by Carrie Laben
It wasn’t likely to try anything physical in front of an outsider. But that meant it might start thinking of other strategies instead. Time to act.
Ryan was smiling at Martha and she at him. Not paying any attention to Abby at all, again, which would normally be the rudest thing in the world, and would normally ruin everything. But she moved in his peripheral vision, just enough to make him notice her, and that was all she needed with someone this soft after having her fill of the diner.
She pushed at the strands of his attention, pulled and stretched and wove them. His smile widened and so did his eyes. He was ready.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Abby said, and Martha looked over at her and the smile disappeared from her face like smoke. “How about you give us your truck and you keep our car?”
“What? That’s crazy?” His hand started moving towards his pocket while she was speaking, but he managed to stop it. “Why would I want to…”
“It would make perfect sense, though,” Abby said without letting him finish a thought. “We’re already fifteen minutes out in this direction and backtracking would be stupid.”
“But…”
Martha was shaking her head, mouthing the word “no”, but Abby had it in the bag now. The words didn’t even have to be particularly plausible, not with this guy. In a moment—she pressed him harder, just to make sure—in a moment he’d think it was his own idea.
He pulled out the keys and held them close to his chest for a moment, obviously struggling. Martha grabbed Abby’s wrist. A little distraction like that didn’t matter now, though. That sad bastard of a diner had nourished her in a way that fifteen kinds of jam could never touch.
He handed the keys to Abby, and the smile returned to his face. “Here, take these. I don’t want to hold you guys up anymore.”
“Thank you,” Abby said, and then, because Martha was squeezing her wrist so hard it hurt, she leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “This is a huge help.”
She backed away from him, towards the truck, keeping her eyes on him for as long as possible. Fumbled with the key fob until she heard the beep and click of the door unlocking. The sounds tugged on Ryan for a moment and she had to steady his resolve.
“Get in,” she said to Martha, but her sister didn’t move. God dammit. Even if Abby was willing to push her, she wouldn’t want to divide her attention until she’d got the truck in gear and was ready to pull away.
“Get in!”
Martha still didn’t move.
Then, before she even had time to wonder what the hell she was going to do with this bitch masquerading as her sister, a hawk screamed high above. Martha flinched and dropped Abby’s wrist, rushed to climb into the cab.
“Nice work, asshole. Thanks.” Abby knew it couldn’t hear her but she couldn’t resist saying it out loud. Ryan looked baffled, but that was good too, he wasn’t thinking about fighting her anymore. She turned her back and climbed into the truck.
About ten miles down the road, she finally deigned to speak to Martha. “I don’t know what you’re so mad about. At least we got to keep the dog, didn’t we?”
“His name is Buddy,” Martha said angrily, but when he was invoked he stuck his head over the seat and leaned into her ear and she softened. “He is neat, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Don’t you remember how bad you used to want a dog?”
Martha nodded. “I wanted to keep Ryan, too. He was cute.”
“It would have been too much. People would look for him.”
“He’s going to say you stole the truck, when he gets back to himself. We’ll have the cops after us for real.”
“No he won’t. He was inspired by God to an act of charity.”
“You’re sure? Even after it wears off?”
“I’ve been practicing.” It sounded more impressive than he’ll never be able to admit that two girls stole his truck without a gun or anything.
Martha nodded. “That’s really good, actually.” She rubbed Buddy’s ears for a moment, and seemed mournful, but she’d had to adjust herself to much bigger disappointments. “Can we really keep him?”
“For sure.”
“I’m sorry about back there. I was worried you were going to hurt him or something.”
“It’s okay,” Abby said, and it almost was. It was a bit gratifying, really, when Martha apologized, gratifying when she tried to resist Abby and failed without having to be pushed at all.
Abby was deep in an exhausted sleep, despite the Coke, when Mom discovered Grandfather’s body. She woke briefly to high-pitched yelling and Martha’s whimpers, turned over and drifted off again.
