by Carrie Laben
“I don’t want you to. Even to help.” Martha lurched up and off the bed entirely. “You know how much I hate it.”
“Okay,” Abby said, and gave one last little calming press. “But you’ve got to yell for me if anything happens again.”
“You know I can’t.” Martha should have been distracted enough by that little bit of meanness to not care or notice the change when Abby walked out. But then, before she was quite through the door, Martha yelled something that wasn’t quite a word, and what sounded like a paperback book hit the wall to her left.
If it was anyone else she wouldn’t have turned around, it would have looked too much like fear or obedience. And Martha looked surprised when she did turn around.
“I’m trying to help you!” Abby wanted to slap her sister, but she remembered how small Mom had seemed after pulling her hair. “You need to get stronger!”
“If being pushed around made me stronger I’d be stronger than all of you by now,” Martha said, now crying again for real. Abby was so sick of that. If Martha won’t work for it, then fine, she decided.
“What do you want? Do you want me to promise that I’m not going to push you, or something?” Abby honestly couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not.
Martha jumped on the words like she was sincere. “Never. Promise me you’re not like Mom and Grandfather. Promise me you’re at least going to treat me like a real person.”
What does that even mean? Abby thought. Do you think there are people who don’t get treated this way? But she nodded. “I’m never going to push you just to push you, only if we really need…”
“No,” Martha cut her off. “Never. Push everyone else around if you want but we’re supposed to be best friends. Sisters.”
“Oh!” Thinking of it as like a friendship bracelet, or like those promise rings that the saddest and most annoying girls got from their boyfriends, that made more sense. Of course Martha wanted to feel special to someone, with Mom and Duane treating her like a piece of meat all the time. “Okay, look. If it means that much to you then yes. I promise I will never, ever push you for anything.”
She wasn’t sure if she was going to keep the promise, but as she left the room she intended to try at least for a while.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Back in the master bedroom, Abby checked the notebook against the Orne and Hutchinson to make doubly sure her plan would work, lit the candles, drew the curtains, threw the still-damp towel over the mirror on the dresser, turned the stupid fish painting to the wall. Probably unnecessary, but as careless as she had been last night she felt like an abundance of caution would help balance the accounts now.
Most everything was still in place, aside from the phone. The rock she pocketed from the grave would do for the mortar she lacked last night. It wasn’t like she was dealing with Lowell or Longfellow or Holmes, for god’s sake, irreplaceable, with a demand out of all proportion to the inevitable limits of the supply. She’d have what she needed with plenty of Grandfather to spare.
If Mom had had any foresight at all, she would have just cremated the old guy and then she could have had a pinch of him whenever she needed him, like baking powder, and kept him hidden from Abby with no rite more complicated than a tin in her desk at work, or if she was really paranoid a safe deposit box.
Well, it wasn’t Abby’s problem when other people were stupid, unless they made it her problem, and Mom couldn’t do that anymore.
A tooth was too much, in the sober light of… sobriety. Really, why had she thought to try this drunk? She was lucky she hadn’t caused a zombie apocalypse or set off the Yellowstone supervolcano. She pried loose a narrow, rattling remnant of cartilage from inside Grandfather’s nasal cavity, careful this time as she should have been before not to slice or jab her fingers. Once it came away she set it apart and hit it with the rock a few times, not even very hard because she didn’t want to mar the finish of the dresser too badly—though why not? She couldn’t say, it wasn’t like she’d ever use this dresser again. The cartilage crumbled quickly under her attack. A little coarse, but it should do.
She adjusted the phone’s volume carefully—too quiet and the ritual would be sapped of power, too loud and she’d upset Martha.
She wished she dared to snap a photo of this for Instagram, or tweet about it; she could have used the boost. Her followers would see it as a bit of witchy play-acting, or better yet some kind of conspiracy-theory fodder, the kind that made you nine days wonder and sent idiots with guns storming around. But you could only post so many human skulls before even the dullest police had to take notice.
At first she tried to keep half an ear free to listen for Martha but she soon gave it up. She couldn’t do anything about anything she heard short of aborting the ritual entirely, and she wasn’t going to do that unless the cabin was on fire. Anyway, it was useless to try to divide her attention, as she should have known from the beginning. Not because the spell was so hard, though it would be, for most people. Because it was so interesting, the power flowing out of the words and flooding the bones, her power everywhere, saturating the air and the furniture, the walls, the waves peaking and resonating in time with the little shreds of old power left there by Grandfather, by strangers before him, and most deeply with the much greater power in the lines and fissures of the earth beneath her. She’d have missed all of this, or forgotten, if she’d done it drunk, and that would have been a shame because she saw the whole pattern for a moment. Distorted reflections of things she once saw Grandfather do in the dark appeared before her. A woman in a high-collared dress shouted at the flames, a Native man with a stone blade stood over the body of a creature that was, perhaps, half a bear. If she concentrated she didn’t just see, she could almost understand the whole history of power and terror that happened right here. This was why she had to cover the mirrors, though they were so far from the sea, though the doors were closed back at home—because other things besides herself could watch, and learn, and such things were everywhere. Some of them had nothing to do with the Waites at all, except the same hungers.
