The House Next Door, page 14
One afternoon, as I made my way from the kitchen to the lounge room, I caught sight of Anna through the window. She’d pulled her curtains back and stood behind the glass, staring blankly at me. I raised a hand. She didn’t respond. I continued to my favourite chair, turned on the TV to absorb its static, and relaxed.
Two hours later, I was due to water the plants. I rose and saw Anna still standing in the window. She had bags under her eyes, and her hair was limp and had lost its sheen. Again, I raised my hand in greeting. She didn’t respond. She wasn’t even blinking.
Something shook loose inside of me. This is wrong. What we’re doing—whatever’s happening—it’s wrong.
My feet were unsteady as I passed the full washing machine and stumbled into my backyard. I blinked in the sun. Though the day was cool but fair, it didn’t stop the overwhelming unease blooming through me. I looked to my right. The grave was visible over the fence; it had nearly completely sunk down to ground level, thanks to the rain. Soon it would be covered by the tree leaves, then even I wouldn’t remember its significance.
“No.” I spoke the word out loud, feeling as though it would have more power that way instead of rattling around in my mind. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. No. Stop it.”
I turned and strode back into my house. My fingers dug into my hair, scratching at my scalp as I paced. The black threads were spreading farther up my arm; they’d passed my elbow that morning.
“Wrong, wrong, wrong.” I grabbed the phone off my living room table. There was no one in my life I could call except for Lukas, so I dialled his number. The phone rang a single time. I hung up. Some part of my mind was telling me I couldn’t call him—that I would be putting both Anna and myself in danger if I did. I tapped the phone against my chin as I paced, trying to clear my head enough to see what needed to be done.
I came to a halt facing the window that overlooked Anna’s house. Across the fence and behind a second sheet of glass stood my friend, unmoving, unresponsive. She’d been there for hours.
Understanding dawned over me. That’s what the problem is. The house was never this active before. It never started affecting other people in the street before. It never affected me like this before. It’s because of Anna. No… not Anna… but the thing inside of her. The baby. That’s what’s caused all of this wrongness.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. The spirit medium, Henry, had talked about Helen having a secret she needed to protect from her husband. She must have been pregnant when she leapt from her window. She’d decided it was kinder to lose her own life, and the life of her child, rather than watch them both suffer at the hands of her husband.
And that was why she’d latched on to Anna: the young woman was nearly a mirror of Helen’s situation. A secret child. A violent partner. A desperate need to hide—to escape—to be safe.
Helen had gone insane in her desperation to protect Marwick’s new occupant. And it was tearing everyone and everything apart.
I pressed my hand to the window, willing Anna to respond to me. Her blank stare landed somewhere past my shoulder. I swallowed, and the frustration, fear, and anger that had welled inside me coalesced into an understanding of what I needed to do.
The doll on the kitchen window stared at me with its dead eyes. I couldn’t stand being watched by it any longer; I turned it around to face the glass. Then I pulled out my favourite bowl, my beloved and dented mixing spoon, and turned on the oven.
I hadn’t been shopping recently, which meant I was low on some of my staple ingredients. I ended up pulling together enough for a sponge cake with jam and mock cream. I sifted the dry ingredients, enjoying the weight of the neglected sieve and appreciating how fine the flour looked as it cascaded into the bowl. I added the sugar then finally opened the highest cabinet in the back of my kitchen to retrieve the porcelain jar.
It had been my mother’s. She’d kept it in the cupboard beside her bed. I’d seen it there several times while cleaning, but it was so unremarkable that I hadn’t given it much thought. It wasn’t until after her death and the coroner’s report came out that I’d realised what it was: iodine.
On top of the diabetes, my mother had been poisoning herself in tiny increments. I still don’t fully understand why. Was it a way of increasing the severity of her symptoms? Giving herself more excuses for calling the doctor? Or had she done it to punish me, in the same way she would wet the bed if I was late bringing her dinner?
