Little Girls

by Ronald Malfi

  “Cool headgear, babe,” Ted said, grinning at Susan.

  “Abigail made it for me.” Susan beamed as she reached up and gently touched one of the flowers.

  Abigail surveyed the people on the deck, and Laurie thought the girl’s eyes lingered longest on her. Then she went over to Liz and showed her the bracelet she wore on her wrist. “Look what Susan made.”

  “That’s very pretty. Did you thank her?”

  “I did. Upstairs.”

  “Good work, kiddo.”

  “Okay, everybody wash up!” Derrick bellowed. “Food’s on!”

  Susan bolted for the door. Abigail walked more serenely, glancing again at Laurie as she went into the house.

  The food was good but Laurie didn’t have much of an appetite. She ate only half her steak, and was silently grateful when Ted finished it for her. The girls sat together at a plastic table and chair set Derrick had brought up from the basement, whispering and tittering behind cupped hands. (Though the girls had presumably washed their hands prior to eating, Laurie noted with mounting disquiet that Abigail’s hands remained filthy; she ate with her fingers, too, and the sight of those grubby meat-slickened digits sliding in and out of the girl’s mouth was slowly making Laurie ill.)

  After dinner, Laurie waited for some coffee to be served, but Liz Rosewood only brought out another clutch of beers onto the deck. Ted finished off the wine he’d brought with him and Laurie stuck to ice water. She didn’t think she could stomach alcohol at the moment. When the girls went into the house to play, Laurie was glad to have Abigail’s eyes off her for a while, although she was fearful of having Susan out of her line of sight for too long.

  “Lizzie says you folks are planning to sell the house,” Derrick said, cranking the cap off a bottle of Flying Dog. “Market’s a bear right now. You might want to hang on to it, rent it out or something, until things get better.”

  “If they ever do,” Ted added.

  Derrick tipped his beer in Ted’s direction. “You know it, my friend.”

  “Derrick’s brother Pete used to have a nice little place in Elkridge,” Liz said, “but then he lost his job and then he lost his house sometime after that.”

  “The place wound up being worth less than he owed on it. It was like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it,” Derrick said.

  “Listen,” Liz said. “Before you folks leave tonight, I’ll give you my friend Harmony’s card. She’s a realtor and she’ll help you guys out. It’ll be good to have someone help take some of the burden off your shoulders.”

  Ted smiled and thanked her.

  The patio door swooshed open again and Susan wandered out onto the deck. She looked flushed and tired, and went directly to her father where she climbed up onto his lap and rested her head on his shoulder. Ted stroked her hair. “Getting sleepy, Snoozin?”

  “Not really.”

  “Where’s Abigail?” Liz asked.

  “Watching TV. I got bored.”

  “Maybe we should leave,” Laurie suggested.

  Ted examined his wristwatch while Derrick said, “It’s still early yet.”

  Laurie stood and collected some of the plates off the table. Liz told her not to worry about them, but Laurie said it was no problem. She carried them into the kitchen and stacked them in the sink, then ran water over the coagulated patches of grease.

  The living room was off the kitchen. It was small and drably furnished, with walls the color of burnt umber and a sofa and loveseat combination that looked like it had been salvaged from a yard sale. Ugly prints of hunting dogs and mallards collected dust on the walls. Laurie lingered in the doorway and stared at the back of Abigail’s head. The girl was planted cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV. With the remote, she flipped through the channels at random and did not settle on a particular program.

  Back in the kitchen, Laurie could hear the murmurs of conversation out on the porch. She peeked through the partially curtained window over the sink and saw Susan still curled up on her father’s lap. Laurie crossed into the hallway and paused at the bottom of the stairwell. The stairs were covered in a woven runner of oriental design and there were crooked little picture frames going up the wall. The house was smaller than her father’s, and there were only two bedrooms at the top of the stairs. Only one of the bedroom doors stood open. Laurie peered in, saw the queen bed outfitted in a hideous floral spread, and knew it was the master bedroom. She turned and approached the closed bedroom door at the opposite end of the hall, peering into a darkened bathroom along the way. Clutching the knob, she expected to find it locked, but it wasn’t. She turned the knob and went inside.

