by Rose Szabo
I quickly followed the hallway to the door that led to the kitchen. I was about to be back with my mother, and then everything would be alright. I opened the door, and as it swung open, I realized someone was standing there, waiting for me to open it.
I’d forgotten about Aunt Margaret.
She stared straight at me from under her ragged tangle of hair. She looked like the women in the portraits, but wilder: sallow skin, bags under her eyes, her clothes covered in grease stains. She frowned at me and muttered something I couldn’t make out. She didn’t like to be stared at, I remembered, and she didn’t like to be spoken to. I could work around this. I averted my eyes and held very still. Slowly, she shuffled back a few paces from the door. “Mother?” I called out again, more tentatively.
“Just follow my voice, dear!”
I edged around Margaret. In my childhood memories she was somehow lovable, always humming a tune. She muttered to herself as I skirted around her through the dark kitchen, across its brick floor and past the big stone oven blackened with years of soot, to the old farmhouse-style back door. The top half was already propped open. I slipped out through the bottom half and shut it behind me, penning Margaret in the kitchen.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the house, so I was blinded at first when I stepped out into the sun. Mother gasped, then said, “My little girl!”
As my eyes adjusted, I saw the shapes in the back garden more clearly. A tall, narrow old woman in a faded black dress, a man in a suit, a woman sitting in what looked like a large iron washtub. And behind them, a table set with plates and glassware and trimmed with faded bunting. A party?
“Hullo, Eleanor,” said the man. He was older than in his portrait, but I knew he must be my father. I stepped closer, but he didn’t reach out to hug me, just looked at me curiously for a long while. Finally, I put out a hand, and he shook it dazedly.
“Eleanor,” Grandma Persephone said. I was already looking past her, looking for the voice that had called to me earlier. But when I really saw my mother, I gasped.
She was wearing a thin robe, drenched with water. Half of her face was just like mine. I recognized my high forehead, my profile. But as she turned to look at me I saw her other side: an eyeless, earless mass of red polyps that ran all the way down her body until they disappeared into the water of the tub. All of them were straining toward me, as though they could see me, as though they wanted to reach out and grasp me and suck me into the mass. I stumbled back and caught myself on the porch railing.
Her one eyebrow shot up, her half of a mouth opening in dismay. I forced myself to smile, but she reached out her good hand and took a damp towel from the edge of the tub and smoothed it protectively over the inhuman side of her face.
I knew I should go and hug her. I knew that I used to. That when I was little, I’d loved her. But now all I could think about was the feeling of those things squirming across my face.
“Hello, Mother,” I said, trying to sound breezy, like the girls at school. But they always said mummy, or mama. I couldn’t imagine what that would sound like in my mouth.
“I told them we should throw you a little party,” Mother said. “It’s been so long.”
“How did you know I was coming?”
“I saw you,” said Grandma Persephone. And when she spoke, I realized that my eye had been avoiding her in the way that it was still avoiding Mother. I forced myself to turn and take in the woman who had sent me away from home all those years ago.
Her hair was milk-white, like mine, and had been since she was young—a family trait. She towered over me, taller than a woman ought to be by her age. Hers was the original face that had spawned all the women in the portraits: her features bonier, crueler, her nose more hooked, her eyes more sunken. I swallowed hard.
“Grandmother,” I said. In my mind it sounded dignified. But it came out softer than I’d expected. Like a question.
“You made it here, I see.”
I wondered if she was angry at me. She’d told me, in letter after letter over the years, to stay put, and I hadn’t. Well, I’d better get this over with. I cleared my throat.
“I need to talk to you,” I said. “Something happened.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she looked angry for a moment. “Not now.” She glanced out across the fields. “The others are coming. They want to say hello to you.”
As if in answer, from the woods came a long howl.
“That will be your grandfather,” she said.
But it wasn’t just him—it was three voices, mingling on the breeze. I was surprised to realize I recognized them. The long vowels of Grandpa Miklos, the sharp yips of Luma, Rhys’s guttural bark. But a part of them felt different now. I used to hear that sound and run to the door. Now I stood frozen in place like a rabbit, my eyes scanning the tree line, dreading what might come out.
