Chapter 30
My teeth are chattering. I can’t seem to make them stop.
I tell myself it is the cold; the snow has been falling all night.
Drifts of it have backed up against the basement window, almost cutting off my view to the outside world.
Almost overnight, clusters of inky-black mushrooms have sprouted on the sill and around the bricked-up fireplace.
I don’t know what they are, and my book is upstairs in Maria’s room with the rest of my belongings.
Memories of the previous night circle like water round a drain.
Scout’s body, heavy in my arms. His lips, purple and bruised looking.
Round glassy eyes so like marbles I almost expected them to roll right out of his head.
I thought he was dead.
I don’t remember getting back into the cellar.
I’m lying on the damp mattress with a heaviness in my skull as if it weighs a hundred pounds.
I can’t tell how long I’ve been out—with this gray, unchanging light, it could be dusk or morning or anywhere in between—and there is a sharp pain on my neck where the needle went in.
I struggle to sit upright. It’s like moving through treacle.
My vision swims, rising and falling like flotsam on a tide.
I have sharp spokes of memory: pulling the hair spray from my pocket and flipping the lid with my thumb before lunging forward and spraying it directly into Andrew’s eyes.
He’d screamed, high and shrill, dropping Scout as he reached for his face with clawed hands.
Scout had slid beneath the surface as smooth and frictionless as oil, and I reached in for him before I’d even dropped the hair spray, saying his name over and over again in my panic.
Barefoot, I’d taken off at a run, through the door and down the hallway while Andrew shouted incoherently at my retreat.
Parts of this memory are blurred, like wet paint smeared with a thumb.
Parts of it, however, are startlingly clear.
Hyperreal. Scout, waterlogged in my arms. His eyes open, lips slack with shock.
I will see that face forever, burned onto my retinas like the afterimage of an eclipse.
“Hazel? Hazel, can you hear me? Please come upstairs.”
Maria is tapping at the cellar door. Andrew had locked it before he left, just as I was swimming out of my strange, chemical sleep.
I don’t know what had been in that hypodermic he’d stuck me with, but I can hazard a guess it was something else he’d stolen from Belle Vue.
I recognize this woozy, fluffy sensation from my early days there, the cold taste of it in my throat.
A mild sedative, they’d called it, just something to help you settle in. Like it was a martini.
“Can you hear me? Come and unlock the door. I’m frightened, Hazel. Please.”
I lie on the mattress with my hands folded over my chest. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to her, I just don’t want to move.
The sedative has nailed me here. Besides, the farther away from her I am, the better.
She’s in danger around me. Everyone is. I can’t contain my other sister anymore.
Two parts of the same monster, she’d said, and she was right.
After all, my hands are still stained with Maria’s blood.
I’d shoved open the door of Maria’s bedroom and headed straight for the huge wardrobe in the far corner, hauling the piles of clothes out so that I could clamber inside.
I’d rubbed Scout’s back as he’d started taking muffled little gulping breaths, stripping him out of his soaking wet Babygro and wrapping him in a T-shirt I found in what was left of the pile beneath me.
The wardrobe door was ajar, painting a strip of light on Scout’s pale face.
Give him to me.
My other sister’s muddy yellow eye had appeared in the gap. Her voice had been slippery, oily hands wrung together.
I’ll keep him warm.
Her mouth, opening as if it was on a hinge.
He’s my family too. Let me take care of him.
Her jaw widened, bigger and bigger and bigger, until it sagged to her chest. Inside, a cavern of raw flesh. Thick black gums, no teeth.
I’d leaned as close to the gap as I’d dared and whispered, “I’d rather kill him myself.”
You will Hazel. You will.
I wish she hadn’t said that. Because as soon as she did, I knew she was right. If Scout stayed with me, he would die. I wasn’t enough to keep him safe. I always hurt the ones I love, and sometimes they don’t recover from it.
“Please talk to me, Hazel.”
I should go up there. I know I should. She sounds so frightened, and after everything that happened, I’m not surprised.
I swing myself off the mattress, testing my legs can take my weight as I straighten up.
Outside, the snow has a hard, crystalline glitter, as if it has thawed and refrozen in the night.
I can see my breath as I move carefully across the room.
I notice more of those jet-black mushrooms growing out of the wall as I climb the stairs.
