Chapter 14
Anna woke a little after eleven, her head pounding and jaw tight, confused that it wasn’t morning already.
She grasped at the wisps of memory that hovered momentarily in her consciousness, and then frustratingly they were gone, leaving her with nothing.
She wondered if she’d started to remember the thing in her sleep.
She must have, because a few times when she’d woken up since being in this house, she felt it.
Something just out of reach. Something awful.
All she wanted to know was those men’s names.
She wanted those four names so badly. One day she’d have them back. She had to.
She stretched and got to her feet, now wide-awake.
The lasagna Doc Burdett had brought had been too cheesy and her mouth was dry, not helped by the constant heat that settled in the house at night as if creeping in for shelter from the cooling dark.
She’d grab a Diet Coke and watch a movie and wait for dawn.
Early evening and dawn were the times when she could sleep most easily.
The hours in between she struggled. At least she knew where Mom had put the sleeping pills for Grandma if it came to it. Silver linings and all that.
In the corridor a sliver of light shone from under Mom’s door at the far end.
It made her feel better that Mom might be awake too.
At night she felt the oppressive nature of the house more, as if the walls were breathing, pulsing and alive, waiting to consume her.
Downstairs was a pit of darkness, and she descended into it barefoot and silent, as if she were a ghost. She went to the kitchen first, the dripping faucet greeting her, and opened the fridge, staring into the white glow as it hummed, enjoying the cold air on her skin, moving the leftover lasagna dish, enough for the next day’s dinner, aside to reach the Diet Coke.
“Shut up.”
At first, as she whirled around, Anna thought the shape right behind her was a monster, a ghoul, the Farmhand, even, but as her eyes readjusted to the gloom, she saw more clearly. Wild eyes. Gray hair. Pale skin. Grandma was standing in the glow of the fridge light, inches from her.
“Shit, Grandma.” Anna’s fading headache picked up its throbbing again.
Grandma didn’t move, her body rigid with such tension she looked as if she might scream or implode.
She frowned, her gaze fixated on the inside of the fridge.
“That’s not right,” Grandma whispered, and then Anna closed the door, condemning them both back to the murk.
“Shut up,” Grandma hissed again. She hadn’t quite removed all her carefully applied Sunday makeup, and dark patches smeared under her glaring eyes, gathering in the crepe-paper wrinkles there.
Her feet were bare and beneath the hem of her nightgown her pale legs snaked with varicose veins.
She looked like a monster. A banshee. Something entirely not human, or perhaps something that had once been human but was now other.
Anna couldn’t decide what would be more unsettling.
Whichever, her heart was racing and she wished she hadn’t woken up.
“I wasn’t making any noise.” Anna spoke calmly, hoping her voice would bring Grandma back around.
It didn’t. Instead, Grandma tilted her head sharply to one side like a bird.
No, not a bird, Anna realized. More like a field mouse in the night, aware of some terrible death circling above. Grandma was afraid.
“Shut up, shut up.” Her hiss softened into a desperate whisper and she half raised one arm as if trying to swat something away from around her head. “They won’t shut up.”
“Who won’t shut up?” Anna took a careful step forward. “There’s nobody here.”
Only then did Grandma look at her, eyes full of terror and confusion. “The girls in my head,” she whispered. “They won’t shut up.”
Anna’s skin prickled with a shiver. “You’ve had a bad dream. There’s only us here. It’s all right.”
“Was it a dream? Or was it real?” Grandma looked as if she was about to cry, and then the hall light came on, startling them both. Grandma automatically grabbed Anna’s hand, and something about it made Anna want to weep herself.
“Anna? Is that you?” Mom came down the stairs, her slippers soft feather touches on the wood.
Her tread used to be heavier. She’d lost weight.
Anna wondered how she hadn’t noticed. “I went to wake you up so you wouldn’t sleep in your clothes again, but—” She stopped short.
