Chapter 5 #3
I brace myself then look up and meet her gaze, instinctively knowing she’s not going to leave until I acknowledge her; clearly her eshé is strong enough for it not to matter. I don’t want to know what might happen if I keep pretending she’s not there.
My first thought is, in fifty years, this is what Genevieve might look like.
She grabs my throat, and screams into my face.
Her appearance morphs rapidly; she goes from elderly to middle-aged—it could’ve been Genevieve herself standing in front of me, plus a few wrinkles and a touch of grey to a shoulder-length loosely-curled afro—to a walking corpse with no hair and rotting, peeled skin, maggots squirming in the ripped flesh of her right cheek, revealing black gums and equally deteriorated orange teeth underneath.
“TELL HER THERE ISN’T A DEMON. TELL HER SHE SHOULDN’T TRY TO—”
Her voice cuts off as her face morphs again, her bones rearranging underneath her skin. Her grin stretches her face almost in half, her eyes turning completely black, her teeth sharp points.
The hand around my throat squeezes viciously, almost crushing my windpipe, before the shannde disappears with bitten-off shriek.
I lean over the side of the bed, coughing and clutching at my throat. Oh fuck, that fucking hurt. What the fuck was that? Is she actually a shannde? Despite the tension in my shoulder blades and the defensive way my eshé had braced itself, I’m still not sure she’s an evil spirit.
Or—I suck in a sharp breath and my limbs grow cold—is the shannko being possessed by something else?
My unease lingers even after a long, hot shower and I leave the guest bedroom. I can’t stop thinking about the way the shannko’s appearance had shifted, morphing almost as if it had forgotten its true age, though it never went younger than the Genevieve of now.
This house has to be Genevieve’s ancestral home, with a strange shannko of her family’s either stuck behind or refusing to leave. Is it her mother? Her grandmother? Some older ancestor?
The hallway is a little dark from the lack of windows, and quiet. I glance at the solitary door on the opposite wall, then turn and head for the living room.
I’m nervous to see Genevieve not just because of my strange dream slash nightmare, but because I want to ask if she’s had any contact with the shannko. I refuse to think about the damning taste of dirt in my mouth.
I spare a glance at where the front door should be. Like I’d expected, its still not there. The bars in the windows of the guest bedroom had been just as sealed as the rest.
The living room is empty, the curtains still shut. Genevieve must still be in bed.
At the archway leading into the kitchen, I freeze.
Genevieve is just closing the back door, her back to me. Her hands all the way up to her elbows are dripping with red. My reaction is almost a reflex, an automatic incantation that masks my presence in a heartbeat.
Genevieve stills, then spins around.
I’m holding my breath, my heart pounding erratically. The back door gets swallowed up by the wall the moment it clicks shut, melting into it until all I see is smooth, undisturbed concrete painted pastel yellow with a strip of decorated tiles.
She’s covered in blood. It’s soaking her chin, dripping from it, and has drenched the front of her tank top and shorts—stained her knees and soaked into her trainers.
I remember my dream, the creature’s sharpened teeth sinking brutally into my throat as it moaned with elation in the voice of my ex-best friend.
And I know, with conviction, that the eshé—mine or the house’s? I can’t be sure—had given me that dream. A warning? A premonition? Fuck, I don’t know. I can’t think.
She stares directly into my eyes, unseeing, yet aware somehow that I’m standing right there despite the eshé cloaking my presence. Something in that desolate gaze breaks my heart.
My throat squeezes. I almost take a step forward, but creep backward instead at the same moment she visibly shakes herself and moves. I barely manage to shift out of the way just as she breezes past me, a hair’s breadth from my nose.
I have secrets of my own, Rosemary.
She’d just gone outside. The house had let her.
Or had she demanded it? Can she control the house?
If the place had been passed down to her, then she’s definitely connected to it and it’s connected to her; it would obey her wishes often without her even having to voice them.
Had she been pretending to be as trapped as I was?
I think of what I’d hoped was a trick of the light after we’d danced—her standing in the semi-darkness, eyes completely black, fingers longer and darker, nails wickedly sharp. The creature chasing me in my dream; Genevieve’s voice gleefully taunting me to run.
I spin around, wanting to follow, needing to—fuck, I don’t know—
But when I make it to the bottom of the stairs on silent feet, lightheaded with bated breath, the floors start moving underneath me, making me stumble and swallow back a gasp.
I glare up at the ceiling but there’s obviously no response. The marble doesn’t stop moving, pulling me down the corridor and spinning me around until I’m standing in front of the single door I can’t help but feel curious about.
I glance back, toward the stairs, then at the closed door in front of me. The house clearly wants me to see whatever is behind this door.
I put Genevieve and her secrets to the back of my mind for now, and reach out and open it.