Chapter 12
XII
The ache piercing my body was as vicious as the flu. I was shivering and sweating. The pressure from the bed sheets was bruising; the mattress assaulted my back. Worst of all was the knocking in my ears, heavy and persistent, as if someone were driving nails into my head with a hammer.
I tried to lift myself from the bed, but it felt like digging my way out of a deep grave. It must have still been day outside.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound was unbearable. It would not stop.
I moaned, willing it away.
But it came again, stronger this time.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Then, again, but only twice.
Knock. Knock.
I forced my eyes open through the pain. Light seeped through the shuttered window. Even looking at it made me nauseous. It was too early.
It wasn’t in my head.
Someone was knocking.
Outside. At the front door.
Someone was here!
I forced myself up, but my legs refused to serve me, twisting the wrong way. I collapsed onto the floor.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
More persistent this time.
I pushed forward and crawled. Only in the hall did I manage to pull myself onto my feet, holding to the wall for support.
Were they looking for me? Or for Sylvie?
A police officer. A mailman. Someone from Sylvie’s work. A friend. A neighbor.
Or perhaps someone was searching for one of the deceased.
They could arrest me. What if they thought I was lying? What if they refused to believe I had been a hostage, forced to bury bodies?
It didn’t matter.
Someone had come.
My hands scraped along the warped wood.
Move. Move. Move, I ordered myself.
The stairs loomed before me like a cliff, each step a battle. I had walked just fine the day before, but now I had regressed to the state of someone close to dying. Or was it just the daylight outside?
My fingers found the railing, and I forced myself down the stairs, risking a fall with every step. Nausea rolled through me in heavy waves.
The house was silent, but the knocking lingered, giving me strength and pressing me onward.
Please don’t leave, I begged silently. Wait for me. I’m coming.
At last, I reached the bottom. The door stood ahead, and my vision narrowed around it, everything else dissolving into the edges of my sight.
Something in me rebelled against investigating.
What if I had imagined the caller? I would open the door only to be punished by light for nothing.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The door rattled beneath my hand.
It was real.
Someone was really here.
I choked back bile and pushed, inching the door open.
The moment it gave way, light exploded, blinding and searing.
It was raining outside; the sound of it, the smell, made my senses wild.
The sky must have been clouded gray, yet to me it felt like a burning lamp shining at a million watts.
My lids squeezed shut, tears spilling, stinging as they traced hot lines down my face.
Against my will, I pushed the door shut, but it rebounded and opened again.
I jerked backward on instinct. The gaping white opening pulled at me like a shattered plane window mid-flight. I reached blindly for the staircase, my fingers closing around the splintered railing as though it were an anchor. I can't. I can't do it!
“Jesus, are you okay?” A voice cut through the white noise in my ears, and at the same moment, a merciful shadow positioned itself between me and the punishing light. “The doorbell’s not working—”
“Close the door,” I croaked.
The door slammed shut, and I collapsed onto the floor, drenched in cold sweat, every muscle shaking.
How would I ever escape this house if my reaction to the day only grew worse? I hadn’t seen daylight in so long. My body reacted violently to even the faintest hint of it. Something was seriously wrong with me.
“Is Sylvie here?” the voice, in which I now recognized a feminine cadence, continued to ask.
“Who the fuck are you?” I struggled to focus on the figure as it drifted in and out of clarity.
The woman stood tall, short black hair framing her face.
“It’s Rochelle. I am . . .” she faltered, her gaze shifting to the side, “. . . a friend of Sylvie’s?”
Why the fuck was she saying it like a question?
Rochelle. The name stirred something in my faded memory.
I knew her. I knew of her.
Rochelle. Sylvie had once talked about her, and then stopped.
Rochelle, who sent those late-night texts that the love of my life so solemnly insisted were strictly work-related.
Rochelle, whose name escaped in a soft giggle whenever Sylvie was on the phone while hiding in the bathroom or lingering outside for a smoke, thinking she was alone.
Rochelle, who had moved to London, climbing higher and higher up the corporate ladder, just as Sylvie’s mood had soured in a strange coincidence.
That Rochelle.
The woman stepped closer. “Iris, right?”
Who is Iris? My inflamed brain struggled to keep up. But the name sounded almost familiar.
Almost like it was . . .
“Is Sylvie here? I just got back from London and learned she stopped coming into work months ago. Is she okay? Did she move?”
