Chapter 4
It’s nightfall by the time I feel calm enough to leave the cocoon of blankets and sheets I’d made of myself on what had once been my mother’s childhood bed.
There shouldn’t have been even a hint of her scent lingering—I’d been very young when she’d fallen out with her mother, and we hadn’t visited her since—but with my abnormally, ever-evolving supernatural senses, despite the fact that she’s been dead for a little over ten years, I swear I can still smell her.
The sharp tang of the cheap body spray she buys every month from the local market, along with sweat and skin and something … unnatural that I try to ignore. I bury my face in the pillow and inhale despite the rising tide of my grief, the scent and the pain choking me.
My temple begins to throb. I taste the phantom copper of spilled blood and hear the faint sound of a shrill scream, abruptly cut off. It happens every time I linger on thoughts of her, like the beast is trying and failing to conceptualise her death.
The sheets threaten to rip in my fists. I empty my mind, trying to ground myself in the present.
Rosemary is cooking. My stomach rumbles, for once as a result of simple mortal hunger.
I sit up, staring out into the darkness.
The curtains are still open, revealing the tops of the trees in the distance, the dark, but clear deep, purple sky, twinkling with stars.
If I concentrate hard enough, I’d probably be able to see and count every single one.
The air smells like rain, though its still a distance away. There’s the tinny sound of a radio, Rosemary humming along. The nostalgia it stirs is painfully unwelcome.
I desperately wish I could, but I unfortunately can’t hide forever.
Whatever magical lockdown had happened downstairs is the same upstairs.
I hadn’t even been able to go onto the balcony; the sliding glass doors have melded into a single, solid pane.
Attempting to break the glass had yielded equally disappointing results as when I’d tried to pull the metal bars off the windows.
Fuck. Rosemary. My gut clenches. My ribs, right over my heart, feel terribly sore, like they’ve been punched in.
Ten years. It doesn’t feel real. It feels like I’ve been asleep this entire time, and now I’m wide awake, the last ten years we’ve spent apart some kind of horrid dream.
Or maybe this right now is the dream. Foolishly, selfishly, I wish I don’t ever wake up, even though I know wishes like that are dangerous. At the same time, I’m afraid to go downstairs and face her. Since I’d left her, she’s remained a hook in my heart, trying futilely to yank me back to her.
A sick part of me loves that she’s trapped with nowhere to run.
She could hide, pretend I don’t exist until whatever juju binding us is lifted, but if there’s one thing I’ve always believed about Rosemary and I, it’s that, slowly, inevitably, like the opposite ends of a magnet, we’ve been bound to collide.
For years, I’d resisted the pull of that painful hook in my chest. Now, at the worst possible time, she’s the one who’s been yanked to me.
Briefly, I picture myself giving in. I see myself going downstairs on silent, padded feet, sneaking up on her like a shadow, and her sinking helplessly into that darkness, lost to its depths for the rest of time.
I grab a pillow and bury my face in it, swallowing down blood from where I’d bitten my tongue. I only drop it when I no longer feel like I’ll lose it.
I want to go back to the day before yesterday, when my world had been crumbling, but slowly, and I’d still grasped desperately onto a flimsy string of hope.
Now, all I feel is a steadily mounting despair. I need to continue my search for the details of this supposed ritual, to uphold the deal my grandmother had apparently studiously maintained before her demise, but the study feels tainted now after all I’ve learned.
The smell of warm food mixed with the sweet scent of Rosemary—the sound of her soft voice alternately singing or humming along to the music lifts my despair like she’s literally cast a spell. As usual, all she has to do is exist and my world, no matter how downtrodden, glows a little brighter.
I leave my bed, not bothering with the lights or curtains.
She’s in the dining area.
“Oh,” she says when she spots me, even though she’s setting the table for two. My heart clenches. Throbs. I ignore the ever present hunger twisting my stomach and flooding my mouth, my gums aching. “Sorry,” she says nervously. “I got hungry and kind of helped myself.”
It takes a few tries before I can say, “It’s fine,” my voice still coming out a little too gruff.
Rosemary’s scent heats up.
God.
“Um. As you can see, I made enough for two.” She smiles tentatively.
I clench my hands into fists. She’s switched on the lights in the living area and kitchen, the semi-dim glow, thanks to the low current, giving the rooms an almost intimate, romantic feel.
