Chapter 16
Vail
Dodie was screaming.
I was awake and out of bed before I fully registered what the sound was. I staggered to my bedroom door as a crash sounded in the hall, followed by a hard thump. My little sister screamed again, then again, the same word. “Ben!”
It was dark. I slapped the wall, looking for a light switch. Down the hall, another door opened and Violet’s voice shouted, “Dodie?”
I smacked the switch in time to see Dodie run to the landing, then start down the stairs. She screamed again, and then she tripped, her feet sliding from under her as she clutched the railing. She twisted, holding on to the railing for a second, and then she let go.
Violet flew after her, calling her name.
I descended to see Dodie sitting on the bottom step in pajama pants and an old sleeveless shirt, her arms wrapped around her knees.
A red mark flared on her skin where her elbow had hit the floor.
Her dark hair was a feral mess, her eyes wild.
She gave an agonized wail, then dropped her head and started weeping, her shoulders heaving.
Violet and I exchanged an alarmed look. Violet tied her robe snugly around herself and lowered to the step next to Dodie, putting an arm around her shoulders. Dodie was definitely not herself, because instead of pulling away, she leaned into Violet, shuddering as she wept.
I moved past them on the stairs and stood in front of Dodie, where I squatted on my haunches in my sweatpants and tee. With her head down, I couldn’t see her face. “What happened?” I asked her, my voice a rasp.
I didn’t think she would answer. She seemed lost somewhere, folded inside herself.
She was the only one of us to have outbursts like this as a child.
Dodie could spit anger, weep, or laugh herself to tears when the mood struck her, while Violet and I never could.
Violet always felt too responsible to let go, and I simply shut my feelings off, flipped them like a fuse switch.
Part of me had envied Dodie’s wild ability to scream.
Violet patted Dodie’s shoulder awkwardly, then patted her back. She didn’t seem to know what to say, either. We Esmies were bad with physical comfort.
Dodie lifted her chin enough to speak. “I felt him.” The words came out in a gasp, and Violet’s hand stilled. “I felt him, Vail. I felt him. There was so much water.” She looked down at herself, brushing a hand over her shirt, which was dry. “I felt him,” she repeated to herself.
I reached out and took her wrist, pressing my fingers to the pulse there beneath the tissue paper of skin. Dodie’s flesh was freakishly cold, but her pulse was racing, and I dug my fingers gently against the delicate bones as if I could pry the truth from them. “Tell me,” I said.
She inhaled shakily, her head still lowered. “He was in my bed. And then he ran out the door and down—” She closed her eyes. “He said my name. And ‘Find me.’ ”
So Ben was playing a game, then. I knew his games. I kept my excitement down by force of will. “Where did he go?”
Dodie pointed past us in the direction of the dark kitchen, the dark living room.
I met Violet’s gaze briefly again, then stood. I turned and walked into the darkness.
The kitchen was silent. Nothing moved. I didn’t reach to the wall for the light switch. Hide-and-seek was always better played in the shadows, where the darkness gave more places to hide.
In the faint glow of moonlight through the kitchen window, I could see a gleam on the top of the stove, the flat surface of the kitchen table. A glass Violet had left on the counter after she drank some water. I listened for a rustle, a breath. Where could a little boy hide in here?
I had been It that day. I had been fourteen, and we’d drawn straws, and I’d drawn the short straw, which meant I was It. I was It now. The silence felt like a held breath.
“Ben?” I called softly. “Where are you hiding?”
Silence.
“I’ll find you,” I said, my voice falling into the croon I’d used twenty years ago, a singsong lilt I had never used since. “It’s only a matter of time.”
I couldn’t hear Dodie’s sobs anymore. I was back to that day, the snow falling past the windows in huge wet flakes, the chill in the air because this house never got truly warm in winter.
The smell of woodsmoke coming from a neighboring house.
The blanketing silence that came with heavy snowfall, as if the entire world was hushed.
I bent and opened the lower cupboards, one by one, my hands sure in the dark. Those were easiest for a six-year-old to climb into. He could push aside some stale boxes of cereal, some dusty old pots that no one ever cooked with, and curl up. But he wasn’t there.
