Chapter 3
KEEPSAKES
Our new home smells like pizza, even upstairs in my bedroom.
Dad ordered out from The Ember Oven. We split his favorite, the Phoenix Special—a spicy pepperoni with roasted red peppers and a drizzle of hot honey.
Now he’s downstairs, hunting for the antacids.
Unfortunately for him, his tastebuds and his digestion don’t see eye-to-eye.
I curl up in my window seat, listening to the night sounds outside. A chorus of cicadas and crickets. The soft chirping of tree frogs. The rustle of leaves. The creaking of branches. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howls at the moon.
Fog rolls over the unkempt grounds. Ground lights shine through the mist, casting eerie shadows up the manor’s front. I stare at the window that caught my attention earlier this evening, now dark and empty. The Vandenbergs aren’t arriving until Sunday. So who was that, watching us move in?
The question sends a tickle up my spine.
I’m itching to explore.
But first, I must sleep.
I pull the window closed. As much as I’d love to leave it open, there isn’t a screen.
Bugs will get in. So I secure the latch and face my room with a smile.
I’m all finished unpacking. Every box has been broken down and neatly stacked.
Except for the one on my writing desk, set atop a tattered copy of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and an equally tattered copy of the book that brought Twig and I together, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
I sit down at the desk and open the box.
Years ago, it held a brand new pair of light-up Sketchers, a Christmas gift from Dad.
Now, it houses an assortment of odds and ends, carefully curated over the years.
A few faded postcards. The front page of a tabloid folded into a small square.
A pair of movie ticket stubs. A meager stack of photographs.
An antique necklace my mother never took off, more relic than adornment.
A tiny hospital bracelet that once fit my wrist. A beaded rosary.
A half-used tube of lipstick. A Chinese finger trap. And an old sour cream container.
Once upon a time, containers like these lined our windowsills.
Mom would rinse them out and fill them with soil and seed, then set them in the sun and wait.
She didn’t have a green thumb. Not like Dad.
But she didn’t let her lack of natural aptitude stop her from trying.
My mother loved to plant. She loved the miracle of something sprouting up from the soil when nothing had been there before.
She loved waiting for new life—the anticipation, the possibility.
Of fresh vegetables.
Flowers.
Me.
I touch the tiny wristband.
Selah Mae Whitlock.
A name from the Bible. Found in the Psalms, mostly—breaking apart songs and poems, denoting a peaceful pause.
A moment of reflection. According to Dad, my mother battled demons all her life.
Most times, the demons won. But for awhile, when Mom found herself pregnant, the demons let go.
Her life entered an extended moment of peace and reflection.
For the first time since she could remember, she was clearheaded enough to think about the life she had lived and the life she wanted to live, and she felt hopeful that it was all possible.
So, when she gave birth to a healthy baby girl, she named her Selah.
Her own peaceful pause.
The problem is, hope of a thing is different than the thing itself.
She intended to take care of the plants in those sour cream containers, to nurture them and watch them grow, just as she intended to be everything a little girl might need a mother to be.
But keeping life alive proved a task too arduous for my mother.
I pick up the ticket stubs, from a theater in Ohio that played old films on the big screen.
Mom took me to one on my seventh birthday—Little Monsters, a favorite from her childhood—and I was only a little bit scared.
But it was the fun kind of fear, like riding a roller coaster at an amusement park.
A jolt of adrenaline. An exciting thrill.
It left such an impression, I made Twig watch it in fifth grade.
From there, we discovered Labyrinth, Gremlins, and every other supernatural cult classic from the 1980s.
I unfold the tabloid, the front page of an old National Enquirer.
The headline is in bold caps, Vampire Baby Born in Idaho, Doctors Baffled.
It still smells of cigarettes. I picture her at Save-A-Lot, snagging a copy to read while waiting in the checkout line.
Every now and then, she’d splurge and buy one and read it cover to cover, then set it on our coffee table next to her ashtray while reruns of Unsolved Mysteries played on our television.
Perhaps this is where my obsession with the strange and mysterious comes from—she was always drawn to it, too. And then I had that dream …
I shuffle through the meager stack of photographs, pausing on a glossy 4x6—a picture of my parents when they first started dating.
Unlike Twig, I bear a strong resemblance to my mom.
I have her auburn hair, thick with a slight wave.
I wear mine long, halfway down my back or up in a messy bun.
In this picture, hers is cut just above her shoulders with the kind of layers popular in the nineties.
We share the same eyes—wide set and deep blue.
The same straight nose with a spray of freckles across the bridge.
The same petal pink lips and pointy chins.
I’m so locked in, so utterly focused on the photograph in front of me, the loud thwack against glass sends a strangled scream up my throat.
Staticky adrenaline zips through my veins as I send the photographs flying and duck for cover, arms covering my head like they might protect me from whatever just hurled itself at my window.
What was that?
Slowly, I lower my arms and come out of my chair. With one hand set over my chest, I unlock the latch, push open the window, and look down at the grounds.
A crow struggles in the grass, its right wing bent at an unnatural angle.
My thudding heart twists.
That poor bird!
Unwilling to let it suffer alone, I hurry downstairs and out into the night where the grass is damp beneath my bare feet. But the bird isn’t there.
A shadow slips across the yard, fast and wrong. A branch snaps behind me. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howls. The sound lifts the hair on my arms, and I bolt back inside, heart hammering.