by Cara Martin
Vigor and wholeness hold me high,
Turn my eyes to the endless sky,
In the light, love’s strength revealed,
In the light, let me be healed.
My grandmother’s honeyed voice flows through the folds of my gray matter, rhythmic and soothing like an old radio song played low. Smooth as water. Steady as stone.
I swim motionlessly toward the sound, where the pain is milder and more distant. From that place John and Luke are far away too, their disagreement of no real consequence.
It’s a trick of the mind, but I need it.
Only for a little while, I promise myself, eyelids sealing me away from the world.
Under a graying sky littered with storm clouds, my father leans over my body, watching for a cue that I don’t know how to give. My arms and legs are brown from the sun and pudgy with baby fat, my father’s face unlined like when I was a kid. The smell of cigarettes sticks to him like flypaper, but the smile he beams me is white and warm. Bright as rhinestones.
“You’re okay,” he tells me. “Don’t give up now. It’s just beginning.”
My mouth falls open, but no sound emerges. My arms flail uncontrollably, precision beyond my grasp.
“No excuses,” he says, smile listing and then capsizing entirely. “You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and fight, damn it. No one’s coming to do it for you.”
“What the fuck do you know?” I spit out, recovering my voice. “You’re an asshole. That’s all you’ve ever been.”
My father laughs in my face and yanks at my arm, forcing me to sit upright. “Doesn’t mean I’m wrong, Mikey-boy.” He claps me on the back and then arcs his hand around the back of my neck, his grip firm but not harsh. “You don’t have to like me; you just need to listen.”
“Screw you,” I tell him, throwing out both arms to shove him away.
“That’s it,” he says, grin returning to his cheeks as he loses his footing and stumbles into the distance. “I knew you had it in you.”
My eyelids peel back, allowing the lantern light in. Someone’s leaning over me, sure enough, but it’s not my dad. Lauren swats her blond hair away from her lips, blinking slowly as she withdraws. The dilapidated living room knits spiderwebs between my ears and over the ventricles of my heart, slowing my mind and body in tandem.
I roll delicately onto my left side, lining both arms up next to me, one piled on top of the other. Balancing my weight on my forearms, I carefully leverage my upper body into a sitting position. It’s not the agony I expected; while I’ve slept, the pain’s been halved.
Peering behind Lauren, I clock the empty space where Tanvi should be. “Where’s your cousin?” I gasp. My head pivots on my shoulders. Cal’s guzzling from a water bottle. Across the room, Luke sits on the chair nearest the door, his knees spread wide and his hands dangling between them, the gun appearing as weightless and harmless as a plastic toy.
“She had to go to the bathroom,” Luke says firmly. “John took her.”
My pulse revs. “How long have they been gone?”
“No time at all. Relax. They’ll be back in a second.” His eyes and tone are as nonchalant as if I just asked him for directions.
Cal shakes his head in aggravation. “I wanted to go with them. But they’ll only take one at a time.”
Luke’s head rears, his shoulders stiffening. “Listen up, I’m tired of this backtalk.” He raises his gun, centering it on Cal.
“It isn’t backtalk,” Cal says, his voice sagging under the weight of an effort not to sound confrontational. “We’re just trying to reason with you. Somebody’s dead, right?” He looks from me to Luke, seeking confirmation. “What went down outside?”
“Somebody’s dead?” Lauren squeaks.
Luke ignores the questions, his attention pinging to Lauren regardless. “You said this place wasn’t right. How do you know that?”
“I didn’t say that.” Lauren’s mouth collapses into a frown, a thin crevice of dissent digging into the space between her eyes.
“Yeah, you did,” Luke insists. “Before you fell asleep. You said some other freaky things too.”
“What?” Lauren appears mystified.
“She was feverish,” Cal interjects. “She doesn’t remember. Leave her alone.”
Lauren bites down on her lip. Turning to face the cross resting on the mantelpiece, her eyes search for something without moving.
“You really don’t remember, do you?” I ask, touching her arm.
