by Kit Reed
CHAPTER 2
Theo Hale
In the dark, in this awful house, Mormama speaks to me. She comes in the night. When she’s in a good mood, she plants herself at the end of the bed and tells stories. Three suitcases and a steamer trunk, she says. Again. That’s all I had left in the world when I came to this house. Little Manette had all my grandchildren lined up on the porch to greet me. Dakin Junior and Randolph, Ivy and Everett, even the twins, everybody but the baby, and my daughter? She left Dakin to do the job, and do you know what my handsome son-in-law said to me?
I never ask. I don’t have to, she can’t stop telling it.
He said, children, this is your Mormama. One more Mama than we need.
She can’t stop telling it and I can’t get her to go away.
When she’s in a bad mood, she hangs in the air so close that it creeps me out and says shitty things. Boys are not welcome in this house. It isn’t safe!
And Mom thinks this tight little room is, like, sealed against whatever. She said so on our first night in this creaky old ark. At bedtime she took me up the big front stairs, all hahaha, like a tour guide. “Look at the panels, Theo. Solid mahogany. Your great-great-great Grandy spared no expense.”
“My what?”
“The first Dakin Ellis. That’s him on the landing in the big gold frame. Wait’ll you see your room!” It was just sad, her going, “Aren’t you excited?
Not really. Poor Lane, ever since Dad bailed you’ve been a mess, nailing hopes to the wall like circus posters, or pasting on fucking smileys that everyone hates because it’s so fake. Give it a rest, Mom. Just give it a rest. I know you’re bummed about moving in here with them.
But she doesn’t know that I know, so I make that belch where they think you answered, and they’re too embarrassed to go, “What?”
She, like, skipped on upstairs to the first landing, where the grandfather clock that the aunts fight over looms like a funny uncle, mwa haaaa. It bongs every fifteen minutes, obnoxious much? “Look!”
She was waiting for me to say I loved it. I said what you say. “OK.”
So she turned me around and pointed. From here it’s a straight shot down past the newel post with the shitty brass goddess of wisdom on top holding her light-up torch and on out that front door.
She said, “You can see everything from here,” like we’re in a museum and the exit is Exhibit A, and, me?
I studied it. Thick glass in the top half with a crap curtain hanging over it so you can’t see out the door, but above that there’s a wide glass transom, so you can. “Oh.”
Mom is all ta-daaa. “You can see who’s out there without them knowing. Theo, look!” Then, shit! She pushed the panel next to the clock. Booya. Secret door. “My room, after Mom got so sick that we had to move in here.”
That would be Poor Elena, according to the aunts, who talked about Poor Elena and all the other Elenas hanging from the family tree for, like, forever before Aunt Rosemary, who is either the Good Twin or the Bad Twin, depending on what she makes for dinner, said grace so we could eat.
“We were leaving as soon as she got well.”
Poor Mom. Shit happens to Lane, it just does. Her mother died upstairs in Sister’s room which is where they put Mom the night we moved in, and when I went, Who’s Sister, Aunt Rosemary was all, Don’t ask. They’ve been calling Mom Little Elena ever since we walked in even though she corrects them every time: as in, Elena was her mother. My mom is Lane.
Lane, trying to make me glad. “You get the best room in the house!”
Oh, Mom. Don’t try so hard! I went, “Great,” because it was so fucking sad.
It was this extra-big closet, pine paneled with brass fittings and a round window that opened and shut so I could pretend that I was on a boat. She stood there waiting for me to say, “cool,” but I couldn’t so she said, “The captain’s cabin. So you’re in charge.”
As if.
“Look!” She opened the porthole and made me hang out. Right, it’s too high for junkies to reach and too small to fit anybody but me, and Mom was prompting, like, “Repel all boarders, get it?”
Oh Mom, just leave.
“For when they fight.”
I just wanted her to stop talking.
“They’re all cute and excited because we just got here, but they’ve been in here together for too long. They fight, and when it gets really bad, watch out, they don’t care who they hurt.” I guess she couldn’t stop talking and I couldn’t stop her either, not the way she was. “This is the one safe place.” Then she sort of crashed. “Besides. She won’t come in here, she promised.”
