Andrew turns and looks back up the stairs. He seems almost as surprised as Cathy feels. “It’s an old house. Sometimes the fuses trip.”
“Looks like you’ve got a problem with damp too,” Suzie tells him, gesturing to the shelves of fan-shaped mushrooms growing out of the wall. They are snuff-colored, striated with thin white lines like lightning forks. As she looks around, Suzie starts to see more of them sprouting through the stair risers and the gaps in the floor.
Andrew gives a dry, thin laugh, like a cough. “Like I said, Suzie. It’s an old house. You’d be wise to watch your step or you’ll end up in the basement.”
A thud from upstairs, as if something has fallen over. A shadow skims the wall, just on the edge of Cathy’s vision. She turns her head, but there is nothing there. Andrew takes another step down the stairs. He is nearly at the bottom now, and Cathy quickly sizes him up. He’s tall, ranging on skinny. He looks gaunt but lean, and Cathy can remember the speed with which he’d moved across her kitchen to grab the kettle.Two of us and one of him, she thinks.Reckon we could take him if he charges us.
Unless he’s got a weapon, a rogue little thought pops up, turning her cold. She moves a little closer to Suzie.
I manage to release the ties just as the wind picks up outside, shaking the windowpanes with icy fingers. As I try to stand there is aloud whooshing in my ears, like the sound of a jumbo jet taking off down the bald runway of my head. The thought makes me laugh, that strangled, ugly sound of cold horror, and I have to sit down again as the room starts to sway. Over thewhoosh, I can hear the rumble of Andrew’s voice, the rat-a-tat-tat of Cathy’s sharp replies.Good, I think.She sounds mad as hell. That’ll work in her favor.
Because it’s not just Andrew I’m worried about. It’s my other sister. She is going to hit this house like a meteorite, leaving nothing but a smoking crater in the ground. And me, of course. I will be beside the crater, looking down at the destruction she has wrought because despite all of this, my other sister doesn’t want me dead. I am, after all, not just her twin but her life support system. Without me, she would wither away to a small mass of skin and bone and hair. No teeth. So she will keep me alive so long as she has her fun, and her fun doesn’t stop with my sister, oh no. I try not to think about what happened to Maria. Her name is tolling in my head like a bell.
I can’t think about it. I can’t. One step at a time. Literally.
I rise to my feet. I haven’t thought about how to open the door yet. I just need to get across the room. One step. At a time. I begin to walk, my legs feeling as long and wooden as telegraph poles. Blood is still oozing out of the hole Andrew drilled in my forehead. It drips off my chin and stains the front of my T-shirt. If I put my hand to it, I can feel it like a tiny dimple, pulsing under my fingertip. I stumble and fall forward, onto my knees. Pain rips through me like an electric shock. I make a noise like a barking dog, instantly slapping a hand over my mouth to muffle the sound.Not a sound or I’ll put it through her fucking eye, Andrew had said. I hope they didn’t hear me.
I figure I can crawl the rest of the way to the door. It’s not far. It is a hundred miles. I look down. Blood patters. When I look up, the door is swinging open. The hallway beyond it is dark. I can see thekey protruding from the lock on the other side of the door, but no one is standing there. Confused, I crawl to the doorway and peer outside. Here, I can hear the voices downstairs more clearly. I want to call out to my sister but I resist the urge. Andrew still has that bone drill in his hand, after all. Instead, I begin to crawl down the hallway, feeling the worn flooring beneath my hands, grit and dust. There are mushrooms springing up here too, tiny pinprick fungi between the warp and weft of the ancient carpet. I don’t stop to examine them. I’m trying to listen to what they are saying to each other down there.
Andrew takes another step down. Now there is only one stair separating them. Cathy wishes she had a weapon. A big stick. Something she could swing.
“You know something I discovered when I went into your parents’ house, Cathy? How invisible you are.”
“Oh my God, it wasyou!” She points at him. “You put the cats in the suitcase!”
“Yup. Horrible fucking things had me sneezing like crazy. While I was there, I found your mother’s keepsake boxes stashed in one of the cupboards. I’ve got a keepsake box myself, by the way. I understand holding on to things you treasure. For your mum, that means newspaper clippings and rosettes and cat photos, doesn’t it? Snow globes from all the countries they visit on their cruises, old matchbooks from hotels. Hazel has her own box, full of stuff from her childhood. A lock of hair, a sleep suit. They’re all labeled too: ‘Hazel’s first tooth.’ ‘Hazel, Last Day of Primary School.’ There’s even the little bracelet they put on her in the hospital when she was born. Tiny little thing it was. No box for you, though, Cathy. Sure, Ifound a couple of things in a padded envelope near the back of the cupboard. Some photos of you as a little girl, a card of pressed flowers you’d made for Mother’s Day. But otherwise, you’re a footnote in the family history. Doesn’t it bother you?”