Also, because a small distraction like a moving shadow could keep her from cutting her own hand or snuffing the flame at the right moment.
As it was, of course, she executed the ritual flawlessly. Which made it all the more irritating when Grandfather rose from the dying smoke already laughing at her. She hadn’t expected distress or fear—those were the reactions of conventional, pious people to being raised from the dead by someone other than their expected deity—but it would have been nice if he’d at least looked impressed.
“Girl,” he said, his voice a dry crackle, “wasn’t the first thing I taught you not to raise what you can’t put down?”
“I didn’t,” Abby said, flatly. Anything more elaborately menacing and he’d take it as fearful bluster and get onto it like a dog on a scent. She didn’t have time or inclination to second guess every word she said right now.
“Well,” he said, still grinning like a jackass, “I guess you inherited the family’s big brass ones. But now you’ve called me up, so you still need dear old Grandfather for something, don’t you?”
In the books, the dead didn’t play these games. They pleaded or they cursed or they just gave in right away and did whatever you asked, but they didn’t get sarcastic with you and try to push your buttons the way only the people who installed them could, as she’d read on some sarcastic gif once.
She didn’t have time for it, she told herself firmly when she felt herself wanting to argue. “We’re at the cabin. There’s a spot somewhere near here that’s good for fixing the transition, but you never wrote it down. I want,” she almost said ‘need’, but you couldn’t say that to Grandfather, “to know where it is.”
“Too lazy to do the math on your own?”
‘The math’ involved charting the stars for years, to say nothing of the time with her face in the books, decoding and translating. But you couldn’t admit urgency, either. Especia
lly not now.
“Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m efficient.”
“You’ll never get anywhere depending on other people to do things for you.” That was actually one of Mom’s taunts, when she’d call them spoiled, but good for him for remembering it.
“I will if I can make them. And I can make you. You should know that better than anyone.” He flinched, or more accurately wavered, a little. Good for him for remembering that, too. Sometimes they came back not knowing all the things they should, which would be disastrous now, but that was mostly a problem with the ones who had been in the ground for a century or who got torn up and scattered.
“You’re awfully well-preserved, if you’re looking like that and of an age to need the spot,” he said.
“Better to know it before I need it than need it before I know it.” She made a mental note not to turn her back on him, even once she was outside the circle, even in this top that covered her shoulders. He might be able to sense the thing, sense her weakness.
“When’d you start planning ahead? You hit your head or something?” He pulled a mocking face. “You sure you’re actually my little Abihail, and not an impostor?”
“I just want to know.” She held up her cut hand, which hadn’t yet scabbed, where he could see it clearly but not get near. “So tell me, and stop babbling like a lonely old grandpa in a nursing home.”
He was trying to pretend to be indifferent to the blood, glancing at it and then away, leaning toward it like a candle-flame in a draft and then forcing himself to correct and stand upright. Abby curled her fingers in to hide the cut, then unfolded them slowly. Flirting with him. Demonstrating control.
“You head due south from the front door of the cabin,” he said after a moment, conversationally, as if he’d merely decided there was no harm in doing her a favor. “Cross the creek. Veer left fifteen degrees at the first standing stone. You’ll know the table rock when you see it, unless you’re even lazier than I remember.”
The little dig made her curl her fingers in again.
“That’s it, that’s all the directions. You have to give it to me now,” he said, a look of seriousness and demand on his face that still intimidated her though he was largely impotent in this form. “You owe me.”
“I know exactly what I owe you. Have you told me everything I need to know?”
“Worried I left a little surprise under the stone?” He grinned. “I did. But it won’t be triggered if it’s a hard-water Waite using it.”
She let the silence go long enough that he couldn’t claim later he’d been meaning to tell more when she cut him off.
“You owe me,” he said again.
She almost turned to the bed, then remembered and reached backwards to pick up the stained sun dress. “I know exactly what I owe you,” she repeated, “and that’s exactly what you’re going to get. No more.” She tossed the dress to him.
He caught it with surprising ease for a disincorporated old man. Sniffed. Frowned. “Muddy. This isn’t yours.”
“You get what you get.”
He couldn’t argue with that, though he stared at her for a long moment as though he was going to try. She stared back, stared him down. She was the one who was still alive, she was the one who got to tell him what was what now. Finally, sooner than she expected, he quavered and pressed the fabric to his face. There was a sound that was oddly disgusting for how quiet and dry it was, and Abby looked down at the carpet. It was still her dress, even if it was ruined, and it angered her a bit on that level.
Still, it was a good move, giving him the dress. Much better than having to concoct some kind of story to tell Martha about how Buddy got a cut on his neck. And much, much better than giving Grandfather her own blood and triggering the spell he recorded in the notebooks he never expected her to read or understand, the spell that would give him another doorway back into the world through her, one last shot at his old plan.
After as long with the sound as she could stand, she snapped her fingers just so and said the word. Grandfather wavered again, grimaced, tried to hold on for a moment and then dissipated back into smoke. She’d put down things that fought harder.
