Chapter Four
There’s no TV or radio in the room, nothing to drown out the wailing of the wind or her own flailing thoughts.
The house makes noises, too, keeping her awake with its unfamiliar song.
Hardwood squawks, windows creak, radiators clunk and rattle.
Footsteps pace nearby, and she can’t tell if it’s upstairs or downstairs or just outside her door.
When Sarah finally sleeps, it’s with the knife under her pillow.
Daylight shining from the room’s front windows rouses her in the morning.
She thrashes in the strange bed, struggling under the weight of the quilt.
Then she remembers she’s alone. Alone, alone, alone.
The word sings in her head along with the wind.
Alone save for the two strangers outside her room.
She scrambles out of the bed and plods to the bathroom. The whole house must hear the floorboards warping, the toilet flushing, the pipes grousing. If the brothers have forgotten her presence, she must sound like their father’s ghost.
A soft knock sounds on the bedroom door. “Good morning, Sarah,” Caleb says. “Would you like breakfast? I can bring you coffee and muffins. Do you have any allergies or dietary needs?”
“Yes, please,” she says. “And no, I don’t. Thank you.”
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Milk and no sugar, please.”
She buries the knife at the bottom of her backpack and changes into her clothes. Her pink hoodie is dry, so she puts it on as she’s got nothing else warm. At least in daylight, Ben’s blood is barely visible.
She tucks the piece of paper with Graham’s number on it in her pocket in case she gets the chance to charge her phone.
When Caleb’s powerful tread rises on the stairs again, she rakes her fingers through her hair in front of the vanity mirror.
Thank goodness for the mask to hide her makeup-free face.
If only it could hide the dark circles under her eyes from months of restless sleeping.
A knock sounds again. “Room service,” Caleb says cheerily.
Sarah smooths down her sweatshirt and opens the door. Caleb breezes in and places a laden tray on the vanity. The scent of coffee and aftershave is intoxicating, and she wonders if Caleb’s cheeks are smooth under the mask today.
“Are you sure I can’t at least pay you for the food?” Sarah says.
“Don’t worry about it. I bet you don’t eat half of what Elijah does. Hang on a sec.”
He slips out of the room and returns with a stack of books, setting them on the vanity beside the tray.
“Not sure if these are your thing, but you said you were a writer. I’m afraid it’s all we have in way of entertainment.
We don’t have wifi and the only TV is downstairs.
” He shrugs apologetically. “There was never any point in getting internet up here when we spent all our waking hours at the motel.”
Sarah crosses to the vanity and inspects the spines.
Bulfinch’s Mythology. Jane Eyre. Heart of Darkness.
Macbeth. The Tempest. She opens the front cover of Bulfinch’s and reads Jacob Vass incised on the flyleaf in stark black ink.
Another white man with a Biblical name. Although she supposes her name’s from the Bible, too.
She must have frowned because Caleb’s eyes crinkle. “I bet you’re wondering why a small-town hick like me has these. Mom taught high school English, and Dad had a thing for ancient Greece. And yes, I actually have read—Hold on.”
Caleb pulls a vibrating cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans. “Hi, Uncle Isaac. Yeah, I brought her up to the house. I put her in Dad’s room. We’ll be safe.”
Safe from the vandals or safe from her? Sarah shapes her face into a pleasant expression, so he can see she’s not a threat.
“What’s that? Fuck. Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
He tucks the phone back into his jeans. “Shit. Kaylee Brighton’s been spotted at the drugstore. She’s supposed to stay home since she snuck off to a clandestine party in Huntsville last week. I have to help Uncle Isaac reinforce her quarantine.”
Sarah remembers the plywood in the back of his truck, and she suddenly doesn’t feel like eating.
“I’ll be back by lunchtime. Do you eat burgers? Sal’s in town has the best bacon cheeseburgers. I can grab us takeout.”
“Sure.” It sounds good, but it’s not like she has much choice.
“Great.” His eyes sparkle above his mask as if they’ve just made a date, and Sarah’s stomach warms.
Until he adds, “Lock the door and don’t leave the room,” and she remembers why she’s really here. Her skin crawls as she imagines him hammering plywood across the doorframe, the brute strength of his arms driving in the nails one by one.
When she stands in the front window, picking at a muffin and watching the truck drive away, she realizes she forgot to ask him for a phone charger.
