The Unwinding House and Other Stories

by Jared Millet

  The girl didn’t respond. After a moment, Hope nodded to the detective and he left.

  “You knew Eric pretty well, didn’t you?”

  Annie nodded. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “He was the rougarou?”

  She nodded again.

  “I understand why you couldn’t talk about him. He was your friend. He saved your life from that gator.”

  “He had that magic dirt.” Her voice was a rasp. “He kept it to protect himself. If I’d told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Was he protecting you at school?”

  Annie paled. The hollow in her eyes wasn’t grief any more. It was fear.

  “Mr. Verette,” she started. “No. I don’t want to.”

  “Annie, that was Mr. Verette’s brother at your house the other night. Is he dating your mom? Did Mr. Verette come and visit sometimes too?”

  The girl turned away and started trembling.

  “Oh, Annie,” Hope said. The worst of her fears were true.

  “They let Mr. Verette watch me when they went out,” she finally said through her sobs. “He wanted to…” She couldn’t even put it in words. “And I told Eric, and he saved me.”

  Hope felt like a monster.

  “Annie, how did he get all the way to the school?”

  Annie stared at her.

  “He… He…”

  Hope shook her head.

  “That’s miles from here. Eric couldn’t have walked that far, or someone would’ve seen him.” Hope swallowed hard, then said it: “He didn’t kill Mr. Verette. You did.”

  “Please,” Annie begged, “don’t tell.”

  Hope remembered Annie’s words at the bayou. If you reveal who the rougarou is, you turn into one yourself.

  “It won’t matter if I do or not,” she said. “Detective Melançon is smart. He’s going to figure it out. He might have already. Eric couldn’t reach the school, so he gave you one of his canisters.”

  Annie cried. “Mr. Verette said he’d hurt my Mom if I told.”

  Hope nodded. “So you did what you had to.”

  Annie crossed herself and leaned on Hope’s arm.

  “Do you think I’m going to Hell?”

  Hope didn’t know how to answer, but she stroked her fingers through Annie’s hair and held her tight to her chest. There were flashlights off in the distance. The police would be coming back soon.

  She wanted to leave. Just like her mother before she was born, she wanted to run away. She didn’t want to bear witness to what was to come: the chaos that would engulf the Zacharies, the furor that would follow the truth about Mr. Verette, and not least of all the shock of Ben’s death.

  But she couldn’t. No matter that she was an outsider and might be blamed for how things unfolded. No matter that lawyers, politicians, and the media would descend on Whatley like wolves.

  Because in the heart of it all was a girl - sad, lost, and lonely, who’d barely had a chance at a normal life before it was snatched away. Hope had to stay, no matter the cost. She would stay for Annie.

  Rocket Science

  Orion had not yet set when Tom squeezed through his bedroom window. The thin snow-ice crunched under his weight when he lowered himself to the ground. He pulled his backpack behind him, careful not to let its contents clink, then reached back inside for a two-foot cardboard cylinder with a plastic nosecone and plywood fins.

  No one watched him but the trees, black pillars on a sleeping, white landscape. Mars burned in the south, Viking red, with baleful Saturn nearby. He tightened his shoulder straps so his backpack wouldn’t slide, then dashed across the yard in the sharp morning air, counting on speed more than silence not to wake his parents. He had ninety minutes to complete his mission. He’d prefer that no one found out, but once he did what he had to it wouldn’t matter.

  Planning was everything, his grandfather taught him. Think through every contingency but be flexible enough to cope with the unexpected. Tom’s grandfather had known that better than most, since he’d laid plans for men to walk on a whiter, colder plain than this, a plain 200,000 miles distant with a shining blue world in the sky.

  Behind the patch of trees was a gully with a floor of ice. Tom played there every winter and hadn’t slipped once since the time he broke his arm in junior high. The gully kept him from view of the neighbors’ houses and wound for a mile to a field behind the farmers’ co-op. In spring the field was for softball, but in summer the grass was too high for anything but endless games of tag. In winter, his grandfather took him there on cloudless nights to gaze at eternity through a polished lens.

