“Nearly!” her voice had floated back. “This is a very delicate operation.”
Suzie wasn’t there, of course. She’d walked away from Beeker Street, claiming she wanted no part in it. She’d tell you it was because breaking in wasillegalandtrespassingand that sometimespeople get put in prison for it, but we all knew she was just scared. Suzie didn’t like the stories about Beeker Street or the man who lived here. She was a baby.
“Holy fuck, Hazel, it worked! Look!”
She’d turned to look at me. It is the last clear memory I have of her smiling. After that day, Abigail smiled a whole lot less, and they were never happy smiles. They were grimaces that lifted the corners of her mouth and never reached her eyes.
“Are you going in?”
“Of course!” She’d stood there a minute longer, her hair so long it reached her waist. That day she was wearing beads in it, all kinds of different colors. She said it took her mum hours to do. She’d grinned at me, unafraid.
“See you on the other side, Hazel-Mazel.”
I look again at the coat hanger. Could it work? Maybe. You just need a piece of bent wire, that’s what Abigail had said. If I can pick the lock, then maybe I can get out of here before Andrew comes back. Get into the woods and find a route to town. There must be one, I just need to head downhill.
I start untwisting the hooked end of the hanger, trying not to think too much about how Abigail had looked when they dragged her out of that house with her braids smoking and the front of her legs mottled like raw meat. I don’t want to remember how I couldsmellher skin cooking, how it had made saliva squirt into my mouth like I was going to be sick, but it wasn’t nausea, it was something else. Right at the back of my mind, where the darkest thoughts bloat and rise to the surface, eyes bulging. That smell had made me feelhungry, as if I had an appetite for barbecue.
Abigail had looked at me, her eyes round and glassy, smile so wide her teeth chattered, voice shrill. “She had no face! She had no FACE!”
I remember Abigail crawling away from the flames. She was screaming your name.
My head jolts up. The voice is louder now—no, not louder. Clearer. Yesterday it had sounded as though it were talking through gauze, muffled and almost indecipherable. Now the timbre resonates like a shimmer in the air.
“I am a rational woman. I do not allow—”
I blocked her path. She thought I was the devil.
I put my hands over my ears. Something I haven’t done since I was a kid, afraid of the woods creeping down the hillside, afraid of the open window and the way the curtains that hung over it billowed like lungs when the breeze blew. But she is still talking. I still hear her.
I was there when the house burned. I could taste your excitement. Like electricity. White heat.
“I am a rational woman—”
Look at me.
“I am a rational—”
Lookat me.
I open my eyes and there is something huddled in the corner. Filthy looking, like a quivering mound of hair. I have to get out of here. I snatch up the coat hanger, telling myself that I’ve barely slept more than three hours and I’ve eaten nothing but fucking cereal bars since Friday. I’m sick. I’m tired.
Would you like to feel that way again? Would you like to see death up close?
I think of apophenia, in which the brain perceives patterns in objects or hidden messages in music. Visions of God in the clouds, symbols in tea leaves, the devil in a corner. I tell myself all of this, and as I run past I see the gleam of an oily yellow eye within some shivering, half-formed mass.
Up, up the stairs. My feet thudding loud as my heartbeat. I look back, certain I am being followed, but there is only the black throat of the stairwell, garlanded with cobwebs. I start working on the coat hanger, untwisting it at the neck to straighten it out.
I just need my medication, that’s all.
That’s all.
It takes nearly twenty minutes to pick the lock on the cellar door, and by the time I hear the heavyclunkof the tumblers falling, I’msweating. I stare at it in amazement, as if it will swing open right in front of me. Then I think of the other sounds I’d heard when Andrew had left—the padlock clicking into place, the bolt sliding home, and I could cry with frustration.
I push the door. It shudders, and a band of daylight briefly appears around the frame. I hit it harder, using my shoulder and twisting into it, and an immediate pain jars my neck. I cry out. It looks so easy in the films. I try again, bracing myself to hit it side-on with my hip and succeeding only in making the padlock rattle applause. Here at the top of the stairs, there is no space for a run-up, but I can use the handrails to lift my weight onto, kicking at the door with both feet like a mule. I use all my strength to batter my feet against the wood, breath hard and shallow, teeth gritted, cords standing out on my neck with the effort. There is a sound like a whip cracking as something splinters, and the door actually appears to bulge outward. I am convinced I am going to make it and my adrenaline soars. But the door holds. It holds.
“Fuck!”
I collapse forward. I imagine my sister’s voice saying,Ah, wise up, Hazel, for fuck’s sake. What’ll happen if you break a bone and you’re stuck down here for days?