Later, when she was properly awake, she wandered downstairs to find Mom and Martha in the kitchen, working on a batch of brownies. It was such an unlikely, TV-like scene—Mom hardly ever let them have dessert, and the way she was hovering over Martha, touching her shoulder, paying close attention… Abby stepped off the bottom step with a thud that made both of them glance up.
“Hey,” Mom said. “Come here for a second. I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
“The good news is the brownies?” Abby meant it to sound guarded and maybe a little sarcastic, like a kid on TV, but Mom’s voice sounded warm and enthused and that batter dripping over the edge of the bowl looked delicious. She crossed the room to stand next to Martha without thinking.
“A-plus!” Mom said with a laugh, and patted Abby’s shoulder too. “You woke up in time to get a vote on whether we put peanut butter in, or cream cheese.”
“Peanut butter,” Abby said without hesitating. Grandfather liked cream cheese in the brownies. No one else did.
“Then it’s unanimous.”
“So what’s the bad news?”
“Your grandfather had to go to the hospital. When he fell down the basement steps, it was too much for him.”
Fell down the basement steps…? Mom had never been as flamboyant about her powers as Grandfather was, had never threatened or hissed at people in public, but since when did they pretend here at home?
On the other hand, the brownie batter looked super good. And from here she could smell it.
“Are we going to bring him brownies? In the hospital?”
Mom frowned for a moment as though that was the wrong answer, but then her face cleared. “Oh! No, not right now. We might be able to visit him soon but the doctors just don’t know.”
Abby nodded and held her face steady.
She was able to corner Martha and get the whole story from her later. Grandfather was in the burned-out foundation of the barn, covered loosely with cinders. The shopping trip to town had mostly been about buying garden lime and a shovel—the brownie mix was to make things look more normal. Yes, Martha thought Mom was acting weird, too.
“But it’s kind of nice, isn’t it?” Martha said after a moment.
“I guess. I don’t think she’s going to make brownies all the time though.”
“No, I mean, maybe if she’s pretending we’re normal she won’t push us around anymore.”
It was so stupid it had to be a joke, but Martha hardly ever made jokes, and especially not sarcastic ones. Abby sliced herself another brownie from the middle of the pan.
“Hey, why do I get stuck with all the edge pieces?”
“Because I’m faster.”
Martha opened her mouth and shut it again, and took a piece from the less-burnt side.
Of course. Martha didn’t even know what having power was. She wouldn’t understand that you’d never let go once you had it.
With all the sugar and caffeine and the mid-day nap, Abby was in no mood to sleep at bedtime. Still, Mom’s new jovial mood struck her as a thing not to lean too hard on. So she’d been flat on her back in the dark for what felt like hours when she heard their bedroom door open.
She let her eyelids open just enough that she could get a flickering glimpse, through her lashes and out of the very corner of her eye, of the door and the backlit form standing there.
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It looked like Mom, and Abby was surprised at how relieved she felt. She’d never felt that way about Mom before.
Mom didn’t say anything, just stood in the doorway watching them. She was still there, watching, leaning to one side or the other slightly every few minutes, when Abby finally fell asleep.
The next morning Mom didn’t wake them. The school bus cruised by without stopping while they were in the kitchen eating Frosted Flakes.
Martha glanced up in dismay and then got very quiet. A moment later, the yellow bus rolled by again. Martha looked as though she might cry.
Mom grinned, or at least bared her teeth. “No school today, girls. We all deserve a break, don’t we? With your grandfather in the hospital and the fire and everything else, it’s been a pretty stressful school year so far.”
A week ago, that would have been the best news Abby had ever heard. Had Mom actually, somehow, finally, felt bad about sending them off to be pecked to death by ducks?
At least it was clear, finally, cloudless and warm for September. After breakfast Abby pulled her Lurlene McDaniel book—with one of Grandfather’s notebooks hidden inside—from her book bag and headed for the door, planning to go up to the apple orchard where Mom’s odd hovering wouldn’t interfere with her reading.
