Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
It feels like a ritual, this bath, something sacred and tender, as if it is her own spilled pearl tears she washes him with, her all-consuming devotion.
Lit candles perch on the windowsill, vanilla and lavender, and she leaves the overhead lights off so the dark wraps around them in a gentle cocoon.
Outside of the bathroom, fingers push between the cracks in the floorboards and the walls beat a heady, vicious pulse, the house’s heart throbbing against paper turned thin as shimmering membrane, stretching to show the outline of the viscid organ beneath.
It’s a drumbeat; it’s a countdown. She ignores it.
She runs the bath deep and warm, being lavish with the bubbles and arraying her coveted stash of little seashell soaps along the rim so Jude can play with them.
He’s always stealing them from her. She undresses him carefully, lifting him in because he is inert with exhaustion.
When she sponges his face and offers him a delicate little soap, he doesn’t react.
Once, he lifts a hand to look at his pruned fingers, but there is nothing in his eyes.
The water turns a soft petal pink.
She rests her chin on the edge of the tub, her heart aching as she watches him. “You are my perfect, sweet boy.”
This is a Jude she is unused to, quiet and docile, not fighting or defying her or protesting for no better reason than wanting to push against the pliant edges of her will and see what gives.
Though now, as she cups water in her palm to tip over his curls, she wonders if that is even the reason they have always cut into each other with sharp teeth and bloody mouths.
Or if abandoning him again and again to scream himself hoarse in his crib, if drugging him to sleep so he wakes disorientated and sick, if leaving him locked in the garage for two days while she floated in paradise with Bren all carved this understanding in his mind that if he was alone and frightened, he should react with violence, with hysteria, because eventually it would bring his mother back to him.
He is different; she knew that back then and she knows it now: his mind following patterns hers doesn’t, his delays, his regressions. She never knew how to care for him.
But there is nothing wrong with him; there was only something wrong with her.
She is crying as she dries him in her big, fluffy towel and sits him on her lap to comb his wet curls.
The swelling red marks on him were never signs of being struck.
She’s heard of it before, the rashes and outbreaks that can come from bare skin interacting with mold and lead toxins.
He was always playing on the floorboards of the nursery in only his underwear.
When she opens the bathroom door, the candles blow out behind her, a solemn farewell.
When he was a baby, there was a fat roundness to his little thighs and his milk-filled belly.
Only now she sees the boniness of him, the fragility of his wrists and ribs like curved sticks.
She imagines him a carving done of soft soap, whittled too far with a paring knife, the floor layered with shaved curls of creamy white.
In the bedroom, she turns on one bedside lamp, casting one corner in a dim, muted glow.
Clean baskets of unfolded laundry are tipped over and searched through until she finds his favorite fire truck pajamas.
At least he smells clean and sweet, her beautiful child sitting on her bed and staring at her with his black button eyes.
Maybe he didn’t see what really happened in the basement. Maybe he didn’t understand.
She reaches out to push a wet curl from his face, and he flinches.
So there is her answer.
Her eyes close, her lungs caving in, and she can feel the untethered edges of herself begin to unravel because it will be impossible to fix herself yet again when his mouth holds all her secrets.
The house has never felt so still.
Silence pulses behind the locked door, sticking fingers under the crack to test for weakness.
This space has somehow been left an oasis of clean laundry and mussy bedsheets, comfort only marred by the fact she can still see the shape of Bren preserved in the rumpled twist of the duvet, imagine the weight of him sunk into the mattress as he gathers her in his arms.
Hear the way he screamed.
Or was that her.
Or was that the walls.
If she unlocks the bedroom door, it feels like there will be nothing beyond it, the house having collapsed in on itself under the weight of its corrosion. A black void will stretch, the nothingness vast and consuming and absolute.
But she will have to open that door.
She dresses herself quickly, discarding her blood-flecked oversize sweatshirt.
Digging in her dresser produces black jeans that barely go up over her belly, a sleek black turtleneck, and her thickest socks.
She finds her coat in the wardrobe and buttons it to her throat.
Cold, she is so endlessly cold. Jude’s toes are bare, so she finds him socks.
A tiny tap sounds at the door. She whips around, her heartbeat spooked to an immediate riot. But it’s still locked. There’s nothing there.
It had only sounded like a single fingernail, scratching.
If she crawls into bed and sings Jude to sleep, the world could look different in the morning. She could find a way to explain—
No. There is no explaining.
A headache pulses in her skull, and she can feel mold growing in a porous film behind her eyelids. It makes her want to dig fingers into her eyes and peel them out, scrub them clean and reinsert; then she will be better able to parse this situation. Then she will trust what she sees.
Around her, the walls run with blood.
“Come on, baby.” She picks up Jude, and he immediately goes limp in her arms.
She drifts to the bedroom door, pausing before her hand connects with the old brass key. Don’t be insane. There’s nothing out there. The house, she is sure, won’t notice them in the dark if she walks quickly and keeps their limbs tight to their bodies.
The house is busy eating.
Breathe deeply. After this, she can rest, she can close her eyes and let the whimper of pain twisting around her tongue finally release.
Then she will cry. But first is unlocking the door and turning the knob as the hinges sigh and darkness sweeps into the bedroom with a silky, seductive whisper. See? There’s nothing—
The door swings open wide.
A shape grows in front of her.
Inked in darkness.
Solidifying with shocking clarity.
Elodie screams. She lunges backward. Jude slips from her arms, and she is screaming and screaming and—
Bren’s bloodied hand clamps around her throat.