Cathy is horrified to find herself close to tears. He’s articulating something she’s always felt, ever since the day her parents brought Hazel home swaddled in a soft green blanket. Over the years, that feeling has deepened, especially after Hazel went into hospital for her operation. After that, Cathy might as well have not even existed. She blinks, her guts strange and soupy, like she might be getting sick. It’s shame, the slow-acting poison.
Andrew tilts his head. He’s not done yet. “Talking of break-ins, what about that window of yours? Is it fixed yet?”
Coldness tightens icy manacles around her. The boot print on the sill, the strange metallic smell of Scout that morning. Unfamiliar, a changeling child. Anger is beginning to boil inside her.
She takes a step toward him. “You?”
“That little one of yours is a big crier. You don’t want that for boys, Cathy. You want strength. Courage. You don’t want to raise another sissy.”
Her mouth floods with an acrid, sour taste. Like sucking burnt matches. She can’t help herself. It’s a cyclone of rage, fueled by fear and panic and exhaustion. She stalks the few short paces to where Andrew is standing on the riser, a look of mild amusement sketched on his face.
“You stay away from my family, you creepy little fuck.”
“Louder,” he whispers, leering forward. “I want her to hear you scream.”
He lifts his hand, and Cathy has time to think,Oh shit, he’s got a knife, and then he is swinging it down in a swift arc, the smile onhis face wide enough to crack rocks as it sinks into Cathy’s cheek. She does scream then, jumping back with her hands clutching her face, pulses of blood seeping through her fingers. Andrew, still leering, still grinning, flashing his yellowing teeth as he advances toward Cathy, that metal spike protruding from his fist like a knitting needle.
When I hear my sister start screaming, I feel as though someone is pouring ice down my back. I scurry the last few meters to the top of the stairs in a half crouch, clinging to the banisters.
Down there in the hallway, Andrew has Cathy pinned facedown to the floor. She is twisting her body in an effort to roll away, but his hand has snagged and twisted the collar of her T-shirt. His strong, limber arm snakes tightly around Cathy’s neck, pulling her head off the floor and cutting off her windpipe. She makes a sharp, gutturalhnng!sound and I am filled with despair. I stumble down the stairs at the same time as Suzie is running toward them, teeth bared, leaping onto Andrew’s back with clawed hands. There is blood on Cathy’s hands as she tries to beat them against him. Blood in her beautiful blond hair. One of her earrings is lying on the ground, catching the light. I’m not going to make it. I feel so heavy, like I’m walking underwater, and the sound she is making is now a thin whistle, like a punctured tire. The front door swings wide open, hard enough to knock a dent in the plaster of the wall. Squalling wind carries snow inside, the scent of pine so strong I feel it hit my chest like a bullet.
That pattering, getting louder. All that blood, running right out of me, only it’s not blood, I realize, it’s the sound of feet, moving fast across the floor. It’s Maria, sprinting through the front doortoward her brother like a creature possessed. Her face is twisted into something I don’t recognize; a feral creature, snarling. I have enough time to yell before Maria’s scream of triumph and rage blocks out all other sound.
Andrew rears up like a cobra, flinging Suzie off his back. She lands awkwardly with a sharp crack of bone. Maria is holding something in both hands, swinging it through the air. I see the white flailing shape sketching a long arc downward just before the stryker hits Andrew high on his temple. The impact is a sound like a foot through a frozen puddle, wet and brittle, the crack of slushy ice. Andrew makes a low gurgling noise as he leans sideways, the drill bit falling softly from his limp fingers. Maria sucks in a long breath, her skin red and chapped with the cold. She is trembling all over, and even at this distance, I can see the thin crust of ice on her eyelashes and brows. Wet clothes hang from her skeletal frame. She looks up at me and grins, feverish.
“Did you see, Hazel? It worked. The stryker worked!”
I nod. I feel like laughing, but I don’t have the strength, so I simply let my legs give way and sit abruptly on the step, hugging my knees against me. Cathy looks up. She sees me and doesn’t see me. There is no immediate recognition on her face. I don’t blame her. I’ve lost a lot of weight, I’ve had my head shaved, and although I haven’t checked in any mirrors lately, I think there is a lot of blood drying to thin scales all over my face right now. I must look nightmarish.
“Hazel? Is that you? Oh man, what has he done to you?”