“Where do you think you’re going, Missy? We’re having a family day.”
“Okay.” The concept of ‘family day’ had never come up before and Abby wasn’t quite sure of the parameters.
“I was thinking we could rent some movies and make popcorn.”
Abby nodded. The popcorn maker usually only got hauled out about once a year, so this family day concept seemed worth getting behind.
And once they were actually eating the popcorn, watching the movie—it had Steve Martin in it and Abby wasn’t sure why most of it was funny, although the dog was pretty great—she had to admit it felt good. The three of them on the couch together, Mom between Abby and Martha, snuggled so close their sides were touching. The popcorn slightly soggy from butter and very salty, the way Abby liked it best. Mom smiling, snorting at the film, even laughing out loud. It was like they were in a commercial for Sony.
But eventually the popcorn bowl held nothing but greasy, unpopped kernels. And a little while after that, the movie was over. Abby looked up at Mom, hoping for a clue about what came next, but she didn’t get one.
Mom was staring at Martha, who seemed dozy, confused.
“Hey.” Mom poked Martha in the arm, not gently. “Wake up, there.”
Martha lurched forward a little bit and then righted herself, shook her head like a dog and seemed to focus.
“Family day’s not over yet,” Mom said. “We’re going to make some more popcorn, and play Trivial Pursuit.” She stood up so fast that Martha almost listed into Abby.
Abby couldn’t remember the last time they’d played Trivial Pursuit; the dust clung gray and furry to her fingers as she opened the box. Mom grabbed the cards and shuffled them haphazardly; Abby picked at the yellow game piece, which had a pink segment stuck in it the wrong way around. When she looked up, she saw Martha staring at her in an odd sharp way. Abby stuck out her tongue, and Martha didn’t giggle and break eye contact. She just kept staring.
“Okay.” Mom set down the cards and reached for the green piece. “Let’s go.”
Martha grabbed the blue piece.
“Hey, I want that one.” Abby didn’t exactly like blue, but Martha always let her pick first.
“You can have the brown one,” Martha said, squeezing her fingers shut around her prize.
“Brown is stupid.”
“Girls!” Mom reached over and pried the contested piece from Martha’s hand. It took her several seconds. “Just for that, I’m going to take blue. You can have green, Abby.”
Abby shrugged. You didn’t defy Mom when that tone came out, and she didn’t even like blue anyway. Martha stared at Mom for a moment, that same weird stare, and then took the orange piece without a word.
“You can go first, Martha,” Mom said, not conciliatory exactly—more like it was a test. Martha scooped up the die and shook it in her cupped palms, frowning. She rolled a six and moved her piece to a brown square.
Mom squinted at the card. “In the Yogi Bear series, what is the name of Yogi’s sidekick?”
“That’s…” Mom placed a hand on Abby’s ankle before she could finish the thought, and Abby shut up. But it was obviously the pink question.
Martha’s frown deepened, but instead of objecting, she hesitated a moment and said “Swami?”
The hand vanished from Abby’s leg, and before she could see what was happening Mom had tackled Martha and pinned her to the living-room floor, one hand clamped over her mouth and the other around her throat.
“Abby,” Mom said. “I need you to go outside to the barn pit. Don’t be frightened. Get Martha back into the house.”
Martha—Grandfather, obviously—twisted under Mom’s hands. But the body was still a little girl’s. He couldn’t get away.
As soon as Abby opened the back door, she heard the wailing. It barely sounded like Martha at all, too wheezy, too weak, even for her. The sun was high and bright and warm, and the smell reached her on the stir of breeze only a moment after the sound did.
Martha had managed to crawl out of the pit, god knows how, since Grandfather’s hands were barely holding together. He only died yesterday, Abby thought when she saw how the skin had slipped from his face, but then she remembered the rotting wound that the creature in the basement had left on him. Those things didn’t understand time; they didn’t have to.
