Suzie swallows with an audible gulp.
“I don’t know how the fire started. I’m not sure anyone everfound out, and Abigail never said. All I know is she was inside that house screaming for nearly a minute while Hazel stood there with her hand pressed against the door.”
“Pressedagainstit?”
“That’s what it looked like. Like she was holding it closed. I told myself to do something, but I was so afraid. Not of the fire but of Hazel, and the way that uncanny shadow had moved. I don’t know how long she waited, but after only a minute, Abigail had stopped screaming. The absence of that sound felt like a knife in my chest. I was so sure she was dead, but then Hazel pulled the door open and Abigail fell through it, choking and gasping. She was on fire, Cathy. Her legs, her hair. That’s when people came running. Families out trick-or-treating, kids from our school. A guy dressed as Freddy Krueger saw Abigail lying there on the porch and beat the flames out with his jacket. When I heard the sirens coming, I ran home. I never told Hazel or Abigail what I saw that night. I never even told my parents. For a long time, it was easy to tell myself that I’d imagined what I saw, but then Hazel went missing and I just thought maybe here was a chance for me to do the brave thing instead of the right thing.”
Another cracking sound, this time from behind. It’s hard to tell how far away it is. Cathy wonders if Suzie is thinking the same thing she is—about a long scarecrow shadow that creeps arachnid up walls. She opens her mouth to speak, but Suzie is already talking, pulling Cathy’s sleeve urgently.
“Oh my God, Cathy. Look!” She points at the house through the pines. “All the lights have gone out!”
41
In the darkness, I can smell the blood trickling down my face. It is the scent of salt and copper coins held in hot hands. There is no pain, but a band of pressure wraps around my skull as if I am wearing an iron hat, too tight. Like my brain is being squeezed out of my ears.
“It’s the fuse box,” I hear Andrew grunt. “The switch has tripped, that’s all.”
The drill died when the lights had pitched out, but by then he’d already made his mark. How deep, I don’t know, but there is a steady pattering sound on the tarpaulin that I think is dripping blood. I turn my head, trying to follow Andrew’s shuffling footsteps. A clank of metal, a sigh.
“Wait here.”
More shuffling. I see a patch of grainy darkness open up, straight lines carved out of the shadows. Footfalls, creaking floorboards. He’s opening the door. I slide my feet along the tarpaulin. They squeak. The wound in my forehead throbs in time with my pulse. Is there a hole in my head? It feels like there might be. I don’t know how much damage he’s done, but I can’t seem to think straight. Maybeit’s shock. Adrenaline. Abigail—She had no face! She had no FACE!—with her mirrored, glassy eyes.
His footsteps descend the stairs.
I switch my head around, trying to get my bearings. There is a gurgling sound in my skull like liquid sloshing in a container.Uh-oh, I think. Still, no pain. The shower cap is filling with blood. It crinkles noisily. I tug against my restraints. First I try to twist my wrists free, but it feels like I’m only succeeding in working the knots tighter. I tentatively lean forward, trying to reach the rubber ties with my mouth. Pain lances the center of my forehead. The room spins woozily around. That pattering sound increases.
Okay, I tell myself,take it easy or you’ll pass out.
But I don’t have time to take it easy. Andrew could get the power back on any minute, and then I’m fucked, well and truly. I bend to my wrists again, this time ignoring the ugly sloshing sound between my ears, like liquid in a jar. Another bolt of pain announces itself and I realize that shock has buffered me from the worst of it. Now the hurt is circling. Closer and closer, high and shrill as a whistle.
Please, God, just let me loosen it, I think, taking the fat little knot between my teeth and working my jaw from side to side.Just enough to pull my hand free.
Downstairs, a door slams. At the same time, I feel the knot slacken, just a little. I turn my wrist, testing it. Is there more movement than there was before? It feels like it. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. I lower my head to get a better grip, and this time the sloshing is accompanied by an ugly grinding, like stones rubbing together.I’ll grind your bones to make my bread, I think, snickering to myself. It is not a sane sound, and after a beat, something in the darkness laughs back. It sounds like an owl, hooting. I stare into the shadows as a swampy yellow eye emerges like a drifting moon.
Fee-fi-fo-fum
My mouth is full of the taste of rubber, bitter and chemical. I feel the knot give a little, and this time when I draw my hand toward me I can pull it nearly all the way past the wrist. My heart leaps.
I smell the blood of an Englishman
I close my eyes. The knot is loosening, losing its grip. I just have to work it a little more.
Be she alive or be she dead
She has grown even taller, rising almost all the way up to the ceiling. Strands of hair brush against me like static. The stench of her is overpowering, noxious. Steeped in filth, like lifting a stained and waterlogged mattress to reveal thick, ripe mold growing beneath. Coils of dread tighten around me.
I’ll grind her bones to make my bread
The flat sheen of her eye is a dirty yellow lantern. It illuminates her open mouth, the black ruin ringed by the sockets of her toothless gums. I remember how she had stood over Maria in her last moments, and something tears open in my chest.
Then, a solid-soundingthunk!and the lights flicker on. Overhead, the bulb buzzes. The light increases slowly, thin and watery. My other sister is nowhere to be seen, but there are dozens of mushrooms where she had stood, black and wet and sinuous. I tug at the rubber with clenched teeth, biting back a scream of frustration. Footstepsdownstairs, that dull, heavy tread of his work boots. I tug my wrist so hard that the skin on the back of my hand rumples like fabric. I’d tear it off myself if I could.
“Come!On!” I urge, spitting through gritted teeth. I lean my head back, vision muddied with blood. Footsteps on the stairs. That grim whistling that makes my teeth itch. A last push, digging my heels into the floor, and my hand pops free of the rubber tie like a cork from a bottle. I’m driven backward by the force, but I don’t have time to examine it or wait for the room to stop spinning. I scrabble at my other hand, picking apart the knot as I hear Andew’s footsteps reach the top of the stairs. With both hands free, I reach for the ties around my ankles, but he is already coming down the hall. Unhurried. Sure of himself. His shadow appears on the wall outside the room, freakishly long. He continues to whistle.
Banging downstairs draws my attention. I sit up straight in my chair, ears pricked. My heart is beating against my throat. In the hallway Andrew’s shadow stiffens. He leans over the banister to look down the stairwell.
Bang! Bang!Harder now. Someone is down there, hitting the front door with the palm of their hand. My first instinct is fear. I have an image of such startling clarity that I actually shrink backward into my chair. It’s the women he buried in the woods. They have come to take me with them. I can picture them out on the porch, the wind playing with their fine, stringy hair, long teeth chattering in hollow faces. Empty eye sockets rimed with mold.