It Will Just Be Us, page 20
“Good night.”
15
Shall I slip a bit of arsenic into her orange juice? Oh, not enough to kill her, although it would likely be enough to make her a bit ill.
Shall I arrange a precarious tumble of books from a high shelf in the library to fall, somehow, onto her waiting protuberant belly?
Now, of course, I don’t have just Elizabeth to worry about, but Don, too, and how he will react if something should happen to his child. In another few days, the weather will turn, and it will seem as if Don has always lived here. Already he has made himself quite at home, busybodying around the house, asking about the door on the third floor that he found stuck when he tried to wrench it open.
“Oh, that room is locked,” my mother told him nonchalantly.
“How come?”
“I don’t suppose I know,” she replied. “It always has been, and we don’t have the key.”
“I bet I could bust it down for you.”
“I bet you will not,” she warned him.
When he pressed for a reason, I asked why we should need to get into that spare room. Certainly Don does not need to insert his presence into every corner of the house. Let some secrets lie. “Is this place not large enough for you as it is?”
His face was wry and daring. “Actually, it is sensible to close off any rooms you don’t use, especially in big old houses like this one. It’ll conserve heat in the winter, and I hear we’re due for an unusually cold one this year. Even with four of us here, I bet you could shut up half of this house and still have more than enough space to get lost in.” He looked around, then, warily, as if he did not trust this rambling old mansion with its creaking floorboards and ancient, groaning pipes. He was right, of course; he shouldn’t trust it.
But he looked at it as if it were a beast to conquer and make his own. I didn’t like it.
Luckily, he was to find reason to leave the house soon enough when Elizabeth asked how he would work, if he was staying here—the commute would take hours if he went into the office. Don had been working from home several days a week when I was living with them; it seems one needs only the right sort of equipment for his work, creating medical databases or something of that nature—I’ve never really asked. It’s all ones and zeros to me.
“I can set up my rig in any of these rooms,” he replied.
“But there’s no internet.”
After my mother shot down the possibility of him calling the cable company to install wireless, he looked aghast. “Well,” he said at last, “I’m sure I can get something done if I bring my laptop somewhere with a connection. There’s got to be someplace in town I could work.”
Mother claimed she didn’t want to pay for internet service, but I know it was rather that she feared the intrusion of all that electrical energy from the outside world crackling invisibly through the air, bringing its charged, negative vibes into her domain. She would be able to feel it, she confided in me once, crawling along her skin like insects.
I wonder what would happen if this house were connected to the internet. Could we digitally download its memories? Could it travel through the cloud and bring in a host of memories from elsewhere, all the history of the world uploaded from the internet into this one unnatural space, a mansion out of time? Would it break the fabric of space-time? Perhaps it is best if we keep things as they are, as they have always been.
On his way out the door to go find a place to get some work done, Don leans into Elizabeth, pressing his rough stubbled face against hers. She dutifully kisses him back, but her body is leaning away from him even as he leans into her.
When she notices me looking, she puts on a smile and holds it until the door is closed behind him.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” I say. “Having Donovan back, one happy family?”
“Oh.” She pauses as if thinking it over. “Yes, of course. It’s exactly what I wanted.”
But I see her smile fade as she walks away.
* * *
I am in a dream.
In the dream, I wander the house like a stranger in a place as unfamiliar as a distant eldritch castle in Europe, growing and stretching and spreading cancerously across a naked landscape, sprouting warrens of crooked corridors and secret rooms that bloom here and there like fireworks out of an abyss. I go about wide-eyed in this oppressively vast arrangement of rooms and hallways, while a heavy dread sits low in my chest.
Everything seems backward, as if I have stepped through the reflection in a mirror. Perhaps I have. Oh God, I think, I forgot—I had intended to smash the mirrors, hadn’t I?
A hallway extends from me, dark and muted, and I cannot for the life of me think of where it goes. From down its unknown length comes a faint bubbling sound, like the frantic percolations of a coffeepot, but higher in pitch.
What is down this hallway?
Part of me wants to turn around and go back the way I’ve come, but I cannot remember any longer what lies behind me either, and so I am trapped between a mystery that was and a mystery that has yet to be, terrorized by the unknown on either side. The longer I stand there, torn between dark worlds, the more familiar the boiling sound becomes, until I recognize it as the phantom giggling of a child.
I strain to see in the dark, wishing I had brought with me a candle or a flashlight on this nighttime dream-jaunt.
Deep in the darkness at the far end of the hallway, if indeed the hallway has an end at all, a silhouette appears by the minutest of degrees, as if from nothing, blooming out of the Never into our own dimension to take a peek.
I am reminded of the phantom I used to see as a child, the Nothing Man. The shadowed shape with nothing inside but a seething, sucking darkness, as if it were sucking in the light around it. As if there were nothing there at all, which is what Elizabeth used to tell me when I complained of seeing him standing at the top of the stairs, blocking my way.
“Sammy’s making up stories again,” she would tell Mother, who would in turn tell me there was no Nothing Man, just as there was no woman with Xs for eyes—that the house showed only memories, not fantasies, and certainly not nightmares. Surely what I claimed to see was only that: a nightmare made manifest.