They ooze a rich, creamy liquid that I don’t want to touch.
They don’t look like anything I’ve seen before.
Something about them makes me not want to go near them.
“Hazel?”
“I’m here.” She sounds like she has been crying. “How’s your hand?”
“The blood has stopped but the pain is coming back. My brother said it will hurt like hell when the pills wear off.”
He’d given her a little white pill for the pain.
I don’t know what it was, but it had seemed to work quickly.
She’s such a tiny little thing, I’d told him, that if he got the dose wrong, he’d end up killing her.
Andrew had just stared at me from his bloodshot, streaming eyes, teeth clenched.
I should have known then that he would have something in that little medicine cabinet to knock me out. I should have seen it coming.
“You might need stitches. There was a lot of blood.”
“Stitches? Like with a needle?” She sounds so horrified that I almost smile.
“Yeah. You need to close the wound. Do you think your brother would take you to hospital?”
Ping. An idea then, not quite a light bulb over my head, but with my foggy thinking, I’ll take what I can get.
I still might have a chance of getting out of here.
“Hostipal?”
I’m not sure she’s even aware she’s saying it wrong. She sounds scared and breathless, but also a little woozy. She must be tired too. I doubt she got any sleep. I close my eyes, feeling my own head drooping. I am a heavy rock dropped into deep water. Sinking, sinking.
“Maybe. Your fingers are all broken, they might need to be in plaster. Splints, at the very least.”
“I don’t want to go to hostipal. My brother said people who go in there come out dead. Like our parents.”
Your parents were dead before they even got to the ambulance, honey, I think. But maybe your brother didn’t tell you that. Maybe he wanted to shield you from survivor’s guilt—after all, you lived.
“Your brother tells you all kinds of stuff, Maria. It doesn’t make any of it true.
You need a doctor. Sutures, at the very least.” I wince, remembering how her fingers had looked—like sausages with the skin split all the way down the middle.
“But the fact that you’re here talking to me means he’s not home. So where is he?”
“He took Scout away. It was still dark, but the snow had stopped.”
I stare at the wall, feeling clawed, full-throated panic threaten to overwhelm me. I fight to keep my voice steady. “Was he—Scout, I mean—was he still alive?”
“He was sleeping.”
Stomach acid burns my throat. “That doesn’t answer my question. Was he alive? Please, Maria, it’s important. Try to think.”
A silence follows, one in which I have to fight not to scream and drum my fists against the door. Seconds tick past. Finally, she says, “His hand.”
“Scout? What about his hand?”
“It opened, then closed. Like a fist.”
My heart soars. I can’t help it. Hope, the giant-killer. “Are you sure? Maria, are you positive?”
“Yes.” She doesn’t sound it. Her voice sounds wavering and weak, rising upward at the end of the word, turning it into a question.
But I have only that one word to cling to, so I grit my teeth and nod. Okay, I think. Okay.
“I’ll tell you something I noticed while I was in that bathroom, Maria.
There’s a little window right over the sink that isn’t boarded up.
I reckon I’m too big, but you? You could probably squeeze right through like toothpaste from a tube.
Have you ever thought about it? You could escape from here. Get help.”
“I can’t.” Her voice is so quiet that at first I think I hear only the wind. “There’s bad things in the woods. It’s a haunted place.”
“Is that what he tells you? Because you’re safer with whatever’s out there than you are in here, let me tell you that.
Have you forgotten that just a few hours ago he tried to drown my nephew?
That he stuck me with a fucking needle and took Scout right out of my hands?
” My voice is breaking up like an ice floe.
I’m shaking so hard I can feel my bones vibrating.
“A man who would do such a terrible thing is capable of anything, Maria, wouldn’t you agree? ”
“He won’t hurt Scout. Not now. He’s promised to take him right on home.”
I sniff, rubbing at my face. I feel bruised and tender and I keep seeing Scout’s gleaming blue eyes looking at me with horrible vacancy.
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t have much faith in what your brother says, Maria.”
“He will. You’ll see. I made a deal with him.”
I frown. “What sort of deal?”
A pause. I hear her sniff thickly. Her voice lowers. “Is she in there with you?”
I stare at the door with drugged, horrified fascination. I trace my finger along the old, knotted wood. I think I know the answer, but I’m compelled to ask the question anyway:
“Who do you mean?”
“The other one.”