The Half That You See

by Rebecca Rowland

  “Ma’am?”

  He heard a wheezing cough from the direction of the kitchen, and went to find her. Inside the house was freezing. I should offer to cut some wood for her.

  He peeked into the kitchen. “Hello?”

  She was sitting at the table. Shadows lingered around her eyes, making her look like a raccoon. Her dress was frayed and torn. “Hello, Jeffrey.” She smiled, and her teeth were as brown as the gingerbread she’d made on his first visit.

  The house was wrong. She was wrong.

  “It’s cold in here. Aren’t you cold? I can make a fire if you’d like. Do you need me to cut some wood?”

  She cackled, the sound grating and unpleasant. “Cold house, cold heart.”

  “Are you alright? Maybe I could fix up the place a little. Should I turn on a light?”

  Outside, the wind picked up, and he noticed a puddle on the floor where the roof was leaking. He grabbed a dirty pan from the counter and set it down to catch the drip. The place reeked with a musty scent of decay.

  “Why are you here, Jeffrey? Did you come to nag me about how you killed your little boy?”

  Jeff froze. His face went pale.

  “Or, maybe you wanted to tell me about how your wife couldn’t stand looking at you anymore?”

  “I…”

  “Or wait, maybe you wanted to tell me more about how you can't even hold down a job so pathetic a trained monkey could do it?”

  He shook his head. Something was wrong, not just with this place, but with her, too. “What happened to your house?”

  “What happened to your life?” she asked accusingly. “Seems to me that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, Jeffrey.”

  Maybe if I fix up the place everything will go back to normal. That must be it, he thought. If I fix the house, it will all go back to the way it was the first time. He left the kitchen and walked into the den. The books that had once been carefully arranged on the shelves were spread all over the floor, with pages torn and strewn about. He gathered the pages and placed them back inside their books, dusting the shelves with his shirt sleeve before replacing them. He retrieved Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland from the fireplace and tucked it back onto the shelf.

  After sorting the bookshelf, he started cleaning the fireplace. He took a small broom and dustpan and swept out the ashes. The back of his throat felt raw and scratchy from breathing the dust and ash.

  Her voice taunted him from behind. “It’s just like your life, boy. You can’t fix that, and you can’t fix this, either.”

  He didn’t respond. He went out to the porch and found some logs for a fire. He took a match and some crumpled newspaper and coaxed a small flame to life. His eyes stung, and he coughed from the smoke.

  “You’ll just make a mess of things. That’s all you know how to do anyway, isn’t it?”

  “No!” he shouted. “No. I can fix this. It can be the way it was before. You’re tired. You can’t keep this place up by yourself. I’ll help you. Here, sit by the fire.”

  She smirked and shuffled to the recliner, her body hunched and arthritic.

  Jeff went into the kitchen and found a feather duster. He set to work on the mantle, then the empty wall where the antlers had been. He paused in front of the bird clock. The birds had faded, all except for one—the raven that marked midnight. Funny, he had never noticed a raven before.

  He reentered the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The smell of rancid meat and spoiled milk made his stomach churn. He skimmed the shelves and opened drawers, but found nothing edible. The milk was cottage-cheese chunks, and the deli meat squirmed with maggots.

  He covered his mouth, holding back vomit, as he pulled the garbage can over. One by one, he emptied the contents of the fridge into the trash.

  Maybe I can still make tea. He realized he’d never seen where things were kept, so he opened the cabinets haphazardly. The finish was chipping off the doors. Was it like this before? Did I just not notice?

  He opened one door to find mice scurrying over broken bits of china. The tea cups were mostly shards and dust; the ones that remained were chipped or cracked down the sides. Mice droppings mixed among the shards. The pungent smell of ammonia emanated from inside.

  He placed the two most intact mugs in the sink. He grabbed the sugar bowl and lifted the lid. The sugar writhed with life. He shook the contents, which sent cockroaches scurrying frantically up his arm. He shrieked and the bowl fell, shattering on the counter.

  He leaned over to collect himself. A cockroach skittered over the toe of his shoe. He tried lifting his foot, but his sole stuck to the floor.

  Everything was in ruins. Cackling laughter mocked him from the den. He tore his shoe free and left the room, garbage bag still in hand.

  “What’s so funny? What happened here?”

  “You’re like a rat in a cage, running around your little wheel.”

  “You’ve changed.”

  “You’ve changed,” she mimicked, sneering. “Of course I’ve changed. You dump all your problems here. What did you expect? That I could just clean all that up? This place is ruined because you ruined it.” She pointed a finger at him accusingly. “You came in with your self-pity and failures, and you infected this place. This is your fault. Just like Zack was your fault. Just like Susan was your fault.”

  He felt stricken. “You were never cruel before. I wanted to help fix this place, but…I don’t think I’ll come back again.”

  She smiled, her brown teeth hanging from her mouth like rotten fangs. “You won't come back? Ha. You can't even leave.” She slapped her knee and doubled over in a fit of laughter.

  Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the room. With the darkness banished for a split second, he could see her face clearly. She no longer resembled a woman at all. She looked like him, but twisted and melted with decay.

  Jeff screamed and fled, flinging the door open. Zack stood in the open doorway, covered in blood, pointing at him, blocking his path.

  He slammed the door shut and leaned against it, sobbing with each breath.

  “I told you that you couldn’t leave.” More laughter.

  He doubled over and vomited on the floor. “What did you do? This isn’t right! This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

  In a rage, he grabbed the books from the shelf and flung them into the fireplace. He pulled furniture, rugs, garbage—anything he could get his hands on—into the fireplace. The whole room erupted into flames.

  The clock cawed. It was raven o’clock.

  Fire Rampages Hillside Apartments

  By: Chronicle Staff

  Firefighters responded to an emergency call at 1:00 am yesterday morning at the Hillside apartment complex. The fire blazed for hours before the local fire department was able to extinguish it. Official reports state that the source of the fire was a two bedroom apartment belonging to one Jeffrey Grant, a 35-year-old man, unemployed, who lived alone. The toxicology report showed large levels of heroin in his system. Authorities were able to determine the time the fire started by the sole object that survived it: a bird clock, frozen at midnight.

  Hagride

  Justine Gardner

  “Devil bird,” the man muttered from the bench behind her.

  Josie ignored him, as she did most mornings when she came here to scope the lake, assess the weather, the day before her. March, the air still cool enough to fog her breath, make her shiver when the wind hit the spot between collar and neck.

  “Devil bird,” he said louder. And then again: “Devil bird!”

  She looked at him this time and saw he was pointing toward the fallen tree sprawled into the water to her left. A resting place for the birds—the coots and ducks usually—but today there was someone new.

  “Cormorant,” she said to herself. “Double-crested.”

  The large, black bird was posed on the farthest branch, wings stretched out in the faint morning sun, holding still.

  “Devil bird!” the
man shouted again.

  She usually rotated around the lake; the same five or six hits on the clock, more or less. But she always started there, at the cement viewing platform that edged into the water, ringed with benches, no fishing allowed. It was the touchstone, the fork in the road: did she go left and through the wooded peninsula, past racing, unleashed dogs, under the bridge, sliding down muddy banks to the water’s lip? Or did she head right, toward the marshes, the sloppy edges where the men drank and smoked. Where Pop-Pop used to sit, his feet on that old log, whites of his eyes as yellow as bottled piss.

  Today she went left, toward the peninsula, craving the brief flash of woods, the absence of ghosts. The weather seemed right for it; damp, the moist air making it feel colder than it should be a week out from Easter.

  Cold Easter, late June, Mama used to say. She meant it was gonna be winter for a while longer. The cormorant had come back, though. Standing on that branch, wings out like a crucifix.

  Devil bird.

  No, not that. A fisherman’s bird. Josie’s kind of bird. Cormorants knew where the fish were; where it was easy to nab them without all the fuss. Follow a cormorant, he’ll show you the way. Thing was, these park cormorants kept themselves on the other side of fences; their fishing spots protected by signs with red slashes. Josie obeyed those signs, but not everybody did.

  The woods were empty, as she’d hoped. Not even a sign of Jack—not his name, just what she called him—the skinny rat-headed man who sometimes slept by the path under a raft of tree branches. He was Jack to her because, well, he had a proclivity. “Lady fish, lady fish,” he’d mutter at her from behind a tree, trying to get her to look. She’d looked once, years ago, and never again. Now, if Jack came anywhere near her, she threw a rock in his direction. Still, she’d sometimes catch a sight of that woolly hat of his, full of sticks and leaves. Lady fish, lady fish.

  She set her kit down on the bench of the wooded pavilion at the peninsula’s southeastern tip. Shook her shoulders out and cast off, releasing herself into the feeling, the first line of the day. The lure flying through the air, landing with a soft plop, water rippling outward. She watched it float on top of the silver water, moving with the chilled breeze and nothing else. She breathed, smelled wet leaves and mud. If she schooled herself, she could ignore the cans and plastic cups left by Jack and others and see nothing but woods, water, sky.

  She reeled in, feeling for a tug, anything. Early yet she knew, fish not biting. Fish still dozing their slow winter away, dreaming of summer flies drowning on the shining sky above them.

  She cast off again. She should move on. Only time enough before home, to Mama, then work. She counted to sixty in a slow tick and reeled in.

  The next stop was not far from her first, still on the peninsula, but more covered, off the narrow dirt path that just skirted the edge of the water. The mud was thick here: March mud, sticky and persistent. She’d be bringing it home with her, caught in the cleats of her brown boots. Mama used to make her shed her shoes in the hall, leave them there till the mud dried and then she’d bang them together over the trash, sending clouds of dusted earth everywhere. Now Mama didn’t notice if Josie came all the way inside, took her boots off on the couch, leaving streaks of lake mud across the floor.

