by K Larsen
I look back to Dallas and give him a lazy smile. It is not bright. It is not genuine. It is simply to accommodate his unease. I can feel it barreling off him in waves, hitting me square between my shoulder blades. He doesn’t need to worry now. The moment is rife with kairos. I can’t yet decipher the warring feelings I’m experiencing but I know that there is opportunity ahead, to heal or find peace or maybe just for justification and validation of my fucked-up-ness.
The cabin comes into view, along with the other outbuildings. The barn and the box. A tremor tears through my body. They all seem exhausted from weathering endless seasons. The cabin stands like a cadaver. The walls are still upright, roof and porch intact… but hollow and listless, empty. From the looks of it, you'd think it was an abandoned summer camp full of joyous childhood memories and love, now long forgotten. You'd never know the atrocities those walls housed. You'd never know the secrets held captive from the outside, but I do.
Eyes brimming with tears, I press the back of my hand over my mouth to staunch the well of emotion rising. There’s crime scene tape still across the door. I’m struck with a paroxysm of weeping when Dallas touches my shoulder. I shake him off, too inside my own head to be touched by another.
I push forward, moving one foot, followed by the other. Forward. Forward. Forward. I pull down the crime-scene tape across the front door and nudge the door open with a solid heave from my shoulder. Stepping inside, I let my pack drop to the floor and look around. The same mismatched cushions on the saggy sofa, and a thick layer of dust covering every available surface greets me. It’s a morose pathetic sight.
I look back at Dallas and swallow back a sour taste rising in my throat. Dallas is wound tighter than an over-tuned viola string. One more turn and he’ll snap. His jaw is so tight, the muscle bunches. There’s a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and his breathing comes so fast and furious that it almost matches my own.
“It’s just a cabin. Four old walls and endless splintered wood floors,” I remind myself aloud. He blinks rapidly, like his electronic wiring is malfunctioning, before his eyes sort of light up, focus, and he sees me. His hand tangles with mine and squeezes. Turning to him I press my index and middle finger to his pulse point on his neck. It’s impulse—the act of it—but my body craves the feeling. The rapid thump, thump, thump oddly comforting in the moment. He doesn’t look shocked that I do it.
“It’s just hard to imagine you living here,” he says. I nod in agreement, because unlike my memories where it’s so easy to slip into my recollections of how it was, the reality of it, seeing it again in such disrepair does make it hard to believe this was my home. I drop my fingers from his neck and release his hand. This is nothing like what it was. The knot in my stomach lessens slightly.
Slowly I walk around the main room and take it all in. “There isn’t much left. There used to be candles and books stacked here.” I point for Dallas. “And the things I whittled, Holden displayed over there. And that room was mine,” I say pointing to the door. “And that one was Nora and Holden’s. Well, after Nora moved in the house.”
“Where did she sleep before that?”
“There’s a room off the porch but there’s no door that connects it in here. Then she was in the box. Then in here.”
Dallas cringes. “The box? Do I even want to know?”
I pull my lips between my teeth and shake my head. I can’t tell him about that right now anyway. I’m too full of other ghosts and emotions to recount that one. Dallas walks across the floor, the boards creaking under his weight, and drops down onto the couch. Dust poofs up in a cloud around him and he coughs.
30
Dallas
I sputter at the amount of dust hanging in the air I’ve set free. I swat at it while City takes the opportunity to snap a picture of me before extending a hand to me through the translucent cloud and says, “Come on. Come see my room.”
I don’t feel right being here, but I take her hand and follow. There are monsters and memories bigger and badder than my own that linger—trapped in these walls. I can physically feel them and it’s creeping me out. I take her hand and try to shake off the morbid feeling that shrouds me. The door sticks when she tries to push it open, so I tuck her aside and throw my shoulder into it. It pops open with a loud creak. Charlotte steps around me, pulling me inside behind her.
