Chapter 3 Una #2
Una’s dream self yearned for her father to see her, to turn away from his brother and cast a smile in her direction.
The image shifted, and the little room in her amma’s turf house disappeared. Una and her father were on the deck of his fishing
boat. The sea was a wild stallion, bucking and kicking. Waves rose like mountains, blotting the horizon as they tried to soak
the clouds. White foam bubbled from the curling crests, making Una think of rabid animals. The only thing between her and
the hungry waves was the thick wood of Pappi’s boat.
Without warning, the bow dipped.
Una would’ve been thrown forward onto her face had she not grabbed a rope and wound it around and around her forearm.
Pappi shouted something, but Una couldn’t hear him over the banshee shriek of the wind. She turned his way, slitting her eyes
against the rain, and saw him gesture at the port side of the boat.
She followed his gaze but saw nothing but churning water. The sky had darkened to the same shade as the sea. The clouds were
thick as porridge.
When she looked back at her father, his mouth was stretched into an oval of fear.
He gesticulated at the port side again, his free hand clamped around the wheel. His leather gloves were gone, leaving his
bread-pale hands bare. The skin had peeled away from his knuckle bones, and they stuck out of his ruined hands like the spine
of a prehistoric lizard.
Una tried to scream, but the wind stole her voice before she could make a sound.
Pappi’s eyes rolled in their sockets. He stabbed his pointer finger into the air, wordlessly commanding Una to move, to release her rope and cross the heaving deck to the other side of the boat.
But Una’s body was like petrified wood. She just stood there, clinging to her rope, as the boat groaned and plunged into another
trough. Suddenly, the planks beneath her feet fell away until there was only air under her boots. She was weightless—an insect
frozen in ice—and then the deck came racing upward again, slamming into her feet, buckling her knees.
She heard a cry over the howl of the gale. Her father’s voice, sharp and urgent. “Svana!”
Una stared at him in horror. Her sister! Where was her sister?
She must be tangled in the netting!
Without a second thought, Una let go of the rope.
She immediately lost her footing. Sliding and scrambling, she practically rolled to the other side of the boat. Her stomach
lurched with the waves, and she lowered her head against the smack of sea spray. The jerking movement allowed her braid to
escape from beneath her oilskin coat. It writhed in the air like an agitated snake.
Svana.
Una pulled herself up to the rail and peered over the side of the boat.
Salt spray smacked her face, torturing her eyes with the needlelike sting of jellyfish, but she squeezed the water away until
she could see directly below her.
The nets were gone.
Svana was gone.
But something was there, just below the surface.
A mass of darkness, even blacker than the sea.
The mass was as big as a whale.
No. It was bigger.
Its teeth were not a whale’s teeth. This creature had rows and rows of long, pointed fangs. They looked like stalactites and stalagmites jutting out of its cave of a mouth. Its eyes were two black marbles, glinting with predatory hunger.
It held something in its octopus arms.
A girl.
Svana.
The monster stared up at Una, and she felt a biting cold course through her body. Frost crept into her blood. Her skin froze.
The air in her lungs turned to ice. Her heart stopped beating.
From a very great distance, a car door slammed, and Una jerked awake.
The dream was already out of reach as she blinked against the daylight. She unclicked her seat belt and waited for Don to
back his car out of the driveway before gathering her cleaning supplies and knocking on the Pulaskis’ front door.
“Halló!” she called out, cracking the door. “It’s Una!”
Beth poked her head out of the kitchen, phone pressed to her ear. She waved Una in and then leaned against the wall.
Una always started her work in the kitchen. This room was the beating heart of every house, and every house was happier when
it was clean.
As usual, the stove needed her attention. Beth was a messy cook, and the cooktop was speckled with oil droplets and a crusty
brown sauce.
“I’m telling you, Paula, Don hasn’t been himself since he went to see Mrs. Smith.” Beth spoke in a clipped tone. “She’s that
creepy lady who lives in the ugly mansion at the end of the street. She bought a car from his dealership, a Porsche 911 Turbo,
though I have no idea why. I mean, the woman doesn’t leave the house. Why does she need a fucking Porsche? Anyway, Don went to see her.”
