The Half That You See

by Rebecca Rowland

  the Half that You See

  Edited by Rebecca Rowland

  www.DarkInkBooks.com

  Copyright © 2021 Dark Ink Books.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-943201-36-5 (pbk.)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020941104

  Cover Photo: “Exquisite Corpse” by Mark Newman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Published by Dark Ink Books, Southwick, MA, March 2021

  Dark Ink Books is a division of AM Ink Publishing. Dark Ink and AM Ink and its logos are trademarked by AM Ink Publishing.

  www.AMInkPublishing.com

  for the fiction writers,

  who spend countless hours planting and pruning their landscapes

  so that, for a short while, others may be treated to an extraordinary view

  “You are young yet, my friend,” replied my host,

  “but the time will arrive when you will learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world…

  Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”

  -The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether

  by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)

  Contents

  Chalk

  Elin Olausson

  Winnebago Indian Motorhome by Tonka

  Eddie Generous

  Sepia Grass

  Sam Hicks

  Prisoner

  T.M. Starnes

  Turn a Blind Eye

  Kelly Griffiths

  Falling Asleep in the Rain

  Robert P. Ottone

  Black Dog Blues

  Luciano Marano

  Imaginary Friends

  Nicole Wolverton

  Boogeyman

  Susie Schwartz

  Safe as Houses

  Alex Giannini

  The New Daddy

  Scotty Milder

  Cauterization

  Mack Moyer

  The Tapping at Cranburgh Grange

  Felice Picano

  Elsewhere

  Bill Davidson

  Daughters of the Sun

  Matt Masucci

  Lonely Is the Starfish

  Lena Ng

  Old Times

  Mark Towse

  The Coffin

  Victoria Dalpe

  Raven O’Clock

  Holley Cornetto

  Hagride

  Justine Gardner

  Officer Baby Boy Blue

  Douglas Ford

  The Intruder

  Lamont A. Turner

  Alone in the Woods in the Deep Dark Night

  Edward R. Rosick

  Mesh

  Michael W. Clark

  Der Hölle Racht

  Laura Saint Martin

  The Red Portrait

  Mahlon Smoke

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  Chalk

  Elin Olausson

  It was night before he found the house. Dirty big-city rain washed over his glasses, blurring and distorting the quiet suburban street. He had to stoop low to read on the letterbox. The name was written in minuscule, cursive, old-lady handwriting on baby blue paper. He thought again of the notebook he had dropped somewhere, most likely in the backseat of that cigarette-stinking car. The lady’s name and address had been in there, along with everything else he needed to remember. But thinking about the notebook only made him anxious, so he forced his eyes toward the house instead. It was a gloom-grey, two-story building at the far end of the street, away from lights and traffic. The garden was overgrown with weeds and the untrimmed hedge rose high above his head, though people often told him he was tall. He didn’t look forward to spending the night in a place like this, but he hadn’t looked forward to anything in a long while. Pressing one arm to his forehead to keep the whipping rain out of his face, he opened the gate and slipped inside.

  His knocks were loud and rude, but his windbreaker was too thin for rainy late-fall nights and he had never liked being wet. There were no lights on inside, not even the blue glow from a TV. He knocked again, then wiped the glasses with his dripping sleeve.

  No sounds but the drumming rain, no footsteps or voices. Nothing until the door was unlocked, hurriedly, and that woman stood there. Her eyes reminded him of the snarling Rottweiler that had bitten him as a child. They were small and inky and brimming with accusations of this kind or that. He was much taller than she but she was firm and fat and seemed carved out of alabaster. While her face was round and moon-like, the top of her head was oddly small and pointy, her scalp covered with sparse, coffee-colored hair pulled into a knot the size of a baby’s fist.

  “Yes?” Something about her deep voice unnerved him.

  “It’s about the room.” He reached into his soggy front pocket, then remembered the loss of the notebook. “I wrote to you… Sorry, I should have come earlier but the man in the car took the wrong turn.”

  “I see.” Her mouth twisted as if she had a cherry-stone in there. “You have money?”

  He let the words roll around in his head a few times until he realized that she had a foreign accent. That explained the name. “Yes, I do.”

  “All right.” When she moved away from the doorway the house sighed. “Room is in the basement. Breakfast between six and eight. No guests.”

  “Understood.” He tipped his head backwards to look for damp stains, but there was nothing to see except the bleary ceiling fixture and a pair of drowsy flies circling it. The image was as depressing as the woman in front of him. “Do you live alone?”

  “No.” She turned her head, barking out a monosyllable name. Her booming voice made the flies scatter. “The girl is upstairs.” Lower she added, “She’s sick.”

  He didn’t have anything in particular to say to that information. He wished he still had the notebook.

