Chapter 17
I hold my breath until it burns my lungs. Even after I lower the paper, that word—hello—hangs in front of my eyes in the dark, like the afterimage of a camera flash. I turn toward the door.
“Hello? Is someone out there? Can you hear me?”
Silence. I wait, itching with impatience, trying not to look behind me down the stairs where the shadows are growing long. I haven’t forgotten about what I’d glimpsed in the corner, that thick nest of tangled hair, a gummy slot where a mouth should be.
“Did you want to talk to me? Can you answer?”
Silence. Irritation gathers like dust in my throat. I peer through the keyhole but see only the grimy wallpaper of the opposite wall.
“If you can hear me, then please help. My name is Hazel Maddon. I’m being held here against my will. I’m cold and I’m sick and I need a doctor. Do you understand? Please?”
A shadow flickers beneath the door. Then, a soft voice. A woman maybe, or a young girl. It’s hard to tell.
“The beginning is always today,” she tells me, and there’s something about it—that insipid, New Age wisdom—that almost stuns me into laughter. Instead, I decide to humor her, because what other choice do I have?
“Those are wise words.”
“There’ll be more tomorrow. Then more the day after.” Her voice is muffled. It takes me a moment to realize she is chewing.
“Are you eating?”
“Bread. Jam.”
“That sounds good.” I’m not trying to flatter her here; I really mean it. I’d take anything right now except a fucking cereal bar. “I used to have jam and peanut butter sandwiches when I was a little g—”
“You nearly broke down the door. I heard you! Bang! Bang! Bang! All the way from the upstairs!” When she laughs, it sounds so merry. “Were you trying to get out?”
“Yes! Yes, can you help me?”
“Oh no. That wouldn’t be safe.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re sick.”
I stare at the door, feeling like I’m going crazy. My voice hardens. “You’re safer in here with me than out there with him, I promise you.”
She giggles again. It’s a young, naive sound. “They all say that. Then he pulls all the devils out of their heads. Hey, look at this. Is this you?”
The change in conversation is so jarring that I can only stare as something else is slid beneath the door.
Another letter, I assume, but it isn’t. It is a photograph, folded to the size of a credit card.
I know what it is immediately, because it is mine.
I bristle with annoyance, which is such a futile emotion considering my situation, but there it is.
“Have you been going through my purse?”
“Who are these children?”
My mother had given me this picture a couple of years ago.
Just so you don’t forget what they look like, she’d fussed, passing it furtively over the table like it was money for drugs.
It was taken in my parents’ back garden and shows Cathy and her two boys in front of a large rhododendron bush, flowers bright, vivid as gossip.
I’d kept it in my purse ever since, because looking at it made my heart ache with dreadful longing.
Bitter as a pill stuck in my throat, slowly dissolving.
“The woman there is my sister, Cathy. Those two boys are her sons. Danny, he’s the oldest, and Scout is the baby.”
I try to pick up the photograph but there is resistance from the other side, as if she is holding on to it.
“You got any other sisters?”
A mass of skin and bone and hair. No teeth.
“No. Just Cathy. I was supposed to meet her yesterday. She’ll be wondering why I didn’t show.”
She chews loudly, with her mouth open. I think of floppy white bread, thickly buttered and dribbling with jam. My stomach rumbles.
“Don’t you have children?”
“No. Do you?”
She giggles again. “Don’t be silly, Hazel!”
“How do you know my name?”
“It was on your cards. Your purse cards.”
Oh yuh, I think, of course. Store cards, credit cards, payment slips. It’s all in there. Our lives are so exposed now, even down to the things we buy. That thought sparks something then, too fast and bright to examine. Like a synapse flaring in my brain. A receipt.
“Well, now you know who I am, can I ask who you are?”
“Maria.”
Maria, I think. I’ve heard that name recently.
“Maria is the name of a saint,” she continues in her sweet, lisping voice, “Maria Goretti. She was eleven when she died. They keep her remains in a glass coffin, like Snow White.”
“What is she the saint of?”
“Purity. Teenage girls. Chastity.”
I think immediately of the Spit then, of steamed-up windows and damp, probing tongues. I gasp.
“Oh my God. You’re his sister! Andrew told me you’d gone missing.”
