Twice Cursed, page 11
“Grandma?”
Terry heard Jessie close the back door behind her, stride across the kitchen floor in her heavy boots. A moment later she was in the hall doorway – much taller than her grandmother, and sturdy with it. Terry envied her strength, wished she’d been that capable when she’d been Jessie’s age. Terry had always been small and slight. Harold had preferred her that way, called her “his little doll”.
Harold had a type. That was what the prosecutors had said.
“Grandma, what happened?” Jessie said, running to Terry’s side.
“Maura,” Terry said, moaning. “You have to fix Maura.”
“Don’t worry about Maura,” Jessie said impatiently. “You’re what’s important. Now, is it okay to move you? Do you feel like anything’s broken? Did you hit your head?”
“No,” Terry said. “My shoulder… may be sprained or bruised. But we have to fix Maura. It’s the only way to keep you safe. She can’t watch with her eyes gone.”
“Do you think you can sit up? I can help you,” Jessie said.
It was like she hadn’t heard anything Terry said about Maura, or worse, was ignoring it. Her family didn’t understand about the spirits, didn’t believe in them, didn’t take them seriously.
“Come on,” Jessie said, putting her arm under Terry’s shoulder and lifting her to a sitting position.
Jessie wore denim overalls over a black sleeveless tee shirt and the suspender buttons clacked against the clip as Jessie moved. The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the silence of the hallway. A cloud of dust had kicked up after Maura’s fall, and Terry saw movement between the motes, something shifting silently through space.
A spirit, she was sure of it. A tiny one that had snuck in while Terry collected the mail. And it had somehow plucked out Maura’s eye. Terry followed the gust of air through the dust as it rose to the top shelf of dolls in the hallway, then she lost track of it.
There was nothing for it now. The spirit was inside, and bent on causing mischief. Terry needed to cleanse the hallway before it let in any more of its compatriots.
“How do you feel?” Jessie asked. “Dizzy? Nauseous?”
Terry felt none of those things, but she couldn’t cleanse anything if Jessie was in the house, fluttering over her like she was a broken baby bird. Jessie wouldn’t just leave after finding Terry on the floor like that.
She really is a good girl, Terry thought, though a touch of impatience followed. She didn’t need Jessie to be a good girl at the moment. She needed Jessie to go away so she could make the house safe again. So Terry played along, careful not to overdo it. The last thing she needed was for Jessie to call Harry, or worse, an ambulance.
“Just a little dizzy,” Terry said. “Can I have some water?”
“Sure, be right back,” Jessie said, standing. She had very dark curly hair cut short to the nape of her neck. The curls on top of her head bounced as she stood. She pointed a finger at Terry, a finger tipped with short nails covered in bright blue polish. “Don’t move. Don’t try to stand up without me. I mean it.”
Terry waved her hand. “All right, all right. I promise.”
Jessie stomped into the kitchen and Terry immediately began scooting around on the floor, searching for Maura’s eyes. Her gaze fell on Maura’s face – on the empty sockets, the web of lines radiating over her cheek.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Terry said, a spasm of grief in her chest. “I’ll make it better, I promise. I’ll fix you.”
Terry patted the ground and a sharp pain lanced through her palm. She turned it over and saw the large splinter that had pushed under her skin, and then realized in horror that she’d bled on the floor of the hallway.
“Blood,” she said. The spirits could use her blood, use it against her. Even a drop would allow them to bypass her sentries, come directly at her. Hopefully the little spirit that had snuck in hadn’t noticed yet. She bent over her knees, tried to get closer to the ground. Terry took the corner of her old brown cardigan and rubbed at the spot of blood on the hardwood.
Out, damned spot, is what she said and I need this spot to come out, but all she appeared to be doing was smearing it around on the floor.
She heard the water running in the kitchen. When the faucet stopped she called, “Jessie? Would you bring me a damp sponge when you come back?”
Jessie appeared in the doorway again, holding a glass of water. “Why?”
