I stiffen. The voice is slurred but audible, like a drunk leaning in and whispering. My eyes peel open, but I am alone of course. The cellar is darkening, gloomy.
A mass of skin and bone and hair. No teeth. Oh my God!
My eyes search the corners where the shadows percolate. Is that a shape over there? It had looked like something was climbing the wall. I am cold to my bones.
Do you think it feels pain?
I feel like I am unraveling. I crawl over to the mattress, hauling the blanket up over my head to block out the voice. The blanket smells musty but with a trace of soap powder, as if it has been washed, then stored in a cupboard. I recognize the smell in a faint, vague way, like reaching for a word you can’t remember.
The surgeon’s hands were cold. They weighed me. I was no bigger than a walnut.
I tell myself I’m in shock. It can make you do funny things, shock. Like the time my sister came off her bike at the bottom of Shooter’s Hill, bouncing along the warm asphalt like a boneless ragdoll. She’d sat upright with her knees grazed like raw beef and her temple gushing blood and when she’d tried to stand up she’d said quietly,uh-oh, and started laughing, but her eyes had been as far away as the stars. Or like Abigail, who’d stood in the doorway of the house on Beeker Street with a smile like shattered glass and her breath coming in big, whooping gulps like she was drowning.
Creak.
The sound of a weight settling above me. I slowly lower the covers, eyes wide and luminous in the dark. Outside, a round Samhain moon is rising over the trees, casting a pale blue light through the bars on the window. Soft and blue, like deep water. I release my breath.
Creak.
I stand up. I haven’t noticed Andrew come back, although ofcourse that’s no guarantee that he isn’t in the house. He’d already proved himself slippery, treacherous. I move to the bottom of the stairs and peer up at the locked basement door. I wish I had a weapon. Something good and heavy in my hands. There is a soft susurration, like material dragged along the floorboards. I see the handle of the door turning, but when I take a few quick steps upward it stops. I’m left waiting, breathless.
“Andrew?”
Is that a sound? A small laugh, or a sob on the other side of the door? A cough, quickly smothered? Is someone there?
“Andrew, please—if you can hear me—then I need my medicine. It’s—it’s dangerous for me to go too long without it.” A pause. “Is anyone there, hello?”
I wait a long time, enough that my breath turns to silver mist on the exhale and the dark grows so deep you could swim through it, and there is no reply. By the time I turn away and head back into the cellar, my skin is goose bumpy all over and my stomach is rumbling. Despite everything, I’m hungry, and so I turn to the shopping bag left for me in the alcove. I hadn’t been able to face it earlier, but now I’m left with no choice. I need to eat and I need to pee—in that order—and I’ve got a pretty good idea what this bag contains.
I tip it up and let the contents slide out onto the mattress. Inside, there’s a few cereal bars, the kind you’d put in a lunch box, and a couple of bottles of water. There’s also a toilet roll and a bar of soap, still in its packaging. I open one of the bottles and drink the water in three quick gulps, wiping my hand across my mouth afterward. My stomach instantly clenches, and I wonder if I’m about to be sick, but then the feeling passes and I’m simply left with a full bladder and a dull, aching hunger.
I polish off two of the cereal bars in quick succession and peeinto the bucket, hating the clammy coldness that has crept silently in with the dark. Outside, an owl hoots, a lonely, solemn sound.
I find myself suddenly tired, unable to keep my head from drooping on my neck. My limbs are so heavy I can barely crawl onto the mattress, and as I find myself pitching forward into sleep, I imagine that voice again, so close now it is whispering in my ear.
You are not alone. You never were.
9
Suzie knows she shouldn’t have come to the shopping center on a Saturday. It’s the worst time, with teenagers sprawling on the sofas at Starbucks, sipping iced coffees through straws and threading charms onto their bags, all noise and audaciousness. Suzie remembers it well. She doesn’t envy them their youth. It was a hard time, as she recalls. She waits patiently in line for her coffee, paying with the credit card from their joint account. Suzie has heard of other women who keep their finances separate from their husbands’, even going so far as to have a secret fund in case they ever need to get away. Suzie doesn’t understand it. For her, Teddy is solid ground. She can’t imagine keeping anything secret from him. He is simply an extension of who she is.
Suzie walks slowly back to the car park, carrier bags swinging from the crook of her elbow, sipping her coffee. She walks past the potted ferns and the mosaic fountain that make up the centerpiece of the atrium, tiled floor the pale pink of seashells. She smiles, commiserating with a woman struggling to get her screaming baby back intoa stroller and nodding hello to the security guard by the exit. Suzie likes her town, she likes the people in it. A lot of people think it’s too small, suffocating even, but Suzie likes to see familiar faces. It makes her feel safe. So when she sees the woman crying beside the cash machine in the car park, she pivots toward her without thinking because Suzie White likes to help people. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the same.
“Hey,” she says, and as the woman looks up, Suzie realizes that she knows the woman with the puffy eyes and tear-stained face. It’s Cathy Maddon, Hazel’s sister.
“Oh!” Suzie pulls up short, hesitating. She has always been wary of Cathy, even as an adult, but she can’t very well leave her here crying, so she steps toward her and holds out a napkin. “Here. Blow your nose.”
Suzie has always thought of Cathy Maddon as one of those women who peaked in high school. She’d once envied her and been more than a little afraid whenever their paths had crossed in the school corridors or when she’d visited Hazel at home. Cathy had been a pretty teen but a mean one, sharp tongued and acerbic. She’d ridden the crest of that popularity all the way out of Idless—first to London and then to New York. Suzie hadn’t heard much about Cathy Maddon in the intervening years, but she’d always imagined her designing clothes for celebrities with fabulous names like Candy Darling and Carmen Electra. When Cathy had returned with a young son and—according to the rumors—a stack of debt chasing at her heels, she had moved into Knox Row, a shabby estate on the edge of town. It was like Teddy said, Suzie had thought, shooting stars burn bright because they move too fast.
“I’m fine. I’m okay, Suzie.”
Cathy swipes at her tears. Her voice is level—light, even—butSuzie notices how tightly she is gripping the handles of the stroller, as if she is clinging to it for dear life. The baby in it, a toddler, really, in a woolly hat and bright green ski suit, is asleep, chin to chest.
Suzie points to a stone bench in a pool of wintry sunshine, just a little way off. “Why don’t you take five minutes? I could do with sitting down.”
Cathy looks as if she might protest but then she shrugs. “Sure, why not. It’ll be nice to have nothing to do for a while.”
She follows Suzie to the bench and turns the buggy so it is facing away from them, dabbing at her streaked mascara with the pads of her fingers. The toddler doesn’t stir, and Cathy looks at him fondly as she lowers herself onto the seat.