Chapter 41
In the darkness, I can smell the blood trickling down my face. It is the scent of salt and copper coins held in hot hands. There is no pain, but a band of pressure wraps around my skull as if I am wearing an iron hat, too tight. Like my brain is being squeezed out of my ears.
“It’s the fuse box,” I hear Andrew grunt. “The switch has tripped, that’s all.”
The drill died when the lights had pitched out, but by then he’d already made his mark. How deep, I don’t know, but there is a steady pattering sound on the tarpaulin that I think is dripping blood. I turn my head, trying to follow Andrew’s shuffling footsteps. A clank of metal, a sigh.
“Wait here.”
More shuffling. I see a patch of grainy darkness open up, straight lines carved out of the shadows.
Footfalls, creaking floorboards. He’s opening the door.
I slide my feet along the tarpaulin. They squeak.
The wound in my forehead throbs in time with my pulse.
Is there a hole in my head? It feels like there might be.
I don’t know how much damage he’s done, but I can’t seem to think straight.
Maybe it’s shock. Adrenaline. Abigail—She had no face!
She had no FACE!—with her mirrored, glassy eyes.
His footsteps descend the stairs.
I switch my head around, trying to get my bearings.
There is a gurgling sound in my skull like liquid sloshing in a container.
Uh-oh, I think. Still, no pain. The shower cap is filling with blood.
It crinkles noisily. I tug against my restraints.
First I try to twist my wrists free, but it feels like I’m only succeeding in working the knots tighter.
I tentatively lean forward, trying to reach the rubber ties with my mouth.
Pain lances the center of my forehead. The room spins woozily around. That pattering sound increases.
Okay, I tell myself, take it easy or you’ll pass out.
But I don’t have time to take it easy. Andrew could get the power back on any minute, and then I’m fucked, well and truly.
I bend to my wrists again, this time ignoring the ugly sloshing sound between my ears, like liquid in a jar.
Another bolt of pain announces itself and I realize that shock has buffered me from the worst of it.
Now the hurt is circling. Closer and closer, high and shrill as a whistle.
Please, God, just let me loosen it, I think, taking the fat little knot between my teeth and working my jaw from side to side. Just enough to pull my hand free.
Downstairs, a door slams. At the same time, I feel the knot slacken, just a little.
I turn my wrist, testing it. Is there more movement than there was before?
It feels like it. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking.
I lower my head to get a better grip, and this time the sloshing is accompanied by an ugly grinding, like stones rubbing together.
I’ll grind your bones to make my bread, I think, snickering to myself.
It is not a sane sound, and after a beat, something in the darkness laughs back.
It sounds like an owl, hooting. I stare into the shadows as a swampy yellow eye emerges like a drifting moon.
Fee-fi-fo-fum
My mouth is full of the taste of rubber, bitter and chemical. I feel the knot give a little, and this time when I draw my hand toward me I can pull it nearly all the way past the wrist. My heart leaps.
I smell the blood of an Englishman
I close my eyes. The knot is loosening, losing its grip. I just have to work it a little more.
Be she alive or be she dead
She has grown even taller, rising almost all the way up to the ceiling.
Strands of hair brush against me like static.
The stench of her is overpowering, noxious.
Steeped in filth, like lifting a stained and waterlogged mattress to reveal thick, ripe mold growing beneath. Coils of dread tighten around me.
I’ll grind her bones to make my bread
The flat sheen of her eye is a dirty yellow lantern. It illuminates her open mouth, the black ruin ringed by the sockets of her toothless gums. I remember how she had stood over Maria in her last moments, and something tears open in my chest.
Then, a solid-sounding thunk! and the lights flicker on.
Overhead, the bulb buzzes. The light increases slowly, thin and watery.
My other sister is nowhere to be seen, but there are dozens of mushrooms where she had stood, black and wet and sinuous.
I tug at the rubber with clenched teeth, biting back a scream of frustration.
Footsteps downstairs, that dull, heavy tread of his work boots.
I tug my wrist so hard that the skin on the back of my hand rumples like fabric. I’d tear it off myself if I could.
“Come! On!” I urge, spitting through gritted teeth.
I lean my head back, vision muddied with blood.
Footsteps on the stairs. That grim whistling that makes my teeth itch.
