Other Words for Smoke

by Sarah Maria Griffin

  A moth leaves the wallpaper, flutters across the room. It hovers a moment, graceful, before your nose, then lands on the very tip. You are frozen. The moth’s wings are very slow, eyes that swing opened and closed, obsidian pupils dilating. Voltage under your skin.

  rossa would like to sleep with you. so, as it happens, would mae. that, or break your nose. isn’t that so funny, bevan? she can’t decide. you would like to walk out of this world and never come back. you still want that. i know it. i would like to eat. we can all have what we want, bevan.

  That was it. Too much. A girl possessed, you pick up the radio and throw it against the wall,22 your hands aflame. It makes an ugly sound and splits into pieces—and the moths glitch out of sight. Blink, they are gone, the ivy leaves just as they ever were, flat, an empty green. You scream. You paid for this, this was supposed to be over. His influence cleansed from you, cauterized from your palms, then wept out like a broken heart. Audrey. Audrey who just came in and took him, who walked in and took a story that was yours. Audrey had assumed herself into something that had belonged to you. She had taken Sweet James and made you ordinary. How dare he pry about the twins that way, how dare he try to get you back—

  Hair half done, you storm out of your bedroom, broken radio littering the carpet. The corridor twists before you like a cruel joke, the floor spiraling up the walls, bad living architecture—but you march along heedless of the nausea it gives you. It rolls and unrolls itself, precisely how your insides felt for weeks after your room closed—your room, there, the empty spot in the corridor where your door used to be. For a second, it blinks.

  A flash, a glitch, a tease. It flashes again, holds, like the door’s really there, like he and your old room are waiting for you just past the threshold and maybe things can be just like they used to be, maybe he’s done with her and it’s your turn again—you extend your hand and it is gone. You are left, a fool ready to step off a cliff. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, you try to dampen the sick need for him, for neon lights and moths and baths and endless possibility.

  His voice thrums and the door flickers one last time.

  bring me the boy.

  Something wakes in you. Some old, bad need.

  In the bathroom, you run your hands under the cold of the taps—steam rises from your palms, the eyes of your tattoos back to their old shape, like they’d never moved. You look out the window over the garden—it will still be warm out, July holding strong.

  Why did nobody come when you smashed the radio? Did nobody hear you scream? You dry your hands and close your eyes. What is it about this house that eats cries for help?

  Chapter

  Three

  The garden was alive with motes, soft buds of strange on the air. The last fluorescent strip of sunset was muted to the mauve that comes before night in July. Rossa rolled himself a joint with the remnants of his weed.

  He sat on the bench, which was a little farther from the house than he remembered it being three years ago. He had thought that growing up meant things felt smaller to you, not still so vast—but maybe not at the house on Iona. Things weren’t quite fixed here.

  The wisteria hung heavy almost over him, drunken peonies bloomed in beds about the bench, petals like silk, too heavy for their stems. He sparked the joint, irritated that he hadn’t brought his pencils and sketchbook. He’d have to pick some of the flowers to draw when he was finished. Rossa inhaled deeply and held the smoke in his chest.

  Mae was in funny form, he thought. She’d been coping okay so far, given the circumstances. Maybe it was Bevan making her uncomfortable. Bevan certainly had that disquieting air, too gorgeous for her surroundings. A runway model collaged into an Ikea catalogue. Rossa had no idea how he hadn’t fancied her when he was fourteen. Maybe it had been just before he’d figured out how to fancy anyone. Upstairs in his room, her curls brushing the pages of his sketchpad, he’d thought how easy it would be to sweep one away from her face and kiss her. One hand on her lower back.

  He took another drag from his joint. This was the end of a scarce supply now: he should have made it last a little longer. Should have shared it with Mae. She was always real funny after a smoke, her laughter like it had been before their mam and dad had gone septic. Didn’t bear thinking about. Besides, Rossa was beginning to feel the exact dose of I don’t care anymore that he needed, leaning into the high.

  The patio door slid open, his twin’s boyish silhouette in the frame.

