Shantallow

by Cara Martin

  They’re not real. Only cracks in soiled hundred-year-old wallpaper.

  I bump into Tanvi’s shoulder. Cringe at her sharp intake of breath.

  What are we doing? If Shantallow wants to wrap its savage arms around Lauren and keep her close, how we can we fight it? We’re only human. The sum of too many parts as breakable as eggshells.

  A door at the end of the hallway creaks opens a sliver. Gingerly, almost. Tanvi’s head twitches as if she means to look at me. Then she advances. My feet follow closely in her tracks, lantern lighting our path. Showing me precisely where I don’t want to go.

  Tanvi’s palm presses into the doorway, easing it open further. My fingers clutch her good arm. Don’t do this.

  I can’t look. And can’t not.

  We’ve never been inside this particular room before. My eyes don’t take in the dusty old furniture or anything else. They can’t see past Lauren levitating in the middle of the room, her ankles bent forward at sharp angles and the toes of her sneakers scraping eerily against the flooring while her heels and arches fly free. Her mouth contorts into a snarl, her eyes squinting cruelly into the light. A spiderweb of crystals, wispy-light like cotton candy, erupts on her cheeks and forehead.

  I tighten my grip on Tanvi. Stay back.

  She slips through my fingers like silk. Bullets to her cousin. Flings her arms firmly around Lauren, battling — with all her will and muscle — to tug her toward the floor.

  Lauren’s giggle rasps in the back of her throat. Low and nasty like someone fueled by hundred-year-old hate. My stomach flips, rejecting the perverse resonance. Lauren’s left hand snakes out of Tanvi’s grasp. Reaches for Tanvi’s head with fingers spread wide and tall, tensed like spiders’ legs. Her movements are pure animal, swift and unforgiving — left hand brutally clawing Tanvi’s scalp from back to front.

  Tanvi screams blue murder. I’ve never heard that sound in her throat. Never heard anyone living scream with a shock and horror that sets the hairs at the back of my hands on end and punctures my chest like a scalpel.

  The lantern falls from my grasp. It rolls back into the hallway. My right knee buckles as I run. Lauren laughs wildly. No hero to the rescue. Only me.

  I grab for her arms. They flail rabidly at the air, blurring my vision. One of her feet kicks into my calf. Fuck. I groan and sag, throwing my entire weight and strength around her.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Tanvi protests. “It’s not her fault.”

  “It’s not her fault,” Lauren mimics, her breath foul like a teeming dumpster in the July sun. The reek overpowers the packing stuffed into my nostrils. Makes my eyes swim.

  “Just hold on,” Tanvi pleads. “Don’t let go of her.”

  We embrace Lauren from opposite sides, neither of our grips loosening. But our combined efforts aren’t enough to plant Lauren’s feet on the ground. She sways in the air like a kite caught in a current. What’s left of her is ice and frenzied hate wrapped in ten-year-old skin. I snap my face away to avoid her putrid breath, her body twisting and limbs thrashing, battering us wherever they can reach.

  “Lauren, stop!” I command. “Make her stop.” Josephine. The girl from my dream, in the middle of her second reign of terror. Make Josephine stop.

  “She hates you,” Lauren seethes, the words crunching between her teeth like shattered glass. “You disgust her. She never loved you. She always loved another.”

  My calf muscles tense. My tongue turns to cotton in my mouth. I blink rapidly, my eyes latching onto Tanvi’s hair, heart sinking.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I mumble, directing my words at Josephine. “You can’t have this girl. She’s not yours.”

  “You don’t matter,” Lauren spits back. “No one cares what happens to you. You’re worthless like your father. You will always be worthless. Everyone knows it. They smile in your face and mock you behind your back.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Tanvi says. “That’s not Lauren.”

  I know it. Doesn’t mean she’s wrong. Doesn’t change the fact that no matter what I do, I will always have to be alone.

  Lauren’s knuckles crash into the bridge of my nose. Shattering already broken cartilage to smithereens. My left arm drops, releasing my hold on Lauren’s shoulders. I back up, doubling over in agony. Whimpering like a child. Tanvi struggles to restrain her cousin, my right arm smarter than the rest of me, still clutching hard to one of Lauren’s hands, limiting her reach.

