8. Calliope #2
This time Calypso breaks. “He put you in the hospital at three months pregnant.” She looks at me, trying to get me to understand something. But that part of me that was once connected to her remains quiet and broken.
Baby steps.
This is a total baby step.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her actually meaning it.
“Calypso has been kind enough to basically be my baby daddy for the last six months. I’ve even been working my way through a degree of my own.” She beams.
Again, I look at my sister. This woman who has the same face as me. The same DNA. The same blueprint.
I don’t know her at all.
Mable mashes a piece of donut into her own cheek and laughs about it.
I had a baby name picked out. I never told anyone. I’d say it sometimes in the car, just to hear it. I bury that thought back to where it belongs.
“What are you studying?”
“Oh.” She settles Mable on the floor between her legs where she sits on her feet like it’s a throne. “Accounting.”
Fuck she’s cute as hell.
“Oh?”
“I know it’s not glamorous or anything. Not like the museum,” she rushes out.
“Not that kind of oh,” I tell her. “Accountants make more than I do. I honestly just don’t know enough about it.”
Actually I was trying to figure out if she truly meant accountant or was just using it as a filler word. Like how strippers say they are an accountant. But they’re strippers.
But I guess you won’t be going to school for that.
“Now tell me about the three of them.” Her eyes brighten up.
“Oh. Them,” I deadpan because screw them.
I wanna know Madison’s life story. And Calypso’s.
A bang from somewhere inside the apartment cuts me off.
“The fuck?” I stand with my coffee because that is my emotional support coffee now.
“Stay,” Calypso says.
“It’s my apartment.”
“It’s three in the afternoon,” Madison whispers.
“I slept longer than I thought, but also what the fuck does the time have to do with anything. Not sure burglars give a fuck about the time of day here.”
They look at each other again.
I’m going to have to need therapy after this.
The bang comes again, this time from the direction of my bedroom. I grip my coffee cup tighter, the warmth seeping into my palms as my heart pounds. This is why I keep a baseball bat in the closet. Not that it would help much against a gun.
See I need that shotgun.
“Stay,” Calypso repeats, standing up with a strange confidence that makes me pause. “Let me check it out.” Something in her tone makes me stay put.
Madison scoops Mable up from the floor, holding her close to her chest. The baby’s eyes go round. Babies know.
“It’s my apartment,” I say again, but my legs don’t move. Except as she moves I growl a little and drag her back.
“What?” She rolls her eyes, looking at where I’m still clenching her hoodie.
“Just.” I hand her my coffee. Another crash. “Hide.”
I know where the sound is coming from. I head back to the hallway and look at the ceiling. All these apartments come with a crawlspace above for storage. I once thought it was the best thing ever. Until I crawled up there and realized it’s secretly a portal to hell.
Thud-thud-thud.
I look back at the girls, I know I’m shaking. But Calypso looks irritated and her phone is in her hands.
“Who the fuck are you gonna call?” I hiss.
She glances at her phone. There is a little head on it with no name, and just a number she must have had to dial in from memory. Weird.
“Ghostbusters,” Madison whispers, her eyes wide and her baby giving the hallway a dirty look. That or she’s pooping. Never can be sure with babies.
I look back at the hall. The little string dangles there like a temptation.
“This is ridiculous.” I swallow. “Probably a rat.”
“Godzilla rats,” Madison says.
I yank the string down and jump behind the wall.
What? Don’t judge me.
Calypso and Madison rush to my side and together we look around the corner.
Nothing.
“This feels a lot like the other night at the museum,” Calypso says.
“When you saw that naked guy?” Madison asks.
“You told her?”
“Madison is family.” Calypso doesn’t look at me.
Right. Family.
“I have to go up there.”
“Do you, though?” Madison asks. “You could move.”
“I sure the fuck cannot.” I crack my neck and look around for something to use as a weapon.
“It’s gotten awfully quiet up there,” Calypso says. “We should go together.”
“My apartment.” I snatch up a straw that’s been lying beside the television console for at least three weeks. “My intruder.”
When neither of them argues me further I creep toward the ladder and pull it down. The hinges shriek as it unfolds, making Mable cry.
“Shh, baby girl,” Madison whispers, bouncing her gently.
I stop with one foot on the first rung, the metal cold beneath my bare foot. “Maybe one of you should take her outside.”
“And leave you?” Calypso scoffs. “Not a chance.”
I climb, still clutching the straw like I might actually stab someone with it.
The opening above me is completely dark. I’ve only been up there once, when I moved in and shoved my winter clothes into storage bins. I remember the cobwebs. I remember them touching my face.
I shudder. I hope they’re magically gone.
“Hello?” I call out. “Is someone up there?”
Nothing.
Then something thumps softly in the dark.
I should have called the police. I should not be climbing into a crawlspace in pink-and-green pajamas armed with a drinking straw. There are several choices I could have made today, and somehow I’ve selected the worst one every single time.
I push the panel aside and haul myself up. Insulation scratches my arms as I crawl forward. The only light comes through the narrow ventilation gaps, laying thin stripes across the dark.
It smells like dust.
And metal.
“What do you see?” Calypso calls from below.
“Nothing yet.”
The insulation crunches beneath my knees. I try not to think about bugs. Or mice. Or anything else that might be living up here.
If I don’t think about them, they don’t exist.
That has never once been true, but I cling to it anyway.
Something moves ahead of me.
I freeze.
The metallic smell gets stronger. There’s something else beneath it now, cloying and rotten enough to turn my stomach.
“Calypso?” I whisper. “Pass me my phone. It’s on the counter.”
Her footsteps cross the room. A moment later, the glow of my screen appears through the opening.
“Here.”
I crawl backward without taking my eyes off the darkness. When I reach down, Calypso presses the phone into my hand. Her fingers squeeze mine once before letting go.
I switch on the flashlight.
The beam cuts across the crawlspace.
“Jesus Christ.”
A body is sprawled facedown across the insulation.
A man, judging by the size of him.
Then he moves.
I scream and scramble backward. My foot misses the rung, and I hit the floor ass-first as the ladder snaps shut above me.