The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

  I bow my head into the billowing rain and go down the row of parked cars towards her.

  Dee

  ‘You said you would help,’ Ted says.

  ‘What?’ It’s early on a Sunday morning, and Ted is on Dee’s doorstep. Her heart begins to pound, splashy and loud. In that moment she is convinced that he knows who she is and why she is here. Get a grip, Dee Dee, she tells herself. Nobody gets murdered on a grey Sunday morning. But they do, of course. She yawns to cover her fear, rubs the sleep from her eyes.

  Ted shifts on his feet. His beard looks even thicker and redder than usual, skin whiter, eyes smaller and blearier. ‘You said if there was something I couldn’t do, uh, because of my arm, you would help out. Maybe you didn’t mean it.’

  ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s this jar,’ he says. ‘I can’t open it.’

  ‘Hand it over.’ Dee turns the lid hard, and it yields quickly. Inside the empty jar is a note. It reads, in neat block letters, let’s go out for drinks.

  ‘Cute,’ she says. She keeps her face still while her mind races.

  ‘I mean as friends,’ he says quickly. ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Uh,’ she says.

  ‘Only, I go away a lot.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dee says.

  ‘I might be spending more time at my weekend place, soon.’

  ‘A cabin?’ Dee says.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Up by the lake, I suppose.’ Her heart is pounding. ‘That’s a lovely spot.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t know it.’

  ‘Well, we’d better have that drink before you disappear.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at that bar off the 101,’ he says. ‘Seven p.m.?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Cool,’ he says. ‘Great. Sayonara!’ He stumbles a little as he backs away from her, and almost falls, but he recovers just in time.

  ‘Well,’ she says as she comes into her living room. ‘I’ve got a date.’

  The yellow-eyed cat lifts her head. She and Dee have a good understanding. Neither of them likes to be touched.

  Dee says, ‘It has to be tonight, before he fixes the window.’ She wonders who she is trying to persuade. Get it done.

  At 6.30 p.m., in the silvered near-dark, Dee is crouched in her living room by the shuttered window, watching Ted’s house. In this light everything has a velvet quality. The world looks mythical and interesting. She waits, legs cramping, as she hears the turning of three locks next door. The back door opens and closes. The locks turn again. Ted’s steps fade and she hears his truck start. She waits five minutes and then slides up the wall, muscles trembling. She goes quietly out of her back door and steps over the fence into Ted’s back yard. She is somewhat screened from the alley by the timothy and pampas grass that grows wild, here. But she had better hurry. She goes to Ted’s rear living-room window and takes the clawhammer from the pocket of her overalls. She pries the nails from the plywood that covers the window. They come out with little reluctant squeaks, but at last the sheet loosens and she pulls it free. The latch on this window has rusted through. She noticed it when she was in the house. He must have forgotten about it, after he boarded them up. She slides the sash upwards. Paint flakes scatter like snow or falling ash.

  Let me in – let me in. But Dee is the ghost at the window now. She throws her leg over the sill. Inside, she is immediately filled with the sensation of being watched. She stands in the green living room, breathing the dust, and lets her eyes take in the dark. Ted’s house smells strongly of vegetable soup and old, used-up air. If sorrow had a scent, she thinks, this is what it would be like.

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ she says softly. ‘Are you there, cat?’ Nothing stirs. She should take Ted’s cat with her when she goes, she thinks. This is no life for the poor thing. For a moment she catches the gleam of eyes, regarding her from the corner of the room, but it’s just streetlight reflecting off a dented silver box. It’s the only thing on the dusty mantel. There is a bare patch in the dust, as if a picture frame or something recently stood there.

  She moves quickly; there isn’t a lot of time. Through the living room, kitchen. The freezer lies open, door propped against the wall. There is no basement that she can see. She lifts the rugs and looks underneath, treads the boards carefully, looking for a trap door.

  She heads upstairs. The carpet stops at the landing, which is dusty boards. Dee turns to sidle past the large wardrobe, which looms large in the tiny hallway. It is locked, and she can’t see a key. No attic.