I was supposed to ask her who. There was us and there was that clock ticking. Like everything else in the house had stopped. I thought, one of us has got to say something, but it won’t be me.
She said, “I was an orphan.”
Poor Lane. “You win.” I hugged her and she left.
See, her dad’s car crashed and exploded before she was old enough to know. She and poor Elena made it alone OK until cancer got her and they ended up here. After that it was just Lane and these fucking aunts, what are they, a thousand years old?
The ones that can still walk are the twins. Aunt Rosemary is the warden, quartermaster, whatever, kitchen police; don’t piss her off if you expect to eat. Aunt Iris is the general. I don’t know what her hair used to look like, but it’s gone all scouring pad on her, this extreme not-blond, with long black hairs that she doesn’t know about sticking out of her chin. Aunt Ivy is the crippled one. Excuse me. Disabled. She used to be an OK person, but everything changed after that horse rolled on her. She can go anywhere the scooter goes, she can even roll out on the back porch and make trouble for me, but tip that thing over and she’d flop around like a fish.
And my mom? She had to stay here after her mom died, and they never called her Lane. It was Little Elena, come here. Do this, do that, until she found the will. Turns out her dad was rich before he pissed it all away, how cool is that? After they had Mom, he did two things. So, did he have a premonition or what? See, he bought these bonds in her name. They’re in the bank down town. As soon she collects, we’re done with this creepy place.
The other thing her dad did was sign her up for boarding school, four years bought and paid for up front. So Mom escaped when she was fourteen. No more Little Elena. Get it? She took the train to Virginia all by herself and met the great big, scary headmistress of Chatham Hall with a great big grin. “Call me Lane.” She’s that smart. Done deal.
They helped her get a scholarship to FSU but she didn’t finish; she had me instead. She says she got so starved for family that she quit and married my dad so she could have one of her own. They were in love, but she swears I’m the only good thing that came out of it. So fuck you, Barry Hale, for wrecking the only real family we ever had, and fuck us ending up in this ginormous dump, stuck with the same old ladies going all “Little Elena” on her and, like Mom says, us fucking beholden to them.
That night she told me it’s just until she gets a job; she told me it wouldn’t take long and it will be a million miles from Jacksonville. She told me that this was my safe room. Look how that turned out.
That first night I turned the latch and put the pillow over my head but it didn’t shut them out, nothing does. I heard her and the aunts bonking around upstairs and after Mom stopped trying and went to bed I heard them yelling downstairs in Aunt Ivy’s room, which they did until the clock on the landing choked out eleven bongs and they all went to bed. On the eleventh bong the whole house shut down. By that time I had to pee, but it was dark out there and I was afraid to go upstairs to the bathroom, so I didn’t what you would call sleep.
It’s the house. It’s too old, like, nothing’s where you thought it would be, and it makes all these weird noises. Plus it smells bad, e.g. the blanket and this bedspread smell like mothballs and the sheets smell like feet and mildew and bad perfume, like ghost sheets ironed and put away by people that got old and d
ied a hundred years ago, and on my first night in this room I lay there wide awake and blinking for, like, years.
Who could sleep?
I’d swear I didn’t sleep at all, except the next time I heard the clock was when it happened. It was dark as fuck inside my room, and I only counted three bongs.
The clock didn’t wake me up and it wasn’t having to pee, either. Around 1 A.M. I peed in my canteen because I wasn’t sleeping and I could hardly stand it and I guess I went unconscious, because then. Oh, fuck. Then.
It was the cold. With the furnace going and the blankets and the window closed, there was a difference. This weird chunk of air was in my room. I could feel this dense shaft of nothing by the bed, like a column of ice or an ice person. It wasn’t a draft, it wasn’t something breathing, either. It was like nothing you can imagine. It didn’t speak and it didn’t touch me. It didn’t come through the door or blow in on the wind. Nothing to see. It was just there.
I guess it was her, but I didn’t know it at the time.