  The Rosewoods had done their best to make the room homey: There were dolls and stuffed animals on the bed, toys on the floor, a small television on a refurbished dresser, drawings taped to one wall, and various arts and crafts atop a cramped little desk in one corner of the room. Laurie took a deep breath and could smell cleaning products and faint perfume. Was there the scent of dirt hidden beneath those other smells? She thought that there was.

  That’s because this used to be Sadie’s bedroom, she thought. I can still smell that girl beneath all this newness.

  She went to the desk and picked up various art projects. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about any of them—a shoe-box diorama, a few crayon drawings, a sock puppet with Ping-Pong balls for eyes and bright yellow yarn for hair, what appeared to be stories or poems printed out in a child’s swollen, bubbly handwriting. Had she not been searching for deeper meaning in the items themselves, she might have missed it, passing off the art projects and looping vowels as a preadolescent’s unremarkable juvenilia. But it wasn’t. The swollen loops of her handwriting made it look like each individual letter was a cell engorged with disease. Smudgy fingerprints had been embossed like wax stamps at the corners of each page. The shoe-box diorama depicted a crudely drawn family, their clothing colorful and done in great detail while none of them had any faces. Laurie picked up one of the drawings. It was of trees, done in crayon, with green curlicues for leaves and forked trunks like upside-down peace signs. Printed in pencil across the trunk of one tree, in all capitals, was the word FUCK. Laurie let the paper flutter to the desktop. She picked up the sock puppet. A bright red crayon had been used to emboss pupils on the sock puppet’s Ping-Pong ball eyes. Laurie brushed a thumb across one eyeball and flakes of red wax rained down on the desktop. The sock itself smelled awful, like industrial cleanser. It stung her eyes and she quickly dropped it.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Laurie whirled around, a scream ratcheted midway up her throat. Abigail stood in the doorway, her small white face expressionless except for a fiery simmer behind her eyes. She took two steps into the room, her gaze still locked on Laurie. “This is where I sleep,” said the girl. “But this isn’t really my room. It’s just where they let me stay.”

  Laurie realized her hands had involuntarily clenched into fists, and she slowly relaxed them now.

  “This is just where they put me down,” Abigail went on. She sat on the edge of the bed and rattled her friendship bracelet—the one that Susan had made for her.

  “Earlier today, you said you had a secret,” Laurie said. “Tell me what it is.”

  “You should guess,” said Abigail. “I think you know it.”

  “We need to stop playing these games now,” Laurie said.

  Abigail’s mouth unhinged and a small pink tongue darted out and moistened her lower lip. The plastic beads of the friendship bracelet sparkled. “Did you see my drawings?”

  “You’re not Abigail Evans at all,” Laurie said. She felt herself trembling. “Your name’s Sadie Russ.”

  “Who do you want to be?”

  “This isn’t a game,” Laurie said. “I’m not playing a game with you. I know who you are.”

  Abigail swung her feet back and forth. There were socks and a single black shoe under the bed. “What games do you like?”

  “I don�
��t like games.”

  “No games?”

  “No. You did something to my father, didn’t you? You were in his house. You’ve been in there recently, too, haven’t you?”

  “My favorite is hide-and-go-seek. Do you know that one?”

  “I don’t want to talk about games. We’re done pretending now.”

  “Sure. Do you like my drawings?”

  “Please stop.”

  Abigail frowned, but there was a devil’s trickery embedded within the expression. “You didn’t even look at them.”

  Not wanting to turn her back on the girl, Laurie backed up against one wall so she could look at the drawings while keeping Abigail in her periphery. The drawings were rudimentary renditions of horses with too many legs, people with the wrong number of eyes in their eggplant-shaped heads, houses that looked like pyramids with windows.

  “No,” said Abigail. “You’re looking at the wrong ones.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Lower. The ones on the bottom. Those are the good ones.”

  “These are—”

  Her voice died in her throat. She was looking now at the bottom row of drawings, and noticed that half of these drawings were of the same multiwindowed breadbox surrounded by some hastily drawn trees. The other drawings were of great looping gyres done up in many colors—circles, spheres, funnels that spiraled off into infinity.

