You both stare straight ahead, not at each other. She’s right. Even in the years he was gone, you were haunted, batting away the flutter of moths at the back of your eyes, distracting yourself from the pull of neon.
“And you? Why did you leave—you couldn’t have known all this back then.”
“I left because I had to make a choice. Run away or get put away.”
“Who was going to put you away?”
“The nuns. My ma.”
“Why? Did they think you were crazy?”
Audrey gave a cold laugh, “No. They thought I was queer. They were right, too.”
You gasp a little. “They couldn’t put you in jail for that!”
She scowls at you.
“Yes, they could. But it wouldn’t have been prison for me, that wouldn’t have looked good on my ma. One of the laundries for girls. That way it looks holy. Just like they did to Deborah.”
Laundries. Places where women who didn’t fit in went. Homes for girls, run by nuns, holy prisons they were signed into for the rest of their lives. There was an old one by the church in the village. The year your ma got pregnant with you was the year it shut down. She would have been done for otherwise.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry.” You can’t think of anything else to say, but a gentle query. “Who was Deborah?”
Audrey’s brow furrowed even further, and for a second she looked terribly old. “Rita never mentioned her?”
You shake your head. You’ve been by Rita’s side for your whole life, and it seems you knew so little about the old woman. But then again, you have secrets from Rita too. So much could go unsaid in a house like theirs. You feel the sorrow rise in Audrey, potent in the air—but you do not drink from it. You let it sit in the space between you.
“Deborah was taken away to the nuns. She was our best mate. Mad curly ginger hair, laugh like a magpie. The three of us were great as kids, a little gang. The nuns always had their eyes on us, though, even from when we were small things. They were waiting for one of us to put a foot wrong, for something to happen. Deb got herself in a way, you know. Pregnant. I told my ma, my ma . . . well . . . asked the sisters for help and they took Deborah away and we didn’t see her after that.” Audrey closed her eyes. “They found her, and the baby, dead out by the grotto in the woods. We were so young. Just like that, me and Rita and no Deborah. Then, quicker than I can tell you, it was me and Rita and James and Bobby, but they only came because after Deb died the world got split open. The wrong of it tore a cut in things. That’s how it happens. Pain opens the world, and things come through.”
You reach across the bench and squeeze Audrey’s arm, for only a second, then let go. Of course Rita had never mentioned Deborah. How does anyone find the words for that story, or the moment to tell it?
You summon your breath and say again, “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing. There’s no need. Cats and owls aside, those nuns were monsters. They ran that town. I’m glad I left. There was nothing there for me.”
“There was Rita, though.”
She snaps her head around at you.
“Of fucking course there was Rita. Rita wasn’t going to get sent away. Rita was a better liar than I ever was. She could have a normal life out there. I couldn’t. She never set foot in the rooms. She wouldn’t know freedom if it kissed her on the mouth.”
“But you loved her.”
“Not enough to stay. And she didn’t love me enough to leave.”
“Why meet her at the cut now then? Why not leave her?”
“Because . . . because I love her enough to ask her one more time. Because I think she’s ready, and that—back there, that can’t be the last time I see her. And you can’t just disappear without saying goodbye. Trust me, I’ve done it, and you don’t want that over your shoulders.”
“I don’t think I want to go back and say anything at all. I want to keep going.”
“Well, make up your mind quick, because I’m not your ma. I’m just saying you owe some people the word goodbye. You don’t want any regrets out here. They weigh hard and heavy, and you don’t need to carry anything more than yourself.”
The pair of you sit in the quiet for a while. Your eyes hurt, your head feels strange. The cat. The owl. You want to ask her everything she knows about Sweet James. You want to tell her everything you know about Sweet James. Did he ever mention you to her over those years in between? Had he missed you? What was he like when Audrey first met him? What was Rita like when she was young? What was Deborah like?