In the days following her death, I’d replayed a thousand scenarios through my mind, each designed to hurt me more than the last. I pictured my mother taking a pinch of the iodine any time I forgot to bring her drinks on time or whenever I refused to give her sweets or when I forced her to take her medicine. She hadn’t said a word about the jar, but each time I displeased her, it would have pushed her a little closer to death. And that was the beauty of the punishment: I only felt its sting when it was too late to apologise and too late to right the wrongs.
The day my mother finally died had been especially challenging for me. I’d had a migraine—one of the bad ones that made me nauseous and blurred my vision—and my mother had been demanding. She never liked it when I was sick—it took the spotlight off her. So she’d made me run a dozen minor errands for her: rearranging the blankets around the stumps of what used to be her legs, fetching a fresh glass of water because she didn’t like the taste of what she had, and retrieving an extra pillow, which was thrown on the floor an hour later.
I’d reached my limit by mid-afternoon. The migraine was blindingly painful, and I couldn’t stand the sound of her voice for another minute. So I went outside to the shady garden seat where I could lie down and drape a cloth over my eyes to block out the light. It helped. I fell asleep and didn’t wake for hours. By the time I roused, it was night, and my mother was dead.
The memories swam through me, alternately stinging and punching at my insides, as I popped the lid off the jar and stared at the white powder inside for a long, sad moment.
I don’t believe my mother had intended to die that night. She wasn’t depressed and had shown no inclination for death before then. She probably hadn’t realised the dose was enough to kill her. But she took it then wrote one of the cruellest notes she could manage.
The words surged through me, threatening to drown me: I blame you for the way I’ve ended up. In a fairer world, I would have had a child that loved me the way they should.
That note was memorised. I’d read it countless times in the days following my mother’s death.
When the coroner’s report came out, highlighting iodine poisoning, it naturally sparked a police investigation. I was ultimately cleared of blame, but by that time, I’d fully internalised the idea that my mother was dead because of me.
I’d managed to hide her porcelain jar. Once the funeral was over and the police investigation finalised, I took it out of hiding, opened it up, and baked two tablespoons of the white powder into my favourite spice cake. When it came out of the oven, I cut myself a slice, poured fresh cream into the bowl, and sat down to eat it.
For three hours, I stared at the cake. I was weak, frightened of what awaited me after death. What tortures did hell hold for children who killed their parents? Eventually, I threw out the slice.
You still have the rest of the cake, I told myself. It will keep for a few days. You can eat it any time.
Days went by. I don’t remember much of that time, except that Lukas came to stay. He was the only member of my family who seemed to care more about me than what was in my mother’s will. He’d offered to help clear out the house. I don’t know if he realised how close to the edge I was, but his voice had held that careful, gentle concern that frustrated me so much.
But he’d done me some good—not just to shake me out of my fog, but by finding the documents hidden at the back of the filing cabinet. Apparently, my father’s will had left half of everything he owned to my mother, and half to me. My mother had concealed my portion—from jealousy, possibly, or out of a fear that I would leave if I had financial independence. She’d always told me she’d received everything he had. But the papers showed I’d inherited a not-insubstantial sum. It was enough to live on for five or six years. And it let me buy my own house. Somewhere far away from the town I’d grown up in. Somewhere, coincidentally, beside a haunted building.
I’d brought the iodine with me, not with the intention of using it, but to have it there just in case. As weeks turned to months, I thought of it less and less often. Some days, I almost fully forgot it was there.
I dipped a measuring spoon into the powder, scooped up a heap of the white granules, and scattered them over the flour.
It was tasteless and odourless. Anyone who consumed it wouldn’t know until the convulsions started. I mixed four tablespoons of the iodine into the dry ingredients before adding the milk and eggs. Four tablespoons would be plenty for someone eating a small slice. The mixture combined beautifully. I resisted the temptation to dip my finger in then poured the batter into a pan.
