by Kit Reed
“OK, Rose.”
“Did you say you were going out?”
Stop sounding pathetic. Mumble, Lane. Maybe she won’t hear you. “Mmm-hmmm.”
“Wait!” Then, good grief, her pitched, penetrating whisper closes the distance between us as she drifts down the first five steps to the landing and confronts me. “In the name of God, take me with you.”
I try, I do! “You’ll miss General Hospital!”
Oh, holy crap. There are tears in her eyes. “I know.”
“Then maybe.”
“No.” The whisper turns into a rasp. “It’s the only time I can get away without her!”
And I thought you were so close.
So I have to wait on the landing while the old lady scrambles back upstairs to her room for her purse and I have to help her downstairs to the front hall, and I have to wait while she pops on her prehistoric hat with fuzzy dots on the veil, checking her image in the beveled mirror over the side table as she clamps on her red fox fur stole over her best black coat, and I have to engage the hooks so the animals chase each other in the right direction and I have to wait while she checks out her look in the mirror once more before she’ll let me open the door on the rest of the world. I have to help her through the door and down the steps and I have to help her into the car because tough as she is, wiry and ordinarily commanding, Rosemary is half herself today, taut and jittery. She won’t relax until I’ve taken the first corner and we’re on the cross street, headed away from them all.
She says in that same, taut voice. “Well, where are we going?”
“I was just.” I don’t know what I was just going to do, I only knew I had to get out of there, and now here we are crawling along River Boulevard, the one road in the ruined neighborhood that hugs the St. Johns River; quiet street, with apartments, small houses and a couple of big hulking relics lining the riverbank, with only a stretch of grass between us and the water. So pretty. Quiet. Until Rose directed me, I had no idea.
“Once Papa rode us downriver in the houseboat, all the way from the landing into downtown Jacksonville, it was so wonderful,” she says. “We stopped here,” she says, and I brace myself for death by past history.
“Oh” seems like the safest response. Don’t want to egg her on, don’t want to piss her off, don’t mind sitting here in the car, but no way am I ready for another onslaught of not-my-memories. “What if we get out and walk around?”
“No thank you.”
“It’s the closest I’ve been to the water.”
“Not today.”
“That looks like such a nice little park down there at the end.”
“That isn’t why we came.”
Oh, shit. You came because I couldn’t get rid of you. “Oh please, it isn’t far.”
“My hat.”
“But it’s so pretty out.”
“Too windy.”
“Don’t worry, take my scarf. Come on, a little walk would be good for us.”
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t relax, even a little bit. She doesn’t even take off the hat. She just sits there blinking at me through the fuzzy dots that sit like bugs on that stupid veil.
God this is awful. “I know what. Since we’re out together and Theo’s on my computer, let’s sneak over to San Marco and see a movie.”
“Are you insane?”
Probably. Who knows what Internet traps Theo could spring in three hours? “The new James Bond movie is there,” I say, thinking, tell me you remember James Bond. “It won’t be Sean Connery, but there’s a terrific new guy.”
She snaps to so suddenly that I hear the click. “I think Iris is trying to kill me.”
“Oh Rosemary, oh, Rosemary!” Bats. That clinches it. Together, the twins are a force of nature, but singly? This one is bats.
Then she says, “The devil didn’t die when Mother did. It happened at the funeral, I saw it, and Iris knows that I saw. For a long time we pretended, but with your boy in the house, and that new man…”
“What man?”
“It isn’t safe.”
“What man?”
“The helping one from the other day. You know.”
Dell. Pretend you don’t. “Not really.”
“I think he’s still here.”
“Why are you whispering?”
The whisper morphs into a rasp. “I don’t know who he is or how he got here, I only know that Iris is possessed.”
“Oh Rose, I know you girls fight sometimes, but your sister loves you.”
“She does not!”
“And you love her.”
“You didn’t see the way she did poor Everett,” she says harshly, breathing so hard that the fuzzy blobs on her veil bob up and down.
“Everett?”
“Or what happened to Alan Deering after Hendersonville.”
“Who?”
“Dear Alan. He was my husband for just a little while.” Her voice trembles, her whole outline blurs because she’s jittering in place so madly that I could swear the car is jiggling too, and if I can’t get her out of this car I’ll have to throttle her.
I take control, sort of. First step. Reach over and unbuckle her. Run around the car. Open the door, take her by the scrawny wrist and yank her out. “Come on, Rosemary, let’s go.”
We manage, nightmare that it is.
Separated from the hat, clutching the red foxes as though the breeze will blow them away along with what’s left of her hair, Rosemary the general morphs into Rosemary the victim, letting go of those foxes long enough to grip me by both hands and look into my eyes, wheezing. “Oh, Elena, she has the devil in her.”
I have to talk her down. “Elena was my mother, Rose. I’m Lane. It’s Thursday, now let’s us walk out on the pier.”
“I heard it in the night.”
“Last night?”
“Before. I heard her call out like a thing possessed, and I knew.”
“Look at those guys. Sailing, in these waters? They must be crazy!”
“It entered her the night Mama died, and Iris changed.”
“In this wind? They almost capsized!”
