by Zoje Stage
“Don’t let go of the rope. Step back and take Tycho’s hand.”
Eleanor Queen took Tycho’s left hand and Orla took his right as she let the guide rope go and walked forward to the boundary. They stood in a line, looking out at what should have been their road. The way out.
But I killed It.
“What is it, Mama?” Tycho asked in the same tone he’d once used when gazing at the northern lights, neither afraid nor awed. Simply confused.
Orla thought of Mount Everest first—she and Shaw had shared a love for edge-of-your-seat rock-climbing films. Sometimes the climbers had to cross vast fields of ice slit by perilous crevasses. They’d lay ladders over the fissures and step across the flimsy, bowing bridges like strange, bent-over animals with viciously spiked crampons instead of rear claws. The snow couldn’t always be trusted; sometimes, where it looked solid, it was only a thin veneer and walking on it meant falling into an abyss. A plunge into a deep crevasse meant almost certain death.
“Mama?” Eleanor Queen asked again.
“It’s a glacier,” Orla told them. An almost laughably matter-of-fact explanation for the impossible.
She wanted to collapse. Weep. Shaw had died for nothing. Whatever was happening in this place was far from over. All the more reason to get the children away. Maybe they’d gone back in time—as she’d prayed, but too far back—to when much of North America had been covered in glaciers. Shaw had mentioned in bed one night, while talking about his paintings, an interest in seeing a glacier before global warming made all the retreating ribbons of ice fully disappear. But they’d spent so much on the move; it was a fantasy. Something for his bucket list.
“Wonder what Papa would’ve thought,” Orla whispered without thinking. And immediately regretted it.
Tycho burst into tears. “We can’t leave! The monster’s gonna get us.”
When had he begun to believe there was a monster? Is that what he understood had happened to his father? How quickly Orla’s own fear had metastasized, infecting even her little boy: Something was out to get them.
Orla was tempted to barrel on past the end of the driveway into what should have been the road. Maybe the lane was really there and this was all a mirage. The bear wasn’t real. It was a bleak yet decidedly awesome possibility if the power at hand had no prescribed boundaries. No limitations. Were they dealing with an omnipotent force that she had tried, too late, to fathom? Or were Its powers limited to florid illusions? I’m the deadly one.
The part of her that wanted to show the children there was nothing out there to fear stepped onto the glacier.
“Mama, no!” Eleanor Queen lunged forward and tugged her back to the relative safety of the snow-covered driveway.
“It might not be real,” Orla said. Her voice sounded hollow, swallowed by the field of fissures. Nothing moved—no birds in the sky, no wind to scatter snow across the ice.
“I don’t think you can trust that,” Eleanor Queen whispered.
Tycho hung his head, whimpering.
Orla hesitated; she didn’t want to give up. She couldn’t relinquish the hope that if they just walked onward, turning right onto what should have been the road, it would lead them to safety. The monster would see they couldn’t be intimidated by displays of winter wonder. Maybe, if they all kept walking, the glacier would dissipate beneath their feet and they’d find themselves in familiar territory, between the tree-flanked hills of their road.
“Are you sure, Eleanor Queen? It might only look this way for a short distance.” Orla hated the desperation that engulfed her voice. And hated that, by questioning her, Eleanor Queen might think her mother still didn’t believe her. Orla was all too aware that she needed to heed more of her daughter’s cryptic words and advice. If Orla pursued what she wanted to be true, simply because she wanted it, they could become stranded on the glacier. Or worse. But she couldn’t turn back without Eleanor Queen’s acknowledgment.
“We have to go home,” she confirmed, almost as if she’d read her mother’s mind.
“I wanna go home,” Tycho cried, raising his arms for Orla to carry him. She knew he didn’t mean the place that awaited behind them, but there was nowhere else she could take him.
Resigned to defeat, Orla picked up Tycho, slippery in his winter gear. The weather improved as they walked back. The clouds lifted, revealing a strip of pale sky. That’s what It wanted. She hated even the perception that she was following commands, but if It heard them—tapped into their thoughts—could she find a way to outthink It?