We’re in her room, which has nothing but necessities in it. No toys. No clothes strewn about. No pictures. Nothing but a bed, a dresser, a gas lamp and a bowl and pitcher for water to wash up with. Less than the nothing that even I—the foster kid—had with me from house to house. Nothing at all that would make you think a child lived here—abandoned or not—there’s no proof of City in these walls. Sunlight peeks through the slats and boards of the room briefly. It is the first time I’ve seen City look afraid. I don’t know what past monsters are waging war on her right now but whatever it is, it has frightened her.
I sneak up to her and kiss her cheek gently before taking her hand. She gives me a half-smile. I watch her sit on the edge of the sagging bed and look around.
“There’s nothing here. They took most of it,” she says.
“Who?”
“The police. I had little drawings and figurines I carved. And books.”
“That’s it though?” I ask.
“That’s all there was to be had,” she says bluntly.
“Maybe we should go outside, set up camp.”
City gives the room another once over and says, “We’ll stay in here. A bed will be nice. Tomorrow we can swim in the creek again. Sometimes there are frogs, too. There used to be chickens in the yard.” She’s somewhere else now, somewhere in the past, remembering. “Foxes and fisher cats and wild pigs and bears meander through the woods here. Holden always kept a gun near, just in case.” Her voice shakes slightly as she finishes but does not break. She’s so much stronger than she gives herself credit for. She stands, nervous energy radiating off her.
A lone delicate finger drags across everything she passes—the bed, the ceramic basin, the wall, a short stack of books—leaving a clear trail in the dust coating on it all. She stops and presses herself into me, wrapping her arms around my waist and resting her head on my chest.
I kiss the crown of her head. “Tell me.”
“Not yet,” she whispers.
“You promised,” I say.
“The words are jumbled. I’ll tell you when I can make sense of them.”
“Promise?” I ask.
“Promise.” She nods. “Let’s go outside. I’ll show you the barn. We used to have so many animals when I first came.” She sounds almost chipper, but I can detect a hint of melancholy under it all. It makes me wonder, is a crime less wrong because time has passed? Does it affect those involved less because it’s buried firmly in the past? What happens if you exhume it the way Charlotte seems hell-bent on doing?
31
Charlotte
A bleak drizzle of rain saturates everything as we walk to the barn, dumping me into a memory so vivid I can taste the rancid tartness of it. The words—the memory—just pours out of me and into Dallas to absorb as I yank open the barn door and step inside.
Holden’s eyes blaze. “She’s not here now to save you, Charlotte. Is that what you wanted? You wanted her gone? To be alone with me again?” The smirk on his face is terrifying. I’m certain punishment is coming. Nora is gone, and I am still here and there is nothing left for him to hurt but me.
I shake my head, and clamp my mouth shut.
“We need to get her back. We need to get her back.” He chants, as if he has no other words. Not like Nora. Nora always had words. Big words, little words. Words that made our life feel just the tiniest bit normal. I stifle a sob that threatens to break loose.
“How are you going to do that?” I ask. If I can just know the plan…
“You don’t need to know,” he snaps. I cast my eyes to the floor. I got caught up in the moment. Spoke out of turn. I only need to k
now what Holden tells me. I wrap my arms around my chest. The fire died out hours ago and the cabin is cold again. I cannot remain with Holden alone again. I will not survive another Nora.
Something flickers in his eyes as he watches me. He takes my hand and opens the door that leads to the path I have taken for countless buckets of water or to feed the animals. He leads me too fast, his steps too big for me and I half stumble alongside him. My body shivers violently in the cold wind as he pulls me through the snow and into the barn.
He fiddles in the back near the grains before coming at me. “Drink this,” he says. I lean away from the cup, eyes wide. I do not trust him. I do not know what he’s feeding me. “Drink, Lotte.” His voice is stern. I do as I’m told and drink the cupful. If this is it, I am ready. I will lie down here and go peacefully. Holden leans his forehead against mine. His rank breath fogs between our faces.