While she thought these things she looked everywhere but right at Martha, only letting her eyes skim over the corpse and see one detail at at time, the last few clinging strands of hair or the way the hands looked like old work gloves left out in a field, but she didn’t have to look to know that her sister was out of her mind with fear and intent on crawling back to the house.
That’s what Mom wanted. Martha back at the house. Abby didn’t have to do anything, didn’t have to get closer or touch. But she was taking so long, the body uncoordinated and weak, barely able to make forward progress. And it might… she felt sick, but the thought wouldn’t go away once she’d had it… the body might fall apart before Martha got there, and how would they get Martha back then?
Abby came to a decision and stepped backwards through the still-open door. Martha’s cries rose in pitch for a moment, but she couldn’t keep it up, not if she wanted to keep crawling too, and it only took a moment anyway to grab Grandfather’s old work jacket from the hook.
Carrying the jacket, Abby stepped into the back yard. Martha, reeking, desperate, still crying through rotting lips, was only a few yards away. It seemed like the kind of situation where people fainted. But Abby had never fainted and didn’t know what it would feel like if she was about to now.
The last few feet as she got closer to Martha she had to look away completely, up towards the hills and the apple orchard beyond where she could have been right now, reading in peace. She felt something snag at the hem of her pants and if it was rotting fingers, Martha reaching out for her, she didn’t want to know. She dropped the coat over the whole mess and only then knelt down beside it.
“Martha, you need to get up to the house.” Abby inhaled through her mouth. She could look at Martha now, or at least at the coat, but she still needed to not look at the crushed damp grass where she’d crawled. “I’m gonna help. Try not to flop around too much, okay?”
She decided that the slurred answer was “Yes.” What else would Martha say? She put her hand on what seemed like the coat’s shoulder, and grabbed enough fabric to hold it steady. “Can you get your arms into the sleeves?”
Once Martha was firmly wrapped in the coat, it was just a matter of dragging and not thinking. She was light, much lighter than Grandfather had been when they’d carried him up the basement stairs. Abby found herself wondering if maybe it was Martha’s spirit tha
t was lighter than Grandfather’s somehow.
In the living room, Mom still had Grandfather pinned. “No,” she was saying, as angry as Abby had ever heard her. “She’s my daughter. Not yours.” Grandfather had arched Martha’s body rigid, like he was throwing a tantrum, and gripped a thick chunk of Mom’s hair, bending her head to one side.
Abby dropped Martha and ran to Mom, grabbing Grandfather/Martha’s wrist and squeezing hard with her nails. The twisted face of her twin turned towards her and Grandfather lunged in to bite at her hand. He’d just gotten his teeth in her when Mom slapped him; they tore the skin of Abby’s wrist as his head rocked back.
Mom slapped him again on the backstroke, and again, and again, until the body in front of them whimpered in Martha’s voice. Abby heard it clearly, but Mom slapped Martha a few more times before she realized. Abby grabbed the real Martha by the shoulders and dragged her away.
Mom was breathing heavily, not even acting like she noticed the smell. For a minute, she just crouched there. Then she stood up, unsteadily, but her voice was very even when she spoke. “Abby, Martha, go on up to the orchard or back to the creek—anywhere you like, but out of the house. He won’t be able to pull that off again any time soon.” Martha, despite her flushed red face and snotty nose, almost sprang towards the coat room and the back door. Abby hesitated a little longer, just long enough to see Mom return from the kitchen with the biggest meat cleaver. Then she scurried, before Mom had to repeat herself.
When they came back to the house at dusk, Grandfather’s body was gone, again. No one said anything more about it. They never had a family day again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Even out of the corner of her eye, Abby could tell that Martha had struggled over the issue for a while before speaking up again. “I think we’re going the wrong way. Shouldn’t we be heading sort of northwest?”
“We would be, if we were going straight through to Minnesota anymore.”