A last push, digging my heels into the floor, and my hand pops free of the rubber tie like a cork from a bottle.
I’m driven backward by the force, but I don’t have time to examine it or wait for the room to stop spinning.
I scrabble at my other hand, picking apart the knot as I hear Andew’s footsteps reach the top of the stairs.
With both hands free, I reach for the ties around my ankles, but he is already coming down the hall.
Unhurried. Sure of himself. His shadow appears on the wall outside the room, freakishly long. He continues to whistle.
Banging downstairs draws my attention. I sit up straight in my chair, ears pricked. My heart is beating against my throat. In the hallway Andrew’s shadow stiffens. He leans over the banister to look down the stairwell.
Bang! Bang! Harder now. Someone is down there, hitting the front door with the palm of their hand.
My first instinct is fear. I have an image of such startling clarity that I actually shrink backward into my chair.
It’s the women he buried in the woods. They have come to take me with them.
I can picture them out on the porch, the wind playing with their fine, stringy hair, long teeth chattering in hollow faces. Empty eye sockets rimed with mold.
The dead are here.
Andrew appears in the doorway. His face is flushed with anger, a dull, brick red.
His eyes are slitted, lips drawn away from his teeth.
He looks murderous as he picks up the drill and unscrews that long metal tip.
Downstairs, the banging has stopped, but now there is something else, something that drives a nail of ice right into my chest. The click of the front door opening and a familiar voice calling out.
“Hello! Anyone here? I’m looking for my sister!”
Andrew’s head snaps up. As soon as I open my mouth to respond, he presses a finger to his lips, showing me that needlelike bone drill in his hand.
“Not a word, Hazel,” he growls, shaking his head. “Or I’ll put it through her fucking eye.”
He closes the door and I hear the lock turning before I can even take a breath.
Hearing Cathy’s voice had made my heart soar, but almost immediately I am overwhelmed with desperation and fear.
It’s the strangest feeling, that high-low sensation.
Like jumping into a lake only to discover blooms of jellyfish just beneath the surface.
I start tugging at the rubber hose tying my ankles to the chair, straining my ears to listen.
I can hear voices in the hallway, a babble of sound but no words.
It doesn’t sound confrontational, but it’s hard to tell.
With Cathy, there’s a very fine line between friendly and combative, and oh God, I miss her so much. I have to get down there.
I have to get down there.
“Stop it,” I mutter.
My other sister has always been able to guess at my thoughts, more so when I was a little girl and my intentions were always impossible to conceal. It’s irritating, but not new. Then I realize what she is saying and I snap my head up, letting the rubber tube fall away from my hand.
“No.” This time I say it out loud, firmly. “No, no, you don’t go down there. You stay here, you leave her alone!”
For a moment, there is only that ominous sensation of being watched.
It has a heaviness, like the pressure in deep water.
I twist my head around, scanning the room.
Her voice is very clear, but of course, she has changed so much these last few days.
I’m not sure I can contain her anymore. She is unchained, feral.
More adept. I feel the tickle of hair on the back of my neck and groan with dismay as I look directly upward into a vast sprawl of knotted hair encompassing the entire ceiling.
In the center of it is a golden, gelatinous eye. It blinks.
I have to get down there.
Cathy stands in the hallway, looking at the man coming down the stairs. He looks amused but not welcoming, and as his eyes slide to Suzie hovering behind her, he seems to nod as if satisfied.
“Cathy! Third time’s the charm, right? And you’ve brought your friend along.” He peers at his naked wrist in a pretense of checking the time. “But it’s late to be out, girls. Especially on a snowy night. So, you want to tell me why you’re here?”
Cathy wishes she’d smoked a cigarette before coming inside. Her heart feels like it is drilling out of her chest.
“My sister was last seen getting into your truck the day she went missing. You knew I was looking for her, and yet you never told me about it. You never said a fucking thing.”
Andrew nods, taking a step downward. His gaze shifts past Cathy to where Suzie is standing. “Hey, I know you! You work in the pharmacy. You know, one thing about Idless is that you can’t move without bumping into someone you know. It’s fucking dreadful.”
Suzie draws up beside Cathy, her chin lifted. If it wasn’t for the tremor in her voice, Cathy thinks, you’d almost believe she wasn’t afraid.