Still crouching low, I checked under the table. Then I moved to the pantry and opened the door. “Ben?”
Nothing. Empty air, the handful of canned goods I’d bought, a stale smell of old floor wax. No Ben.
You’re failing, I thought. You won’t find him in time.
I left the door open and turned.
I hadn’t found Ben in time. I was It—I was the one who was supposed to find him, but I hadn’t. He’d fallen somewhere, or gotten trapped, or hit his head, and the one who was supposed to find him never had.
All of this was my fault. All of it.
I left the kitchen, still finding my way easily in the dark.
I paused at the cubbyhole under the stairs, which Ben had loved to hide in.
Dodie had hidden there that last day. I knew from my initial reconnaissance of the house that the cubby had been stuffed with a box of old junk, but I checked it anyway.
My hand slid over the box, over its edges.
There was nothing else in there. I closed the door and turned to the living room.
There were more corners in here, more pitch-black spaces a little boy might hide in.
The living room was large and oddly shaped, and the furniture didn’t fit into every corner.
I touched the back of the sofa, feeling my way.
I crouched to look beneath a side table. I called for my little brother again.
Failing. You are failing. Again. Like you’ve failed at everything.
I’d been a diver for a while, after Ben was gone. I had the build for it, and people said I was pretty good. It was something to do. It took time before I realized that all I wanted was to crash into the water and break my neck, every single time I jumped.
Diving felt different after that. I started to think I might do it—dive into a shallow pool, or an empty one. Dive off a bridge, or from a window. Execute perfect form on the way down.
I quit diving.
When I stood, I realized I could see my hand when I held it up.
It was hours from dawn. The light was bright, white, unnatural. There was no window in this room.
Do you see lights? I’d asked Charles Zimmer in Sacramento, just a few days ago.
And his answer: Yes. They’re blinding, right in my eyes.
Light flared, and I flinched back. From the pitch-darkness, now I could see everything—every corner of the room as bright as an operating theater.
I’d dreamed this so many times as a child. Dreamed it over and over again in this house in the middle of the night. The light from nowhere, someone standing over me. The tall form peering down, staring at me, its face in shadow. The figure stared at me, and I couldn’t move—
“Ben!” I called out, but he didn’t answer.
Something flitted beside me, and I turned.
A shadow, long and thin. An arm reached out like a whip and a hand gripped my throat, icy and raw.
The thing pulled me toward it. It was as real as any physical hand I’d ever felt, bones and hard flesh, cruel tendons twisting the thumb and digging it into the soft spot below my jaw. I felt the scrape of a ragged nail.
“Wake up,” the thing said in my ear, its voice a rasp.
I gasped as it squeezed harder, as the light flared in my eyes.
“Wake up,” it said again, and this time I could feel its breath, smell something rancid and undead. My stomach turned as I reached a hand down and grabbed for something, anything.
The hand, its fingers mere bones and skin, wrapped tighter around my throat as the thing leaned in. “Wake—”
I spun, swinging my arm with all of my strength, the power and precision I’d once used to slice into the water. My arms were long, and my aim didn’t miss. Precision like an arrow, that was what you needed to be a diver. I hit with everything I had.
I hit something corporeal—there was no question there was a grisly thump. The grip on my throat loosened. I swung again, and I hit it—whatever it was—again. There was a cold clicking sound, and the hand let go.
The lights went out. The only sound was the hiss of my breath and the clatter of the vase as the broken shards of it dropped to the floor.
Darkness, and then a light went on—the overhead light this time, its familiar jaundiced yellow. Violet stood in the doorway, Dodie behind her.
“Did you see it?” My voice was hoarse as I spun in place. I scrubbed a hand over my throat, over my chilled skin. “Did you see the lights? I hit it. Did you see where it went?”
My sisters didn’t answer. Violet’s gaze was fixed past my shoulder. Dodie looked there, too, and her hands went to her mouth.
I turned. In the glow of the overhead light, I saw the wall, papered in a pattern of cream and soft blue. The colors were marred with red letters scrawled in two words. A red crayon—from the attic—lay discarded on the floor.
The three of us were silent as we read those two words over and over.
WAKE UP.