She shudders. A sound my ears can’t twist into any known words dislodges from her diaphragm. Her mouth jerks crudely around the vibrations, like the connection between it and her brain has been partially severed.
A buzz of static electricity jolts through my fingers where they connect with Lauren’s arm. My hand whips away from her, cold rocketing through my body like a flash freeze.
Footsteps thunder over our heads. Sprinting across the ceiling and thumping onto the stairs.
Tanvi charges into the living room, tangled Medusa hair shielding her face from view and temporarily changing her into something feral. Luke leaps from his chair, grabs her shoulders, and shakes her. “Where’s John? Where’s John?”
“He’s back there.” Tanvi casts a terrified look over her shoulder, wholly herself again. “Something got to him. In the hall upstairs. It snatched him up and hurled him back. I ran.”
Luke releases her, Tanvi stepping deeper into the living room on shaky newborn deer legs. Cal folds his arms around her, hands smoothing over Tanvi’s hair and steadying her.
My heart’s still leveling out — too grateful for her safe return for jealousy to get a solid grip.
“John!” Luke hollers into the darkness, opening his lungs the way a razor blade is capable of opening a vein. “John! Answer me!”
Silence engulfs the house as each of us listens for a sound that doesn’t arrive.
“Jesus Christ,” Luke intones, raising both hands to his head, desperation and anger clawing at his throat. The gun handle presses against the fabric of the ski mask, the weapon so much a part of him that either he doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “Everybody then, everybody with me. We’re going upstairs to find him.” Luke’s eyes pin Tanvi to the wall, intensity holding her there. “If you did something to him, you better pray that I forgive you.”
Lauren laughs maliciously from behind us. Every one of us hears it.
When I spin to look at her, Lauren’s lying on her back with her eyes closed, the pillow crammed under her head like the last few minutes never happened.
“I’ll stay with her,” Tanvi volunteers, confusion plucking at her brow. “She’s not well.”
“No one’s staying. Get her up. This is happening right now.” Luke coughs into the stale air. “Grab a lantern too. You’re going first. You’re going to lead us up.”
“She can’t go first,” I object. “She has no weapon. We don’t know what’s up there.”
Luke cocks his head at me, his words setting like cement. “You think you’re tougher than she is, then you go first, M. Fine by me.”
I grab a lantern while Tanvi hurries to Lauren’s side.
“She’s not just sick,” Cal says quietly to Tanvi. “Something else is wrong.”
Luke’s voice torpedoes across the living room. “We all know something’s fucking wrong. Just. Get. Her. The. Fuck. Up. Or I will.”
Lauren stumbles to her feet, her eyes clinging to the ground. Tanvi wraps an arm around her cousin’s shoulder, squeezing reassurance into her young body. They hasten toward us together.
We fall into rough formation, me out front with the lantern. Cal next. Tanvi and Lauren following close behind him, hands clasped. Luke’s the caboose, gun in one hand and lantern in the other, no free digits available to hold the handrail.
“Watch the first step,”
I warn, purely for the benefit of the other hostages. “It’s loose.”
We tackle the stairs. Quickly and without incident. The old hairbrush has vanished, and the silence of everything but our footsteps feels wrong, like someone’s toying with us.
Cal and I hesitate as we reach the second floor. Between the two of us, we could take Luke down, but not before he gets a shot off.
If whatever we’re facing here is worse than Luke — who didn’t kill me when he had the chance — we might need him. My mind tumbles downstairs, slinking out the doorway and behind the carriage house where Mark’s breathless and bloody body reclines in the muddy grass.
“Open one of the doors,” Luke instructs, his voice like curdled milk.
I check the bathroom first, Cal at my shoulder, breathing audibly. “Clear,” I shout back.
Four doors left. I head for the one at the far end of the corridor. The doorknob resists my pressure. “This one’s locked.”
Staring over Lauren’s head in the hallway, Luke’s dark clothing transforms him into a shadow. “Force it,” he demands.
“I’ll do it,” Cal tells me. He knows I’m weak now.