But you don’t ask anything at all. You can’t. Audrey owes you nothing. Least of all her stories, her pain. A small yellow bird bops along the grassy path towards you.
“Is that the canary from the office?” You squint.
“This place is riddled with them.” Audrey stands up and stretches. “Lucky for us.”
She leans down and takes it in her hand, stroking its head. It peeps softly at her touch, in the way a wild bird shouldn’t. She releases it and it keeps itself steady in the air, beating its wings.
“Right. That’ll follow us. Just in case.”
Your ears ring and each peep brings you right back to that window ledge and the things you shouldn’t have seen. You cringe, taking steps after Audrey as she goes. You do not know if you want to stay with her, nor do you know if you have a choice. She leads you down the grass, on and on until in the distance: a door.
The next room is again not a room at all, but a dark, cobbled street. That black ceiling pervades, claustrophobic. Shop windows are lit dimly. You see bodies moving behind their dusty surfaces, hear the murmur of voices. Streetlamps suggest, rather than shine, amber. It might be nighttime here, you think, slowing to look around.
“Come quickly,” Audrey says, grabbing your wrist. “Now’s not the time to be making new friends.”
The street runs uphill ever so slightly. She ducks around a sharp corner into almost liquid black. There is a door marked with a green light. Opened and closed.
The next space is a room, narrow and short, almost a closet. There is no visible ceiling, only a long pull upward into dark. Falling from the dark are too many strings to count. Tied to the strings are small, slim white bones. They graze against your forehead. Audrey swears under her breath as the two of you crowd in, the canary peeping, fumbling with the walls, looking for something. Click, thud, she finds the door. Onward.
A library, void of people or books, the ceiling a high painted dome. You don’t get to stop long enough to look at it. You think it is painted with flowers, but you could be wrong, it makes your eyes hurt. The bird peeps and peeps.
A kitchen, the tap overflowing and the water up to your ankles and freezing cold. Audrey strides through; you almost slip, but don’t. Peep peep.
The next space is green. A tunnel, budding with fauna, clusters of canaries like rows of daffodils. There is no end in sight. You have to stoop, almost crawl, to get through. The door this time is below you, and you hold your breath and follow Audrey into the black.
A room with red curtains and two empty chairs.
A hotel lobby. (Audrey rings the bell, playful for a second as she passes the reception desk.)
A string of hotel corridors—unopened door after unopened door.
The carpet moves and changes beneath your feet.
Somewhere along the way, you decide you are not afraid anymore. You think, Is this what infinity feels like? You never want to get off this strange carousel, it dazzles you so.
“Can you feel that? We’re getting closer.” Audrey slows down a second and extends her arms, reveling in something you can’t feel.
“What am I supposed to be feeling?”
“Listen harder.”
You stop. The canary peeps. You listen. There’s your own heartbeat, the inhale and exhale of your own breath . . . then glowing past the edges is something good and warm. Almost a melody, but not quite. It’s familiar. A rising tone that falls just when you need it to, if you could call
it a tone. The aftereffect of a tone, maybe. A feeling. A moth’s wing rising and falling. Gray becoming gold. Circle flicking to triangle. A light coming on slow, like a breath. You are not afraid at all. You have never felt braver in your life. The glow is coming from somewhere you can’t see but yes, you can feel it.
“I feel it, but I don’t know what it is.”
“The house is burning down. The wall between worlds is thinning. Let’s get to the cut. I don’t want to miss my girl.”
Audrey takes off at full speed and you fly after her, the source of the glow pulling you. For a second you think your arms could be wings. For a second you think you could be a moth, an owl. You are anything but human and you are, as you race, caught by delight. Maybe you are happy. Maybe, just maybe, you’ve been lucky.
Chapter
Thirteen
Mae knew the corridor was misbehaving, that space wasn’t working right, but there was nothing she could do about it. All she could think of as she tried to get to the stairs was that she wasn’t the third witch. Her role had been usurped by the mysterious interloper in a tuxedo. Audrey. Audrey was the third cup. Mae bit back tears as she sped up.