“Quite alright?” Grandma Persephone asked. My throat was too dry to speak.
It was spring dusk. They were nothing more than smears of light and shadow among the trees. If they came for my throat there would be no way I could stop them. The sound of their voices made my chest ache with longing, but my legs wanted to run. A dangerous combination, to want something so badly and also be so afraid. I felt that hunger open up inside me again, the same one I’d felt gripping Lucy Spencer by the hair—
I realized I’d shut my eyes, and when I forced them open again, three shapes had broken free of the tree line, ambling along upright, laughing and joking and straightening clothing. One of the shapes, a young man tugging on a red sweater, saw me and started into a run across the lawn. He vaulted the low stone wall, rushed me, grabbed me, and heaved me high into the air. Against my will my body went limp, preparing for death.
“Ellie!”
He caught me up and held me out to look at me. My feet dangled in empty air. I still couldn’t draw breath.
“Rhys, put her down.” Grandma Persephone’s lips were pursed, but I could see the smile twitching around the edges. She thought this was funny. I couldn’t believe it.
“She likes it,” Rhys said. “Don’t you?”
“Please put me down.”
He looked wounded, but he lowered me to the ground. As soon as my feet touched down I backed away. My ribs ached where he’d held me.
“Eleanor,” Grandma Persephone said, “this is your cousin Rhys. A college man, when he bothers to show up to his classes. Popular with the ladies, or so I’ve heard.” Rhys’s chest puffed up. “And clearly, as you can see, a brute with no manners.” She said it affectionately, but I didn’t think it was funny at all.
“She knows me.” He grinned at me. “Don’t you, Ellie?”
“Of course.” I tried to infuse my voice with warmth. He felt dangerous.
“I knew it!” He moved forward as though he wanted to scoop me up again, but stopped himself short. “Every time I’m home I ask Where’s Ellie, and Grandma says—”
“She’s been at boarding school,” Grandma Persephone said.
“I know that, Grandma. Where’s she been at Christmas?”
“Rhys, who’s got the meat?” she asked.
“Grandpa.”
“Why don’t you go help him with that?”
Rhys nodded, then sprinted back toward the other two figures making their way across the lawn. One was an old man who tottered slowly, the other a blond girl who kept pace.
“If he’s my cousin,” I said, “who’s his mother?”
“Margaret. And that’s your sister there, and your Grandpa Miklos,” Grandma Persephone said, behind me. She said it quietly, like a stage manager feeding me my lines.
“I know that,” I said. I watched Rhys catch up to them. He took the sack from the old man, leaped back over the wall, and opened the gate for him. The sack dropped to the ground with a leaden thud. As she stepped through the gate, the girl glanced up, and although I knew it was her, I recognized my sister for the first time. And she was the first thing I saw that didn’t frighten me
. She’d grown up, but she still looked like a movie actress, with her wide, bright eyes, cherubic face, and soft hair the color of a star. She ran toward me and wrapped her arms around me, and from her clothes came the familiar smell of pine forest and mail-ordered perfume. Luma. My sister, my best friend. I’d written her probably a hundred letters and she’d never written me back, but now I was here, and she had me.
“Eleanor!” she said into my cheek. I let her hug me, and for a moment, things felt normal. Then she pulled back and grinned cheerily at me with her mouthful of sharp teeth. Strands of bloody flesh still clung between them, and her breath smelled gamey. I kept my smile fixed as she stroked my cheek with a fingernail caked in blood.
“Luma,” I said. “I’ve missed you.”
“And you!”
“I have so much to tell you,” I said. “I—”
“Mother,” Luma said, “what’s in your bath? It smells incredible.”
“Sage.”
“Heaven.” Luma sat down on the edge of Mother’s tub with a sigh, stroked the water, and splashed some of it across her face. I couldn’t quite believe that after eight years away, she hadn’t even let me finish my sentence.
All around me were little domestic scenes: Luma sitting on the edge of the garden tub, Father listening sheepishly while Rhys talked about the hunting they’d done, Grandma Persephone tapping Grandpa Miklos on the chest with one bony finger. “You forgot your cane,” she said.
