Chapter 8
I start shaking just as the daylight is beginning to fade.
It’s a tremor so forceful that my legs give way and I can only curl up at the base of one of those stone pillars and wait for my heart to stop racing.
The rain has ceased, and now the sun is setting, turning the shadows beneath the trees to a deep, subterranean purple.
The mist is rising, and white moths bat against the window. My bones rattle with cold.
Suction. There. Do you see?
I stiffen. The voice is slurred but audible, like a drunk leaning in and whispering. My eyes peel open, but I am alone of course. The cellar is darkening, gloomy.
A mass of skin and bone and hair. No teeth. Oh my God!
My eyes search the corners where the shadows percolate. Is that a shape over there? It had looked like something was climbing the wall. I am cold to my bones.
Do you think it feels pain?
I feel like I am unraveling. I crawl over to the mattress, hauling the blanket up over my head to block out the voice.
The blanket smells musty but with a trace of soap powder, as if it has been washed, then stored in a cupboard.
I recognize the smell in a faint, vague way, like reaching for a word you can’t remember.
The surgeon’s hands were cold. They weighed me. I was no bigger than a walnut.
I tell myself I’m in shock. It can make you do funny things, shock.
Like the time my sister came off her bike at the bottom of Shooter’s Hill, bouncing along the warm asphalt like a boneless ragdoll.
She’d sat upright with her knees grazed like raw beef and her temple gushing blood and when she’d tried to stand up she’d said quietly, uh-oh, and started laughing, but her eyes had been as far away as the stars.
Or like Abigail, who’d stood in the doorway of the house on Beeker Street with a smile like shattered glass and her breath coming in big, whooping gulps like she was drowning.
Creak.
The sound of a weight settling above me. I slowly lower the covers, eyes wide and luminous in the dark. Outside, a round Samhain moon is rising over the trees, casting a pale blue light through the bars on the window. Soft and blue, like deep water. I release my breath.
Creak.
I stand up. I haven’t noticed Andrew come back, although of course that’s no guarantee that he isn’t in the house.
He’d already proved himself slippery, treacherous.
I move to the bottom of the stairs and peer up at the locked basement door.
I wish I had a weapon. Something good and heavy in my hands.
There is a soft susurration, like material dragged along the floorboards.
I see the handle of the door turning, but when I take a few quick steps upward it stops. I’m left waiting, breathless.
“Andrew?”
Is that a sound? A small laugh, or a sob on the other side of the door? A cough, quickly smothered? Is someone there?
“Andrew, please—if you can hear me—then I need my medicine. It’s—it’s dangerous for me to go too long without it.” A pause. “Is anyone there, hello?”
I wait a long time, enough that my breath turns to silver mist on the exhale and the dark grows so deep you could swim through it, and there is no reply.
By the time I turn away and head back into the cellar, my skin is goose bumpy all over and my stomach is rumbling.
Despite everything, I’m hungry, and so I turn to the shopping bag left for me in the alcove.
I hadn’t been able to face it earlier, but now I’m left with no choice.
I need to eat and I need to pee—in that order—and I’ve got a pretty good idea what this bag contains.
I tip it up and let the contents slide out onto the mattress.
Inside, there’s a few cereal bars, the kind you’d put in a lunch box, and a couple of bottles of water.
There’s also a toilet roll and a bar of soap, still in its packaging.
I open one of the bottles and drink the water in three quick gulps, wiping my hand across my mouth afterward.
My stomach instantly clenches, and I wonder if I’m about to be sick, but then the feeling passes and I’m simply left with a full bladder and a dull, aching hunger.
I polish off two of the cereal bars in quick succession and pee into the bucket, hating the clammy coldness that has crept silently in with the dark. Outside, an owl hoots, a lonely, solemn sound.
I find myself suddenly tired, unable to keep my head from drooping on my neck. My limbs are so heavy I can barely crawl onto the mattress, and as I find myself pitching forward into sleep, I imagine that voice again, so close now it is whispering in my ear.
You are not alone. You never were.