“We’ll get her back. I promise. We’ll be a family again.” I want to laugh but do not. A family. We were never a real family. My eyelids feel heavy. It feels good. I’m ready.
Then… I drift.
I blink away my tears. “I thought he was poisoning me. I thought that was it. That it was the end of my story. If we were all dead, we’d be together again and I was certain that he’d find and kill Nora and then himself. I gave in, Dallas, I drank and accepted my fate.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“No. No, I was wrong about his motives. But I can tell you this, I have never been so disappointed to wake up in my entire life. I was ready for it to all be over, and waking up proved that it wasn’t. It wasn’t over and I was still with him.”
“Maybe we should get outta here. Make a fire. Eat something. Maybe we shouldn’t stay here at all.” He heaves out a sigh. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“It feels like everything,” I say a little too harshly. “It feels like everything I need it to.”
“I can’t handle your tears or the fear in your eyes. It kills me, City.”
He looks like he means it, like somehow he can actually experience and feel what I am. “I can’t do this without you,” I tell him earnestly.
Dallas gives me a meaningful look. The one that solidifies my faith in him. The one that shows me that he really does only have eyes for me.
“Tell me what you need from me.”
I turn around and take in the dilapidated barn. Everything here is broken and rotting just like the memories I carry with me. Lingering scars never allowed to heal. It all needs to burn. To finally be put to rest. To end the suffering.
“I just need you here with me. I have a plan.”
“Your plans scare me,” he says. I laugh loudly because they scare me too sometimes.
Inside we pull our packs into the living room and unpack our meager belongings. I pulled a bucket of water up from the well on our way in from the barn, and let a bottle’s worth filter while we go through our things.
“Seriously, you’re like Helen Keller or some shit with that well and bucket,” Dallas says.
I giggle. “I’m not blind or deaf.”
He rubs a dirty shirt over his damp hair. The rain outside pelts the cabin roof with dull, thick-sounding splats.
“Right, not exactly like her.”
I side-eye him before bumping his shoulder with mine. “The kerosene is in that cabinet—if there’s any left,” I tell him, and nod to the floor-to-ceiling cupboard near the counter. “We’ll need to fill the lanterns for tonight.”
“On it.” He kisses my cheek on his way past me and my stomach settles. If there were a way to guarantee that at least once an hour Dallas would lay his lips on me every day, I’d do it, whatever it might be.
With Dallas momentarily busy, I take time to stop distracting myself and just feel the moment. I want to take back my power. I want to make this place mine, not his—to fill it with so much good that it chokes the evil out. I want to leave here knowing I’ve erased the horrors I experienced.
A loud clang draws my attention to Dallas, now standing in the middle of a small pile of pots and skillets.
He frowns and looks to me. “Good news is I found it.” He raises a can of kerosene. “The bad news is I think that cast-iron pan broke my toe.”
Chuckling, I meet him halfway to take the can from him. “Should I kiss it to make it better?”
Dallas’s face pinches, wrinkling. “I’m into a lot of stuff, City, but feet aren’t one of them. Gross.”
A smile stretches the corners of my mouth before a belly laugh hoists itself up and out. Dallas’s face lights up as his shoulders shake with his own laughter. That’s exactly what this place needs; laughter and jokes.
By the time the cabin has grown dark, I’ve managed to start the wood stove so we can cook our soup. There is still chopped wood left stacked on the porch. Not much, but enough for what we need. The rain subsided with the lingering descent of the sun and the clouds seemingly evaporated leaving behind a stunning evening sky. I move around the cabin with ease, lighting the four lanterns. They cast the entire place in a soft sepia tones.
Dallas is on the couch, feet tucked under him, scouring every inch of every wall.
“What’s the most ridiculous thing your mom ever did to entertain you?” I ask. I swipe a deck of cards from a shelf on my way to Dallas. He raises a lone brow at me.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know, something to talk about. Do you know how to play Rummy?”
