Suzie taps her nails on the counter. “You know, Hazel said something to me when she came into the pharmacy. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but now it’s sort of stuck in my head, you know?”
Cathy nods, but she doesn’t know what Suzie means, not really. She’s tired, and now the adrenaline is wearing off she feels upset and angry.
Suzie sips her tea and continues, “I asked Hazel what she was doing in town and she said, ‘We’re house-sitting for my parents.’”
Cathy frowns. “So?”
“‘We’rehouse-sitting,’ Cathy.We.At the time, I presumed she was here with Joe, until you told me about the divorce. So, who did she mean when she saidwe?”
Cathy feels a bud of dismay unfurl in her chest. Her heart sinks.
Suzie’s phone vibrates again, and Cathy slams a hand over it as if she wants to squash it flat. She fixes Suzie with a stare.
“What were you doing here tonight, Suzie? You don’t live on this side of town.”
“Ever since I bumped into you at the shopping center, I’ve been thinking about how Hazel looked when she came into the pharmacy. I’ve seen that look on her face before, but not for a long time. Not since… uh, I don’t know, maybe I’m just projecting. I just thought I’d come by the house and see if I could help.”
“Ah, I get it. You wanted to fix things.”
“Is that wrong?” Suzie feels angry but her voice doesn’t sound it. It sounds whiny and hurt. Sometimes she wishes she was more like Cathy. A wasp. Ahornet, she thinks meanly.
“You were just beingyou,” Cathy sneers. “It must be so lovely in your head, Suzie Trebath. It must be like fucking Disneyland.”
Suzie stares at her. Her phone buzzes. She’s over an hour late home. Teddy is getting frantic. “I should go.”
“Good idea,” Cathy tells her, nodding toward her phone. “Sounds like Teddy needs his nappy changing.”
Suzie opens her mouth to reply, snaps it shut again. It’s been over ten years since she was at school, but almost immediately she is transported back there again, mean girls with mouths like buckshot and Cathy Maddon the meanest of them all, a coiled viper. Suzie stands and grabs her phone and handbag, trying desperately to ignore the burning feeling in her hands, the overwhelming compulsion to run them under water so hot her skin peels. Her cheeks burn as she leaves the house wordlessly, almost running to reach her car. Let Cathy sort her own mess out, she tells herself angrily, slamming the door so hard the whole car shakes. Forget Hazel. Let them both suffer.
14
Andrew puts the pillowcase over my head. I struggle, but it’s clumsy and I’m overpowered very quickly. Despite his slim build, Andrew has a mean, wiry strength, the kind that leaves bruises. Pinching, digging his fingers into my flesh. The pillowcase is musty but also smells like the blanket—cloying, cheap detergent—and I experience that same jolt of familiarity again, this time as a static image: a neatly made bed, the covers stiff with starch. I am sitting on this bed and looking down at trainers which slide off my feet because they have no laces in.
The pillowcase is thin cotton, almost translucent. Looking through it gives everything a strangely hallucinatory quality, my vision condensed to muted shapes and throws of light. Andrew grunts as he draws a length of something around my neck. It feels warm and smooth, almost like skin. The coils of a living thing. I begin to panic, repulsed by the feel of it, twisting and clawing and trying to break free. I think of hooded prisoners, condemned men. Gallows and gibbets, broken necks. A wave of terror moves through my body, as muscular as a spasm. I twist and claw at the noose, sucking in sharp little breaths like a panting animal until he warns me sternly to stop.
“You ever see a dog in a slip leash?” His voice is thick with disdain. “The more it fights, the tighter the leash gets until eventually it chokes. A dog on a slip leash learns to behave pretty fucking quickly. Do you understand me, Hazel?”
I nod miserably, wondering for the hundredth time how I’ve found myself in this position. This would never have happened to Cathy. She’d have karate-chopped his windpipe and stolen the keys to his car the first time he’d tried to talk to her.
“We’re going to take a walk now, Hazel. Stay close. Don’t try and run.”
Andrew guides me slowly to the top of the stairs before leaning across me to unlock the basement door. There is a rush of cool air as the door swings out into the hallway. I don’t move until he shoves me forward—not hard, but enough to make me gasp as the strap around my neck digs in, pulling tight. I make a softhurrgh!noise. The light diffuses, grows brighter, like looking through filmy glass. Andrew turns me toward the light, tugging the strap.This way.I stumble behind him, acutely aware of the sound of thatchurringbird outside—a nightjar maybe. Cold draft against my ankles. I reach out for the walls and run my fingers along the embossed wallpaper. Flowers and fleur-de-lis, whispering under my fingers. Lifting my head, I see the outline of a figure off to the left, framed by light as if they are standing in an open doorway. The dark form is smudged, like someone has drawn them in charcoal and then run a thumb over it, and even as I try to focus, the shape seems to melt away, if it was ever there at all.
“You’ve got ghosts,” I say, but Andrew doesn’t slow his pace. He simply tugs me forward and I am compelled to follow, lumberingand bovine. The strip of light becomes wider, fills my vision, becomes a doorway. We pass through it. Outside now. Even through the cotton I can smell the rich damp earth of late autumn, a bite of frost. I usually love this time of year, when the moon rises full and orange like a glowing, jaundiced eye.
“Where are we going?” My voice is husky, I don’t know that he hears me. He simply tugs a little harder to draw me toward him. “Andrew? At least take this thing off my head.”
“Can’t.” The creak of his leather boots. The rustle of his clothing. “Can’t let you see where we’re going. It’s sacred.”
“Sacred how?”
Another tug, sharper this time.Shut up.We walk a few steps before Andrew starts that maddening whistling again, the same atonal notes over and over. A female cuckoo calls from the forest, a sound like the bubbling cackle of a witch. Damp grass whispers against my shins as we walk silently for what feels like hours but is in reality probably only about twenty minutes. We appear to be following a stony path or old track, overgrown and bristling with nettles. Even through the hood, I can smell the bright, antiseptic fragrance of them. The ground begins to dip and we walk steeply downhill for a minute or so, before passing beneath creaking, swaying trees. Dusky light plays on the fabric in front of my eyes, dappled shade.
“Here.” He stops abruptly.
I stand very still, straining to listen. It feels as if there is a knot in my chest, pulled so tight I cannot draw breath. “What are we—”
Another yank on the strap, hard enough to make my eyes water. I bite back a yell. Andrew doesn’t remove the strap—I assume he thinks if he gives me the opportunity, I’ll try and make another run for it, and to be honest I don’t blame him, not even a little bit—but he does loosen it, and when he draws off the hood, I see that it is a length of flexible rubber tubing.