“I saw it rise up out of the coffin when they lowered Mama into the ground. That night I heard the devil’s voice in her.”
I can’t ground her. I do what I can. “Toxic water, full of industrial waste.”
“I heard it through the bedroom wall.”
I grab her wrist. “What if they fall in?”
“Last night I heard it again, but it was not with Iris.”
“Their kids will come out looking like space aliens.”
“It was thumping around in the attic right above my head.”
“Nice walk out on the pier, Rosemary. Come on, it isn’t far.” I tug, but the woman digs in.
“First I heard the footsteps and then I heard it drop on the floor. Right above my head!”
“Do you a world of good.” Tug harder.
She won’t budge. “And then I heard somebody coming down the back stairs, I knew it was her, I heard her come back into her room and flop down on the brass bed, you know that sound, when it hits against the wall?”
“OK, Rose, we can get back in the car now.”
“I heard what she said.”
“Heard who.” It is not a question. I am beyond asking.
“I heard her cursing me. Mama is dead and buried, but her devil is in this house.”
She is beyond answers, and I am over asking. I shovel her into the car. “That’s too bad, Rose.”
She fights the seat belt. “You don’t understand!”
“Settle down. We have to go.”
Before I can close the door on her, she leans out, squawking. “She’s going to kill me.”
“The devil?”
“No, moron. Iris! Don’t you know anything?”
CHAPTER 26
Mormama
Poor Rose, she was in love with nice Alan Deering and he loved her, I do believe, and perhaps if she’d let h
im take her to their new home in Annapolis she’d have escaped, but Alan the architect was a perfectionist; the two of them moved into Sister’s room— just until their perfect house was done.
As a favor to my daughter, Alan was out in the driveway directing the crane she hired to lift Little Manette’s new marble bathtub to the second floor and lower it into the temporary opening she’d had cut for it. The crane malfunctioned and smashed him in the scant week he spent under this roof.
Bad things happen to men in this house, and he was not the first. There was Leah’s sweet boy, taken from us before they could marry; there were two who came courting her daughter, the first Elena, nice boys taken from us in accidents before they could propose. Better for them, I suspect, because Manette would have destroyed them with words, willy-nilly, that I know.
By the time Little Manette died, Poor Elena was almost too old to find an acceptable man. Iris had been married to Stan Worzecka and divorced by then and she and Rosemary ruled the roost, as strict and demanding as their mother at her worst. I saw Cinderella played out on this very hearth.
The first Elena managed to meet that nice boy in spite of her jealous aunts. She and Edwin Parkson were in love. I helped the child to elope, never mind how. They honeymooned downtown at the Windsor Hotel, but only for a night. Our Elena brought her sweet young husband home to May Street the very next day— “Just until we find a house,” she told us, but of course it dragged on and on. Foolish girl. I tried to warn her, but I was long dead. In a way.
I was …
Never mind what I am.
What could I do to protect the lovely boy Leah’s daughter finally married, what could I possibly do? Poor Elena’s nice man got caught up in some odd way and broke his neck in that fall down the back stairs. He died a week before the baby came, and he was only the newest in this strange, long line of sad lives and untimely deaths brought on by Ellis women who dared to bring new men into this dreadful house.
Poor Elena begat Leila the free, who begat … Her descendents’ losses are too many and too tiresome to name. Generations march into this house and march on to death, all but we women, who …
Oh, look at us. Oh!
CHAPTER 27
Theo
After a while you get sick of Adults-Only chat rooms, even though you can see the weirdos coming and you know which ones are gonna try to set a meet and then you say you’re with the government and the feds are coming to their house as we speak. Dad put me onto that gag, he said he was arming me for the future, but it turns out three weeks later he left, the fuckwad, what does he know?
So. If you can’t find anybody you care about on Zonecraft and picking up new weapons for your skimmer or blowing away scaly monsters gets old, you have to kick back and go down to face real life. Plus, I played all the way past lunch. Yeah, I have to pass through their TV room to reach the fridge, and, fuck. One of those aunts will spring out all pissed off at me, where were you, why don’t you, you never, but I have to eat, right? Better run past, grab whatever and split before they make it out of those great big honking chairs.
The tricky part is doing it while they’re deep in their TV. It’s in the big back room because they think the giant flatscreen and fuzzy tweed Barcaloungers are an insult to our fine old family furniture, at least that’s what Aunt Ivy says. Plus, during commercials the twins can skibble into the kitchen for crunchy snacks and another beer and make it back in time. General Hospital is over, but without Aunt Rosemary kicked back in her recliner all, blah blah blah, the switch on the Aunt Iris machine clicked OFF. I can hear her snoring from here. I’ll go out and buy food. Whatever I can get. It’s not like Mom shoved a twenty in my pocket when she bailed. She gave me a five and handed over her phone. In case.
Aunt Rosemary latched on to my mom before she hit the top step, and it serves her right for not taking me with but look at it this way, I’m on my own.
I can check out the side streets off the back of the one that runs behind, and see what this five will get me. If I don’t find anything else, like a lunchroom or a falafel truck, I’ll settle for crap food from the old guy at the yuck corner store.