He nods, unfolds his legs and rests his elbows on his knees. There is something so untouchable about him right now—his body language, the glint in his eye, the way he’s looking at me—it’s like the ultimate player vibe. I know he’s not, but I can’t think of a better way to describe it. Maybe it’s a secret. Player’s never tell the whole truth, they reserve information and emotions and maybe that’s what Dallas is doing right now.
I sit cross-legged on the floor at the coffee table and deal the cards.
“Everything okay?” I ask, focusing on counting the cards.
“Yeah, why?”
I shrug. “Seems like something's got you down.”
“Nope. Just, you know, adjusting to this place and all the things you’ve told me about it. It’s creepy now that it’s dark and the wind makes spooky sounds when it gusts.”
I giggle. “Yeah. It does. I’d forgotten about that, I guess. It’s just wind though—trust me—there’s nothing else up here.” Dallas picks up his cards. “So, what about my question?” I ask.
“My mom?”
I nod as I arrange my cards. He’s silent a few beats, staring at his hand but not moving any cards around and I think maybe I’ve lost him to his own thoughts. I don’t mind though. I like watching him think. His nose twitches every so often and his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip mindlessly. Sometimes his brow furrows, and then it happens. He has the memory he wants. I can see it plain as can be on his face. The corners of his mouth tilt upward as he rubs his palm on his thigh. I like that about him. I like that if I pay attention and watch him—I can see what’s coming.
“When I was real little, once in a while she’d bring home lobsters for dinner. Obviously, this was when she was having a good spell. Sober and actually around and present. While she got the water boiling, she’d let the lobster crawl around on the floor and let me play with it. It was almost like I had a real pet for a few minutes. I used to beg her for a pet.”
“Oh my God, didn’t it pinch you?” I ask.
Dallas laughs while he throws down a run of five cards. “No, she left the bands around the claws.”
“Oh.”
“Those nights were the best. She’d sing while she danced around our tiny out-of-date orange kitchen and I’d sit in the middle of the floor following this lobster around the cheap linoleum, poking and examining it, until her hand appeared out of nowhere and scooped it up.”
“And then what?”
“She stuck it in the pot. It was dinner, City.” He gives me a dejected look. “Did you
know lobsters make a weird screaming sound when they boil?”
“You’re a real buzz kill, you know that?”
“You’re not buzzed and neither am I,” he points out.
“Good idea!” I jump to my feet, leaving my cards face down on the floor and move to the kitchen. “Can you help me?” I call to Dallas.
“What are you doing?”
Pushing up to my tiptoes I reach for the bottle but can’t stretch far enough.
“I need you to lift me. Just like, a little.” I point to the shelf I’m trying to reach.
Dallas laughs at me while he moves me out of the way and easily reaches the bottle. “I think you just wanted my hands on you,” he says, while handing me the bottle of bourbon.
I blush because I was so invested in the moment that I didn’t realize he could reach and it embarrasses me that I sounded so dependent and stupid and feminine asking him to lift me.
Dallas catches my chin with his index finger, lifting it until we’re looking at each other. His finger slides the length of my jawline until his hand is cupping the nape of my neck. “Silly, City, I don’t need an excuse to put my hands on you—do I?”
I suck my bottom lip between my teeth and shake my head. “Never.”
Dallas kisses my forehead and takes the bottle from me. “Whiskey, huh?”
“Why not?”
“Okay, but only a little—for fun, because Drunk Charlotte is sloppy.”
“Oh my God,” I draw out the ‘God’ emphatically and Dallas laughs. He unscrews the top, takes a swig and hands it to me, so I mimic him. The taste is awful and burns as it goes down and instantly I want to wash it away. Dallas chuckles.
“That’s some face,” he says, grinning.
“That is nasty! Why would anyone drink that?”
“I believe they call it ‘an acquired taste’.”
My eyes go wide. “Why would anyone want to acquire a taste for that?”