like to see the rest of the downstairs before you make your decision to buy?” Elizabeth’s reply was curt, but she hadn’t been prepared for the woman’s personal questions or her judgmental tone. All she wanted now was to finish showing off the house and to end today’s meeting.
Genie peered up at Elizabeth through long, graying lashes as if seeing her for the first time. “Beg pardon?”
“I asked if you wanted to see the rest of the house before you decided whether to purchase. I understand you must have a sentimental attachment to it seeing as it’s your childhood home, but a lot has changed about it since you were last here.”
Genie laughed her high-pitched, girlish laugh again and Elizabeth was once more on edge. “Oh, I don’t plan to buy the house.”
“Then ma’am, may I ask why you came?”
Genie’s laughter subsided. Her cloudy eyes and pale skin darkened. “To stop you from selling it.”
“And why would that concern you?”
The old woman walked past Elizabeth without responding and headed to the stairwell. “May I tell you a story, dear?” she called over her shoulder.
“Okay.” Elizabeth didn’t answer, but followed the old woman down the stairs and into the kitchen. The layout of the house must not have changed much from the time Genie lived there Elizabeth thought because she hadn’t needed to be shown the way.
“Do you mind making us some tea?” Genie asked, taking a seat at the island in the middle of the room. “I know it may not be hot tea weather at the moment, but my limbs are aching and I could really use some nice green leaves to soothe me.”
“I’ll…see if we have some.” She searched through the cupboards, taking her time so as not to give the woman the impression that she was eager for her to stay.
Elizabeth wanted her out of the house. She hated to say it, after all the woman was old and probably lonely now that her husband had passed, but Eugenia Waters disturbed her in a way no one else ever had. She had a way of talking to her like they knew each other that, while normally would be comforting to Elizabeth, felt very intrusive at the moment.
When Elizabeth’s hand found the canister where she kept her tea bags stored, she pushed it to the back of the cupboard behind boxes of crackers and some half-eaten peanut butter. Slamming the door shut, she turned to Genie with a sheepish grin and threw up her hands.
“Sorry. I seem to have run out of tea.”
Genie gazed at Elizabeth with knowing eyes. “Are you sure? Maybe you should check the cupboard again. Maybe you’re mistaken.”
Elizabeth’s throat tightened. Genie pointed with her dead hand to the closed cupboard door. “My mama used to keep her tea in the same spot. My sister, Caroline, used to take daddy’s old step stool out from under the sink after school, take out two bags, and make us tea on the stove even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to. She was always so sneaky, that Caroline. Are you sneaky, Elizabeth?”
Genie crossed her legs. The hem of her skirt rode up her thighs, exposing a large expanse of sagging skin over thin bones. Her legs looked like dough, stretched and pulled into a shapeless mess. Elizabeth almost gasped at the sight.
She turned back to the cupboard and opened it. “Well, I guess you were right – I do have some tea after all,” Elizabeth said. She pulled down the canister of tea bags and put on some water.
“I like my tea with a bit of milk, dear. Do you have any?”
Elizabeth flashed Genie a nervous smile. “I think so. Let me check.”
She silently prayed that she was all out so she could have an excuse for getting rid of her unexpected visitor. She swung open the door. A half-gallon of whole milk sat on the top shelf. She took it out and displayed it to Genie before setting it on the counter.
The kettle whistled shortly after and Elizabeth poured the water into two mugs, placing the tea bags in them under Genie’s silent scrutiny. The old woman hadn’t said much else. She just sat at the island and watched Elizabeth – she could feel Genie’s eyes following her around the kitchen.
Elizabeth set the mugs down on the island and got her sugar dish out. The two women fixed their drinks in awkward silence.
“I make you uncomfortable, don’t I?”
Elizabeth looked up from her drink. “Why would you say that?”
Genie chuckled to herself and raised her mangled hand. “It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. You get used to it in time. My Harold did. You will, too.”
Elizabeth’s cheeks reddened. She glanced down at her own perfectly formed hands with beautifully long, fully functioning fingers and swallowed down guilt. “I know I probably shouldn’t ask –”
“You want to know how it happened.”