  “Perfect timing, Maemae,” he called, waving the spliff, a little cherry-red beacon in the growing dark.

  “You sly dog,” she called back, soft, closing the door behind her. “But Rita’s not gone up yet. She’ll be raging at you for getting stoned!”

  “I somehow imagine that Rita’s had her fair share of potions and concoctions in her time, I hardly think a cheeky joint would offend her.”

  Mae fell back onto the bench, reclining, exhaling. Like, Grand, just us now.

  “Should we get Bevan and offer her some?” Rossa wasn’t thinking when he said it. His sister’s face fell.

  “Give me a break, would you? You were all over each other at the table earlier.”

  Rossa passed his sister the joint. She took it, and as they touched fingers briefly, he noticed she’d painted her fingernails. Apricot pink, a little messy. That was weird.

  “I wasn’t all over her. I was just trying to, like, establish something! We’re here for three weeks. Just because she was possessed or whatever last time doesn’t mean we should hold it against her.”

  Rossa was surprised by how easy it was to talk about the strangeness of the first summer, now that they were here, at the site of it. Some parts had caved off in his memory, some parts of it felt like they hadn’t really happened. They didn’t talk about those days too much, he and Mae. Their shared experiences in the house were hard, sometimes, to put language on at all. Mae inhaled, held the smoke in her throat, and puffed out two, three delicate rings. They drifted in the air, and she closed her eyes. “That’s not bad at all.”

  “All right, Gandalf the Gray, hold your horses.” Rossa reclined, rolling his eyes at his sister’s performance, and she gave him a soft elbow in the ribs. “It’s really something here, isn’t it? So quiet.”

  “Ah, yeah,” murmured Mae. “Nothing’s getting thrown at the walls tonight.”

  The pair laughed darkly—hushed remarks like this they could only share with each other. Neither of them saw any use in telling their friends what was going on, drawing the wrong kind of attention, drawing pity. Their parents separating was one thing, that much the whole housing estate knew, but the rest—well, the rest wasn’t anyone’s business.

  Rossa took Mae’s hand on the bench and squeezed, but the peace and silence didn’t last. A crash lifted them right out of their skins. In the bedroom farthest to the left of the house, the lights flickered, brightened, then switched off.

  Mae swore, all color draining from her face, her breath quickening.

  “It’s grand, shhh.” Rossa rubbed her arm, her grip on his hand now a vise, her apricot nails almost breaking his skin. “Shhh,” he soothed. “Look, it came from the side of the house that Bevan and her ma used to live in. You don’t think—”

  Mae wrenched away from her brother and wiped her eyes. “And I suppose you’re going to go gallivanting into the house and save her from the creatures in the walls, are you? I’m pretty sure she’s on good terms with them—she took a tooth out of your mouth, for Christ’s sake.”

  “But shouldn’t we be going up to see what’s going on?”

  “Absolutely not.” Mae shook her head firmly.

  Her brother narrowed his eyes at her. “Is this because you’re feeling weird about seeing her again? That shouldn’t stop you helping her, Mae.”

  “Look. For a second, can you imagine you’re me? It can’t be that hard. Imagine if you saw her again and she was totally different. Got that? Right. Now, imagine that you saw her again and she was totally differ
ent and your twin was flirting his hole off with her.” Mae was always frank.

  “Ah, come on—” Rossa began, but she cut him off.

  “So now that you have that delightful image, imagine you saw her again, and she was totally different, and your flesh and blood was putting the moves on her, and oh. The most important thing. You were in a magical fucking house with your witch aunt and a talking cat. And! The house was full of weird bad spirits and that girl was the center of all that malevolent energy and—look at me—imagine all that. Imagine that was the case. Now. Imagine hearing something smash and seeing the lights flicker. Are you with me now?”

  Mae was vibrating with anger. Rossa saw flashes of their mother in her when she got like this, wondered if he should tell her that. If that would make her stop and calm down, or wind her up even more.

  “Mae, we should go and help even if it was something strange. We’re older now, we’re probably better able for it too.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’re well able for it, all right.” His sister took one last pull off the joint. “I’m going in to check on our aunt and the cat. If there’s something up, Rita probably knows the ins and outs of it. Bobby probably knows its birthday and favorite color.”