“I don’t need it on four legs.”
“You need it coming back.”
“Ehhhh…” He waved a hand. “I don’t like it. It makes me feel old.”
“You are old.”
He slung an arm around her shoulders, and she bent her knees to take his weight. As she moved to his side I got a look at his face. It was the face I remembered most vividly from childhood: those kind, dark eyes, those soft lines in his skin, his bushy eyebrows, his broad nose. But I didn’t feel the way I used to when I looked at him. I was afraid.
“Miklos,” Grandma Persephone said. “Don’t you want to say hello to Eleanor? She’s home.”
He grinned as he turned toward me. But then he sniffed the air, his grin faded, and his head snapped up to lock onto his target. His eyes focused on mine, and as they did, his shoulders dropped down, relaxing but also … preparing.
I felt suddenly cold. Grandpa wasn’t like Rhys or Luma or Father. He was older and came from somewhere less civilized. He wasn’t seeing Eleanor, his granddaughter. He was seeing a young woman named Eleanor who had suddenly found herself at an isolated manor house. Someone no one would miss if she disappeared on a spring evening.
He took a step toward me. I took half a step back, praying my foot wouldn’t catch on a stone, praying I wouldn’t falter or fall.
Grandma Persephone saw it, too. She snapped her fingers under his nose. “Miklos. Miklos!”
He shook his head and looked a little dreamy.
“It is good to see you, my … darling,” he said. “It has been too long.”
I nodded, waiting for my heart to stop racing.
Grandma Persephone had him by one arm. I could see her fingernails digging into his jacket. “Let’s toast,” she said.
They all turned toward the table and took up flutes of champagne. Someone put one into my hand.
“To our Eleanor,” Grandma Persephone said, and they clinked glasses and drank. I sipped.
I’d pictured a time like this every night for years, until the image got threadbare and worn. My family, welcoming me back, thrilled to see me, as though I had never left. And now that I had it, it was wrong. Or I was wrong.
The rest of them quickly fell to chatting, and I let myself sidle out of the way. At school, the easiest way to get out of things was just to stop existing. I watched them for a while, and then Grandma Persephone detached herself and drifted back to stand near me.
“You’ll want to apologize to your mother once you’ve settled in,” she said. “You were a little rude, but I’m sure she’ll understand that you’re just nervous. Which, by the way, is not something you should show your grandfather, either. If something runs, he has to chase.”
“I wouldn’t have been afraid if you hadn’t sent me away.”
It was out of my mouth before I could stop it, and after I said it, I glowed hot with indignation. She studied me, and I studied her back, looking all over her face for any trace of remorse for what she’d done to me, for sending me away, for letting me be afraid. Nothing. I realized she was curious about me, that she might have known I’d come back, but now that I was here, she didn’t know exactly what I’d do next.
“I felt like that, once,” she said at last.
“I’m sorry?”
“After my son died,” she said. “The first Rhys. I looked at your grandfather, and I forgot everything that made him my family. I just saw a monster.”
I looked around at the gathering. How could she see anything else?
“Give yourself time,” she said, “to let your eyes adjust.”
I glanced around at my family. They’d clumped together, laughing, drinking champagne. Aside from a few glances at me, they looked like they’d already forgotten I was here, that I was the reason for the party. Evening fell across the lawn as my sister still perched on the edge of the tub. Her long, sharp teeth, the ones that couldn’t retract like everyone else’s, glinted in the light of the rising moon. Father and Grandpa Miklos were looking conspiratorially at the bag on the ground.
“What’s for dinner?” Father asked Rhys. “Show me what you caught.”
Rhys grabbed the sack and pulled out a brace of young rabbits by the ears. Their bodies swung limply from their broken necks. Their white throats were pink with blood.
Maybe my eyes were adjusting, I thought, since everything seemed to be getting darker around me. And then I fainted.