Abby uncovered a window, wincing in the sudden stab of light, and opened it wide. Spoke another word to break the power, which was always the hardest part—more like sobering up than sobering up felt, all the anger and sadness, the sheer resentment that it had to end. Only when the haze was gone did she step into the circle and pick up the dress.
It was already ruined, she told herself, poking a finger through the holes in the fabric, not tears so much as worn-away places, as though the fabric had been rubbed and washed for years. I can get another, I can get ten others just like it. There was no reason to be so upset.
Abby tried one of the pills one night, just to see what was so great about it, but it didn’t do anything but make her sleepy and dumb, and around one in the morning she was seized with a terrible fear that she’d throw up and choke to death even though she knew that was mostly D.A.R.E. bullshit.
Kristen liked them well enough, though, and paid Abby for the ones she stole and brought to school. The money didn’t matter much—Abby found ways to make people give her what she wanted usually, these days—but Kristen’s rapt attention and gratitude did. When it was almost time for another deal, she was the most important thing in Kristen’s world, way more important than Carl or her hatred of Duane or anything.
That said, it was important not to skim too much. She didn’t want Mom running out, didn’t want to deal with the unpredictable anger and sarcasm that sometimes still gave her claws. It seemed like Abby was always misjudging, though, and most of the time she could do nothing right, was the bane of Mom’s existence. Most of the time. Sometimes Mom would whipsaw around and be chummy again and that was almost as unpleasant for Abby, trying not to let her disgust at the obvious fakeness leak through and slam shut the short window when she could actually get rides, favors, a moment to breathe.
Running out of pills might be the only thing that would stop Mom’s ride down the rollercoaster now. She seemed almost as addicted to Martha and the life she led in her body as she was to the chemicals. Somehow, Mom/Martha was popular. Luke Bowman, one of the wrestlers, had even shaken Duane loose from her at last by threatening to beat him up. And though Abby knew that none of this was Martha’s fault exactly—she was weak and whiny and incompetent and so unable to protect herself that how would anyone on earth not want to take advantage?—it was boring trying to protect her now that there were other people who looked at Abby with grateful eyes. Like Kristen. So the pills had to keep coming, and Mom could make do, or steal more herself.
For all of that she knew, in one deliberately-ignored corner of her mind, that a confrontation might come. So when Martha slipped into her room without permission one night near eleven and said, “You have to stop,” she assumed that this was it. She braced herself, turned, and got ready to try and push someone who as far as she knew couldn’t be pushed.
The instant yielding was the first clue that she was wrong, and the tears in Martha’s eyes were the second. She stopped herself as fast as she could. She’d break Martha using the kind of power she’d need to make a dent in Mom.
“What? Why?” If she’d thought about it, she’d have said she was doing Martha a favor too.
“It isn’t helping. The only way out of this is to go through it, Abby. She can’t keep it up forever.”
Abby sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “You think she’s going to quit?”
“She’ll have to, eventually.”
How could she think that anyone would give it up? She didn’t know anything. “That’s not a plan.”
“Yes it is.” Martha sped up, and Abby began to see a hint of brittle anger behind the fear, something that reminded her of Grandma. “You didn’t do anything so I’m doing something. And the more pills she takes, the sooner she’ll get too sick to hold on to me.”
Abby didn’t push, even then, but s
he took a minute just to stare and pretend to be shocked. It was a pretty good idea. She should have thought of it. Since there was no barn to burn down this time.
“You’re trying to kill Mom.” Maybe it was stupid to say it out loud but she wanted to punish Martha, a little, for being bolder than Abby and thinking of it first.
“No! She won’t die!” Martha looked legitimately upset at the thought, which sealed the deal that it was really Martha; if it had been Mom she would have tried to egg Abby on into saying that she’d help, or something else incriminating. “She’ll just get too sick to keep grabbing me. I can feel her getting weaker already.”
“Can you.”
“Yeah. The amount of folding I’ve been doing, she can’t possibly keep it up much longer, she keeps having to take more and more to keep me asleep.”
“What the hell,” Abby said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. She hadn’t thought of this, that Martha would be willing to fold her own life away, that she’d do it all on her own. She wasn’t even sure if she was angry with her sister or not. “I guess it’s worth a try.” She picked up the remote—if what Martha was doing was working, Mom probably wouldn’t hear them turn on the television at this time of night. Then she thought of something. “But be careful. Leave enough time for me to do what I need to do.” Martha might think she meant homework but she was still sure she could learn enough, gain enough power, to stop Mom on her own.
Martha looked at the ground, at the blank gray face of the television. “Okay. I can leave you more time. If you’ll stop stealing the pills.”
And Abby meant to, until the first time Kristen asked for more, and then she decided Martha’s plan wasn’t going to work anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Abby cleared away every trace of the ritual with more care than she’d devoted to cleaning anything in five years of living in her old apartment. Stepping in a bit of stray ash probably wouldn’t do any harm, but why risk it now, when she was so close? She tried to take the mirror off the dresser, too, in an abundance of caution, but it was bolted firmly to the dresser and the entire piece of furniture was too heavy to move on her own, too close to the wall to come at with a screwdriver. She just left the towel over it. The skull she put back in a shopping bag, the shopping bag she put in the closet.