  That old man with the telescope and mug of hot coffee had also been a strong man, tall and proud in the Florida sun. In Tom’s earliest memory, the wind carried salt spray and the tang of sea-grass. Back then his eyes were glued to the giant, shining needle standing farther up the shore. The countdown rang through the air. Tom’s grandfather lifted him into his lap and covered his toddler’s ears. The rumble rattled the young boy’s bones, but his grandfather’s hands held him steady as the rocket pierced the heavens and thundered like the roar of God.

  It was a small god they prayed to in the chapel on Sunday, a god small enough to comfort Tom’s mother while he sat in the back and nodded at condolences from people he barely knew. The service wasn’t for his grandfather, but for the family. As far as Tom knew, his grandfather hadn’t set foot in a church more than twice in his life. His grandfather's god measured time by eons, His word was the voice of mathematics, and His church the infinite sky.

  The sky was starting to blur when Tom reached the empty field. The backpack was secure, but he carefully tossed the rocket ahead of him, trusting that the snow wouldn’t damage its fins, so he could climb out of the ditch with both hands. Before pulling himself all the way up, he scanned the surroundings to make sure he was alone. The air was perfectly still, but wisps of cloud reflected the lights of the stirring town.

  Tom had been nodding off in class when the news came. It was a frosty January morning and the school’s overcranked heater would have put anyone to sleep. He was only marking time until the Shuttle launch on TV. It was unusual for anyone to care about a launch these days, but some teacher from New Hampshire was going into space so all the students got to watch. Challenger’s lift-off was still some minutes away when the secretary called him to the office and told him that his grandfather had passed.

  At the service, Tom’s relatives said what a blessing it was that his grandfather hadn’t had to witness the disaster, how it would have broken his heart. Tom clenched his jaw but said nothing. His grandfather had seen the fire on Apollo 1; he’d gone days without sleep to bring the men on Apollo 13 home. He knew the risks of space flight and he’d have been the last to flinch away.

  Tom tried not to think about that. Instead, he focused on the mission.

  The day before, he’d cleared the snow from the rise that served as the pitcher’s mound. From his backpack he now produced a plastic tripod, to which he affixed a metal blast plate and the rod that would guide the launch. He slid the cardboard rocket into place and, hands shaking, popped off the nose. He’d removed the bulky parachute before leaving home. There would be no return from this voyage and he had to make room for the passenger.

  It had been easy to steal the ashes. The family knew how close Tom had been to his grandfather, so they trusted him implicitly. While they said their prayers and offered remembrances, Tom scraped the old man into a freezer bag and replaced him with leavings from his fireplace.

  He didn’t quite fit in the rocket, despite how tightly Tom packed him, so part of him ended up scattered on the launch pad. With the model engine Tom had brought, the rocket would reach an altitude of a thousand feet. Then a charge would blow it open and send his grandfather into the wind. It wasn’t the same as going into space, but it was better than sitting on a shelf.

  The countdown this time was silent as Tom caressed the igniter with his thumb. The blast would be more
of a whistle than a roar. A morning breeze tickled the ice that had formed on his cheek. Early fires of sunlight warmed the red horizon, but the stars remained for a few minutes more, waiting to welcome their earth-bound brother in

  3…

  2…

  1…

  Hurricane Season

  Lindsey Destrehan huddled on the couch in front of her TV while Brad raged and screamed outside. He rattled the windows, hammered the door, kicked the siding, and shouted through the walls while Lindsey flipped the channels and wished he’d go away.

  What a stupid thing it was to give a storm a name.

  The weatherman on the national broadcast gushed with excitement as his reporter in the field pulled a hood over his rain-drenched face. The Pensacola station showed live video of trees and street signs whipping back and forth, while on the Mobile affiliate a coffee-powered anchorwoman insisted that Brad had weakened to a mere tropical storm. Lindsey didn’t believe it. It was as if someone had scooped the entire Gulf of Mexico into a bucket and was pouring it over her house.