  In the bedroom grocery bags line the walls. Clothing spills out of them. There’s a closet containing one broken coat hanger, no clothes. It looks like Ted has just moved in, except that the mess has an air of timeless assurance. It has always been and will always be.

  The bed is unmade, blankets still holding the moment when they were kicked away. There is a handful of pennies scattered across the sheets. When Dee comes closer she sees that it’s not pennies, but dark drops of something. She makes herself smell it. Old iron. Blood.

  The bathroom is as she remembers, sparsely furnished, a cracked sliver of soap, an electric shaver, various medications in amber drugstore tubes. The blank patch over the basin where the mirror used to be. She should have taken pictures, she thinks, but she didn’t bring her phone or a camera. She tries to remember as much as she can. Her pulse is thundering.

  There is a second bedroom containing an office chair and a desk. The couch has pink blankets on it and drawings of unicorns on the wall, of varying proficiency. The cupboards here are locked, too, with three-number combination padlocks. Dee bends to examine them. She touches the dial on one, gently.

  A board sighs downstairs, and a hand clenches round Dee’s heart. Something scutters by in the walls and she screams. It comes out as a gasp. The mouse feet scurry on. Actually, they sound bigger than a mouse. Maybe a rat. She leans against the wall, thinking as best as her thundering pulse will let her. How long will Ted wait in the bar, alone? She imagines him coming home, standing in the dark, watching her. She thinks of his blank eyes, his strong wrists. She should go.

  She picks her way downstairs on tiptoe, every moment expecting to hear keys in the lock. Her breath is catching in little hiccups. She feels like she might faint, but also giddy with the strangeness of it all. Dee catches the barest glimpse of a dark slender shape, watching her from the corner of the living room and her heart stops for a moment.

  ‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ she whispers, to break the thick silence of the room. ‘Have you seen a little girl?’ But there’s nothing in the corner but shadow and dust. Either the cat has slunk away or it was never there. Dee makes her way to the window, giving a little hoarse cry as the ugly, burry blue rug slips under her feet. She climbs out, swearing as she knocks her head against the frame, and pulls the sash down with relief, closing the house up behind her. The night air seems sweet and soft, the darkening sky is wonderful.

  She raises the plywood with shaking hands. The old nails are bent, rusted and useless. Dee removes them gently. She nails the plywood back in place using the nails from her pocket. They are silver and sharp, fresh from the hardware store. The sound makes her think of coffins and she shakes herself. There is no time to lose focus. She must be precise hammering the new nails into the old holes. She must be quick, and finish while no one is passing to hear the blows or see her stumbling out of the creeper in the coming night.

  When she gets back to her house she finds that she is shaking all over, like she has a fever. And in fact she does feel cold. She lights the wood burner and crouches by it, seized by cramps and chills. She used to think she was sick, when this came on. But she has come to know her body’s ways of expelling distress.

  Lulu is not in the house. Dee realises now that she had been thinking of her sister as very close. Had been imagining her breathing nearby. She has been reduced to wishing her sister a prisoner there. It seems so unfair, to have b
een driven to that. Feeling slices at her throat. She tries to order her mind. If Lulu is not there, she is somewhere else.

  ‘The weekend place,’ Dee whispers. That is the answer, it must be.

  She clasps her hands before her mouth and whispers into them, watching the heat rise red behind the glass, the building flame.

  I’m coming, she promises.

  Olivia

  I was at the window, looking for the tabby, when the sound began again. It’s like bluebottles, only sharper, like a little needle in my head. I raced through the house. The tiny voice whined and stabbed. I bit open a couch cushion and clawed open a pillow in the bedroom. Where the heck is it?

  I just played this back. I can hear the whine clearly on the tape. So it’s not just in my head. It’s a real thing. That’s kind of a relief and also at the same time, not at all. I will get to the bottom of this. I think I could have been a good detective, you know, like the ones on the TV because I am very observant and—

  The most awful thing just happened.