The wind surges, battering against the windows like a bird fighting its reflection.
Sarah picks up The Tempest and the mug of coffee and sinks into the recliner.
Caleb’s mother has written Meredith Vass on the inside cover in the neat handwriting Sarah would expect from a teacher.
The name suits the delicate woman in the photo on the vanity.
Sarah flips the page to Act 1. She doesn’t need the CliffsNotes to know she’s Ferdinand, washed up on this unexpected island.
As she turns the pages, she smells tobacco, so faint she’s not sure she’s imagining it.
The sickly sweet scent pricks her nose and sends the hairs on her arms rising.
She squirms in the chair, the air suddenly sucked out of the room like it did every time Ben entered.
Her lungs strain to breathe, her senses convinced someone is looming behind her.
Caleb’s father, reading over her shoulder.
She tosses the book on the bed and springs out of the recliner, heart racing.
She’s alone, save for the shrieking wind. The house, though, is silent. Caleb’s brother, Elijah, must be asleep. No ghosts stirring, except for the ones in her head.
Rattled and reluctant to sit any longer, she unlocks the door.
She can’t be carrying the virus. Since the start of the pandemic, she’s barely interacted with anyone other than Ben.
It’s been months, and neither she nor Ben have even gotten a cold.
She’ll just have a quick look for a phone charger.
Caleb has a cell, so there must be one lying around.
She won’t rifle through papers or open any drawers, nothing that would violate his privacy.
If she doesn’t see one, she’ll return to her room like a good girl, and no one will be the wiser.
Sarah puts on her mask, slips her dead phone into her pocket, and steps into the hallway with her half-empty coffee mug. If anyone catches her outside her room, she can say she was hoping for a refill.
There are two doors ahead, one closed and one open.
Elijah must be sleeping behind the closed door.
She doesn’t want to wake him; she’ll have to peek into Caleb’s room another time.
She’s afraid to, anyway, in case she finds something that’ll make her dislike him, like a stack of porn magazines or the same World War II history books Ben owned.
She tiptoes down the stairs, breath straining behind her mask with the effort to keep quiet, and finds the kitchen.
It’s as outdated as the rest of the house.
Rustic wooden cabinets, brown patterned linoleum, a backsplash of orange and white tiles.
Sarah almost laughs out loud at the beige rotary phone hanging on the floral wallpaper.
She picks up the receiver, but remembers Graham’s cell still has a Toronto area code.
She reluctantly puts it back. Nice girls don’t make long-distance calls without asking, and being nice is how she’s survived this far.
She locates the coffeemaker, the carafe blessedly half full and the heating element powered on.
She refills her mug and then locates the milk.
The fridge holds mostly convenience foods that can be eaten by hand.
Baby carrots, cold cuts, a grocery store rotisserie chicken, a leftover slice of pizza on a plastic-wrapped plate. Sarah smirks. A bachelor fridge.
No phone charger plugged into the outlet with the coffeemaker, however, or lying out on the table or laminate countertops.
She splashes milk in her coffee and slips off her mask to drink.
Sipping carefully, she wanders into the dining room, where a grandfather clock loudly echoes her fraught heartbeat.
The bite of furniture polish and tobacco lingers in the air.
She checks behind her shoulder for Caleb’s father again, but sees no one.
A bulky teak dining set squats in the middle of the room.
On one side, a matching hutch is stacked with books instead of the good china, mostly faded classics like the ones in her room and a few textbooks on hospitality management.
A cluster of framed photos face the hutch on the opposite wall.
Meredith Vass holding a baby on her lap.
A grim-faced elderly white couple. A pair of chestnut-haired boys standing in front of a Christmas tree, the older a lanky adolescent, the younger a chubby-cheeked toddler.
Next to them, in another photo, Jacob Vass lounges in the plaid recliner, a pipe jutting from one broad fist—identical to Caleb’s fists, Sarah notes—laughing so heartily the camera reveals the metal crowns at the back of his mouth.
Meredith perches on the arm of the recliner, hands crossed demurely, her own smile tight and close-mouthed. The smiles of the dead.
Sarah turns away from Caleb’s family and crosses the foyer to the front room.
It’s granny chic meets hunting lodge: wood paneling, floral upholstery encased in plastic slipcovers, and a stag’s head mounted on a wall.
Surprisingly the room doesn’t smell the way it looks; it smells faintly of bleach, like the motel.