She’d been right, in a sense, about everything, but they weren’t spiritual musings anymore; something was out there, more powerful than she could comprehend. And It had betrayed her. She’d wanted to believe in beauty, in nature, in the promise of the unknown. But it was a ruse, and a trap.
They walked on the trampled path, and the driveway delivered them to their house more quickly than expected. Could they try again tomorrow, maybe only with the intention of going as far as the mailbox to leave a note for the postman? Would It let them do that, or would It recognize the attempt to communicate with the outside world? Though the pool of blood lay buried, Orla switched Tycho to her right hip so he was facing away from the garage—away from the garish tarp, still bright blue beneath its dusting of snow, that hid Shaw.
One word pounded through her head.
Why.
Why.
Why.
Why did It want them all to stay? Did It plan to pick them off one by one?
It angered her, the pettiness of this force she didn’t understand. It teased, flaunted, threatened, made them unwelcome, then wouldn’t let them leave. Why? Had only Shaw pissed It off? Or had she angered It too? Was there something she could do, something to set things right? Or would It remain volatile and vengeful?
She opened the front door and the children slogged in, sullen, defeated. Exhausted. Orla locked the door behind them. Yanked the curtains across the windows. Ready to try a new plan, silly though it sounded: pretend they were somewhere else. As Eleanor Queen and Tycho stripped out of their coats and boots, Orla headed straight upstairs, indifferent to the melting snow puddling in her wake. She closed every blind, triumphant in her foresight to install coverings on every window.
Block it out.
Make it all disappear.
Convince the children the outside didn’t matter anymore, didn’t exist. She’d lead Eleanor Queen and Tycho—her imaginative, artistic children—on a game of creating a new reality. Maybe they could confuse the thing that was lurking at their door, eavesdropping on their thoughts. Let the thing read their minds and find no trace of the world It knew, or wanted. If they could forget about It, maybe their tormentor would forget about them.
How long might that take?
And did they have enough food and resources to outlast It?
26
Orla put on one of their favorite Putumayo Playground CDs. It filled the living room with the buoyant rhythms of steel drums and cowbells.
“Each rug can be an island, and—”
“The chair can be Australia!” shouted Tycho.
Orla, unaware of her little boy’s retained knowledge of Australia, nodded at him, suitably impressed. “Good thinking.”
“The bookcase can be a mountain—”
“That no one can climb.” Though she’d interrupted her daughter, Orla directed the words toward her son. “But you can make up new animals for the oceans and friendly creatures you might meet on the land.”
Once she had them settled in their game of reimagining the living room, Orla planned to carry through with some necessary tasks, alone. She needed to inventory the food. Check the cell phone reception. It felt later in the day than it should have. Time was passing in wonky ways. Orla wouldn’t have been surprised to crack the curtain and find the sun was setting. Maybe grief had ruptured something inside her, an intrinsic mechanism that kept her rooted to the real world, the Earth’s rotation, the rising moon. She’d become a bro
ken toy, a spinning top launched into crooked motion. It didn’t help that the house seemed empty without Shaw. They’d grown accustomed to him being behind his closed door, working, a call or knock away. His absence was everywhere. The children felt it too.
“What about Papa?” Tycho asked as he leapt from one island to another, following his sister.
Eleanor Queen squatted and pulled Tycho down beside her, gazing at her mother in an intense, unnerving way. Orla sensed it was a test—how much did she know of the wrongness, and what would she admit to? She would never lie to her son, but he was still young enough that she wanted to protect him from the gorier aspects of the truth.
Orla knelt in front of them. “Your papa…” She pressed her lips together to stop the quivering. “There was a terrible accident…”
“I know,” Tycho drawled impatiently. “But he’s going to freeze out there, he should come in.”