Stepping out of Cal’s way, I crowd in close to Lauren and Tanvi. Lauren’s lips vault into a smile that remains absent from her eyes. “Wash your hands,” she whispers, spit gathering on her lower lip. “Purify your heart.”
I don’t recognize the spiteful eyes that bore into mine. There’s nothing childlike about them. Swallowing the bitter taste in my mouth, I glance at Tanvi next to her. Both her hands mold themselves supportively to Lauren’s shoulders. Lauren doesn’t protest, doesn’t react.
Tanvi blinks quickly, her return look approaching apologetic. She doesn’t mean that. She’s not herself.
She means it.
She can smell it on me. The things I’ve done. And the stench of death from Mark’s body, too.
Then Cal charges at the door, right foot kicking vehemently into the wood. The door groans but refuses him entrance. He tries with his shoulder, thudding leadenly but fruitlessly on impact. Switching back to his foot, the door flies open on the third attempt.
I push past him, holding the lantern high to reveal what’s left of a modest bedroom. Most of it ragged, torn, filthy, faded. Twin bed flush against the wall. Dressing table topped with a rectangular wood-framed mirror. Mahogany wardrobe. Small floral-pattern armchair tucked into a corner. Unlike downstairs, framed pictures still decorate these walls. A sailboat floating in a lonely harbor. Portraits of people who have been dead for too long for anyone to miss them.
“Open the closet,” Luke says, peering in from the hallway.
Dust particles take flight as I tug anxiously at the wardrobe handle. It’s roomy enough to store a body inside, but John isn’t here, only the hairbrush from the stairs. I slam the door shut, not wanting to confirm its presence. As I turn to exit the room, lantern light tumbles over one of the decorative pillows piled on the bed. Something thin and flat peeks out from behind the cushion. I reach for it, pulling it free from the pillow. A cloud of disrupted dust spews irritably from the cushion. It’s a house nameplate, the kind that would’ve swung from a post somewhere near the end of the road as a marker. SHANTALLOW.
The sign slips from my grasp and drops onto the bed, Luke and everyone else staring at me from the hallway, watching it fall. Shantallow. My shock falls quickly away too, fading fast because just as a glass can hold only so much water, a mind can absorb only so much shock. The rest of it disperses who knows where. The word I heard from Tanvi’s mouth in my sleep months ago is a place that doesn’t want us. Beyond that, I don’t know …
“Keep going,” Luke orders. “Next room.”
Cal’s out in front, closest to the next door. The doorknob turns easily in his hand. Trailing him by less than two feet, I shine the lantern into the room. It’s bigger than the first, a double bed with an enormous headboard positioned near the uncovered window. On a clear night, moonlight would stream through it, bounce off the mirror, and bring shadows to light.
Tonight there’s no moon, only the light we bring with us.
A hefty roll of fabric juts out from under the bed, strangely solid. Long too, stretching almost the length of the box spring above it.
“What is that?” Luke says urgently. “Pull it out.”
I spin to hand the lantern to Tanvi, my heart out of whack. Its normal rhythm forgotten. The things we say with our eyes are beyond words. It doesn’t matter how afraid we are — like people who’ve fallen through a hole in the ice and been carried away by a fast-moving current. We’re here now, under water, swimming for our lives.
Cal and I step swiftly toward the bed, bending to yank at the fabric. It’s more than just a spare blanket or bedspread. It’s heavy, something encased within the folds. Something fleshy and tall.
In our grip, the fabric slides reluctantly out from under the bed. Luke and Tanvi have gathered behind us, the concentrated light from both lanterns spotlighting the lumpy mass. A small horizontal slit in the material reveals lips and teeth.
An intact mouth, petrified into an expression of terror.
14
THE ROOM BEARS DOWN on us. One of the furniture legs rocks unevenly, like its being pushed. My eyes instinctively scan the surrounding space, looking for an invisible culprit. Hatred for this house burns in my veins as the air turns cold.
A squeak from the ceiling forces my gaze up. The chandelier over the bed swings erratically. The noise of old chain and fixtures in motion grates like nails on a chalkboard.
“Open it up!” Luke screams, refocusing our attention on the body.
