“Can I talk to her? I’d like to ask her some questions.”
Clickclickclick. A bubble of saliva bursts between her teeth.
“You see, witch—I know something about you that Alice doesn’t.” I can hear the slow creak of the floorboards under my feet as I lean in close, theclick-ing ratcheting in Alice’s throat, faster and faster, a sound like bones knitting together. I keep my voice to a whisper. “I know what you are. You’re a thought.You’re shame and guilt and repressed emotion. You’re not a hook in her brain, you’re just some bad memories and I’m going to help her scrub you away. You. Aren’t.Real.”
The clicking stops so abruptly I almost forget to breathe. I can feel the blistering heat of Alice’s skin, can see the flare of her nostrils. She is breathing like a gored bull, shoulders flexing as she sucks in air, looking past me. Toward the fireplace.
“Alice?”
“Mina,” she whispers, barely moving her lips. “Don’t move.”
Her eyes are huge, gleaming white saucers. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle. The urge to turn around and look over my shoulder is overwhelming but I am frozen in place, muscles stiff. Alice is shuffling slowly backward until she hits the wall, head shaking. Something scrapes in the chimney breast and then there is the sound of a low, meaty chuckle. I think of that old glass bottle stuffed with hair and pins and balls of dimpled wax.
“Alice, listen to me. There’s nothing there, all right? It’s a bird. Okay? A bird that got stuck in the flue.”
Alice’s head stops shaking but her eyes are still luminous and wide with fear. She draws her knees toward her, fingernails digging into her skin. I jut out my chin, defiant.
“There’s no witch. No curse. She’s a crossed wire in your brain, a delusion, that’s all. Okay?”
The scraping sound deepens, as if something is clawing through the brickwork. I can smell that rich, animal odor again, heady as incense. Paul is hammering on the door, his voice loud and strident. “Let me in, let me in.” I lift my voice, trying to keep it steady. I can’t let her see that I am afraid.
“It’s okay. Look at me. It’s okay, Alice.”
I’m trying to reassure her and yet I can’t bring myself to glance behind me in case the witch comes creeping from the hollow throatof the chimney, limbs bent and twisted, face tilted at an upside-down, inconceivable angle, smile slit so wide you can see her teeth all the way back to the molars with the stump of a tongue moving in the gory hole of her mouth. There is a rain of hard blows against the door so heavy that the wood bows inward. Alice’s eyes find me. She looks numb with fear.
“You’re going to die, Mina Ellis.”
Alice’s tongue is black and bloated and long. Her teeth chatter together beneath round, haunted eyes. Then the door bursts open and Paul stumbles into the room, his cheeks red and hectic, shirt damp with sweat. I have just a single moment of utter, terrible clarity—“my daddy sometimes thinks about taking his deboning knife to one of us kids”—and then his furious expression slides away, face paling. He, too, is looking over my shoulder.
“What the fuck is going on?” he bawls, fists clenched. He looks as though he could start a fight in an empty room. “Whatisthat stuff?”
Something unlocks in me. My muscles, rigid and unmoving, suddenly loosen and I slowly turn around to see what they are both staring at behind me.
At first I think it is blood. The dark and viscous liquid oozing sluggishly through the brickwork of the chimney breast certainly appears to be blood. It trickles slowly to the lip of the fireplace where it gathers and swells and begins to drip onto the hearth beneath, forming a fat and glossy puddle of thick, black ichor.
“What is it?” I say, voice cracking slightly. “What’s happening?”
Alice is still sitting with her mouth hanging open. Paul looks as if his eyes might bulge out of his head. I take in the scene, the inky goo leaking through all the cracks and crevices like syrup—molasses,my tired brain supplies,it washed awaythe horses—and pattering to the tiled floor in large, coin-sized droplets. I crawl over the bed to where Alice, pale and shocked-looking, is staring at the black rivulets as they dribble down the brickwork. I put my arm around her the way Eddie used to do with me when we were kids and I’d had a nightmare, rocking her slightly back and forth, comfort in warmth, in a touch. In keeping the bad things at bay.
TWENTY-THREE
As Alice takes a shower, I fill a bucket with sudsy water to help Paul scrape the worst of the black substance from the wall and carpet. We work silently, avoiding each other’s eyes. The room is stiflingly hot, suffocating. I keep thinking about Alice saying“I know what you did, Meens,”and fear passes over me like the shadow of a raptor.
“Soot and rainwater,” Paul keeps saying, wringing his cloth out into the bucket. “Must have been trapped up there over winter, just collecting into a pool.”
We both scrub at the carpet, stained an ugly dark color.
“There’s probably a cavity in the bricks. Maybe that’s what’s been making all these tapping and gurgling noises, eh? Maybe the heat forced it out of the walls.”
I don’t reply. I don’t know precisely what the liquid is but it is gluey and black as tar. Paul sees my hesitancy and gives me a sick grin.
“Some investigator you are. The look on your face when I came in!” He gives a mean little laugh. “You looked like you’d been hit with a fish.”
I was frightened, I want to tell him. She knows about me, your daughter. I don’t know how, but sheknows.
“Is Sam back?” I lean back on my heels, wiping my forearm across my brow. Paul shakes his head, lighting the cigarette that hangs out the corner of his mouth.
“Done a runner, I should think. Don’t blame him. I wish I’d thought of it first.”