Now I’m not so sure. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t know that I do now. But then again, I am in a dream, after all. This isn’t the Nothing Man, though; this shape is smaller. A Nothing Boy. A boy without a face.
I feel along the wall for the light switch, knowing that it must be somewhere nearby, frantic for its light as the realization swarms over me like a scourge of mosquitoes—the Nothing Boy, the Nothing Man.
The future is all around us.
The laughter burbles out of the shadow again like boiling water, like hot muddy swamp water gushing out from between his teeth and through the tender black holes where baby teeth have fallen out, submerged creepers dangling from his open laughing mouth—
My spidering fingers snag the switch, and yellow light floods the hallway.
There is no one there.
But on the floor, leading off down the hall and around the corner that gave birth to the disembodied laughter, is a trail of wet, muddy child’s footprints. I step carefully around the wet patches soaking into the diseased wooden floorboards, toward the end of the hallway where it makes a sharp turn, sensing that someone is standing just around that corner. Somewhere around the edge comes the low creak of a floorboard, the sound of shifting weight. My heart lurches into my throat.
Carefully I ease myself to the edge and hesitate there, feeling the presence just on the other side of the wall, the breathing, and it is only when I turn the corner and see the man standing there that I realize I am not dreaming at all.
I am awake. I have been awake this whole time.
“Don?”
“Sam?” His eyes are frantic as he grabs me by the shoulders. “Where are we?”
“What do you mean?”
Sweat rings the arms of his gray shirt. “This house is a fucking maze,” he mutters, almost to himself. He lets go of me and steps away, hands fishing in his pockets. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
“What are you doing?”
He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, slides one free, and sticks it in the corner of his mouth, unlit. “I can’t find the door. Just these hallways—two, three miles long. Shapes and shadows moving around, like there are other people here. Did you lock the front door?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. “I went through so many rooms. There can’t be this many. A hundred. Maybe more.” He flicks a lighter a few times against the trembling cigarette.
“Can you not smoke in here?”
The cigarette catches the flame. “You’re playing some kind of trick,” he snaps. “You’re playing me, aren’t you? Trying to fool me with that bullshit story about Mad Catherine. What’s really going on here?” He starts laughing, that terrible laugh of his, which manifests in a cloud of smoke. “You don’t have a candle, do you?”
“No,” I tell him, knowing he isn’t asking if I am Mad Catherine changing the house around me by the light of a candle flame. “Can you put that out?”
“Funny how we keep meeting like this,” he continues, ignoring me still. “What’s your problem? Always sneaking around, following me.”
“You’re the one sneaking around.”
“You know how fucked up my eye was after you blindsided me? Took weeks to get back to normal.” He pulls his cigarette from his mouth and points it at me, his own talisman of power. “Think you can just get away with that? And whatever shit you’re trying to pull on me now?”
I glare into his dark eyes, refusing to blink.
Finally, I say, “For the last time, will you put that out?”
His gaze turns to the cigarette in his hand, contemplating it as ash flakes off and disperses. Before I can stop him, he takes my hand, turns it over, and presses the burning tip of the cigarette into my palm. I sharply inhale.
A moment of searing pain—his grip is too strong for me to pull away—and then it’s over, just a black circle on raw skin that I curl my fist around protectively.
I open my mouth to shout, to berate him, begging my voice not to warble, my eyes not to tear, but he beats me to the punch.
“Just be glad it wasn’t your eye.”
He turns, and he’s gone.
* * *
It isn’t so bad. Now that I’ve rinsed off the ash, all that’s left is an angry red mark buried in the grooves of my palm, echoing vaguely the ache of the burn. The skin there is smooth and taut. It will probably scar.
We’re even now, I suppose.
Even so, I want to get back at him. I glare into the mirror, wanting to smash it to pieces, then to take one of those pieces, one with a nice sharp edge, and slash his throat—
I shut off the water, stray drops plinking down from the rusting faucet. Afraid I will see August Wakefield with a gun behind me, I avoid looking at the mirror as I dry my hands, taking care not to drag the rough fibers over the tender spot on my palm. Terrible men, all around me.
Something ought to be done about them.
* * *
I leave for work early the next morning so I won’t see him on my way out, and I manage to avoid him after I return, too, taking my dinner into the parlor under the pretense of needing to grade while I eat. My eyes stare blankly through my students’ quizzes; in the silence, the only sound is my fork clinking against the plate and the old clock ticking quietly on the mantel. It seems to slow and quicken, as if it can’t quite keep the right pace.
After I’ve finished and lingered longer than necessary, I go to rinse my plate in the kitchen, which is dark and empty by now. I freeze for a moment, listening to see if I can tell where everyone has gone. Voices further down the hall. Footsteps, light, right behind me—
I turn to find my mother.
“Have you finished your work?” she asks, sipping a glass of wine that I’d swear has been glued to her hand.
“Not quite.” I glance behind me, toward the hall, trying to gauge where the voices are coming from. “Where is everyone?”