“There’s blood on the floor. I want to clean it up before it stains the hardwood.”
Terry realized a moment later that she’d said the wrong thing, because instead of going back into the kitchen for the sponge Jessie rushed toward her.
“Blood? Where are you bleeding? Is it your head?”
“No, it’s not my head,” Terry said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. Why must they always think there was something wrong with her head? “It’s a tiny splinter, and it bled on the floor, and I want to clean it up. So please, please, help me do that.”
“Let me see,” Jessie said, kneeling beside Terry and placing the glass of water on the floor. She took Terry’s hand in hers, examining the injury.
Terry yanked her hand back in irritation. “Please, Jessie, listen to me. Don’t ignore everything I say just because you think you know best. I’m not a child.”
Something flickered in Jessie’s eyes, something that Terry was sure she read rightly as Then why do you act like one? but her granddaughter, to her credit, did not say it out loud.
“Okay, Grandma,” Jessie said with a little sigh. “I’ll get you a sponge if you drink this water.”
“I will,” Terry said, and watched Jessie stomp back into the kitchen.
Terry immediately resumed her search for Maura’s eyes, but they seemed to have disappeared.
They have to be here somewhere, Terry thought. One little spirit couldn’t cause so much damage in such a short time.
Jessie ran the faucet in the kitchen for a moment, which reminded Terry that she’d promised to drink some water. She lifted the glass to her lips, and her head tilted backward. As she did, a movement caught the corner of her eye, a movement sliding smoothly up the wall, inhuman, alien.
A thin-legged spider with a tiny brown body, making an elevator of its silk. She exhaled in relief. Every movement in the house was not fraught with sinister implication. Sometimes a spider was just a spider.
The spider caught the bottommost shelf of dolls, shimmied easily over the edge, and Terry lost sight of it. She hoped that it found something delicious to eat.
Jessie joined her again, handing out the damp sponge. Terry carefully scrubbed the floor until there were no remnants of her blood anywhere. She’d mop the hallway, just to be safe, after Jessie left.
“All right, are we done with that now?” Jessie asked. Terry ignored the put-upon tone in her voice. “Can I clean and disinfect this splinter?”
“Yes,” Terry said meekly. The sooner she submitted to Jessie’s ministrations the sooner Jessie would leave, and then Terry could address the more important matter of the spirits.
Jessie helped Terry to her feet. It wasn’t lost on Terry that her granddaughter was being extra gentle, no matter how impatient she might feel.
As Terry stood, her eyes shifted to the shelves of soldiers again. The spider she’d seen earlier was crawling over the green pinafore of her Italian girl doll. The Italian girl was her second-favorite, with her colorful dress and her little straw bonnet and her black hair and eyes.
Terry wondered idly where the spider was going when it stopped on the doll’s blushing cheek. Its legs reached toward the girl’s dark eye and somehow, though she knew it couldn’t be physically possible, the eye began to spin in its socket.
Noo, Terry thought. Nooo, spider, spider, why did you betray me? I never sweep you out of corners, I never stomp on you when you pass before me.
“Nooo,” she said aloud, and Jessie stopped trying to shuffle her toward the kitchen.
“Are you okay? Does something hurt? Do you feel sick?”
“The spider,” Terry said, trying to wrench away from Jessie, but her granddaughter held firm – not hurting Terry, but not letting her go.
“What spider?” Jessie asked. “Since when do you care about spiders? They’re living rent-free all over this house. There are some big ones in the attic, too. Erin won’t even go up there.”
Terry didn’t care about Erin’s feelings on the subject. All she cared about was stopping the little traitor before it did any more work for those trying to hurt her. “On my Italian girl. It’s trying to take her eye out. It’s working for the spirits, colluding with them.”
“Grandma,” Jessie said, in that “I’m-trying-to-be-patient” tone that made Terry wild. “There are no spirits after you. We’ve talked about this.”