“Oh, Mom.” There was frustration, loss, and exhaustion in those two words, and more than a little love.
She looked at Anna. “Where did you find her?”
“Here. In the kitchen.”
“I’m cold,” Grandma said. Her hand was icy and Anna took her gray cardigan from where it was once again slung over the back of the kitchen chair and wrapped it around Grandma’s narrow shoulders.
“It’s fine,” Anna said. “She just wanted a drink. I’ll take her. You go back to bed.”
“Are you sure?”
Anna nodded and started to lead her grandmother back to her room.
“Thanks. Oh, and Anna?”
“Yes?” She looked back at her mother.
“Maybe make her a hot chocolate. So we can all sleep.” Her eyes slipped from Anna’s guiltily, but there was no doubt in her meaning. Pills. Give Grandma a pill.
“Sure. Sure, I will.”
Grandma got back into bed, and while she wasn’t in the agitated state she’d been in when Anna found her, she was dozy and confused, so Anna talked soothingly for a few minutes, somethings and nothings about Caroline’s schoolwork and Dr. Burdett’s cooking and his visit, and she waited until the old lady was completely calm before going back to fetch some water.
She was nearly at the door when she saw a pack of American Spirit, a large dent in one corner, on the top of Grandma’s dresser.
Anna frowned. She opened it up and there were ten left, one turned the wrong way around for luck, just like she did with a fresh pack.
They weren’t her cigarettes, though. She didn’t earn enough to forget about half a pack of smokes somewhere.
Maybe they were Doc Burdett’s. He’d still been here when she’d gone upstairs, and maybe they’d come to Grandma’s room for some private conversation.
She left the pack where it was. Wasn’t worth the hassle from Mom if he came back for them.
In the kitchen, she took a capsule from the blister pack on the top shelf and washed it down the drain before getting a glass of water to take back to Grandma.
She felt better. Lighter. There was no way she was drugging Grandma without her permission.
There might be little love lost between them as women, but Anna wasn’t doing that. Not a hope in hell.
Grandma was still awake when she got back, but drifting on the edge of sleep.
“I got you water, Grandma,” Anna said softly.
“In case you need it.” Grandma murmured some small response, and Anna turned away, heading to the door.
She looked to the dresser, suddenly tempted to take the cigarettes, but they were gone.
She searched around a little but there was no sign of the beaten soft pack.
She looked back at Grandma. She must have put them away somewhere while Anna was in the kitchen.
There was never a reward for anything in life.
As Grandma finally drifted into silent sleep, Anna crept out and headed back to her own bed.
Undressing, she thought about what Grandma had said about girls’ voices in her head. Where did she think she was during these odd moments? Back at school, maybe? Some time in her youth? What girls would be talking to her?
Anna sat on the window ledge and peered out at the still night, getting a breath of slightly cooler air.
The yard and the land and road beyond were filled with shadows and for the briefest moment she thought one looked like the shape of a person staring up at the house.
She froze, but then a cloud suffocated the moon with darkness, and when it passed, the shape was no longer there.
She stared, unblinking, until her eyes began to water, but nothing moved that she could see.
Just her imagination, she decided, although her heart was beating hard. In bed, she took the poster of the dead girls out from the bedside table and stared at it, thinking about what Dr. Burdett had said about death. Death has ripples and waves. Poor Jamie drowned in one.
She opened her laptop, the light from the screen the only illumination, and clicked into the New York Times writing competition.
She might have dropped out of her journalism program at Columbia after the thing, but she found she still had that curiosity, that urge to dig deep into something and write about it.
She stared at the competition details for a long moment, then opened a Word file.
Her fingers hovered over the keys as her brain searched for a title.
Something simple. Powerful but effective.
After a moment, she typed: The Haunting of Harper’s Creek: The Ripple Effect of Murders in a Small-Town Community.
She sat back and closed the lid, strangely satisfied. A title was at least a start. It was something.