Refilling her glass, she tosses casually over her shoulder, “Don is fixing the window in the laundry room. Isn’t that nice of him?”
I cross my arms, curling my hands into fists and gently fingering the sore spot on my palm. “I thought you didn’t like Don.”
“He’s making himself useful.” She turns from the counter and looks at me, glass in hand. “Fixing what you broke. And he’s doing it out of his own pocket.”
“Well, if that isn’t some fucking chivalry.”
“Samantha,” she snaps at my language. I pull a face. “Anyway, it’s nice to see the two of them talking again. This seems like the right thing for them. I think they can make this work.”
“Seriously?” I can’t keep the incredulity from spilling out in my voice. “So you’re playing matchmaker? Is that why you called him up, so that he could come in and take care of things—so that Elizabeth wouldn’t be your problem anymore?”
Her lips form a tight line. “I just want what’s best for her—and Julian. The boy needs a father in his life.”
Don is a terrible man, I want to tell her, but her eyes are two dark flints, sharp as arrowheads, and suddenly I am nine, frightened in my own house, and my mother is barking at me to leave her alone, the reek of alcohol on her breath.
“You really think having a father around will make a difference?” I ask tightly.
The lines in her face deepen, shadowed by the overhead light, which throws darkness under her eyes. “Would it have made a difference for you?”
My gut clenches, as it does each time I remember that my mother is capable of cruelty, too. I slink against the wall to let her pass, then wander down the hall myself toward the laundry room.
Inside, Don is toiling away, measuring and fixing the glass into place with the biting cold whipping in at him, while Elizabeth sits folding a pile of towels. A scene of such ordinary domesticity, you would hardly know it’s happening in a haunted house.
“Come on,” Don grumbles as he tries to fit the glass pane into its new home, a task that doesn’t look all that difficult. I’m sure I could have accomplished this in half the time he’s taken, but there is something painstaking, meticulous about the way he works, like a surgeon at his craft. Because the window is not yet sealed tight, frozen air slithers into the room, shivering my bones as I hover in the doorway. I peer around the edge of it, keeping myself out of sight.
“Are you sure it doesn’t fit?” asks Elizabeth.
He sets down the glass and picks up a tape measure, pulling out the yellow tongue and holding it along the window frame. He makes a noise in the back of his throat as if it’s irritated with phlegm, then casts the tape measure aside, where it slurps up the yellow tongue into its round body with a sound like a zipper.
Moving with slow heaviness, Elizabeth gets up, squats, and picks up the tape measure. Once she has made it back to standing, Don snatches the tape measure and remeasures the frame, something I get the sense he has already done several times now.
“I don’t think measuring it again will give you a different answer.”
“You sure about that?” he says, thumbing the measurement and shaking his head, holding it up for Elizabeth to see. “This is impossible. See? It keeps changing. It won’t just stay one length.”
She reaches out again for the tape measure, but he slaps her hand away. Throwing her hands into the air, she turns, goes back to the towels. “If you don’t want my help, fine. Just get that pane into the frame already, before we freeze to death.”
“I told you,” Don snarls, “it doesn’t fit. It needs to be done properly. You can’t just jam it in there and expect it to work.”
The chill of the room reaches out toward me. I want to close the door on them, but then Elizabeth says, quietly, “Do you want this to work?”
I have been eavesdropping too long. I turn, take a step to disappear down the hallway, but the floor groans under my foot, and they both snap their heads up to stare at me in the doorway.
Don’s eyes are dark, unreadable; Elizabeth has a hand on her belly.
“Everything going okay?” I ask nonchalantly, as if I’d only just stopped by to check on them.
Don’s eyes flick to his wife, then to the window, beyond which the black night looms. “Fine,” he grits out, picking up the glass pane by its razor edges to slide it into the jamb. This time, it fits. He steps back, staring at it, his eye twitching.
A sigh of relief escapes Elizabeth, and she sits back down.
“All right,” I say, turning again to leave—only when I do, I am frozen by the boy standing at the other end of the hallway, blocking my path.
Though his face is a pale blur and his mouth nothing but a thin black snarl and his eyes just two empty pits, a terrible familiarity washes over me—not just the familiarity of having seen him so many times, now, in this house, but the familiarity that comes when you’ve just looked upon a child’s father and then at the child itself, and seen the resemblance there.
Even though I cannot see his face, that resemblance feels uncanny—the temper, the violence simmering just beneath the surface. I look from one to the other—Donovan’s back is to me as he rechecks the window, running a hand over the edge, and for a moment I consider imploring him to turn around, to come look upon his son, but the words choke up in my throat—and I feel as if I am caught between two mirrors, and I wonder just how much Julian is his father’s son.
Outside, it starts to snow.
16
All those eyes gaze up at me, here at the front of the classroom, like the eyes of Shadydale all turned at once in my direction, fixing me with their stony gaze, the white corners of their eyes vanishing into vast pupils like black holes. Frost creeps across the windows and trees bend over the walkways, limbs laden with snow. It is a colder winter than we’re used to. All the weathermen are in a tizzy over it, predicting snowmageddon all down the East Coast.