Elizabeth nodded. Genie smiled and placed the hand on the island countertop between them.
“It happened when I was a girl, in this very house. My mama was…well, she was sick. She had, what you’d call it nowadays? Oh right – post-partum. She got it right after giving birth to my brother Francis. She’d already had me and Caroline, but I think the stress of two school-aged girls and a new baby must have set her off because she wasn’t the same after him. We’d only been living in the house for a year then. Mama kept telling us she heard somebody whispering to her late at night while she was feeding the baby.”
“Whispering what?” Elizabeth stirred some honey into her tea to cool the drink and cupped the mug in both hands.
Genie shook her head. “She never said. She just said she heard the voice, a woman, while she was with him. Then she started hearing her during the day. It was always in that room. The one upstairs at the end of the hall that you forgot to show me.”
Elizabeth’s heart skipped. That room was a nursery before – she’d never known that. She watched the old woman for a sign of…something, she didn’t know what – maybe a sign that the woman had been mistaken, but the old woman wore a serious mask as she picked up her mug.
Genie blew on her tea before taking a tentative sip. “My daddy ignored it at first as silly talk from an obviously tired woman. But then she stopped sleeping. She’d sit up all night and walk around like she was in a daze during the day. She withdrew from us. My mama used to laugh all the time…after Francis, she hardly cracked a smile. And then one day she got really bad. I was home from school that day with a cold. Francis was in his bassinet upstairs crying – I could hear him down the hall in my room. I went in to check on him, try to soothe him so he’d stop crying and I could get some rest, but he wouldn’t respond to me. I called out for mama, but she didn’t answer. I went downstairs. I looked for her in every room, but she wasn’t there. Then I came into this very kitchen, although of course with the remodeling, it didn’t look exactly like this when I was a girl. The layout’s the same, though.”
Intrigued, Elizabeth set her mug down and found herself leaning into the woman. “Did you find your mother?”
“Oh yes, dear. I found her by the sink. I called out to her and told her Francis was crying – didn’t she hear? But mama didn’t respond. She just looked at me and I’ll never forget that look as long as I live. Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot like she hadn’t slept in years; she looked thin and pale – haunted almost. She called me over to her and I went, thinking she was ill and needed me to help her. She picked me up and put my hand down the drain. And, well…you can guess what happened next.”
“Oh my God.” Elizabeth clasped her hand over her mouth, then dropped it to the counter beside Genie’s. “That’s awful.”
“Luckily, I was able to get away from her before that disposal got all my fingers. I passed out on the front lawn running for help. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital and my daddy was there crying. He sent mama away to an asylum after that. She said the woman came to her and told her to do it.”
Elizabeth sat speechless; numb almost. Genie stroked her right hand absentmindedly, staring out the kitchen window to the backyard. “She wasn’t a bad woman. It’s hard on mothers, but especially back in those times.” Th
e old woman folded her hands on the counter and grinned. “Do you have children?”
Elizabeth got up from her stool. She took her mug to the sink and poured the amber liquid down the drain. She was no longer thirsty. “No,” she said, soft and plaintive.
“Why not, dear? Are you barren?”
The mug fell from Elizabeth’s hand and clattered into the sink, the ceramic chipping on impact, but fortunately not breaking. She whirled around to gape at Genie.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, are you barren? You know – infertile; unable to conceive.”
“I know what barren means,” Elizabeth said, her voice clipped. Her hands found their way to her hips as she stared down the woman. “That was just very rude.”
Genie put her bad hand on her chest. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to be indelicate. I sometimes forget how politically correct we’ve become in these modern days.”
Elizabeth sighed and the fight left her body. Genie seemed sincere in her apology and Elizabeth had to remind herself that the old woman was right – people from her time were generally blunter than Elizabeth was used to. She probably didn’t mean anything by it.
“I knew a barren woman once,” Genie said, almost to herself. Her eyes narrowed and she stared beyond Elizabeth like she was trying to find some semblance of the past in the present. “She was the saddest woman I’d ever met. She came to me after my mama was sent away. She’d
Dark Tales: eVolume One Page 5