The stairs and hallway behind me are still in darkness. I must look like the monster I secretly am, lingering in the shadows, staring at her.
I don’t move, waiting until I’m sure a single step won’t lead me right to her, to grabbing her throat and snapping it quickly to the left. It’d be so quick, she won’t even feel it—and then I can—
She glances at me from underneath her lashes, her throat bobbing with a nervous swallow as she takes a seat on one side of the dining table, momentarily halting my repellent thoughts.
Her back is to the wide windows looking out onto the front of the house, hidden now behind dark green curtains patterned in thin golden thread the shape of roses.
Had the curtains always been that lovely shade of emerald green? Had they always held that faint, golden pattern? I could’ve sworn they’d been plain and red the last time I’d looked, no pretty designs in sight.
Fuck, I’d forgotten how lovely she is. Or, perhaps, more likely, she’s gotten even lovelier—evidence of the time and distance we’d spent apart.
In her light green spaghetti top, with her rich brown skin and the different warm yellows and browns of the beads at the tips of her braids, framing her shoulders, she looks like an enchantress.
Those thin gold frames don’t help; the lenses are perfectly round, making those magnetic brown eyes look so luminous, her dark lashes lusciously thick.
And all that bare skin. Her long, elegant throat. I can’t stop staring. Her skin looks so soft; her plump flesh would rend so beautifully underneath the sharp ends of my—
Rosemary’s growing anxiety gives me the strength to pummel the monster back into submission. I don’t want her wary of me. I want—
I end that thought. What I want doesn’t matter; it hasn’t mattered my entire life. It’s too bad it’s taken me this long to finally, truly accept it.
When I’m sure I have my wits about me, I walk stiffly to the table, taking the seat opposite hers. I glance at the old device resting between us.
My heart throbs again.
It’s the same radio and cassette player.
Of course it is; Rosemary’s always been good at keeping old things.
The device is an analogue, silver in colour, four inches by eight, two inches thick, and only works with four triple-A batteries.
The antenna has that slight curve at the top from the time I’d bent it a little too hard, and now it won’t completely retract anymore.
The radio had been her mother’s. Despite our phones and the novels we’d borrowed from the library serving as entertainment, Rosemary had loved that thing.
We’d spent many nights flicking through the channels, listening to music.
There’s an opening in its front for small cassettes; I’d gotten her a whole bunch for her eighteenth birthday—the first of hers we’d shared—and we’d spent hours—days—going through them all.
Rosemary looks like she’s remembering, too, her eyes dark, her teeth digging into the corner of her lower lip.
Don’t stare at me like that, I want to snap, even though I know I’m staring with the same intensity.
But it’s not really the same, is it?
I want to devour her.
She only looks like she wants to be devoured.
I tear my gaze away, biting the inside of my cheek until I taste blood, once again frantically beating the beast back into the darkness.
The first bite of the yam porridge almost brings tears to my eyes.
Shit, her cooking still tastes like home.
I can’t look at her, blinking rapidly and staring anywhere but opposite me.
Fuck, I should’ve chosen the head of the table; it would’ve been easier.
Or, better yet, I shouldn’t have come downstairs at all.
We eat in silence, the slightly fuzzy sound of the radio like a buffer. I resist the urge to lick my plate clean.
She knows—she’s always known. I don’t have to ask, and she’s dishing out the rest of the porridge, scooping two-thirds of it onto my plate and the rest onto hers until the serving dish is empty.
I love her so much it’s unbearable.
When we clear our second helpings, I expect her to stand, to start to take our dishes to the sink, and I’m prepared to stop her and offer to do them myself.
She doesn’t move.
I’d expected the tension between us to feel awkward, at worst; a tad familiar, at best. Instead, it’s charged, alight with something new and positively electric.
The current song comes to an end, and in the brief, crackling silence, she speaks.
“I’m an oerhwu.” The words land between us like a bomb.
The next song starts. The playlist tonight seems to be comprised entirely of love songs, I absently realise. The DJ has a terrible sense of humour.
Do you believe in magic? Rosemary had asked me that, once, on the day we’d had our first proper conversation. She’s peeking up at me now like she’d done back then, with the same sweetly reserved, searching look in her eyes that had instantly had me—and the beast—metaphorically by the throat.