Chapter 16 #2
Downstairs the belt sander comes on with a thunderous roar, and Elodie seethes between her teeth. Was Bren going to do that while he offered to “look after” Jude? She alone can be depended on. She alone is what her son needs.
Hopscotch takes more coordination than their games usually require, and Jude’s feet keep landing outside the boxes.
He wobbles, restarts, drops the frog, restarts.
She demonstrates again, even though all this movement makes her need to pee, and then she holds his hand through a set of hops.
He’s stubborn and determined to do it by himself, a recipe for a meltdown if he fails, except somehow he’s engaged enough to keep trying while she sits on the floor and encourages him.
When he makes it through the whole hopscotch, his face lights up and he jumps atop her, his arms around her neck in a strangling hug. But she loves it. She loves him.
The belt sander shuts off and she glances toward the nursery door, only now realizing the entire house has been shuddering under the abuse.
Jude’s brow pinches. “The house hates being hurted like this.”
The way he talks about the house has started to sink hooks into her, leave her mouth dry and her hands shaky. She should shut it down, but it feels too late. Or maybe the problem is she believes him.
“I won’t let the house get you,” she says. “Mamas don’t let their babies get hurt, not ever.”
He cuts a glance at her from the corner of his eyes. “Never, ever?”
“Never, ever, ever. Do you want a cuddle?”
She can see it in his eyes, the way he’s tilting toward acceptance and how it will feel when he’s snuggled into her arms, all needy and soft and wanting. She pushes to her feet to pick him up—
And that’s when her foot goes through the floor.
At first, the only thing that makes sense is the shock of the sudden imbalance, of pain engulfing her up to the ankle as if she’s stepped into a mouth of toothy splinters. She topples to one knee with a scream before she looks down.
The floorboards ripple, serpentine and liquid, as if she’s sunk through the glossy shine of a lake’s edge. The wood has forgotten to be solid and instead stretches and reshapes, devouring her, drawing her down, down.
She’s screaming; this isn’t possible; it can’t be happening. When she grabs at her foot to yank it free, it doesn’t move. Teeth scissor through flesh right down to bone and the boards compress, flattening her foot as if it’s cardboard being broken down before disposal.
Jude has begun to scream, too, matching her pitch, his terror so shrill that she’s screaming at him to stop even as her leg sinks further into the floor. Pain and panic condense, crucify her, and she yanks harder at her leg. But she’s trapped. It’s as if the house is—
Eating her.
Don’t be insane. Don’t think like that. You cannot afford to think like that. You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re normal, you’re—
Feet pound down the hallway and then the nursery door crashes open with a cataclysmic bang. She feels, more than sees, Bren barrel into the room at breakneck speed, already yelling, “What’s wrong? What happened!”
It’s Jude he snatches first, plucking him up as if he weighs no more than a rag doll as he lunges for Elodie and yanks her out of the house’s jaws.
She slithers free, easy as butter. Her screams cut off with a dry-heaving gasp, and she allows herself to be towed to the far side of the nursery.
They collapse, all three of them, in a pile under the window, Bren’s arms tight around them both as their lungs heave and they cling to him, sobbing.
“What happened? Elodie— I don’t understand.” He pulls her closer to his chest, glancing wildly from her to the floor.
The floor, smooth and unmarred.
Jude cries wildly, his arms flung around Bren’s neck so he can sob into his filthy, sawdust-covered work shirt.
Elodie yanks up the cuff of her leggings and stares at the crisp indents marching in a line around her ankle. There. It was real. It happened.
“My foot went through the goddamn floor.” She doesn’t mean to yell, but she can’t calm down.
“How the…” Bren glances to the floor, unblemished but for the tape of their hopscotch. “Are you okay?”
“No.” Elodie wants to scream at him, but he hasn’t done anything.
Except bring her here, put her in this house—
She digs fingers into her hair and pulls, her wail more frustration than pain, her fury like a hot rash burning the inside of her mouth. Something loosens against her scalp, and she slowly draws her hand from her head with a fistful of curls.
The roots are tipped in blood.
“Oh my fucking god.” Her voice cracks.
Bren tries to say something reassuring, but even he looks freaked out—not by the floor, but by her goddamn hair.
Jude buries his face in the crook of Bren’s arm and refuses to loosen his death grip, so Bren simply cradles the back of her son’s curly head as he pushes to his feet and edges toward the hopscotch.
He stomps a few times with one boot and then glances at Elodie.
“Was it here?” he says. “Nothing is loose.”
“It wasn’t loose,” Elodie snaps. “I sunk down. It was like … There were teeth down there, and—” She breaks off, knowing how unhinged this sounds.
But he has to believe her. There is no option for him but to believe her.
“Maybe it…” He looks at a loss, but is he even checking the floor thoroughly? Is he standing where she was?
Elodie staggers to her feet, limping as pain closes in a white-hot circlet around her bitten ankle. She holds out her arms for Jude. “Give him to me. He wants me.”
Bren tries to pry Jude’s arms from around his neck, but Jude shrieks and holds tighter, his legs wrapped around Bren’s waist.
“How about I get ice for your ankle,” Bren says. “Come lie down. I’ll fix everything. I just need to figure this out.”
There is nothing to “figure out” when the answer is to believe her, but there seems no point in snapping at him again.
She allows him to guide her out of the nursery and down the hallway to their bedroom.
When she collapses on the bed, he fusses around, propping pillows under her leg to elevate it, then disappearing into the bathroom and coming back with a tall glass of water.
It looks murky from the faucet, but she doesn’t care enough to send him downstairs for something cold from the fridge.
She drinks as he perches on the edge of the bed, Jude curled on his lap, still latched to him with sniffing whimpers.
“You need to listen to me,” Elodie says, low and fierce. “There is something inside the house, something dangerous.”
Bren has a hand on her ankle just above the teeth marks, and he massages slowly as he watches her, pensive and quiet. As if she’s a deranged creature midway through a mental breakdown.
“You need to believe me,” she snarls.
“Okay,” he says, but it’s so unconvincing she could scream.
“Jude is getting hurt!” She half shouts it and then sucks in a sharp breath as Jude cowers closer to Bren.
He isn’t asking for her, reaching for her, turning to her for comfort.
What the hell is the point of anything if it isn’t her that he wants?
Bren folds his arms around Jude’s shuddering body and rocks him. “Maybe you should rest for a bit.”
Her teeth are clenched, her lips bloodless. “Maybe I should walk out of this fucked-up house while I still can.”
It is the perfect thing to say, the worst thing to say. Bren looks stricken, a lonely sort of fear closing over his face before he quickly glances down, his eyes gone glossy in a way that makes her stomach clench.
“Just rest, okay?” He swallows hard.
She should make good on her threat, snatch Jude and walk out until he fixes this god-awful monster of a house, but her anger is slipping even as she tries to take fistfuls of its red, blazing glory and stoke it to a hotter burn.
Her eyes have never felt so heavy, as if her long nights awake have hit all at once.
Bren’s face begins to melt down his cheeks like a watercolor painting left out in the rain, and she can barely feel his hand on her ankle, stroking soothing circles with his thumb.
Her eyes close; her mouth feels chalky.
She has the sudden urge to reach out and slap him, but she isn’t sure why.