  Mae stood up in front of Rossa for a moment, hugging herself tightly as though it was cold, though it wasn’t. She sniffled. “Do you want a cup of tea? Toast?” An olive branch.

  “Yeah, actually. I’ll follow you in a second.”

  As Mae wandered back up to the house, Bevan greeted her in the garden doorframe. Rossa saw his sister flinch. Felt it for a second, even, some weird twin reflex that had been dormant since they were single digits in age. Or maybe it was just the weed. The stiller he stayed, the better he felt it. Bevan was advancing down the garden toward him, and his pulse hopped. He could see the gooseflesh on her bare legs before he saw her face, blotchy and red. Her eyes puffy, her hair a mess. She sat down beside him and wiped her nose on her wrist.

  “You’re not here to take another one of my wisdom teeth, are you? I’ve only three left.”

  It was out of Rossa’s mouth before he had even a second to filter himself. Surprisingly, Bevan laughed. The sound of her was unreal; Rossa felt a wave roll over him.

  “Kiddo, you have no idea. I’d say I was sorry—I mean, I am, I really am—but at the time . . . at the time it was worth it.” The girl shrugged. “I know that probably sounds awful. I feel awful.”

  Rossa asked, “Did you smash something off the wall upstairs earlier?”

  Bevan nodded, her eyes prickling with tears again, her lip trembling. Rossa looked at her throat, her clavicles.

  “I can’t tell you about it just now. Will you . . . will you come to the glade—look, there’s this place in the woods I’d like you to see. Come in the morning? Please?”

  Before Rossa could answer, his heard his sister’s voice. Mae was on the patio holding Bobby. “Are you two saps coming in or what?” Rossa sensed something behind her jovial tone, something forced. Bevan however, didn’t. She called, “Coming, Mae!”

  Then she turned back to Rossa. “Meet me here at six. We’ll get going before Rita’s up, go down to the cut, then come back through the village. We’ll be back by nine, and it’ll look like we just went off down to get some fresh bread.”

  She rattled it off so quickly, so quietly. Then she got up, waving to his sister with one hand, wiping her running eyes with the other.

  “Let’s see if we can get Rita to stay up late.” Her tone switched as they approached the house, from one kind of conspiratorial to another in a single breath. “I’d suggest Cluedo, but someone always ends up peeking through the paper and ruining it for everybody, don’t they, Bobby?”

  Bobby chirruped, “Not you though, Bevan. Butter wouldn’t melt.”

  “Butter wouldn’t dare. Sure, I’ve never done a single thing wrong in my entire life.”

  Rossa let himself believe her. Just for a second.

  Chapter

  Four

  Late the following morning, Mae was listless. She lay on the bed scrolling through her phone. No internet. Just a few saved songs. Rita was with Bobby, holding court in the living room with a clutch of young women, reading their tea leaves and tarot. Mae wished Rita would tell her her future. She read her own with her cards, sure, but it wasn’t the same as the hope of handing over big, heavy questions to someone far older, far wiser. For once, Mae would just have liked answers. What would become of Mam and Dad, their house? Would she ever feel the same way about anyone as she had about Bevan? Would she and Rossa stay close . . . actually—where was Rossa? What was going on in this house? She swore she could feel it, an uneasiness in the air. No amount of incense could mask that oily electric tone: an infestation taking place.

  She sat up, a determination to investigate blooming in her. Where was Rossa? Had he gone off someplace with Bevan? She focused intently but couldn’t quite see him. Of course. She’d been cultivating what little power she had, her senses keen from years of exercise with the tarot. She didn’t have sight, she couldn’t throw books off walls with her eyes (no matter how many times she’d tried), but she did have something. Something small and unnamable and most likely deniable to anyone she’d try to explain it to. She’d always had it, more so when she was little, she felt like she could hear her brother’s thoughts, what he needed. That channel had been long closed, but the half sense stayed there. Maybe it would be more someday if she worked hard enough.