“There are. Jessie, I love you but you don’t understand. None of you do. Now please, please, let me stop that spider before it hurts my Italian girl like it hurt Maura.”
Jessie loosened her grip, just a little, like she wasn’t certain about what to say or do. It was enough. Terry swept her hand toward the spider. The miserable little turncoat was too intent on its work to notice. Its body brushed under Terry’s fingers, flew away from the doll onto the floor. Its legs scrabbled in the air for purchase for a moment, and then Terry’s slipper came down on it, hard.
“Ha!” she said, triumphant. “There’ll be no more of that, thanks very much.”
She wondered how the spirits had recruited the spider in the first place. They must be frustrated if they were forced to use the local arachnid population.
“Oh, no,” she said, realizing what this meant. “They’re using the spiders now. They could use more of them.”
She’d have to clean the whole house of spiders. They were in every corner, under every piece of furniture. She was always careful to vacuum around them, to let them live as they pleased. All her little friends and companions, all the neighbors that had kept her company when her human neighbors turned away – they would have to go. They’d turned on her, like all the others.
The scandal of Harold’s arrest, the allegations that had come up in the trial, the conviction that followed – it all meant that people who’d known Terry for years would turn away when they passed her on the street, would pretend they didn’t see her in the grocery store. The spiders had been a comfort to her. They’d listened without judgment. They’d filled up her home with their tiny little children. She’d kept them safe.
But the spiders were like Judas, ready to turn their backs on her. She hardened her heart against them.
“We’ll have to clean out all the spiders,” Terry said. “Can you stay and help me?”
Jessie’s eyes slid away from Terry’s. “Grandma, we just have to worry about your injuries right now. You cut your hand. You said you might have sprained your shoulder. I think maybe I should take you to the urgent care clinic, just in case.”
Terry ground to a halt. “No, I’m not going to the clinic.”
“Grandma, be reasonable,” Jessie said. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but you aren’t young any more. Even a little thing like a fall could have serious consequences.”
“It’s not the consequences of the fall that I’m worried about.”
“All right, Grandma. Enough with this spirits nonsense. There are no spirits coming to get you. I know you don’t want to admit it, but Grandpa Harold was a terrible person. You’re not responsible for what he did, but he was a terrible person. Clearly you feel some guilt or something related to that, but there are no vengeful souls trying to drag you to hell by association. You have to stop saying things like this. Dad is talking about putting you in a care home. He thinks it’s not safe for you to be by yourself, that you’ve lost touch with reality.”
Terry waited patiently through most of Jessie’s speech, until she got to the part where Harry wanted to put her in a home.
Another traitor, she thought with a spurt of anger. Her own son, trying to remove her from the home she’d shared with his father.
He’ll probably get twice its value when he sells it, Terry thought bitterly. The home of an infamous serial killer.
She shook that thought, and the attendant bile that rose with it, away. It wasn’t time to worry about what Harry might do to her, or what his father had done…
(but he had done so much he killed all those girls he killed them he killed them all those girls he called his little dolls just like me pretty maids all in a row just like my soldiers on the shelves except they died)
… it was time to worry about the spiders, about the potential rebellion within her own walls.
Jessie was looking at her expectantly, and Terry recalled that Jessie had been talking before.
“Your father won’t put me in a care home,” Terry said. “And I’m not crazy, Jessie, whatever you may think.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Grandma. Just…” Jessie trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
“Just confused? Just a little mixed-up? It’s all right, Jessie. You don’t have to believe me. But will you help me? Help me clear the house of spiders?”
“Because the spiders are working with the spirits,” Jessie said, doubt in every syllable.
“It doesn’t matter why,” Terry said. “All of you have been complaining for years that I let the spiders run rampant in the house. Wouldn’t you love to see them evicted?”
“Well,” Jessie said, rubbing the back of her neck. “I don’t know. I always kind of liked them – or at least, I liked that you left them alone.”
“But I can’t now,” Terry said. “So, will you help me or not?”