  The meager light from the hallway lantern streaks harshly across the floor, casting everything from the knees up into a grimy gray gradient. Raising my head, my eyes leap to the blackest corner of the room, where the closed window blind intercepts any stray light from outside. A body surfaces from the darkness, never fully gaining form — caught between worlds — disappearing before I can bring it into focus. In another time and place, I’d blink and decide I’d imagined it.

  I can’t do that now. I’ve seen him too many times tonight to dismiss him as nothing. Things I thought I knew have inverted to reveal themselves as lies. There’s no such thing as life after death. My father is somewhere in Mexico, lost to the nearest dive bar. He doesn’t give a damn what happens to me or my sister.

  “Dad?” I whisper. Only his arms — unmistakably bone white — and the sleeve of his shirt are still visible.

  Rocketing forward, I hurl my arms back around Lauren. Tanvi cries quietly into her cousin’s shoulder. She heaves and shivers from the other side of Lauren’s thin body, where my arms border hers. “I don’t know what to do,” Tanvi murmurs despairingly. “I can’t leave her in this place. Maybe you should go. Get help. She’s too strong —”

  “I’m not letting go,” I tell Tanvi. “We’ll both keep holding on.” Until when? Like Josephine waiting for her miracle that never arrived? But this is different, isn’t it? The three of us don’t need a miracle. We only need Josephine to loosen her grip, return what was never hers to take.

  Tanvi gasps, her head swinging sharply to the right. “I felt something. Was that you?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  Tanvi’s gaze whips into the far corner of the room, Lauren making use of the distraction to twist her narrow fingers around Tanvi’s neck and squeeze. Tanvi coughs in distress, eyes bulging as I wrestle Lauren’s hand into submission again. “Alice,” Tanvi says. Her eyelashes open and close in wonder as she regains her breath. “She’s come back.”

  I can’t see Alice the way I’ve seen my father, but something’s changed. I feel it in my gut. A layer of oppressiveness has been sucked from the room and swapped for something better. Hope, maybe. Imperfect goodness. The knowledge that we’re not alone here.

  “In any way that matters you are all alone,” Lauren counters, reading my mind and speaking in a voice deeper than it should be for her ten years. Mean and scratchy as steel wool. “You always have been. You will die here alone.” She laughs shrilly, thrusting her head closer to Tanvi while we fight to keep Lauren wedged between us. “He hates you. He wanted to hurt you. It brought him joy. Nothing makes him happier than your misery.”

  “That’s not true.” Denial booms in my stomach like a bass drum.

  I’ve kissed Tanvi everywhere there is to kiss a person. Listened to her heart beating through her chest, her nipple so close it was out of focus, my hand fitted to the curve of her hip like a second skin. I made her promises I thought I could keep. Laughed with her like we were kids. Combed the tangles out of her hair after we showered together. Wanted things for her. The best things. Wished — with everything I had inside me — that I could rewind history and bring Alice and her parents back, if that would make her happy. I’ve been happy when she was happy and sad when she was sad.

  And I have wanted to hurt her. I’ve made her cry and broken her down, on purpose. Because I could. I had that power.

  Do you know what it feels like to really hurt someone you
care about? Never the way you imagine. When someone’s pain is what you want, you can only ever lose.

  How do you see that up close for years but never learn it? How am I so broken?

  “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” Lauren intones with false solemnity.

  Her body’s colder than anything living. Colder than Greg’s, even. Her hate is crisp and raw, too. It seeps through her body and clothing, my skin absorbing it and begging me to shrink away from her.

  “I believe in God,” Tanvi begins, “the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.”

  I don’t know what I believe anymore. Except that my father is in this room with me. He’s been here since we arrived. Not to torment me, but to offer me what he could. Strength. Warning. His pale arms on the stairs, alerting me to what was coming. Him waking me from sleep. Him peeling back a veil to reveal the tragedy that befell Josephine’s family.