  “Do you like them?” Abigail’s voice was suddenly right behind her. Laurie turned to find that the girl had crept up on her and now stood less than two feet away. “That’s the little house in the woods.”

  “The greenhouse,” Laurie whispered.

  “It’s not a green house. It’s a glass house. But it’s very dirty.”

  Laurie swallowed a lump that seemed to burn her throat. “What do you want from me?” The words croaked out of her.

  Abigail went back to the bed, sat down, crossed one ankle over the other, and proceeded to swing her legs.

  “I want you to leave me alone,” Laurie seethed through her teeth. “I want you to leave my daughter alone.”

  Abigail’s legs stopped swinging. “Haven’t you missed me, Laurie?” she said. “After all these years, haven’t you missed me?”

  Laurie merely stared at her. She could no longer formulate words. Again, as it had done earlier at the park, her vision threatened to splinter apart. She felt instantly hot and her entire body tingled. A high-pitched keening filtered into her ears. Around her, the walls began to balloon inward. On the bed, Abigail’s face seemed to inflate as well . . . and then her features rearranged themselves, sliding and melting wetly into one another. One of her eyes bled down her cheek in a dark greasy ribbon while her left nostril widened and widened until it was no longer a nostril at all but a massive sinkhole in the center of her face. Only the girl’s hideous smile remained unchanged.

  Chapter 21

  “Hon? Honey?” It was Ted’s voice, swimming back to her through the ether.

  She blinked open her eyes. Faces congealed before her. Ted’s was closest, concern stitched across his face. He rubbed her cheek with one smooth hand.

  “Where am I?” Her throat was sore. “What happened?” When she tried to sit up, Ted held her back down.

  “Don’t,” he said. “Just give it a minute.”

  There was a faint vibration, like the strumming of guitar strings, in the center of her head. Her entire body was clammy with perspiration. “Did I pass out?”

  “Not exactly.” Ted slipped a hand under her neck and helped her sit up.

  She found she was in a strange room, on a strange bed crowded with stuffed animals. People she did not recognize stood just behind Ted, staring down at her in concern. After a moment, she recognized the couple as Derrick and Liz Rosewood. Then she recognized the room as Abigail’s bedroom. When she looked across the room, she could see the drawings of the greenhouse and all those concentric circles on the wall.

  “Mom?” Susan appeared beside her father, her eyes moist with tears. The girl looked frightened. “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “Yes, love.”

  Abigail approached the bed, peering at Laurie from between Susan and Ted. The girl’s face was hollow.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Only a few minutes,” Ted said.

  From the doorway, Derrick said, “Should I call an ambulance or something?”

  “No,” Laurie said quickly. Then she softened her voice. “I’m okay. Extremely embarrassed, but okay.”

  Liz came up behind Abigail and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Go on downstairs and get Mrs. Genarro a glass of water.”

  Abigail’s eyes hung on Laurie for a moment longer. Then the girl spun away and hurried out into the hall and down the stairs.

  Laurie eased her legs over the side of the bed. Her clothes were drenched in sweat and the strumming at the center of her head had reduced to a light buzzing. It happened again.

  “Are you sure you should get up?” Ted said. “There’s no rush.”

  “I’m fine, Ted.” Nonetheless, she braced herself against his shoulder in order to stand. Her legs felt as unreliable as toothpicks.

  In the doorway, Derrick stood with a portable telephone in one hefty paw. His big octagonal face was mottled red in his confusion. He kept looking down at the telephone, as if he was unsure how it had gotten in his hand.

  Abigail returned with a glass of water. She crept through the small crowd and arrived before Laurie, holding the glass out to her in both hands. There was a dark shine in her black eyes. Her hand shaking, Laurie reached out and took the glass from the girl, brought it to her lips. She did not take her eyes off Abigail as she gulped half of it down.

  Back down the street, Ted helped her into bed. While she lay there, he peeled off her shoes, then tugged off her pants as Susan, still looking frightened, stood watch in the doorway. Laurie kept promising Susan that she was fine but her words didn’t seem to allay the girl’s fears.

  “My head hurts,” she said. “Did I bump it when I passed out?”

  “You didn’t pass out. When I came into Abigail’s room, you were just standing there staring at the wall. You were awake, but when I called your name, you didn’t answer. Your pupils were dilated.”

