Overhead, the sound of a door slamming, footsteps pounding down the stairs. In my fright I bite my tongue hard enough to taste iron.
“Mina!” It’s Alice. “Mina, oh God. Mina, where are you?”
“I’m here!”
I start shoving the items (the Devices, he calls them “the Devices”) back in the box, not bothering to wrap them, driven by the sound of Alice’s frightened, desperate voice. I can hear her in the kitchen now, the clatter and thud of something heavy falling to the floor. In my panic I think it might be Alice, collapsed and convulsing, a wasp buried in her throat. But no, I can still hear her crying—hoarse, choking sobs.
“Where are you?” she croaks, and I answer, “Right here, I’m coming!” lifting my skirt so I can take the stairs two at a time, hitting the light with the heel of my hand and plunging the cellar,the dummy, and the Devices back into the darkness in which they belong.
There is a diningchair lying on the floor of the kitchen. Alice was moving at such speed that she was propelled into it, knocking it down and barely noticing. Her skin is ashen and when she looks at me she blinks rapidly, as if trying to make sense of what she sees. I move beside her, brushing her hair away from her face and forcing her to look at me.
“Alice, what is it? What’s wrong?”
There is a tremor running through her. Her stricken face is damp with tears. I know what she is about to say before she says it, some ancient telepathy passing between us, can feel the answer in the heat of her skin beneath my hands, the sharp clockwork of her eyes moving left to right, wild with fright. I know, and I am afraid.
Adrenaline sends me flyingup the stairs and into Mary’s bedroom. My heart is a totem drum, a warning pounding out a rhythm to Alice’s words,she’s dead she’s dead.Mary is sprawled on the bed with her face tilted toward the ceiling. Her body is askew, twisted slightly as if she were in the process of trying to stand and has fallen backward. Her mouth hangs open, lips stained a dusky, lethal blue. The bedside lamp has rolled onto the floor, casting shadows at strange angles.
“Mary?”
My fingers brush along the wall. The woodchip wallpaper reminds me of Eddie’s bedroom. For a moment the déjà vu is so complete I can almost see him lying there in the bed, footballscarves and posters on the wall, oxygen mask hanging from his narrow, pinched face. Headlights splash across the ceiling—a car driving past outside—and for a moment I see Mary’s eyes, shiny glass orbs, blank and empty.
“Mary? Can you hear me?”
I approach the bed and lean over, resting two fingers on the underside of Mary’s wrist. There is a line of spittle suspended between her parted lips. Tears sting the backs of my eyes but I keep my fingers there a moment longer, just to be sure. There is nothing beneath my fingertips except her skin, soft and cool and powdery. No pulse, no rattling breath. No telltale rise and fall of her chest. I sink onto the bed next to her and the movement cants her body toward me, head lolling bonelessly to one side. A skein of silver hair falls over Mary’s brow and I instinctively lean over her to gently tuck it behind her ear. The movement reveals a redness that has flooded Mary’s glazed and staring left eye. A capillary burst and spread like spilled ink. I pull away quickly, heart pounding.
“No,” I say quietly, voice small as if it has curled up in my mouth. “No, no, no.”
I snatch up the lamp and point the light toward her, making all the shadows of the room stretch and swell. For a moment it looks as if her mouth is yawning open and filled with (molasses, it drowned the horses) the same tarry substance that leaked through the cracks in the brickwork, but it is just a trick, an optical illusion conjured by shades. That’s when I see the livid marks on her neck, the long, vertical furrows dug into the skin of her throat. It is as if she has raked her nails there, clawing for air. The thought sends a shiver through me, strong enough that I have to wrap my arms around myself to stop the violent shaking.
Bert will be home soon,that same voice says. Practical. Assured.You need to pull yourself together.
Yes. Yes. I force deep drags of air into my lungs. I need to focus. Alice is just downstairs. Alice, I think. Oh God. I think of Vicky Matherson with her heels beating on the soft tarmac, the scratching in the chimney breast. I think of Simon Pascoe pulled cold and bloated from the still quarry waters and Alice saying“The dead become transformed.”I wonder what shape Mary has taken, what strange vision she has become. Flame and eyeballs floating over strings of nerves.
You see it, Mina. You see it, don’t you? That eye. That bloodshot void.
I lean against the wall, my strength seeping from me, down, down, subterranean behind my ribs. I think of Eddie, how weak he became, how quickly he let go.
You know what it means, don’t you?
I turn and run out the door and down the hallway, bouncing off the walls like I’m drunk. I burst into the bathroom and fall to my knees in front of the toilet, one hand clamped around my stomach as all my dinner comes back up, spattering into the bowl. The sour smell makes me retch again as I grope for the flush and it’s only as I sit there, spitting out long spindles of drool, stomach fluttering, muscles sore, that I hear it.
There is music playing downstairs.
TWENTY-NINE
I walk trancelike into the hallway. My voice—“Bert? Alice?”— weak from puking. The piano is lilting, delicate. The woman’s voice smoky, with a texture both rich and lethargic, like a stretching cat. I float slowly downstairs, feeling as though I have been filled with helium. The front door is standing open. Outside, the streetlights are halos against a crescent moon in a cloudless sky.
“Alice?” I say again. Silence. “Hello?”
Trembling legs threatening to spill me over. The music rises and falls, sonorous in the living room. The television is still playing although the sound has been muted. An advert for toothpaste, everyone smiling as if at gunpoint. The curtains are open. Alice’s can of lemonade sticky beside the record player. I stand there, swaying slightly, black roses blossoming in my vision before Icollapse into the chair. There’s a voice in my head that won’t stop talking.
You know what that bloodied eye means, Mina. It’s a sign of asphyxiation, isn’t it? You know what asphyxiation means, don’t you, Mina? Don’t you?
I pick up the remote control and switch off the television set, then turn to the stereo and lift the needle from the record.Billie Holiday,the label reads. The cover is leaning against the wall and I pick it up and oh wow, there she is, the white gardenias in her black hair, her poise, those striking features. I lift up the sleeve and turn it around. There, right there, is the song Mary and Bert danced to on their wedding day, the song Alice said that Bert often played when Mary was having her hair cut. “Blue Moon.”
Maybe Alice played it to her, Mina, while you were preoccupied in the basement. Maybe she played it so Mary could hear it one last time as Alice took the life from her.
I shut out that voice. I can’t listen to it right now. I need to move. I need to tidy up before Bert gets back. He’ll have a terrible shock when he hears about Mary. My hands are shaking so badly that the record glides through my fingers as I try to slip it back into the sleeve and only sheer luck stops it from falling to the floor. I try again to slide it in, but something is blocking it. Frustrated, I jerk the record out and look inside the sleeve, thinking the obstruction is an insert or tissue paper. But it’s not. There’s something stuck there, all the way back. Taped to the cardboard. I reach in for it, hearing the soft ripping sound it makes as I pull it free. It is an envelope. The paper is thick and creamy, expensive. No writing on the front and when I turn it over, I notice the back is tucked in but not sealed shut.