“I did! They searched the woods for nine days with dogs and helicoppers, but it was my brother who found me in the end, hiding here in the farmhouse. He said I must have crawled in for shelter and survived on berries and mushrooms.”
I’m trying to calculate in my head, but it’s hard work. My brain feels like glue.
“You must be about Danny’s age now, then. He’s fifteen.”
“Close! I’m sixteen. I run small, though, like the rest of the family.”
Huh. I don’t know about that. Andrew is at least six foot two, maybe more. I don’t say that, though. That idea is forming, shapeless and transparent, but there all the same. Like an impression left in dough.
“Well, you know, I understand that. Cathy’s older than me, which makes me a little sister too. Like you.”
She laughs and I realize what it is that has struck me as odd.
I don’t have much experience with teens, but Maria sounds much younger than her given age—that babyish voice, the word she’d used, helicoppers, even the way she regularly interrupts, as if she isn’t used to holding an adult conversation.
“Tell me about him. The older one.”
“Danny? I haven’t … I haven’t seen him since he was ten.
” It’s a jolt, thinking of all that lost time, all that I’ve missed.
“I know he likes music and skateboarding and being with his friends. He’s a regular kid, pretty much.
When he was born, my sister wanted to call him Heath, after Heath Ledger, the actor, you know?
Cathy had a big crush on him at school. I don’t know why she went with Danny in the end, I don’t remember.
Danny’s good at art. He draws comics and big fantasy worlds that he populates with orcs and trolls and God knows what else.
He likes macaroni cheese that comes in the bags that you add hot water to and pizza and burgers. ”
I sniff loudly. I’m not crying, but I’m close to it. Behind me, a stair creaks. I look round, but the stairwell is empty. I wish it wasn’t quite so dark.
“Does he go to school?”
“Oh yeah. He’ll be finishing soon, though, I think. He’s got exams coming up.”
“What then?”
It’s so cold in here. I don’t know how I hadn’t felt it before. Adrenaline, probably. I shiver as the chill crawls slowly up my back.
“Uh, I don’t know, Maria. College, probably. But he’ll have to go to the city for that. After that, it’s university. I imagine he’ll move away then. Go out and see the world. That’s what me and my sister did.”
“You’ve seen the world?” The awe in her voice is unmistakable, and a little sad. There is a thud as she sits right up against the door, leaning so close I can hear her breathing.
“Well, some of it.”
“‘To travel is to live,’” Maria whispers, and I suppress a smile. More folksy wisdom. In the gathering dark behind me, there is a sound like rocks grinding together. A deep itch is embedded between my shoulder blades, as if something has pinned its filmy yellow gaze on me.
“Listen, Maria, I’d really like to get this photo back. Do you know what quid pro quo is?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“It means ‘this for that.’ So you give me the photo, and I give you something in return. Sound like a deal?”
“Like what?”
She sounds interested, eager. Good. I want to keep her onside.
I need an ally. I fish in my pocket for the packs of gum, drawing out that crumpled prescription I’d shoved in there when I’d seen Suzie behind the counter of the pharmacy.
I get that flash again, like a connection made in my brain.
The seed of an idea, not yet formed. I unwrap the packet of gum with my teeth, sliding a stick out.
“Here.” I slip it beneath the door. “Take it, it’s for you.”
Behind me, another creak, a heavy dragging sound. A harmless cluster of tissue about the size of a golf ball. That’s what they called the teratoma when they cut it out of me. I was lucky, they said. We don’t see this often. You’re one in a million.
“Don’t you want it, Maria?” Nothing. The stick of gum lies there, little foil wrapper just poking out under the sill. “You don’t like apple? You want the cherry?”
“What’s it do?”
“What does it do? It’s gum. You chew it.
You never had gum before?” The darkness is pressing at my back with a weight that crushes my lungs, making it hard to draw breath.
Every muscle is tense. “You just put it in your mouth and chew till the taste runs out. You don’t swallow it. It’s just flavor. It’s fun.”
“Okay.”
To my intense relief, the stick of gum disappears. I pull the photo toward me and hold it against my chest. I see the shadow stir beneath the door as Maria stands.
“Don’t be sad anymore,” she tells me airily. “My brother can cure you.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know what she expects. I listen to her footsteps moving away down the hall and I almost call out for her to come back. When I finally pluck up the courage to turn and face the stairwell, it is empty.