Orla pressed her cheeks between her hands. Maybe she’d awaken in a hospital and a concerned nurse would say, You had a massive head injury, we almost lost you. And Shaw would be there, smiling. And the kids, holding up homemade cards. And she would tell them, What a horrible dream I had. I thought I’d never wake up.
She’d had nightmares like that before. Once, she thought she was awake, but as she threw off the sheet to get up and go to the bathroom, she saw a human figure hovering on the ceiling above her. A man in a fetal position, like he was sleeping. A scream ricocheted inside her and she tried to clutch Shaw to wake him, warn him. But when she couldn’t move, couldn’t vocalize her terror, she realized she was asleep and had never flung back the sheet to rise from the bed. At that point she awakened a second time and shuffled into the bathroom rubbing her eyes, trying to dispel the image of the man on the ceiling. But in the dark bathroom, she almost leapt off the toilet when she sensed in her peripheral vision a form curled up in the bathtub.
It could be like that, a nightmare within a nightmare. And maybe somewhere she lay paralyzed, perhaps in a coma, and no one was really waiting for her to explain to her children the practicality of leaving their father’s body outside in the cold.
She tried to take Tycho’s hand, but he clutched his sister’s instead. They sat there with expectant faces, a united front. Orla still couldn’t read Eleanor Queen’s focused look and was afraid that Tycho didn’t even have a basic understanding of death. She didn’t want to explain it—not here, not now, not without Shaw. And not with an enemy hovering outside their door.
“You understand your father died?” she asked, nearly pleading. “There was an accident with…the shotgun.”
“It made a big boom.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mama,” Eleanor Queen said, eyes still riveted on her.
“So Papa’s…he’s with the universe now, swirling with the stars.”
In spite of her misguided spiritual efforts, she could still believe that—and believe that Shaw wouldn’t object to such an explanation. For the sake of the happier you-will-not-get-us mood she hoped to create, Orla wouldn’t let herself cry. For Eleanor Queen’s stoic forgiveness. For Tycho’s tender confusion. She’d do it later, and praise a thousand nameless goddesses for her daughter’s understanding and her son’s innocence. But the tears flooded the hollow places in her face, pressing, pressing, threatening to shatter her delicate bones.
“So, since Papa…his spirit is free, and if we leave him—his body—the cold will preserve him. So that’s why we can’t bring him in.” She had no expectation that Tycho would fully grasp this. But he needed answers, so she gave him spare but honest words. “Do you understand?” she asked Eleanor Queen.
“Nothing else can happen to him. The real Papa isn’t here anymore.” She elbowed her brother. “That’s what I told you before.”
“Later, we’ll be able to…” Have a funeral? Her hands sought her son and daughter, the reassurance of their solidity. Her children weren’t illusions, and this wasn’t a dream. Her fingertips touched their warmth, and she hoped she’d explained enough. It was an unbearable thought, that she’d abruptly become a single parent and bore full responsibility for whatever befell them, now and forever. It would have been hard enough in the city. But here? She needed survival skills more practical than determination or instincts.
The music bopped and swayed, tippa-tippa-tippa and cooing harmonies, as Orla headed upstairs. She raised her cell phone high in the air, looking for a signal, and went from room to room. The beats from below made her shoulders bounce; her head kept time, her free hand floated with a swell of instruments. Tycho and Eleanor Queen sounded normal as they chattered, describing the magical winged animals in their new world. Was it working? With the outside view forgotten, the inside mood shifted to something more upbeat.
Back downstairs, she held the phone out to the windows. Still nothing. She slipped into the kitchen to make a quick mental inventory. Boxes of cereal. Canned stuff—soup, tuna, fruit. One and a half jars of pasta sauce. A loaf of bread in the freezer with a few bags of veggies. Dry goods—rice, capellini, lentils. A few potatoes, onions, carrots, apples. How many meals would it all make? If they lost electricity and the generator, she could cook on the wood-burning stove. Endless snow to melt for fresh water if the pipes froze or the well stopped pumping. They’d eat well for a week, maybe more. After that they’d start to get hungry. Then what?
