somehow both slowing everyone’s movements while simultaneously propelling everyone forward in erratic jumps of time.

Aurora tried to breathe, but the air stopped dead in her throat and she suddenly wished she had let Aly hide her away after all.

The black…the black all over Mama’s face and chest and hair and neck and seeping down arms-

The black that splotched Daddy’s face and neck, that was smeared over Rion’s hands and shirt-

It wasn’t black at all.

It was deep red, and in that moment Aurora realized what everyone else had known all along.

The black was blood, Mama’s blood. Blood from Mama’s head and maybe her brain.

Aurora turned away and pushed her face into Aly’s chest so hard she could feel the bones of her sister’s ribcage through the teenager’s impossibly thin nightshirt.

Aurora tried to take a deep breath, but couldn’t- it felt like something was choking her.

Another heaving attempt and Aurora’s stomach lurched, and she realized nothing was choking her, that something was surging up from inside her, and that her body was fighting to keep it all down.

But she could only fight so much. Aurora was, after all, only six.

The scream began low, somewhere deep and primal- making her insides roil and her stomach churn. She shut her eyes tight and bit down on her lip, holding the cry in and hoping that the painful sting of the stitches on her lip would somehow make the scream disappear.

She needed to make pain- that was the best way to stop the crying, make so much pain there wasn’t room for tears was the best thing to do sometimes.

Most of the time that worked, but this…Aurora immediately felt that this was too strong. Physical pain could not stop this pain she was feeling inside.

This pain that wanted to scream itself out.

The force of Aurora’s buried scream began to shake her body- she begin to twist and quake so violently she felt as if her bones would break against themselves.

Aly felt the spasms and struggled to contain her little sister-not knowing what to do but holding on tight.

“It’s going to be ok Aurora, it’s going to be alright. Daddy…He’s…”

But Aly couldn’t say anymore, and it didn’t matter, because Aurora couldn’t hear her anyways.

It was taking everything Aurora had to hold back the scream, the scream that she was sure would destroy her if it escaped.

Another moment passed, Aly murmuring consolation into Aurora’s tangled hair as Daddy, Mama and Rion disappeared out of their dark trailer and out into the sunlight- as the sputtering sounds of the family’s truck started up in the woods just outside.

The door slammed shut behind them and in that instant Aurora felt something else rising within her.

The lights flickered once more and there was another lurch of her stomach, a wrenching…and then Aurora knew.

She was going to be sick.

Her tiny body heaved in Aly's arms, and Aly understood immediately.

With a sharp twist, Aly turned from the trailer’s family room and ran straight down the short hallway - throwing open the door to their single tiny, dank bathroom and slamming up the toilet seat lid with a clatter that cracked the cheap plastic.

Never letter go of her sister, Aly spun Aurora towards the toilet puling the girls white-blonde hair back from her face.

Just in time for Aurora to retch the pathetic contents of her stomach into the waters of the yellowing bowl.