Rolling over the fabric, we search for the ends to pull apart. There aren’t any. The blanket’s been sewn shut. Luke drops to his knees next to us, thrusting one hand deep into his pocket. Leaning over the blanket, he slices into the fabric with a pocketknife. The slit expands into a gash. Then a hole, big enough to force a human head through.
Wrenching the fabric away from skin, Luke cradles the man’s head in his hands. “Get him out of this,” Luke shouts breathlessly. “Get him out!” Cal snatches up Luke’s knife, continuing to cut the man free. I pull at the hole with my fingers, ripping the material to shreds.
Together we peel what’s left of the blanket away from the body. Most of us have never seen John’s face before — a white male in his early thirties, eyes shut as if he were just kicking back on his couch, catching a few winks. Short brown hair and a snub nose. I could’ve bagged his groceries without ever really noticing him.
“Is he breathing?” Tanvi asks.
“I think so,” Luke says. We stare at John’s chest, watching it expand. Luke lightly taps John’s face. “Wake up, man. We have you.”
Unlike with Mark’s body, there doesn’t seem to be any blood. No obvious signs of physical trauma. No response from John, either, and my mind pounds with questions. Who would do this? How? Why?
“He could have a head injury,” Tanvi says, swallowing her lips.
The damn chandelier goes crazy, shaking with the force of an earthquake. Rage pools in Luke’s eyes, his jaw snapping and his teeth biting the air. He’s hit his limit and hurtled past it. He leaps up on the bed like a man on fire, throwing his hands over his head and catching the chandelier with fingers. Holding it still, defying its will.
As he hops down from the bed, Luke’s eyes spring back to Tanvi.
She peers unblinkingly down at John, her cheeks sharpening as she evaluates his condition. “We probably shouldn’t move him. He’s on his back, which is good. But we need to raise his legs at least a foot above the ground. And loosen his clothing.”
Tanvi and I both learned CPR at school. Probably Cal did too. But John’s still breathing, and there’s not much else we can do for him from this forsaken place.
Cal swipes two anorexic-looking pillows from the bed, tucking them under
John’s feet. They’re not enough. The three of us stare expectantly at Luke, fresh shock stranding us in the moment of helplessness.
None of us will volunteer to leave this room — alone — to get more pillows from the adjacent bedroom. We could be next.
Only then does it dawn on me that Luke set down his gun and lantern to cut John from the blanket. My eyes drill into the hastily cast aside weapon behind us on the floor.
Luke follows my gaze. His shoulders stoop, his body somehow heavier as he exhales. He claws jerkily at the bottom of his ski mask, tears it free from his skin, and hurls it to the ground. “I’m done,” he declares, misery scratching at baby-faced features I already recognize. His neck’s begun to turn purple where I punched him. “I’m not holding you anymore. You all do what you want.”
The revelation feels ancient, like I saw it coming a long time ago. Craig, Gavin, Greg, whoever the fuck he is. Last time I saw him he was sitting on my neighbor’s stoop. I would’ve let him into my house. Did he start planning the kidnapping way back then because of things I said that night?
But there’s no time for outrage. That already feels ancient too.
I slide backward, fingers reaching for the gun.
“Lauren!” Tanvi calls suddenly, backing into the hallway with one of the lanterns. “Lauren, come back here!”
I haven’t seen Lauren since we walked into the master bedroom. Occupied with John, we never realized she was missing.
Cal and I tear after Tanvi, rushing into the previous room to search for her. The cold is everywhere, bleeding our breath from our bodies in long wisps. Thumping from behind closed doors sends us spinning into the corridor. “Lauren?” we yell repeatedly, the cracks in the walls like gnarled veins. They scratch at my eyes and twist inside my head, carving trenches of loathing. “Lauren, where are you?”
We run for the bathroom, discovering it empty except for the furry thing that lives there.
It steals into the hole next to the toilet as we avert our eyes. Tanvi whirls into the hallway, Cal and I right behind her. She jiggles the doorknobs of the two remaining doors. Both locked.