It was December. When would Julie and Walker start to worry? Would they try to call when they got back from their vacation? Had other people been e-mailing, texting, calling, wondering why they got no response? Maybe her own parents would miss having them all in Pittsburgh for the holidays and drive north for a surprise visit. It would be the best Christmas present ever. She prayed on it without realizing she was doing it: Come see us, come see us, please help us.
Fucking Christmas. Shaw had hidden presents in the basement in what looked like unpacked moving boxes. They had planned to let the children pick a small live tree, which they’d attempt to unearth and bring into the house. She couldn’t imagine celebrating the upcoming holiday (or any other) without Shaw. But maybe it was good timing; would her friends think it weird when they didn’t get their usual holiday card from the Moreau-Bennetts? Would it be enough to make them worry? And worry enough to act? Or would they shrug it all off—The Moreau-Bennetts have gone off the grid.
At some point, she’d have to try escaping again. Maybe she’d go alone and leave the children within the safety of the house. Could that be what It wanted? Their company? Had Orla been looking at it all wrong; was It just lonely? But what if something happened to her out there and she couldn’t come back? She couldn’t leave the children to starve alone.
She made supper out of the ingredients that would go bad first—the things in the refrigerator. She heated up the leftover chicken in a skillet filled with the half jar of pasta sauce and served it on a spare bed of capellini. It was a small meal, but the children didn’t complain. The necessity of rationing food reminded Orla of her early days in New York City, when she had barely enough money to live on and was taking classes and auditioning and trying to figure out where she fit in. But back then, she’d been able to call her parents in an emergency, financial or emotional. And she could always pop out for some cheap ramen.
We’ll pretend it’s all normal. They’d go about their days as carefree as possible. Orla would have to be deliberate about what she did and didn’t say (did and didn’t think) and not fret about the weather. We can outlast It. It was an optimistic plan, even if it didn’t feel…she muffled the doubt. It had to work. Her left fist tightened, crushing an invisible stone. She watched her children quietly eat the last forkfuls of their dinner.
Tycho wanted to sleep in her bed, so she read him a story as he bounced Moose on the nubby blanket. She and Eleanor Queen would join him later and it would almost be like home—their real home, without all the rooms and doors—though Orla doubted she’d be able to sleep. How could she, with Shaw weighing on her chest—a tomb of guilt—and the fear of w
hat another morning might bring?
Eleanor Queen hovered in the doorway. Since they’d come back to the house, she appeared to be in a constant state of alertness, always listening for something, her attention elsewhere. Orla’s heart skipped a beat, then sped up as Tycho’s story ended happily-ever-after; it was almost time to sit down and talk with Eleanor Queen, ask her directly if she knew more than she’d yet revealed. She dreaded what her daughter might say, but she had to ask.
“We’ll be up again soon. Sleep tight.” She kissed Tycho and shut off the lamp, but left the door wide open and the hallway light on. Both hands clutched imaginary stones, worrying, as she trailed her daughter down the stairs. At least when she’d had to do this with Shaw, there’d been the American Honey to help with the rough spots. It was wrong in so many ways to want alcohol to make it easier to talk with a nine-year-old. But there’d already been too many harrowing conversations in this house, and Orla feared the worst was yet to come.
27
When Orla reached the living room, Eleanor Queen was standing in the open doorway of Shaw’s studio, one hand on the knob. Orla scurried past her, plucked the red-slathered canvas from the easel, and put it on the floor facing the wall. Reassured that the other exposed paintings weren’t too disturbing, she stood behind her daughter, hands on her narrow shoulders, and waited as Eleanor Queen glanced around the room.
“Looking for something? I’m sure Papa wouldn’t mind—maybe you want to try his guitars? When they’re not plugged in, they’re very quiet.” She tried to be as soothing as she could; Eleanor Queen knew too much, a burden no child should bear. A few days ago, a quiet instrument might have appealed to her, but she shook her head. “Then what?”