But that was before Mom and me drove out to the Publix and we had The Talk.
About whatever it was. It wasn’t a thing, like, Thing. You know, from the movies. It was an object. I just lay there and waited for it to go away, although it didn’t blow out the door when I realized there was a presence. It didn’t speak either. It just stayed. It wasn’t like I went to sleep after that. It was more that I quit counting bongs and forgot time. Next time I heard the clock, I counted. It bonged eight times. It was light in the room and the cold, cold chunk of nothing was gone. I told myself, OK, it was a stupid dream. It had to be, because otherwise I was batshit crazy, and on top of everything that’s come down since Dad blew us off, crazy was one fucking thing too much.
Tuesday she was there again, but at the time I didn’t know it was her. I didn’t even know it was a person. I just knew it was way creepy, and this time made twice. I didn’t make it up or imagine it.
This happened.
The cold didn’t do anything, it didn’t say anything, it was just there for as long as it took to, like, make an impression? You’d think I’d freak with a chunk of black ice standing over me but it was OK. I thought I knew what the drill was. The sun would come up like it did yesterday and it would go away. Thing or not, I peed into my canteen like I do every night now, because no matter what’s in your room with you, you don’t want to go out there, ever, all by yourself in the dark.
I wash it out in the downstairs bathroom before anybody gets up. They fixed up the second-class sitting room for Aunt Ivy because of the scooter, but she has to wait for Aunt Iris to come downstairs and get her up.
It went on like that. Some nights she came. Others, I slept through, which was a relief. I didn’t tell anybody, because certain things aren’t real until you name them. Couldn’t see her, didn’t hear her, but I knew she would keep coming. I just felt it. Chunk of cold by the bed, solid as a post, but then it spoke to me.
Some of us are trapped here, blood of my blood.
At least I think it spoke.
Get out while you still can.
I didn’t know what it was, not then, and I wasn’t about to tell Mom, either. She has enough going on right now, between the aunts and snarky phone calls from Dad’s lawyers, plus, as long as I didn’t pin words to the wuddiyou say, presence, I could pretend it wasn’t happening. Maybe it would give up and go away. When that didn’t work I shook my fist at it and went, get out, and it didn’t say or do anything but THIS came into my head: I can’t, and that creeped me out, but I would die before I would bother Mom with it. Yeah, right.
This: Get out while you still can.
CHAPTER 3
Dell
His first night in the belly of the house was harder than he expected, filled with extreme silence broken by sudden cracking sounds as the footprint of the old house sank deeper into the earth. He unrolled his sleeping bag on the cement apron by the old washtubs, but it felt wrong. He moved on to the area under the back steps, but the insect life in the dirt and hanging in the air drove him out. After a series of uneasy moves and restless nights in different spots, he settled on the space behind a partition at the far end of the enclosure. He thinks they used it to keep firewood or coal, or whatever the house ran on before that kid— he was a baby— before Teddy caught fire, back when this was new, the floor scrubbed clean, all traces removed.
No telling how the women heat their house these days— not much, Dell knows. Yes, he’s been inside. It’s how he learns these things.
Accidentally or not, the old lady in the wheelchair taught him how to come and go without their knowing. He was on his way around the house with his head down when he caught her on a bad day. He heard her up there on the porch, spitting with frustration. She was scolding that scooter thing she drives, desperate to get it aimed directly at the sun. Then her voice filled up with tears, so he had to swarm up and over the rail and help her, how could he not? She blinked up at him without seeing, frustrated and resentful. “Vincent, we’ve been waiting for you!”
“Ma’am?”
“Miss Ivy, please!”
He studied her, wondering. How old are you, anyway? Older than the City Directory says, he’s sure. This once-lovely woman looks as old as God. Poor old thing; she’s waiting. “Yes, Miss Ivy,” he said. Carefully, he turned her scooter. Her eyelids snapped shut; sunlight deepened every one of the thousand wrinkles in her face. “Yes Ma’am.”