  He never went to Mexico. He died in a ditch or an alley somewhere — a location I will never know the name of because no one missed him enough to search. The world was better off without him.

  My mom, sister, and I were the closest people to him in this life, and he hated us. Or made us believe that he did. I am who I am in large part because of him. But he’s here now, and my emotions — hot and cold, angry and shamed and carved open — churn under the surface, kicking up through collagen and tendons and breaking through.

  “Alice wants you to know it’s your fault,” Lauren says to Tanvi. “You left her all alone in the world. She died alone. Because of you.”

  “It’s a dirty lie,” I erupt, and between my damaged ribs, my twice-broken nose, and the meat-locker chill of Lauren’s body, it’s killing me to hold on. It must be leveling Tanvi too — her injured shoulder squashed against her cousin’s chest — but she just keeps praying. Words rolling rhythmically off her tongue like ancient poetry.

  I can’t let go. I won’t let her down again.

  “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones,” Lauren croaks.

  I shiver, chilled to the bone. “We’re not giving her up. It doesn’t matter what you say or do.” My voice gathers rust, crumbling into grit.

  “Let the dead bury the dead,” Lauren intones, strength knitting itself into the fabric of her words. One of her hands breaks free. Her thumb digs viciously into the hollow of Tanvi’s neck.

  Tanvi chokes and forces it away with both fists. Lauren lashes out like a wild animal. Her teeth tear into my shoulder — where the neck of my shirt’s askew — feet scissoring in every direction. We fight to subdue her. Time after time, Lauren’s cracked, jagged nails gash into exposed skin and her elbows jut sharply into our flesh. Whenever we tire and accidentally loosen our grasp it’s like beginning the battle from scratch. Lauren never weakens. She’s inexhaustible. Stronger than either of us. Together it’s all we can do to restrain her. We’d never make it down the stairs with her, let alone get free of this place.

  “Why fight me?” Lauren asks slyly. “When you know you don’t have the strength?” She snickers, steam leaking from her mouth. “Your prayers are worthless. He doesn’t hear them. He only hears mine.”

  “We aren’t your enemies,” Tanvi murmurs, tongue stumbling with weariness. “My cousin isn’t your enemy, whoever you are. She’s only a child. Fearfully and wonderfully made.” It must be some kind of biblical quote — something that would be meaningful to Josephine — and I listen to Tanvi hesitate, her breath shallow as she adds, “Innocent.”

  My mind ricochets to my dream. The boy running with the grass whistle between his hands. “Innocent like your brother,” I suggest. In a corner of my memory, his glass shatters on the floor; he cries out for everything he lost. “Innocent like Walter.”

  “Don’t speak his name,” Lauren hisses, a whiff of rot escaping her mouth. “You aren’t worthy to speak his name. You know nothing.”

  I’ve angered her. Made things worse. My brain scrambles for a way to undo the harm — so that she won’t take her fury out on Lauren — but then Lauren stills, her limbs slackening. Her cold body resists us with listlessness instead of violence. Heavy and immovable as a tractor-trailer without any wheels. Her toes make unbroken, motionless contact with the floor at a slant that even a prima ballerina couldn’t sustain.

  We hold on and hold on. For longer than I can measure in a place where time never appears to pass — but I catch glimpse after glimpse of my father in the dark, and when Lauren falls to the floor I can’t allow myself to imagine it’s over. To believe that and be proven wrong could snap me in half.

  Hope can be an enemy too. Make you trust when you shouldn’t. Make you lose.

  Even when you promise you’ll steel yourself against it — harden your heart — it persists. Only to burn through you like acid when it suffocates.

  But you have to have hope. That’s what everyone says. Never lose it. Never give up. As though hope is a magical, bottomless well that will get you through anything, and I don’t know — but maybe they’re right after all, because then I hear Lauren breathing, in a rhythm all her own. Quick and uneven like a child about to cry.

  “What are we doing up here?” she whimpers.

  20

  TANVI SQUATS ON HER haunches, wobbling with exhaustion. Smoothing Lauren’s blond hair back from her face, she studies her cousin intently. I hunch down next to them, seeing only a little girl. The same contours and innocence in Lauren’s face as I first registered in Braden’s. This could easily be a trick too. Shantallow’s capacity for deception and cruelty could be limitless and infinite. Fatal for every last one of us.