I know Aunt Ivy’s, like, languishing in her room across the hall with the old black-and-white TV, but I don’t have the heart to go in. I keep the ten she slipped me under the doorstop in my bedroom, but I’m not going back in there either, no way. Yesterday Mormama showed up in my room in broad daylight, fuck! Couldn’t see her, but I knew. I threw my book at her before she could start. She didn’t like, yell or anything. She just flickered and went out. In this house even in broad daylight, no one is safe.
Which is why I’m scoping out the backside of this long, messed-up block for the zibledy-hundredth time since we got stuck here, and I’m shit out of luck. I check out all three side streets but there’s no neon down there and no plastic banners, just more junk buildings with lame jungle vacant lots and wrecked foundations surrounding and a bunch of FOR SALE signs out front. No food trucks in sight, not even the frozen custard guy, and not a single plastic banner in front of any of those crap buildings signifying food for sale inside so, fuck.
I’m hungry enough to gnaw my arm off, whatever, I’m not going back inside that wooden sarcophagus until Mom does. Fuck, I’ll have to go back into that crap corner store and look for food that’s under five bucks, tax included. Plus edible. Plus nontoxic. Plus with no bugs in it, God, OK? OK? While that creepy old guy puts his elbows on the counter with that snarky glare, like I’m about to rip him off, waiting like he wants me to drop dead so he can watch.
Anything that passes for ice cream, I decide, turning right on the big cross street that leads back to May Street because there’s only industrial park between there and the interstate, fuck that shit.
OK, ice cream. Prepackaged and in his old freezer, so at least the weevils or whatever froze to death. I don’t care how old his Good Humors or Drumsticks are if he even has them, anything that got in there will be frozen too, and if I’m right and there’s a cockroach stuck to it, cockroaches don’t burrow so I can probably scrape it off, no prob. Thinking about food makes me maybe a little braver. If the ice cream looks OK, I’ll take a chance on some Ring Dings to go with.
Like those will be bugfree and nontoxic. Dude, stop dragging your feet.
Then when I’m coming up on the backside of the store, this kid skins out of a second-floor window in the yellow brick heap and jumps on the ladder side of the fire escape. It slides down with him on it and, holy crap, he’s bang in my face, hair sprouting out of his ears and tomato sauce stuck in the hair around his mouth, grinning like he’d just as soon pull back and smash me in the face.
He goes, “Yo.”
So I go, “Hey.”
“Who are you?”
“Theo.” Grin back at him, asshole, or try to. Quick, before he can mess with you. “From up the street.”
“Like you think I don’t know that? You’re the only other fucking kid on the whole fucking block.”
“No shit.” I don’t really mean that. I mean, “Fuck.”
“Fuck,” he says. “But don’t let Gumpy hear you or he’ll smash your face.”
“Gumpy?”
“My grandfather.”
“That creepy old guy?” Mistake, Hale. Go, “I didn’t mean creepy, you know…”
“Fuck yeah I do. He’s old and he’s weird. He’s my legal guardian. See, my dad. Fuck, you’re scared of him!”
“Not really.”
“I seen you in there.”
“No way.”
“Way. I live upstairs. Gumpy, he’s a mean old bastard, but he doesn’t hit. He owns the store. We get shitloads of free samples and everything that rots in the bin.”
“Cool. What’s your name?”
“Douglas Ditlow, but he calls me Dopey. Dopey and Gumpy, get it?”
“Cool!”
“If you say so. I think it sucks.”
“Sorry about that.” We just turned the corner into May Street.
/> “Are you going in or what?”
Problem is, the store looks just as creepy as it did before I knew. “I don’t need it.”
“I can get you a discount, no shit.”
“No shit?”
“Shit. Then we can go upstairs and I’ll show you my stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Really. I’m the famous nighttime crawler. I can get into places and come out with stuff people never even know they lost.”
Their food is awful— freezer burns on the ice cream and weevils in the cake but the old man gives me a discount and I pretend it’s fine because Dopey is watching and the weevils are probably dead.
Then we go upstairs so he can show me his stuff.
It doesn’t look like much, empty rhinestone cell phone case, girl’s scrunchy, a pair of socks with sequined bunnies on the fronts, a pack of file cards with the plastic wrap still tight, a tough-looking sports Swatch, but man, the kid is proud. “Right out from under their noses.”
I did what you do. I went, “Wow.”
“In broad daylight, some of it.” He shows me so much dumb stuff that after a while I zone out and home in on ways to get him to quit without being mean.
I guess he knows. He flaps an old magazine up in my face to get my attention. “I mean it. See this?”
It doesn’t look like much to me but I have to say something “Where’d you get it?”
“From the guy that lives underneath your house.”
He either did or he didn’t, but he knows something nobody’s supposed to know. Instead of asking how he found out I go, “Cool!”
“Not really, but it proves I can get away with anything and the victim will never know.” He flashes the cover in case I didn’t get it the first time.
It’s an old copy of Wired. Like Dell went out scavenging and came home with a bunch. “You were in there.”
“Pretty much. And you want to know the coolest thing?”
“How did you find out he’s in there?”
“He was sound asleep, and I took it right off his chest.”
“How do you know?”