TWO
I woke up in a dim room. For a moment I thought I was back at Saint Brigid’s, and I was relieved. Everything that had happened had been a terrible dream. Now I would wake up for morning Mass. I’d eat toast in the dining hall alone. Maybe I’d spend the morning reading with Sister Katherine. It was June, and everyone but me would be gone on summer vacations at last, so there would be no one to bother me.
But the bed underneath me was too soft, almost saggy. And there was a weight on me, pressing down, heavier than a blanket.
I glanced down, then screamed, instantly awake. Sprawled across my legs was a dead—something, big and covered in brown fur. I scrambled backward until I hit the headboard, and I stayed there, breathing hard, until I could bring myself to look more closely. A groundhog. No blood on it, just dead. A prank, I guessed. Probably Rhys. And I remembered all at once where I was.
Rhys was a beast. Was he trying to frighten me away? He could try his best. This wasn’t the first time someone had put something horrible in my bed.
I slithered out from under the covers, stumbled around the room until I found the curtains, and tugged them open.
Light flooded the room, and I blinked for a moment, stunned. My window overlooked the high cliffs and beyond that the ocean, sunlit and deep blue. I opened the window and felt an ache under my ribs. The smell of the sea called to me. I shut my eyes and sighed. I loved it here, in this place. I couldn’t let Rhys scare me away.
I went to the bed and picked up the top sheet by the corners. I heaved the groundhog to the window and rolled it out. It hit the lawn with a thud.
There, that was a little better. I shook out the sheet and risked a look around.
My room at school had been austere: white walls, two narrow beds, one perpetually empty because no one would room with me. This room was its opposite, so packed with things and life that it was almost hard to look at. It had wallpaper printed with tiny flowers, an enormous black wardrobe carved with grinning faces buried in sprays of oak leaves, a cheery pink-and-red rag rug, a chandelier hanging from the high ceiling, heavy curtains of faded pink velvet with gold tassels,
a spindly-legged desk crouched in one corner, and a dollhouse in the shape of the house itself, the roof caved in, as though someone had stepped on it. My suitcase was propped up by the wardrobe. There was a little armchair with a rabbit sitting in it, and my heart raced until I realized it was a stuffed toy. There were sheets of paper pinned to the walls, page-sized pieces that flapped a little in the breeze from the open window. Some had come unpinned and fluttered to the floor.
They were poems, their edges showing the rough scissor-work of a young child. They must have been cut out of a book. I leaned forward to read one.
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
My poem, the one I knew most of the lines to, the one I mouthed to myself late at night in my dormitory room at Saint Brigid’s. I thought that I’d read it for the first time at thirteen, behind a shelf in our school’s little library. I checked it out so many times that Sister Katherine had finally let me keep it. It was the only book I’d grabbed when I hastily packed my suitcase and ran for the train station. But here it was, something a much younger me had loved, too. How could I have forgotten?
Downstairs, plates clattered and people spoke in hushed voices. I should go down there and say something. I should try again. They were all I had, after all. I stopped in front of the mirror; they’d put me to bed fully dressed, so I was still in my school uniform. I smoothed my collar down. Close enough.
When I descended the stairs and came to the dining room, I hesitated at the door. Then Mother saw me. She was sitting in a barrel, a gauzy robe draped over her and trailing in the water. She turned toward me and smiled winningly with the side of her face that had teeth.
“Eleanor!” she said. “You’re awake. We were so worried after last night.”
“I feel much better now.”
“Come have some breakfast!”
I tried not to look tentative as I stepped across the threshold. I remembered Persephone’s words: If you run, he has to chase. So I tried to look confident as I turned toward Miklos, but he didn’t see me. His face was a snout, buried in his breakfast, licking it up from the plate. Bits of meat and egg flew in all directions. At his elbow, Rhys and Luma were fighting over a last slice of thick undercooked bacon, until finally it ripped apart between them and Luma fell backward into Father, jostling his elbow while he cut his meat into little squares. Rhys looked up at me with an expectant grin. Determined that he wouldn’t scare me, I stared impassively until the grin vanished. After his eyes dropped to his plate I let my gaze wander, and realized that there was someone else at the table, someone whose back was turned to me.