Chapter 33 #2
“The smoke is terrible here—come on, we’ll go downstairs,” she announced.
The two of them moved toward the door, and I let them go.
I looked around the grandma’s living room.
I’d never been up here, but now I wondered why that was.
It seemed almost, homey, and smaller than I expected.
There was a little kitchenette with a mini fridge and microwave that I could see through the far door and then what looked like a couple of bedrooms off another hall.
And of course, the door to the roof, which would have looked like any other door, except it was now barred with a thick plank of wood hammered into the doorframe.
No one would be getting back onto the roof that way, at least not anytime soon.
My gaze drifted back over the walls and I frowned, peering a little closer.
The smoke hung heavily there, like it had been stuck to the walls.
I walked over and grimaced at the stench of it.
Cleaning this place was going to be a bitch.
But I realized that the smoke was adhering to the wall in actual patterns.
Patterns that looked like letters. Almost despite myself, I reached out, but I felt the heat from the walls a few feet away.
My fingers throbbed a little, and I remember the sting of my hands as I’d touched Grandma Kate.
Her clothes had been soaked as well, I assumed with water, but that didn’t make sense.
And she’d smelled sweet. I stood back and studied the wall, and finally—finally I could read what she’d written there, in a thin, spidery scrawl.
A chill skated over me, and something roiled in my stomach.
It read “Jesus.”
I took several steps back, my gaze sweeping the space. Instead of the expected epithets and curse words, the walls were covered in prayers, scratched in the hand of someone who’d actually been taught penmanship. But how could that be?
“Delia?”
I turned at Claire’s nervous voice and realized it was coming from the hallway. I ducked back out of Grandma Kate’s bedroom. The two of them hadn’t gotten far. They stood at the top of the stairs, and Aunt Emily had taken Claire’s hand and was stroking it, over and over again.
“You really do have pretty hands, such pretty hands.” Her actions grew harder as I approached, until I could tell her nails were scraping against Claire’s fingers, digging into the back of her hand.
“Ouch!” Claire tried to pull away, but Emily was faster. She jerked Claire’s hand toward the staircase, and the stairs seemed to surge up at the same time, although of course that was my own imagination.
“Emily.” I rushed forward, forcibly knocking the woman away from Claire.
Emily looked at me, startled and something wild and rough flashed in her gaze.
For a moment I thought she was going to fight back, and I squared up against her, ready to channel some of my spinning, chaotic energy into what I was meant to do.
But just that quickly she stepped away, deeper into the hallway past the stairs, her eyes sprouting big, wet tears.
“Oh my God!” she cried. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry! I don’t know—I don’t know what happened. It’s just this place—this miserable floor in this miserable place!”
Claire had yanked her hand back and was staring at Emily now, even as she started to rock a little on her feet, her fingers rhythmically rubbing the skin that Emily had stroked, as if Max’s aunt had somehow managed to rub some of her crazy onto her.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Emily cried, lifting her hands to either side of her head.
That rooted me to my place as well. My mind flashed to Mrs. Klein’s sister, Iris, ripping the hair from either side of her head in clumps, leaving behind an ugly welt that oozed blood.
I didn’t want Claire to see that, but when I reached for her, Claire spun away from me, too, her eyes wide, too wide, and glazed.
“What is this place, Delia?” she asked, her gaze darting from Emily to the open staircase she’d nearly been thrown down. “What happened here?”
I knew what she was asking. It was what everyone wanted to know.
Why them, why here, why now. Why, why, why.
No answers spun up from the empty blank space inside me, the space where answers had come before.
Had those answers always been the truth, though?
Right now, I didn’t care. They would have been better than the answers I came up with, the only option I could offer anyone, anymore.
“Nothing happened here, Claire, except some very unhappy people did some very unhappy things to each other. That wears on a place, on a house.” On a soul, I thought grimly, thinking of Joe.
“You know how you walk into your grandmother’s room back home?
Well, this isn’t so different from that.
It’s just a room with a lot of memories built up. ”
“Memories!” Emily practically spat the word, drawing our attention back. “Don’t talk to me about memories. Do you know the kinds of parties I was invited to, back when I was loved? None of you people could have gone to any of them.”
Claire and I exchanged a startled look. “Aunt Emily?” I tried, though she sure as hell wasn’t my aunt.
It seemed to work, though. She straightened tall in the corridor, her hands clasped to her heart. “I was the star. I was beautiful. I had my entire future in front of me and now—look at me.” She flung her arms wide. “I’m stuck here, tied like a fly on a string. And it will never let me go.”
Her crying started up in earnest then, and it was a fearsome sound, wet and long and loud, the sound of a child hoping for someone to come along and pick her up and comfort her. Only it was just Claire and me, and we couldn’t pick up anyone. Especially not a crazy anyone.
Claire finally seemed to gain some understanding of this, and her feet began to move. She shuffled a little closer to me, almost touching, as we watched Emily cry. Then we took a long, slow step toward the stairs.
Emily’s crying turned to shrieks. “No! You can’t leave me! You won’t!”
That was enough for us. As Emily burst after us, we turned and scrambled down the stairs, half-running, half-stumbling. Emily pounded down right on our heels, and I imagined her reaching for us, straining for us, and then we were onto the second floor and running hard.
“Max.” I fairly screamed the word and then he was there, rushing past us, strong and confident.
I stopped, and Claire came to a shaking halt beside me, gasping as we both turned—and saw Max with a crumpled Emily in his arms, Emily clinging to him like he was her savior, and Max awkwardly patting her, trying to disengage her but even more trying to give comfort as he half-turned to edge her back toward her own bedroom.
Over his shoulder, Emily lifted her head, her bleary eyes finding us almost drunkenly.
Then she smiled, triumphant.