  She got up and ventured out into the hallway. She was sure her brother was just behind one of these doors. Mae closed her eyes and ran her hand along the walls, where was he, what was he doing? The walls were covered in paper, and paper wasn’t all that different from cards, and the cards held up structure and stories the same as houses, didn’t they? Maybe the hum she was feeling in the walls was just her imagination, but even if it was, she wandered after it, down the too-long hallway to the other side of the house. The carpet even changed halfway along from bold, hotelish geometrical patterns of Rita’s taste to Imelda’s neutral beige.

  Mae peeked around a doorway—another bathroom, nothing useful. She didn’t know there were two bathrooms up here. Two doors left. She listened hard, but the house was mute in return. That meant nothing: the house ate noise, something in the architecture dampening cries for help. It probably also muted any sort of cries of pleasure. She realized that she was not only looking for Rossa; she was looking for Bevan, too. To see if they were together. To see if it hurt.

  The next peek into an unexplored room showed her a bare double bed, an empty open wardrobe: Bevan’s mother’s room. Imelda the escape artist. Mae had never seen her; there weren’t even photos around. Mae assumed she was beautiful, if Bevan was anything to go by. She looked around at the unused space, the hollow of it. She tapped her fingers lightly on the door, heard it echo. She imagined her parents’ bedroom this bare. This abandoned. A pang of sorrow flashed through her, and she quickly closed the door on the empty room and on those unbidden feelings. Not for today.

  Next was the too-large space on the hallway wall, the room that Bevan used to stay in, the room they’d watch disappear that night. She tried hard to remember more from that late, strange scene, but she couldn’t wrap her memory about it. It felt just beyond her, but she knew this was the place she’d seen the door close up. The farthest room from the kitchen. The house’s heart. Mae was drawn to it like a magnet, pulled by curiosity or something else. Something worse.

  She stood in front of the blank space, and in a blink, the door was there. In her memory of the first summer, this door was a place she had desperately wanted to go but never could. Bevan’s room. Had she called it? Had it come just for her? Her mouth was dry and her heart too fast. She didn’t even think before opening it up and walking in.

  The room was spare, but not as barren as Imelda’s had been. The bed, under a window facing the garden, was made. Pastel and neat. The wallpaper a muted rose garden. The dresser scattered with cosmetics. The
air stale. One wall of the room stood without a stick of furniture up against it, the wallpaper an ivory garden. The air hummed ugly around Mae. She had seen this door close, this room get eaten up, with her own eyes. Some things you misremember, sometimes big old houses that aren’t yours feel strange when you think of them years after—but the house on Iona, Mae knew, was all wrong.

  Mae felt a little woozy: at any moment she could be caught trespassing here. She was an interloper. She had no excuse for being in this room other than the undeniably creepy truth that she had been wandering the house expecting to find her twin with the first girl who broke her heart—technically she was just following a feeling to its source. Maybe that wrong feeling was only heartache. The metallic dark of the air in the room was almost indistinguishable from the pain she had begun to feel when she first noticed her brother’s eyes on Bevan. It was almost enough to make Mae feel a little drunk—a very heady gradient of pain.

  Where was her brother? Where was Bevan? She ran her fingertips down the rosebuds on the wallpaper.

  She closed her eyes. “Come on . . . where are you?”

  A silence fell, thick, the afternoon dense all around her. Maybe she could plant the pain in amongst the flowers, nurture them to grow into what she wanted to see: her brother, Bevan, wherever they were. As she thought it, every hair on her skin lifted. Something was arriving.

  “Mae Frost.” Bobby stood in the doorway, aghast. “What are you doing?”

  Bobby was as big as a Labrador, wavering in the light, his form uncertain, rippling. “Leave this room immediately and never come back. You can’t reckon with him!”

  “Him? Who’s—”

  Mae’s fingertips sank into the wall and she jerked back, shocked. The roses turned black, then white again. The air smelled of copper.

  “Please, Mae, he’ll drink your fear and get stronger—come to me, please—” Bobby was almost shouting.