Where had the stairs gone? The windowless shade manipulated what was and was not possible as on either side of the hallway new doors slid into existence, the world effortlessly extending itself all wrong. Mae looked over her shoulder: Rita and Rossa were still far, far behind her. The carpet underneath her feet was warm in a way that made her skin crawl. Like maybe the house had turned flesh, like maybe she was in some new organ of the place, or traveling down an artery through a fresh limb, or as though the house was eating her, digesting her, like she’d become a part of it and never get free.
Bobby had gone inside to banish Sweet James. He would, wouldn’t he? That’s what had to happen. Bobby was kind and loving and Sweet James was greedy and hungry and controlling. Love always wins in the end, doesn’t it? Where were the stairs?
Mae stopped and opened the door to her left, as a test. It should be a bathroom—that’s what the first door by Bevan’s room was.
But when the door swung open, a closet lay before Mae, dark and shallow, packed with flickering candles, stacked with hundreds of tiny idols: the Virgin Mary, over and over in different blue cloaks, her heart bleeding, snakes at her feet. Mae gasped, peering in, unable to take her eyes off them. She had never seen this before. The nest of holy statues looked back at her, their tiny judgmental eyes flickering in what was barely more than a closet, but shouldn’t be there at all.
Mae looked back up the corridor, expecting Rita and Rossa to have advanced, but they were static in the distance, almost eaten by shadow. None of this was right.
She broke into a sprint toward them, called her brother’s name, but somehow he and Rita descended. They had found the stairs. She cried out, her chest tightening, she couldn’t just keep running, the corridor wasn’t getting any shorter. The air felt hotter, the ceiling lower. There was a smell of smoke, she thought, though that could just have been the candles from the grotto.
She flung open another door, and what lay beyond the threshold took her breath away—a bar. An empty dance floor, pumping music low and dissonant. Red light soaked down over empty tables and thick striped drapes on the wall. A mirrored globe hung over the proceedings, dousing the place in flecks of white. A shallow stage, an unmanned piano. A stand with a birdcage, home to a tiny yellow bird. Behind the bar, there was a man whose face she couldn’t quite see. He stopped polishing his glasses to take a look at her. Mae shivered.
“Come in and watch the show!” he called.
Something pulled Mae’s body, but she resisted. “I have to get outside!” she cried, clinging to the doorframe. “Let me go!”
“You can’t just yet. There is something you need to know. Let me pour you a drink.”
“No!”
The bartender sighed and lifted his hand. Mae’s feet left the ground. She shrieked as the door slammed behind her and she landed on the hard, cold tiles with a crack.
He pulled a tall, dark bottle from the shelves behind him and twirled a long glass in his hand. Mae still couldn’t quite make out his face, but his voice was deep and familiar.
“You’re going to need this.” He poured the drink with flair. From behind the bar he procured three ice cubes and a tiny umbrella. He slammed the drink down. “This one’s on me. Only rule is, you gotta get up and get it yourself. No drinking on the floor. At least sit at a table if you’re not going to sit at the bar.”
Mae looked over her shoulder. The door was gone. Just wood paneling in the red light. She pulled herself up off the tiles and dusted herself off, her elbows and knees sore. She sat up on one of the high stools and leant over the bar. Beer taps and unmarked liquor bottles. Lemons in a jar. The bird over by the stage chirped softly. She tried to look up at the bartender, but his face wasn’t a face. His eyes weren’t eyes. His form was absent. He was obscured in the red light. His suit was most definitely a suit, but that was all the light gave her. She wrapped her hand around the cold glass and thought, Well, why not die this way—and drank. It was thick and sour and good.
“Stay for the show, then I’ll let you be on your way,” he said, leaning over the bar.
“Do you promise me?” Mae asked. “I have to find my great-aunt and brother.”
“There are no promises here. You’ll just have to believe me.”