“You’re late! Get in there and start the fires, boy. It’s freezing inside!” She’d plunged into deep past and stayed. Giving orders to long-dead servants, he supposed. With her eyes still closed, she continued. “Start in the dining room, Vincent, and for heaven’s sake, use the hatch. You can’t be tearing up Mama’s Persian runners like you do, dragging your logs through the house every whichway.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Miss Ivy!” Then her eyes popped open. “Oh! I’m sorry, it isn’t you!”
“Sorry, Miss Ivy. I’m not him.” Dell flashed his best grin.
She drew herself up. “Hello, Mr.”
“Dell. And if there’s anything I can do.”
“Not right now, thank you. You were sweet to bring me out into this beautiful sun.”
“Glad to help, and now I have to.” Don’t even try. Smiling, smiling, he backed away.
Hatch, she said. Under the dining room bay window, he discovered when he dropped off the edge of the porch to inspect. He went into the shadows on his hands and knees. Right. Like the sprawling porches, the bay juts over the foundation but in a small way, like an overbite. Duly noted. Now leave before Miss Ivy remembers what she just told you. Yes, that’s “Miss.” She looks like she was born at least a hundred years before they even thought of Ms.
God he feels sorry for her.
CHAPTER 4
Charlotte Robichaux: Mormama
I never thought I’d be a mother for so long. The son I loved so much is lost to me, and the daughter? The evil is in the details.
I never wanted to be a mother at all.
It happens to girls in my situation. I was born in the Ware house on Tradd Street in Charleston. For girls born into society in my time, there was no other choice. I was brought up to be a lady, and ladies, Mother told me before I was old enough to resent it, do not work, it is beneath them. A lady may embroider or dabble with watercolors to occupy her hands but the rest will be done for her, unless a bad wind comes in and blows the servants away, and that must never happen; it would be too terrible, never mind that it does happen, has happened, will happen, and ladies end up doing things that ladies never do.
This is what ladies do. They marry gentlemen who want to do certain things to them, and it’s best if they marry well. When I was small I lived my life as though none of this mattered, but my body changed. Mother saw. One day she pulled me into the sitting room. For a tea party, she said. Margaret came in with a tray with macaroons, a pot of tea and three cups. I thought, How nice, a party! Mother poured. I
handed mine to Margaret. “You first!”
And didn’t Mother slap my fingers then! “Charlotte, hush! Thank you, Margaret. That will be all.”
“Yes, Miss Manette.”
When she was gone Mother said, “Ladies don’t sit down with servants, Charlotte. Maids leave the tray and go. Ladies pour.” The third cup was for her china baby doll that I hated and I had to practice pouring over and over again.
My brother came in with a clatter. I thought, Here’s Jared. Please God, make her ask him about school.
“Now. For a lady, position is everything in life.” Without missing a beat she waved him away. “Not now, dear.”
Jared turned red and his face broke into pieces. He dropped his books and ran out before Mother saw him laughing, but I could hear the snorts exploding with every step as he pounded down the hall and out the door. I love my brother but I hated him, with his bright and shiny future spelled out in gold braid and boots polished to a shine. All the best boys from Porter go on to the Citadel. They are Charleston’s finest, who finish as commissioned officers and gentlemen, best boys for life.
Best boys threw themselves on horses, bicycles. They ran and shouted, they got drunk and rowdy, they did bad things in the strangest places and walked away scot-free, but I was expected to do what ladies do.
Mother lectured as though their willful freedom was none of my concern, when all I wanted was … Whatever I thought I wanted went up in flames that day. Mother saw, and poured words on the fire until it went out. The coral necklace she gave me snapped off my neck just then. Beads rolled everywhere. I dropped to my knees as if to retrieve them. Like Jared, I didn’t want her to see my face.
Oh, she was furious. She wished she could stamp me down and make me go along on my belly to look for them, I heard it in her tone. She wanted to see me writhing across the carpet finding every single bead, but ladies don’t.
“Get up.” She stood over me, rigid with spite. I hated Mother, and Mother hated me. She rang for Margaret and made me watch as Margaret scrambled for the beads. “Look what you made poor Margaret do!”