Chapter 4
Ilie in bed with the lights off.
Dinner was hours ago and yet, I feel hungry. No, not hungry, ravenous.
The scratching is a metronome now. Not constant, but constant enough that it becomes my new normal, with the tambour like a memory of a heartbeat.
I keep waiting for it to become narrative, to scrape in a discernible rhythm, a promise to turn into words.
I should be able to sleep. People sleep in far worse conditions. Some have to sleep with the sounds of sirens and city noise right outside their windows all day and night, and yet I can’t stop my brain from focusing on it.
My windows are double-paned. The air hums.
The monster under my bed is polite, and remains inside the wall.
When I close my eyes, it moves closer. It is psychological, obviously. I am doing this to myself. This is the content of my character leaking out of my ears.
Fine.
I can weaponize that like anything else.
I will not give this sound my full attention, because fear is fed like a child.
I think about the school prom, about how I will arrange my hair and how I will choose my next victim now that Maya has been adequately dealt with.
I count, not sheep because that is exactly the wrong animal right now, but steps down the main staircase.
I am at twenty-two when I stop counting because I realize with horror that my hand is on something. Touching something.
My eyes snap open, but I’m too frozen in fear to move.
The doll is on my chest. The doll is on my fucking chest.
The weight of it pins me as surely as any intruder.
Its whiskers brush my chin, and the irritant of them is so shocking and precise it makes me gag.
My arms are by my sides, as if I arranged myself ready for a coffin.
I cannot remember getting up, I cannot remember opening the closet.
I cannot remember walking through the rectangle frame of the door at all.
I know I didn’t do this, I didn’t put this doll here.
I grip it with both hands and throw it as hard as I can.
It lands on the rug with a dull sound, like a human head hitting there instead of the wood.
It lies there, askew, with one stiff paw stuck up in the air.
I sit up, staring, as my heart does the sprint the rest of me refuses to make, and I say out loud, “No.”
My voice sounds strong, but my entire body is shaking.
The scratching in the wall pauses like a shy animal caught mid-chew.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand with such determination.
The room tilts, just the way it does when you have a fever.
I walk unsteadily to the doll and pick it up. I carry it back to the closet and put it away with such care that my hands feel like someone else’s; pushing, aligning, smoothing the ratty collar down around its rancid neck.
For a second I have an image of biting it, of taking it in my teeth and shaking it, and I am so disgusted with myself my vision whites out.
I close the closet door and turn the knob and then keep my hand there, gripping until the metal heat transfers to my skin, and I listen. I listen so intently.
No sound.
The scratching has stopped.
Relief is a cheap drug, immediate and bright.
I let out a laugh so small it could be an exhale. Good. That’s what I wanted. Everything in its place. Everything quiet. See how that works.