  So, I was just sitting here, clawing at my head and trying to scratch the whine out of my ears, when I heard the repeating click of a key stabbing at the lock. It took several tries before it slid home. Thunk. The locks on the front door opened one by one. Thunk, chunk. Goodness, I thought, he’s really steaming this time.

  ‘Hey, Lauren,’ he called. I purred and trotted to him. He stroked my head and tickled my ear. ‘Sorry, kitten,’ he said. ‘I forgot. Olivia.’ Wow, his breath.

  I hope you don’t go near any open flames, I told him. I always speak my mind to Ted. Honesty is important, even if he can’t understand a gd word I say.

  He weaved in, kissed the Parents where they stared from behind glass and went to sit on the couch. His eyes were half-closed. ‘She didn’t come,’ he said. ‘I waited for an hour. Everyone looking at me. Just this loser waiting in a bar. In a bar,’ he said again as though this were the worst part. ‘You’re the only one who cares about me.’ He swatted my head with a moist palm. ‘Love you, kitten. You and me against the world. Standing me up. What goddamn kind of move is that?’ He sighed. The question seemed to exhaust him. His eyes closed. His hand dropped to his side, palm up and fingers loosely curled as if in entreaty. His breath slowed to a heavy drag, in and out of his lungs. He looks younger when he sleeps.

  Behind, in the hall, the front door swayed gently in the evening breeze. He didn’t close it properly.

  I leapt down. The cord was thin today, a stylish purple. I walked to the door, feeling it tighten about my neck. As I reached the threshold, I could still breathe, but only just. The open doorway burned, white light. A heavy hand fell on my head. Ted fondled my ears clumsily. He wasn’t sound asleep.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Wanna go outside, kitten? You know that’s dangerous. It’s bad out there and you should stay safe. But if you want to …’

  I wasn’t going to go outside, I said. The lord told me not to, and I won’t.

  He laughed. ‘First we got to make you pretty. Give you a makeover.’

  I began to back away from him, I know this mood, but he seized me in strong hands, gripped me to his side like a vice. He locked the door, thunk, thunk, thunk, then took me to the kitchen, the world swooping tipsily as he staggered. He reached up to a high cupboard and took something from it. The knife was broad and shining. I could hear the slight snick as the blade cut air. I fought hard, now, trying to reach him with my claws and teeth.

  He pinched the fur on the scruff of my neck, pulled it up. The knife made a soft pretty sound as it sawed through. The air was full of dark scatters of my silky coat. He sneezed but went on, cutting chunks of fur from my neck, my back, the tip of my tail. Somehow he was holding me and the knife and grabbing handfuls of fur all at once. He gets focused when he’s drunk.

  Then everything stopped. The arm holding me went rigid. Ted’s face froze and his eyes were gone. I slipped from his grip, carefully avoiding the blade where it hovered, an inch from my spine. I left him standing in the kitchen like a statue, knife in his clenched fist. Soft tufts of fur floated on the air.

  I crept away from him. The cord followed me, dirty yellow now and thin like an old shoelace.

  The air is cold on the shorn patches in my coat. I can forgive his attacks on my dignity, on my feelings. The LORD would want me to. But there are limits. He should not have messed with my looks. I am stinking, stinking mad. Forgive me, LORD, but he is just a selfish piece of ess aitch eye tee. Ted must learn that his actions have consequences.

  I go to the living room and jump up on the bookshelf. I push the bottle of bourbon off. It smashes on the floor in thousands of beautiful shards. The stink is strong as gas. My eyes water. For a moment it reminds me uncomfortably of something, some dream I had, maybe, about being locked up in a dark place, and a murderer was pouring acid onto me … My tail switches – whether it was a dream or a TV show, the memory makes me feel bad.

  I jump up onto the mantel and knock the horrible fat monster doll to the floor. She falls with a crack, spilling her babies in the air as she goes. They shatter into splinters on the floor. It is a massacre. I try to knock the picture of the Parents down, too. I know it won’t work, but I can’t help myself. I am an optimist. I don’t know what he has done to fix it so firmly – superglued it in place? The squirrels in the silver frame look more skull-like than ever. That thing is silver; I am surprised Ted hasn’t sold it. Maybe he can’t move it either!