Washing up while waiting for the cake to cook gave me time to clear the anger out of my head. I joined my doll in looking through the window towards Marwick House. I felt better now that I had a purpose. It was the only way to fix Anna, even if it meant I would never see her again. The house would go back to being quiet. Dormant. Perhaps it would stay empty for another eight months before a new family moved in.
24
The cake smelt good. I decorated it with icing sugar before wrapping it in a cloth and leaving the house. Anna still stood at the window when I passed it, but she answered the door on the third knock.
Her face was grey and gaunt, and her eyelids red. She looked sick. Pity twisted inside of me, and I held out the cake. “I brought you a treat.”
“Thank you.” The voice didn’t sound like hers. It was too flat. Too deep. She turned and walked towards the kitchen. I followed, feeling as though I’d joined a two-person procession. We went through our usual tasks with smooth efficiency: boiling the kettle, pouring water into the cups, slicing the cake, setting out plates. Anna served me a piece, though I had no intention of eating it.
I felt the need to make some kind of conversation. “Things have been quiet.”
“Yes.” Her blue eyes seemed darker than normal. “Very.”
We sat at the table, one on each side, and Anna picked up her fork. I watched her cut a corner off the cake’s slice.
“How are the dolls?”
“They haven’t sold.” She lifted the cake to her lips. Slipped it inside. Chewed. Swallowed. “So I won’t make any more.”
“That’s a shame.”
She didn’t ask why I wasn’t eating my cake. I watched her cut off another forkful. Something shifted inside my mind. This is wrong.
My eyes were blurred, I realised. How long had they been like that? Why hadn’t I noticed before? I shook my head, and dullness sloughed away from me. When I blinked my eyes open, a thousand shades saturated the room. I was shocked to realise I hadn’t been perceiving colour over the last few days.
I looked at Anna. She looked back, her face dull, her eyes glassy. The implications of what was happening rushed over me, and I startled upright, knocking my chair over.
Anna placed the second cube into her mouth. “What is it, Jo?”
“No. No, no, no, no—” A curtain had been lifted from my eyes. I stared about myself, horrified, unbelieving of what I’d done. Anna returned her fork to her cake like a machine, neatly cutting off a third cube. I lunged forward and smacked it out of her hand.
She stared at me, but her eyes didn’t hold shock, only very mild surprise. There was no life behind the heavy lids. Terror ripped through me. I’d poisoned my friend. She’d eaten two bites—was that enough to kill her? The baby? I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “You’ve got to throw up. Please, Anna, I’m sorry—”
Those emotionless eyes stared back at me. The voice, which sounded less and less like my friend with every word, released a soft, emotionless laugh. “You’re so strange, Jo. It’s a nice cake. I would like some more.”
“No, Anna, listen to me—it’s been poisoned. Think about your baby. You don’t want to hurt your baby, do you?”
Her lips twitched into a smile. The voice was now unrecognisable. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”
I slapped her as hard as I could. Her head snapped to the side, and her eyes widened. She raised a hand to her cheek, where a splotch of pink appeared on the pale skin, and the awful glassy sheen vanished from her eyes. It was replaced with fury. “Don’t touch me!”
“Listen, Anna—”
She threw herself at me. We grappled, and I fell to the ground. The impact winded me. She pushed me down and pressed one knee onto my chest to keep me there. Her whole face was turning bright red from anger as her scrabbling hands found my neck.
I tried to speak, but her grip tightened and squeezed my throat shut. I thrashed, trying to throw her off, but my energy was already low, and she had the height advantage. Her thumbs dug into my trachea.
Then she blinked, and the anger was replaced by shock. She scrambled away from me. Her hands were still held out ahead of herself, but they shook. “Oh-oh no. Jo, I—”
I fought to regain my breath and propped myself up against a wall. “You didn’t mean to. I know.”