  “Hold my hand,” Tanvi says softly, pulling Lauren up with her. “We’re leaving.”

  In the brief seconds between thought and action, footsteps rampage through the hallway outside. The three of us hesitate in place, bracing for the worst. Tanvi steps protectively in front of Lauren, right arm outstretched to shield her. I reel toward the door to pull it shut — hide us from whatever’s on the hunt.

  Fingers curl around the edge of the door before I can close it. They force the door wide open with a bang, Cal standing in the hallway with blood oozing from both his ears.

  “They’re insane,” he mutters, vacancy glossing his eyes. “Gone fucking gone gone gone. Kept saying the same — the same the same — things over and over. Couldn’t even see them in the dark, but their voices were buzzing. Like there were a hundred of them instead of two.” Cal claps his fingers over his ears, his eyes darting from side to side, half gone himself.

  We all are. The human brain can only cope with so much. Push us over the edge and the ability to distinguish past experiences from present ones shrinks. The amygdala ramps into hyperactive mode like an overtired toddler running in circles and screeching, ready to claw the eyes out of anyone who dares come near them.

  My nerves are miles past shot. Nothing but frayed edges and fear of my own fucking shadow left. I’m like a ghost of myself that’s somehow retained its skin and bones. Shaking like a junkie in withdrawal. Heart outpacing itself, like a cold engine revved into extinction.

  Without Tanvi and my dad, I might not have made it this far. I might be curled into a ball on the floor, rocking myself into oblivion.

  But here we are: Tanvi, Cal, Lauren, and me. The four of us with our minds and bodies badly bruised by trauma, yet still more or less on our feet. Ready to run again.

  Light from the abandoned lantern spills through the gap between Cal’s feet in the hallway. We’ll scoop it up and take it with us. Hold it up against the darkness like something holy and walk toward day. It has to be out there.

  Has to be.

  But before I can move, Lauren weaves past me, charging toward Cal in the doorway. He jumps aside to let her out. Tanvi and I shoot forward to follow.

  We almost make it through. Our bodies are inches from the door when
it crashes shut in Tanvi’s face, delivering the two of us into near darkness. A thin scab of light creeping under the doorway allows my fingers to find the doorknob. It rattles and turns under my hand, but refuses to open.

  Cal bashes against the door from the other side. Over and over again, groaning and swearing in frustration.

  “Let me try!” I holler through the wood. You’d think it was heavily fortified steel or that my body was made of straw. The fucking thing doesn’t budge.

  “Lauren, are you okay out there?” Tanvi asks in high-pitched alarm.

  “We’re okay.” She raps insistently on the door three times in quick succession. “I hate this place. Break the door down.”

  We don’t like it either. Cold settles on my shoulders. Something wet dabs my right hand.

  “Tell them to go,” I say under my breath.

  Lauren may have gotten free, but Josephine hasn’t left.

  Tanvi’s face shoots questioningly toward me in the dark. Behind my ear, Josephine laughs poisonously. Her hands that aren’t hands swoop up the front of my shirt. Razor diagonally into my skin as Tanvi and I watch in horror.

  “Cal!” Tanvi shouts. “Listen to me, I need you to get my cousin out of here now.”

  “We can break the door,” he argues. “Between the three of us we —”

  Her urgency axes through his plea. “No! Please. Just get her out of here. Get her to safety. We’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

  “T.V.”

  “Do it!” she demands. “Do it right now, for me. I need to know she’s out of danger.” She drops her voice, whispering into the door. “If you don’t do it now, it could take her again.”

  “No!” Lauren screams defiantly from the other side of the door. “I’m all right now. We’re not leaving you.”

  “You heard what she said — we have to go,” Cal commands, reluctance dragging at his voice even as he holds it taut. Lauren’s scream recedes into the distance. The sound of someone being hauled down the corridor against her will. The scab of light from under the door ebbs along with it, black soup gulping down its leftovers.