The bartender handed her a cigarette from an unmarked white box. She hesitantly took one, murmured a thanks, and he lit it for her with a long match. She held it in her hand, too nervous to bring it to her lips. It looked right, but it didn’t feel right. There was too much smoke already. She didn’t want anymore.
A cloth in one hand, a glass in another, the bartender resumed cleaning. Mae drank again, wondering if she should ask him what the hell was going on, or just let all this happen around her, not resist it. She had no power to fight. Her party tricks were no use here.
Mae took another drink, and the light reddened, then blackened.
The bartender said, “It’s starting. You’ll want to listen.”
Mae turned to the stage, expecting some slinky lounge singer to emerge, but that was not what happened. Smoke rolled from the slim gaps between the wooden paneling on the walls and coated the stage, like fabric caught in air. The small bird in the cage gave a tweet, tweet.
The smoke became a screen, and licorice-black tendrils began to illustrate something on the surface. The swooping wings, heart-shaped face, and savage talons of an owl. The serpentine tail and piercing eyes of a house cat. Sweet James and Bobby Dear. The owl perched high above the cat. They spoke.
long time no see. you don’t visit enough.
I’m trying to win, not trying to waste time.
do you feel as though you are winning?
I no longer care. We’ve made a terrible mess of this one.
what a waste.
What a waste. This was a dangerous game.
you picked the right hand. love makes them pliant and comfortable.
Fear keeps a good handle on them until it doesn’t. Fear gives until it snaps. A volatile meal. Love, however, quietens and fades.
next time let’s choose different things to taste. we must leave here soon.
I know, friend. I know.
we have broken this house.
Pity. It’s only bricks, but I had gotten quite used to it.
you grew to love her, too.
Yes. And you never feared her for a second.
will you miss her?
Don’t ask me that.
there will be other feeds in other places. other buildings stronger than this.
So who wins this round?
let’s call it a stalemate. hangman. the next point counts double. the next place will be different.
Mae is listening.
then she should get out before she burns alive.
The smoke dissipated.
Mae was left with the strange, facele
ss bartender in the red light with knowledge she didn’t want. Couldn’t the cards have spelled this out for her? Bobby hadn’t just been eating her love, he’d been competing with it. It wasn’t just sustenance, it was entertainment. A game. Her love like currency, Rita’s love like checkers on a board. Poor Rita. Rita had been betrayed far worse.
“You have to leave now, girl. The house is on fire.”
“This isn’t the house. This isn’t anywhere.” Mae stubbed the cigarette out in a flat steel ashtray, never having brought it to her mouth.
“You can stay back here if you like. But I don’t think that’s what you want.”
This was where Bevan had gone to, wasn’t it? A temptation came over her: she could just go looking for Bevan. The other world offered her something the real world never would: the company of that tall, terrible girl. She’d have to leave Rossa behind.
Rossa would have left her behind. He’d said as much in the garden. And he’d have done it for the same reason: for the possibility of more time with Bevan. The very thought made Mae’s stomach roll. But no, Mae was not going to slink out of this earth quietly and turn her back on her family, despite the mess they’d found themselves in. Mae would leave the house with her head up.
She pushed the empty glass back across the counter to the bartender and said, “I’ve to go find my family now.”
He picked the glass up and examined it. “You’re welcome here anytime.”
Mae paused. “How did you know about all of this? That I’d need to see them, that I needed help?”
The glass melted into liquid in his hand. It dripped, thick water, onto the bar.
“Walls are very thin. Thinner some places than others. Nobody in that house was listening for what’s been going on, but you can hear it all from here.”
Mae blinked and dipped her fingertip in what used to be the glass. It was warm, gelatin.
“Thank you for the drink. And for the information. I’ve nothing to tip you with.”
“Make it up to me, someday.”
For a second Mae thought she could see a face there, a smile, perhaps, in shadows where the bartender’s face should have been. She smiled back.
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