“Jo.” Tears welled in her eyes and spilt over her cheeks. “What’s happening, Jo?”
“It’s Helen. I think she wants one… or both of us… dead.” I rubbed my sleeve over my forehead to remove the sweat. “You need to throw up. I poisoned the cake. Be quick, before any’s absorbed.”
Horror drew over her face, then she scrambled to her feet and dashed to the sink. I listened to the sound of running water and retching, and the terror squeezing my chest relaxed.
I looked down at my hands. They were both flesh-coloured. The awful discolouration that had been growing up my arm had vanished. I hoped it had only been an illusion.
Oxygen was returning to my limbs. I dragged myself to my feet and moved around the kitchen table. Anna leaned over the running sink. She looked ghastly. One hand held her hair out of the way, and tears rolled down her cheeks and dripped off her nose freely.
“Is it all out?”
She nodded.
“I’m so, so, so sorry.” I pressed a hand to Anna’s shoulder. She reached up her free hand and squeezed mine.
“You said Helen was doing this. But why? I trusted her—I thought she was looking out for me—”
“I think she was, in her own strange way.” I reached up to get a glass from the cupboard and filled it with running water. I handed it to Anna, and she downed it. “She was pregnant. I’m almost certain. That was the secret Henry mentioned, the child she didn’t want her husband to discover. She threw herself out of the window because she believed it would be safer for them to be dead.”
“And she thought the same for me.” Anna’s eyes narrowed. I watched them closely in case the glassiness returned, but they appeared clear. She wiped her hand across her mouth. “She wanted me dead. Like her.”
“So you’d never be apart. So she could look after you forever.” I turned off the tap then leaned my back against the bench. “It’s irrational. Especially when she already took care of Raul.”
Anna groaned and bent low over the sink again. “I forgot that happened. It feels like a dream. Did we really bury—”
“She was influencing us. A lot. Just like she influenced everyone else in our street. I haven’t seen any of our neighbours in days.” I ran my hands through my hair, which was tangled and overdue for a wash. “We need to leave. We’re not safe as long as we’re in this house… or even this street.”
“Yes.” She pushed away from the sink. Her hair hung in her face, sticking to the sweat, and she tried to brush it aside as she glanced around the room. “I’ll just get my dolls—”
“No. There’s no time.” Now that I’d realised what we needed to do, a desperate urgency propelled me. I grabbed Anna’s arm and pulled her through the kitchen. “She’ll try to pull us back under her trance. We need to get as far away from her as we can, as quickly as we can. We’ll—we’ll stay with my aunt and Lukas. They’ll let us move in for a couple of days while we figure out what to do.”
Anna’s lips quivered. She swallowed and glanced towards the stairs as we passed them. “Can’t I pack a few things? Everything I own is here. My whole world.”
That sounds reasonable. It will only take a minute to fill a travel case. She can gather her clothes while I pack the dolls…
I blinked. The thoughts tried to cling to my mind like cobwebs, but I brushed them away. I understood what was happening. “No. It’s Helen making you think you want to pack. She’s trying to stall you, because every second you spend in her house, she tightens her grip a fraction.” I bent closer, staring into Anna’s eyes, willing her to absorb some of my conviction. “We’ll go right now. In a few days, we can come back and collect your things.”
She fixed her lips together and nodded. I’d gotten through to her. I wondered if she realised the promise to come back was a lie. I knew in my soul we would never see Marwick House again. We would be like the last family—the ones I’d watched run to their car, crying, wearing only their pyjamas. They had never returned. And like them, Anna’s property would be absorbed into the building to be used and admired by the next soul who underestimated the house and Helen’s control over it. I wondered what they would think about the blue room with its shelves of smile-less, dead-eyed dolls.
We ran to the front door, and I grabbed the handle with both hands. I was ready to get outside, to taste clean air again, and clear my head of the layers of fog Helen had wrapped it in. I was ready to see my family. I was ready to be free.