  A door opened and closed somewhere on the second floor. Soft, slow footsteps tickled the skin inside his ear.

  “Sick,” the woman said again. “Don’t mind her.”

  The sounds from the stairs made him wonder what the girl looked like—her legs in particular, if they were bent or broken, or if she was extremely obese like some of those people on TV. Heavy thuds filled the house as if there was a fight. The beginning of the stairs was at the far end of the hall, in a windowless corner. The woman kept watching him, as if the unsettling sounds were everyday occurrences to her. Thud-drag-thud. Part of him would enjoy it if the girl turned out to be plagued by some rare, disfiguring illness. But when she showed, emerging from the shadows by the stairs, she was a short and scrawny thing with no visible faults. As pale as the mother, with the same dark hair, but her face might almost have been pretty. If it weren’t for her slack, open mouth and the vacant stare in her blue eyes. The hanging arms and slow, strained walk.

  “Sleepwalker,” the woman said sharply. The girl stopped dragging her feet forward at the sound of her voice. She blinked, once, before her head slumped forward. “Disease. Called something, can’t remember what. Now you know. Don’t disturb, don’t talk to her. Makes her upset.”

  “She can hear you,” he said. It troubled him how the girl’s flat, unwashed hair hid her face. “How?”

  The woman shrugged. The movement seemed to pass through her body like slow, dark water. “Go back
upstairs,” she commanded, then scratched at a large red mark on her neck as the girl turned around. “Is sad,” she muttered over the sound of arduous walking. “She used to be like you and me.”

  He nodded. “I should go see the room.”

  She pointed to a closed door with her alabaster hand. “Basement stairs. There’s a bathroom down there, towels, linen. Goodnight.”

  Rubbing a droplet of water from the tip of his nose, he thought of asking her how old the girl was. But her eyes barked at him, tired of questions. He went down the steep basement stairs and found a square, brick-walled room lit by a naked bulb. The bed was narrow and there was a crack in the bathroom mirror. It was perfect.

  Whiny house sounds tore up his dreams. Sounds he wasn’t used to and didn’t like, but he didn’t like his dreams either. They made him sweat. He sat, eyes shut as he inhaled his own stink. There was an air vent somewhere, making a noise like a choir of insects screeching. Maybe he could talk to the woman about that in the morning.

  It took him a while to discern the other noise. The creak-pause-creak. Opening his eyes, he felt for his glasses on the nightstand. The room wasn’t completely dark—there were two narrow windows high up on the wall, twin slits allowing the moon-glow inside. He pushed the glasses against the point between his eyes, counting quietly. Creak, pause, creak. Someone was walking through the hall upstairs. Someone was coming.

  The insect noise sank to the floor and died when the basement door opened. The stairs were concrete; they swallowed the footsteps without chewing. He watched the end of the stairs, expecting the alabaster woman—but it was the sleepwalking girl. Except she was awake.

  “Mister, you have to help me!” She pattered over to the bed, barefoot, polka dot pajama sleeves covering her hands. “She’s sleeping now. Finally.”

  He pulled his knees up as she sat down on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were like marbles, too pale for real life. “I thought you couldn’t talk,” he said.

  “It’s only because…” She sighed. “You are not her friend, are you?”

  “No.” He liked how small the girl was. Her voice was small too, breaking here and there as if she didn’t trust it. She was like one of those tiny glass animals his grandmother had collected, the cats and does and velvet-eyed horses. Kept high up on a shelf where he couldn’t reach.

  “You can’t become her friend,” the girl said. “She’s evil.”

  “Then I won’t.”

  She gnawed at her bottom lip, wine-colored like his mother’s roses. Her skin made him think of chalk. “Why did you come?” she asked, her fingertips slipping out of the long sleeves to press against each other.

  “I had to go somewhere.”

  “I suppose.” She didn’t sound interested. He didn’t mind. Her fingers moved like earthworms writhing on a wet road. “But you can’t stay here long. It’s a bad house. It steals your dreams.” Her milky eyes prodded his own, as loud as her voice was quiet. Her eyes screamed.

  “It can have mine.” He laughed at the image of a house with a sour, sagging face. The girl gasped, motioning for him to be quiet.

  “You don’t understand! She…she doesn’t like laughing. That was why she started punishing me in the first place.”

  He remembered what she was like in the hall. A broken toy. “How does she punish you?”

  “You know.” She shook her head with unnaturally large movements. “I’m only myself at night…like in a fairy tale. It’s horrible. She’s horrible.”

  “Is she your mother?”

  The girl started crying. She didn’t bother to wipe the tears away. “You have to help me. Please. You have to do something.”

  He lifted his arm but wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. When he woke up in the morning he couldn’t remember more than that. His lifted hand, and her distorted face stitching itself into his memory.