She had come for Sylvie. Like she had any right! How had she gotten this address? Had she been here before?
Rochelle sniffed the air. Her nose twitched, noting the foulness.
“What’s that smell?” she asked, and then again, “Is she here or not?”
I could think of nothing but my hatred for the woman in front of me. It swallowed everything inside me, everything around me. Even the ever-present hunger faded beneath it.
The hatred fueled me, gave me strength. I straightened my back. If I couldn't go outside, I could at least show her what lay within.
“Yes,” I said in barely a whisper. “Yes, she’s here. You drove here?”
“No, I took a cab,” she said absentmindedly, too distracted to grasp why I was asking.
I pushed myself upright, still gripping the railing, and took in the woman’s appearance. She was not unattractive, but she was not Sylvie’s type. Sylvie had always gone for long-limbed, dark-haired, grungy princesses. Like me. Like all her girlfriends before me.
I still had my black hair, now longer than ever, but I was wrapped in the silk slips I had been wearing for months, making me look nothing like myself. Making me Agatha instead of what I used to be. Who I used to be.
I was probably no longer Sylvie’s type either.
Not that it mattered any more.
“Help me to the back,” I murmured. “She’s over there, on the terrace.”
“Are you sick?” Rochelle’s fingertips hovered over my shoulder as if I might infect her.
Above us, two floors up, the bones were vibrating, a chorus of hunger and anticipation so loud I feared she would hear.
But Rochelle noticed only the house’s distress, her face growing more troubled, yet she never turned back.
I led her in, lured her forward. Past the bloodied wood and carpet.
Past the ichor curdling in the corners. Past the fungus spreading behind the wallpaper, veins beneath diseased skin.
Rochelle had no idea. She didn’t know the back terrace had already given way, the boards collapsing like a broken ribcage.
I led her, turning back now and again to catch her scent. Beneath her floral perfume and the faint trace of hair gel, I could smell her blood, spiced and sugary. I saw the large vein pulse in her neck. The drum of her heartbeat grew louder. I could taste her sweetness in the air.
I licked my lips. Inhaled deep.
The smell. God, that smell.
It was too late by the time I came back to my senses.
I could feel my pupils slowly contracting back to their normal size. The salt of Rochelle’s blood coated my mouth, and my tongue worked to gather it all into a swallow.
There was a gurgling to my left side. I rolled drunkenly toward Rochelle’s unblinking stare. Her body twitched, a reflex, as the vigor oozed out of her.
The chef’s knife lay further away in the pool of thick liquid.
So this was how she went.
I had drunk so much I feared my stomach might split. But it felt so. damn. good.
I closed my eyes in a haze of bliss.
Fuck Rochelle.
No one stood between Sylvie and me. No one!
The sun leaned toward the horizon. That was when I slowly began to descend from the high.
Panic hit me in waves, crashing harder with every thought. Not that I had killed someone. No, that barely registered. But what if someone came looking for her? What if her coworkers, her family, the people who loved her, followed her trail here? What would I do with her body?
And most urgent, most terrifying: what if Gunnar and Ophelia found out?
They mustn’t. This would be the end of me.
I couldn’t go outside. The sun was still up.
The cellar. I could put her there. I just needed to break the padlock and hide her from sight. The house already stank of death. What was another note in the symphony of rot?
I stumbled through the kitchen, my mind racing in crooked circles. Fuck, now bloodied footsteps were dotted everywhere.
I didn’t know what to do first. Clean? Move her? It felt like trying to solve an equation with too many steps while racing against time. Everything seemed urgent. Everything at once.
Plastic. I needed to wrap her in plastic.
I thought of the bloodied, molded curtain in the bathroom on the first floor, then remembered the plastic sheets in the living room, rolled up and forgotten from when we tried to renovate.
I tore through the space, nearly tripping over a chair, ripping open the roll with shaking hands.
It was still there, folded in a dusty corner like it had been waiting for this moment. I could wrap her in it, keep her contained, keep the smell from rising, at least long enough to think.
Back in the kitchen, her body lay open, slack and leaking. I had drank like a leech, but I could only hold so much. Now, the remaining blood kept weeping from the chaotic network of wounds across her body. Had I done all that? Had I stabbed her again and again in a hungry rage?
If the stains remained, if they found out. . . I was finished.