  As a child she’d watched Andrew plow through the South on TV, but in Indiana it seemed no worse than any other storm. Katrina provided an annoying deluge at IU’s campus in Bloomington before the horrifying images of its aftermath appeared on the news. Even so, when she took possession of the old family home twenty miles from the coast in the small town of Craft, it had never occurred to her that the threat was more than pictures on a screen.

  The lights flickered and something like a herd of gazelles stampeded along the side of the house. Lindsey parted the living room drapes to watch her garbage bin tumble across the lawn. It bounced off one of her oaks, plopped on an azalea bush like a beanbag, then rolled until it hit her wrought iron fence. She hoped it would stay, or else she’d have to hunt for it later and explain to her neighbors why she hadn’t the brains to bring it inside.

  A shadow drifted on the other side of the fence: tiny, hunched, and moving against the wind. Lindsey gasped. It was a child, and far too young to be out alone, storm or not. She looked up and down the street, what little she could see of it, hoping there was a parent nearby. There wasn’t.

  Damn it.

  Lindsey liked being dry. She’d planned to stay that way until the storm passed, but there was nothing for it. The lights dimmed again as she slipped into the decades-old poncho that hung in the house’s utility room. With no time to hunt for a flashlight, she stepped out to the carport, shutting the door behind her and bracing for the worst. The wind had slackened, but the rain still came down in sheets.

  She jogged to the end of her driveway, keeping her back to the weather. Within seconds her shoes were heavy with water. The child, a boy, wasn’t far down the sidewalk. He was small, black, no more than five years old, and drenched to the skin. Rain was so thick on his face that Lindsey had to wonder if he could even see.

  “Hello?” she said. “Are you lost? Can I help you get home?”

  She did what she could to shield him from the rain. In the respite, he wiped the flood from his eyes and looked up at her, scrunching his nose.

  “Are you the piddy lady?” he asked.

  “Am I what?”

  “The piddy lady told me to come.”

  “What? I don’t… Look, kid, where are your parents? Are they around?”

  “I dunno.” The boy shrugged. “The piddy lady said to go this way.”

  Oh, for god’s sake, she thought. Lindsey was already shivering and she didn’t have patience for preschool mind games.

  “Look, come out of the rain. I think the phones are still working. Do you know your number?”

  He shrugged again. Lindsey took his hand and led him to her carport while looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching. She had to do something, but she wondered what kind of trouble she’d get in for dragging a strange child into her home. If the kid didn’t know his number, she wouldn’t have any choice but to call the police.

  “Is this the piddy lady’s house?” the boy asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “A very pretty lady lives here. A wet, pretty lady.” Come inside, darling. “Come inside, darling.”

  She almost had him across the threshold before she stopped herself. Why had she said that? That didn’t even sound like her, and had she faked a Southern accent?

  But the door was open. She’d closed it, she knew she had. She let go of the boy’s hand and something shifted in her belly. Someone was in the house. They must have slipped behind her as she’d gone to the road.

  “Hello? I know you’re there. Hello? I’ll call the cops.” She reached in her pocket for her phone, but it wasn’t there. Of course not, she’d left it in the living room. “Hello?” she said once more, then listened.

  A chair in the kitchen scraped the floor.

  “Get in the car,” she said.

  “But the piddy lady–”

  “I said get in the car.” She opened her Beetle and lifted him in. She didn’t have a child seat, so she buckled the belt across his lap and hoped it would be enough. She climbed into the driver’s side as fast as she could, only taking her eyes away from the carport door when she had to. She found the key by touch and started the engine.

  “Where do you live?” she asked, as if a five-year-old would know. There was a hospital on the other side of town. She decided to take him there and let someone else figure out what to do. Water spun from the tires as she backed too quickly into the street, and the brakes made a wet groan.

  ~

  There were already police at the hospital, keeping dry and waiting for emergency calls. To her relief they took her seriously about the intruder, though they asked so many questions about the boy that she was afraid they were going to arrest her.