Una pulled on her rubber gloves and began scrubbing the cooktop, trying not to listen. Don Pulaski swore all the time, but
Beth only swore when she was really upset.
“He’s been weird ever since he went there. It’s been over a week, and he hasn’t touched me. Not once. No sex. No grabbing my ass. Not even a kiss. He barely looks at me!” Her voice was high and shrill. “Last night, I cooked
dinner, opened a nice bottle of Chianti, and told him dessert was a surprise. I gave him a little time to digest his steak,
then I called him for dessert. I was in the kitchen with a lacy negligee and a bottle of Hershey’s syrup. I waited and waited
for him to come in, and guess what? He never did! He just shouted that he didn’t want dessert.”
Underlying Beth’s indignation was a note of fear.
“I want a baby more than anything, but I can’t get pregnant by myself. He’s acting this way because of her. Don practically bit my head off when I asked why Mrs. Smith needed a car when she doesn’t even drive. He said the commission’s
gonna pay for our trip to Jamaica, so I should shut up and be happy. Don has a temper—everybody knows that—but he’s never
talked to me that way before. Not once.”
Una had heard Don fly off the handle many times. He was a loud and brash man. He yelled at sports teams and news anchors on
TV. He shouted at the mailman, the garbage collectors, and kids who walked on his grass. He was a bulldog of a man with a
barrel chest, slicked-back brown hair, and dark, hooded eyes. He barked and bellowed unless he was talking to Beth. With her,
his voice was spun sugar, all airy sweetness.
“I have no idea what she looks like,” Beth said, twining the phone cord around and around her palm. “Don didn’t see her. She
put a check in an envelope and taped it to her front door. I know it sounds crazy, but just being that close to her did something to him. Just being on her property, it cursed him somehow. Like in a fairy tale.” Beth shot Una a plaintive look.
“You believe in curses, don’t you, Una?”
Una nodded. She’d seen old women in her village carve runes into sheep bones and bury them outside an enemy’s house. She’d
seen painted stones left on windowsills and heard dark mutterings fly up the chimney with the smoke. She’d seen animals grow
sick from curses and recover when curses were lifted.
Yes. She believed in curses.
She watched Beth clutch the gold cross nestled in the hollow of her throat. “I’ve been to church, Paula. Four times since Don went to her house. I lit candles. I prayed to Saint Anne and the Blessed Mother. My
mom thinks I’m being punished for dressing like a hooker, which is ridiculous. I could wear a potato sack, and men would still
look at me like I’m a lollipop they want to lick. Except for Don. He’s not looking at me in that way anymore. He’s looking right through me.” Beth walked over to the window. “It’s Mrs. Smith. She’s coming between us. The woman’s a spider, and I’m going to flush
her out into the light and squash her. Yeah, I do have an idea. If I can get my garden club to help, we can make Mrs. Smith wish she lived on a different street.”
Beth ended the call but didn’t return the phone to the cradle. She just stood in front of the window, staring at the treetops
in the distance. She couldn’t see Mrs. Smith’s house, but Una knew she was thinking about it. About her.
When the jarring off-the-hook alert blared from the phone speaker, Beth thudded it into the cradle. She left the room, a hornet’s
buzz of angry muttering trailing after her.
Una had no idea what Beth was planning, but she was scared for her.
You’re here to work. Don’t get involved, Una reminded herself.
She turned the knob at the kitchen sink and waited for the hot water to flow onto her sponge.
While she waited, she also glanced out the window, her eyes locking on the cluster of jagged treetops in the distance.
She couldn’t see Mrs. Smith’s house from here, but she could feel it.
She could feel its presence and the presence of the woman within.
Danger waits there, she thought.
Suddenly, the water from the tap turned viciously cold. So cold that it burned. Una felt like her fingers were freezing inside
her glove. She’d had frostbite before, but this sensation was a thousand times worse. It was like touching the red eye of
the cooktop for several agonizing seconds.
Jerking her hand away from the water, Una peeled off her glove to find scarlet blisters on every finger. They looked like
tiny toothless mouths. Like the open sores left by a cluster of leeches.
Wrapping her hand in a clean rag, Una pressed it against her belly and waited for the pain to subside. Then she reached for
the Comet and, using her uninjured hand, began to scrub the sink.
She did not look out the window again.