  “Oh.” Chilled by the image this put into her head, she was glad when Ted piled the blankets on top of her. “How did I get on Abigail’s bed?”

  “I put you there.”

  “Did it take me long to come back around?”

  “A couple of minutes, I guess.”

  “I’m not even tired.” But her voice was already someone else’s, floating through darkened corridors and across the vast recesses of space.

  Ted went to the door, a grim expression on his face. Out in the hall, Susan hovered like a shadow.

  “Yes, you are,” he told her, and turned out the light.

  She lay in the dark, accompanied by night sounds. A muted thump above the bedroom ceiling. A muffled sliding sound, like bare feet gliding against hardwood floors. She came fully awake, a scream caught in her throat, and realized she had been dreaming.

  Chapter 22

  She spent the next day and a half in bed, resigned to have Susan or Ted bring her food and water. Of course, she insisted that she was perfectly fine and that there was no need to wait on her, but she would be lying to herself if she said she didn’t like the attention. Ted even brought up his laptop so she could watch DVDs. For dinner, Ted went out and picked up Chinese food, and the three of them ate in the big bed in the master bedroom while they watched a Jim Carrey movie on Ted’s computer.

  She was aware that at one point Liz Rosewood came over, presumably to ask about her condition. Laurie had heard Ted speaking with Liz downstairs in the parlor, their voices carrying up the stairwell and into the bedroom. Though she couldn’t make out what was said, she could sense a conspiratorial undercurrent to their hushed tone. Was Liz suggesting she see a doctor, much as she had suggested the realtor to help sell the house? It s
eemed likely. It was only a matter of time before Ted would suggest she see a doctor, just as he had after the highway incident last year. That horrid little intermission. One of the doctors whom she had seen had stated concisely, When you’re dealing with the brain, even the smallest thing could be a reason for concern. Imaginary odors, seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, unprovoked blackouts—these are all things that might seem harmless but could actually be a symptom of something quite dangerous. But he hadn’t found anything dangerous. He hadn’t found anything at all. None of the doctors had found anything. At the time, she had joked that it was probably nothing more than plain old crazy . . . but now, in the wake of this second incident—another horrid intermission—it didn’t seem so funny. Probably because she was starting to wonder if it wasn’t actually the case....

  That night, when Ted came to bed, she feigned ignorance and asked if someone had stopped by the house earlier that day because she had thought she had heard him talking with someone.

  “Liz came by to see how you were feeling,” he said. “She dropped off her friend’s business card, too. You know—the realtor? Harmony somebody. We should give her a call when you’re feeling better.”

  Laurie said nothing, just continuing to stare at the ceiling.

  “Despite how crummy the housing market is, I think we should put the house up,” he went on. “Do you feel okay about that?” He cleared his throat. “Laurie?”

  “I guess so.”

  “This place is haunting you,” he told her.

  You just want the money, she thought.

  “I think maybe it’s haunting me, too.” It was easy to tell he was smiling to himself in the darkness. “Isn’t that funny?”

  Laurie made a hmmm sound, rolled over, and went to sleep.

  On the second day, she realized her wedding band was no longer on her finger. She tried to remember the last time she saw it, but she had never been consciously aware of it and couldn’t remember. She tore the sheets off the bed, the pillow cases from the pillows, and looked under the bed itself. The ring wasn’t there. She checked the bathroom—the sink, the tub, the toilet. A friend of hers back in Hartford had once set her wedding ring down in a Kleenex after cleaning it, then accidentally chucked the Kleenex along with some other trash into the toilet. She hadn’t realized what she’d done until she had already depressed the flusher. Laurie thought of that now. Had she carelessly dropped it in the toilet and flushed it down into the sewers, out into the bay? No, she didn’t think that was possible. . . although she had taken it off a few times while cleaning up around the house. Had she mistakenly left it somewhere else? It seemed likely, and she had been similarly careless in the past. Once, she had lost it for a whole week—never telling Ted—until she finally found it in her purse, in the little nylon case that held her sunglasses. So yes, it was most likely in the house somewhere. Yet panic shook her. She felt like she was underwater, breathing through a tube.