“If I don’t you’re just going to go through the whole house on your own, aren’t you?” Jessie said.
“Yes,” Terry said.
“Fine,” Jessie said. “But first I want to look at your shoulder and make sure it’s not swelling or anything.”
“My shoulder is fine,” Terry said.
“Grandma.”
“All right,” Terry said, submitting. She was going to get her way, so she could play along for a little bit. Jessie would help her clear the spiders, and then Jessie would go home, and Terry would find Maura’s eyes and cleanse the hallway of that lurking spirit, and everything would be fine again.
Everything would be fine.
If she kept telling herself that over and over, then maybe it would be true.
Jessie was as good as her word. She took out the vacuum and went after Terry’s eight-legged tenants with a thoroughness that her grandmother admired. They went all through the house, hunting under every piece of furniture and into every corner. They stopped when they reached the attic door.
“Should we do upstairs, too?” Jessie asked doubtfully. “I feel like you might need an exterminator for those.”
Terry thought, weighing the risk. It was possible that the spirits might get into the attic, recruit from the population there. On the other hand, they were a bunch of lazy lobs. The attic spiders hardly moved at all. Surely they wouldn’t come all the way down from the attic just to pluck out the eyes of her little soldier dolls.
“No, I think it will be all right,” Terry said. “Thank you for helping me, Jessie.”
“Sure,” Jessie said, bringing the vacuum downstairs.
Terry followed her slowly, carefully. Stairs were a source of constant anxiety. She gripped the banister and tried not to think about falling.
By the time she reached the bottom, Jessie had already put the vacuum away in the hall closet.
“Can I make you some lunch?” Terry asked.
“Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff?” Jessie asked hopefully.
Terry laughed. Even though she was twenty years old, Jessie still preferred her favorite childhood sandwich. Terry kept a jar of marshmallow fluff just for Jessie’s visits.
Terry made the sandwich, and watched Jessie eat it, and tried not to grow impatient with her granddaughter’s continued presence in the house. Terry had work to do, a spell to cast to cleanse the house of the spirit’s incursion. She couldn’t do that while Jessie was here. Terry felt she’d already reached the limits of Jessie’s tolerance in relation to the spirits.
“You know, Grandma,” Jessie said in a casual way that told Terry it was not casual at all. “Maybe I’ll stay here tonight, in the guest bedroom. What do you think? I could just run home to get my overnight bag.”
I think you’ve been texting your father while I was putting fluff on bread for you, you little traitor, Terry thought. I think you’ve decided I need looking after because I’ve been having an “episode.”
But she didn’t say this, or let any of her bitterness leak through in her tone. If Jessie wanted to go away for a while, that would be enough time for Terry to take out the book Harold had given her, the book of witchcraft to keep her safe.
Harold had always wanted her to be safe, even if he broke all his other dolls.
(and you knew oh yes you knew what he was up to but you weren’t bothered about it so long as he took his obsessions elsewhere and stayed sweet to you then you didn’t care)
“That sounds fun,” Terry said to Jessie.
“A girls’ night!” Jessie said, a little too heartily. “We can watch a movie and make popcorn.”
Terry couldn’t eat popcorn anymore. It played havoc with her stomach. But she went along and nodded, as if she was excited about the prospect.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two,” Jessie said, glancing at her watch.
“Sure, sweetie,” Terry said, but in her mind she thought Traitor.
As soon as Jessie went out, Terry hurried to the armoire in the living room. She kept her book and her materials for her spells on the second shelf in there.
Terry threw open the doors of the armoire, her brain already feverishly moving ahead to the ritual she’d need to cast.
The second shelf was empty.
For a moment Terry stared, thought wildly that Jessie or Harry or Erin had taken her things, tossed them out in a fit of pique.
But then she crouched a little so that her face was closer to the shelf, balanced her reading glasses on her nose, saw the gossamer silver strands trailing across the surface, noticed the unmistakable marks of tiny featherlight feet.