  Breakfast was bitter tea and a hard-boiled egg with toast. He ate fast as usual, alone at the kitchen table while the woman stood with her back to him, doing dishes. She looked the same as the night before. Sturdy black dress, dark slippers. As if she hadn’t gone to bed at all. He hadn’t seen the girl, and the woman hadn’t mentioned her. She had only spoken to him to ask how he preferred his egg.

  “It’s a good house,” he said, trying not to think about what the girl had told him last night. “I slept well.”

  “No talking.” She didn’t turn to him. “Is unnecessary.”

  Her back was a square of resentment and stiff muscles. Had she fed the girl some drug? She looked like a poisoner, though he’d never met one before. She had those dog-bite eyes he didn’t like. When he was done eating he went downstairs, wishing he still had his notebook. There were plenty of empty pages left when he lost it. White as chalk.

  The girl returned to him that night. He woke from one of the angel dreams and she stood there by the bed, hand waving. He sat up, thinking about poison.

  “I had to see you,” the girl said. “It’s the only thing that makes me happy.” Her pajamas had changed color: they were pink with tear-shaped buttons down the front. She was so small, a doe made of glass. A velvet-eyed creature. “I like you,” she said. “I like your stories.”

  He nodded, absent-minded. That noise from the air vent was back, stronger now. He had to speak with the woman about it.

  “Tell me something then.” The girl giggled, her mouth full of teeth. “You haven’t told me anything yet, remember? About you. I want to know about you.”

  The pink stung his eyes. “There’s nothing special about me. I needed somewhere to stay, that’s all.”

  “But you have to have a name. A family. Something.”

  The family question seemed less dangerous. “I’ve got a family. My father is away a lot, but he always brings back treats. My mother loves flowers. Grandma does, too, though she likes anything pretty.”

  The girl’s eyes seemed to have grown a size. “I love pretty things too. Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” He winced. The air vent whispered around their conversation like a broken echo. “Then there’s Cassie as well. She’s the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen.”

  The girl huffed. “Prettier than me?” Then she shrugged, smiling. “It’s nice that you love her so much. You’re a great older brother.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t have any brothers.” Her smile was gone. The shadows stuck to her face like dirt. “There’s no one who cares for me. There’s no one who can help me get away from her.”

  He reached out to pat the back of her hand. It was as cool as glass. “I care. I’ll help you.”

  “And then we’ll be together forever,” she said, and the whispers grew until the world was wrapped in pink cotton.

  He slept late the next day, missing breakfast. When he came upstairs, the woman was gone, and there was a note to him on the basement door. Gone shopping. Back soon. He didn’t know when she had left or where the nearest grocery store was. He didn’t care. The one thing on his mind was the girl.

  The stairs to the second floor whined, every inch of wood slippery as ice. There were three doors upstairs, all closed. He opened the first, the second, the third. She was in the third room. On her back, fully clothed, empty eyes open. Matte hair spilled over the pillow like dead leaves.

  “Oh, no.” It pained him to see her like that. He didn’t want to. “How can she do this to you?” He sat down on the bedside, the way she used to do at night. He touched the back of her hand, and it was warm. “I’ll put an end to this,” he said. “I’ll make her pay for what she’s done.”

  The girl blinked, but there was no other reaction. Nothing but a girl on a bed in a dark room, her eyes going blink-blink-blink like a sparrow’s heart. He wanted her to smile but she didn’t, so he left her there and closed the door. Went back to his basement whispers, imagining that he filled his notebook with thick black strokes.

  When she came to him that night, she was crying. “I don’t want you to see me like that,” she said. “Like h
ow I am when her poison has taken me.” She wiped her cheeks with her sleeves, refusing to look at him. “That’s not who I am.”

  “I know.” The whispers prickled his skin but he pushed them back. “You’re a pretty girl. You deserve to be free.”

  “Do you really think so?” She sniffled. The sound tugged at a memory somewhere, and he pushed that away too. “But I’m nothing special. Not even my own mother thinks so.”

  “Spread your wings,” he said, drawing in the air. White shapes, white strokes all around her. “Angel.”

  He was up in time for breakfast the next morning. The woman boiled the eggs, put the kettle on. No talking, because that was how she wanted it. No air vent whispering. Bitterness slipped down his throat, egg yolk painted the inside of his mouth. He cut one slice of bread, two, three. The woman stood by the counter sipping her tea, back turned. She didn’t notice when he rammed the bread knife into her throat. But she made a sound, a gurgling scream that shot into that stinking dark corner of his mind and tugged at his hideaway things. The things no one could know. Her cup crashed into the floor a moment before she did. It was ugly, nothing like that other time. It was sticky tiles and broken china, it was limbs going in the wrong directions. The blood clawed its way toward him but he stepped aside, dropping the knife. No more need for it. He was done.