  The child’s name was Ray. As soon as the officer asked, Lindsey felt bad for not doing so herself. The dispatcher confirmed that a child matching Ray’s description had been reported missing, so one of the patrolmen went to get the boy’s father while another, Officer Rice, offered to follow Lindsey home.

  The rain slacked off on the way back, but the ditches on both sides of the road were full. Rice pulled into the driveway behind her, but Lindsey veered off to the side so she could leave in a hurry if she had to.

  Through the rain-frosted window, she watched Rice dash to the carport. The door was still open; she could tell from the blurry rectangle of light. The policeman’s shadow passed through it, and then the rain gods turned the great hose in the sky back on. Lindsey settled into her seat and waited.

  That’s when she saw her: a golden-haired woman in a white dress walking across the lawn. Whoever she was, she didn’t care about the rain. She moved slowly, casually, looking up at the sky as if on a clear summer day. The windows of the Beetle were too fogged up for Lindsey to make out her face, so she rubbed a clear patch with her sleeve.

  As soon as she did, the woman was gone – or rather, the illusion that she’d seen her at all. A stray beam of sunlight broke the clouds, and it was instantly clear that all she’d seen was the siding of the house next door, glimpsed through the gap of two low-hanging branches that formed a vague outline like a woman in a dress.

  Lindsey sighed. She was way too on-edge. She took a breath to calm herself, then jumped out of her skin when Officer Rice knocked on her window.

  “Miss Destrehan? The house is clear, but you definitely had a visitor. You’ll want to come see if anything was taken.”

  The sitting room beyond the entry was untouched, but in the kitchen her late grandmother’s collection of spoons had been knocked off the wall and scattered across the floor. The living room was also a shambles: the couch had been knocked over on its back, the lounge chair on its face, and the TV had been shoved several feet to the side. Her grandmother’s oddments and knickknacks seemed to be in place, but even after several months Lindsey still hadn’t memorized all the house’s flotsam.

  “She was a nice woman, your grandma,” said Rice.

  “Never knew her. I mean, she c
ame to visit a few times when I was young, but my mom never brought me down here.”

  “So how’d you come to own the place? If you don’t mind my asking…”

  “No, it’s all right. My mom passed away several years ago and I was the only grandkid. I thought about selling, but I needed a break from my life up north. So here I am.”

  “You get a job in town?”

  “I work part time at the Art Center, but mainly I edit copy for a magazine in Chicago. If not for email, the commute would be a killer.”

  Something rumbled, either thunder or a transformer about to blow, but it sounded more like a growl. Lindsey rubbed her arms, but she couldn’t relax.

  “Look,” said Rice, “if you don’t feel safe, there’s a hotel off I-10 where I can get you the police discount.”

  “No, that’s alright. I’ll just make sure all the doors are locked. Twice.” She didn’t relish the idea of going back into the storm any more than the thought of another break-in.

  “Okay, but I’ll be in the area. Call my dispatcher if you get to feeling uncomfortable.”

  She nodded, smiled, and showed him out.

  Something growled again as she closed the door. It sounded like it came from the living room, though she knew that wasn’t possible. Perhaps the hotel would have been a good idea, but she worried that if she didn’t stay and power through the panic, she’d jump at every creak the house made for a month. As calmly as she could, she made tea, set the couch upright, and went back to surfing channels.

  ~

  The Craft Community Arts Center, which doubled as a day care in the summer, was an old theater building run by Mrs. Maddy Babineaux. She also owned the ancient beauty parlor next door, which had been repurposed as an antiques shop. Lindsey was late for work, but she found herself staring at the beauty shop window.

  On the other side of the glass was a lovingly arranged setting of a small, round table and two high-backed wooden chairs. The table was covered with an old, patterned cloth that retained most of its vibrant green, and was set with plates and silver for two. Draped over one of the chairs was a tweed jacket, and on the other hung a short-brimmed hat for women that hadn’t been in style since the Twenties.