  Never mind, I have other ideas. I go quietly up to his bedroom and into his cupboard, where I pee in one of each pair of shoes.

  I know the LORD won’t like it but I must have justice.

  Ted is calling for me now but I won’t go to him, even though his voice is filled with black spikes.

  Ted

  I’m back, with the force of a blow – breathless, as if I have been punched in the guts. In one clenched fist I hold a knife. It’s the big one that I keep hidden at the back of the high cupboard in the kitchen. No one knows about it except me. The blade is broad, polished to a high sheen. Grey daylight dances along its length and the edge gleams wickedly. It has been recently sharpened.

  ‘Steady, Little Teddy,’ I whisper. The rhyme makes me laugh.

  Start with the basics. Where and when am I? Where is easy. I check the living room. Orange rug, bright and cheerful. Ballerina standing proud and upright on her music-box stage. The holes in the plywood are grey circles, filled with rain. OK, fine. I’m home, downstairs.

  When is a little more difficult. In the refrigerator there is half a gallon of milk, yellowing and sour. A jar of pickles. Otherwise it’s a bare white space. In the trash are sixteen empty cans. So, I ate and drank everything while I was away. I was surprisingly tidy, however. The kitchen’s clean. I even smell bleach.

  ‘Kitten,’ I call. Olivia doesn’t come. I am filled with bad ideas. Is she sick, or dead? The last thought brings horrible panic. I make myself breathe slowly. Relax. She’ll be hiding.

  I lost days, this time. At a guess, three. I check the TV. Yes, almost noon. So three days, more or less.

  I go through the house, making sure of padlocks on the cupboards and the freezer, checking everything. I did some damage while I was out. Scratched up the orange rug, broke Mommy’s Russian dolls into tiny shards. When I check my closet I find that some of my shoes are wet. Did it rain? Did I go through a river or something? Or a lake, my mind whispers. I shut that down real quick. I go to take a drink but apparently I broke the bourbon, too. Never mind. I get a fresh bottle and a pickle.

  As I’m eating I drop the pickle. When I bend down to pick it up I see a gleam of white. There’s something under the refrigerator. I know what it is. It shouldn’t be down here.

  Up in the attic there’s the sound of weeping. It’s the green boys. They’ve been quiet lately but now they’re kicking up a storm. ‘Shut up!’ I yell. ‘Shut up! I’m not scared of you!’ But I am. I have nightmares that one day I will wake up in the attic, surrounded by the green boys
and their long fingers and that I will slowly disappear, fading into the green. I hook the white flip-flop out from under the refrigerator and throw it in the trash. It’s got bad memories all over it like fungus.

  I don’t put the knife back in the high cupboard. Instead I bury it in the back yard under cover of dark. Isn’t that a wonderful expression? It makes the night sound like a warm blanket, littered with stars. I find a good place beneath a stand of blue elder.

  I am still quite upset so I eat another pickle in front of the TV and slowly I calm down. I can’t stop now. Those women weren’t the right friends for me, I guess, but I’m not a quitter.

  Olivia

  Ted is gone again. Honestly, he is such a gadabout, these days.

  The noise is very bad. Eeeeeeeeeeee. My head is a cavern of sound. I am in desperate need of guidance. I knock the Bible off the table with a paw. It falls open with a thump on the boards. I wait, eyes closed. When the crash comes it is so loud my ears want to burst. The house seems to tremble at its very foundations. There are great cracking sounds, as if the world or sky is breaking. It builds and builds to a scream and I think, Is this the end of everything? Horrible! Scary!

  When at last it starts to die away I feel so relieved. I swear, I feel like a salt shaker that’s just been used too hard. I have to sit for a moment to let my tummy settle.

  I lean in. The verse that meets my eye is:

  And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.