  Josie found a leafy pile to rest her kit and cast off into the shallows. Waited.

  The cormorant’s head appeared like a dark snake in the water to her right so abruptly she jumped back several feet, dropped her pole. She scrambled to pluck it from the mud and reeled in to keep the bird from getting caught in her line. The cormorant paused, seeming to wait for her to finish, before paddling by and leaping onto a log to her left. Beads of water rolled from its back as it shook its great wings dry. The feathers weren’t just black, she noticed, but a deep bronze in places, rimmed in darker ink. The bird turned its head, catching her with a sapphire eye, and then lifted into the air, the wet breeze from its wings just touching her cheek. For a second she thought she could smell the rich, icy heart of the lake.

  She moved on. Her third spot was farther in, on the path along the upper wedge of the lake, toward the boathouse. To get to the water here required scraping down the steep banks, curving around tree trunks to find a two-foot slice of space to stand. She liked these spots best of all. The biting was the same all over the lake; same fish schooled in the same habits. But here—despite the risk of snagging in the crowded trees—here, she could feel alone.

  Josie held the feeling close and shoved thoughts of a day’s work aside, of Mama at home, and cast off. She waited, the lure lying there, a dot of red against the dark water. A pair of ducks squirted by, clucking their complaints. She watched, made sure they were clear of her line, and reeled in. She resisted the urge to look at her watch even though Mama would be wondering soon, and when Mama wondered, Mama wandered.

  And she couldn’t be late to work, not again. That new supervisor, she liked her time sheets neat. One more, she decided, and cast off a third time, the plop of the lure on water like the tinkling of the sweetest bells.

  And then, there it was: the cormorant, its snake-head peeking from the water. It stopped before her line and turned and paddled toward her. It hopped out, inches from her feet, and shook its wings. Water hit her, splashed her face, touched her lips. She was so close she could have reached over and stroked its wet back.

  The bird pulled its wings in, cocked its head, piercing her again with that bright blue eye. “Josie,” it croaked, opening its orange beak, “help me.”

  She fell back again, this time landing hard against the rocky ground. For a moment she saw nothing but black water, felt her heart beating in its cage.

  That bird…it spoke. She drew in a deep breath, another, and turned her head. The bird had vanished. But it had spoken. And it had used Mama’s voice.

  Josie stood in the doorway, staring at the curl of Mama on the floor by her bed, so small under the thin nightdress. Her head was turned, as though looking beneath the bed for something lost—her slippers, a dropped pill bottle.

  Eventually, Josie rolled her over, took a pulse, even as those wide eyes stared up at her. Mama’s skin was cooling—how long had she been lying there? Josie closed her mother’s eyes with a blind hand—not able to bear their accusation.

  Blue eyes, that orange beak: Josie, help me.

  She’d be late for work now, she knew. This time, though, there’d be no arguing with her excuse.

  It was the silence of the apartment, the emptiness, she found hard to endure on those days off work, her mandatory bereavement leave. It still surprised her, Mama dead, and Josie drinking water alone in the kitchen. Even with Mama sleeping, Josie had known another body was home, warm and breathing. Now the only things breathing were the steam radiators ticking over the muffled voices of the new family downstairs, old Mr. Blake’s television set to top volume next door.

  Was that better than the not-silence of a knock on the door—someone coming to pay respects, ask after? Living in one building your whole life, you knew people whether you wanted to or not. And everyone had known Mama—even after she’d stopped coming down to do the shopping, the weekly laundry. It had been her and Mama in this apartment, alone, near thirty years. Her and Mama. And earlier, when she was still in braids, Pop-Pop had lived there with them.

  Pop-Pop lived there but he lived elsewhere too, that old stump in the park, the drinking men by the marsh. He would disappear for a day, maybe three, but always come home, joking that it was Mama’s snoring keeping him away. And then, one night, cold, rain lashing the airshaft window that opened onto Josie’s bedroom, she heard Mama cry out, the door slam, and Pop-Pop stopped coming home at all. Pop-Pop had gone to the drinking men in the park, Mama said, and good riddance.

  It was three days she missed work but it was almost a week before she returned to the lake with her fishing pole, her kit bag.

  The night before she’d dreamt she was swimming deep into the cool of the lake, tapping sleeping fish on their silvery b
acks, waking them with the heat of her hands, bidding them rise, come. When she woke that morning, her heart thudding, pillow cold with sweat, she knew she needed to go to the lake that day or she’d never go back at all.

  So there she was, walking into the park, her legs gone to rubber, her heart a steady thump. She’d start where she always did—the lookout spot that jutted into the water. She felt like she’d been on a long run on an empty stomach. That bird. She didn’t know what to do if she saw that bird again.

  It was early, earlier than usual. She hadn’t slept well—not with that dream—and once awake there was no turning over, finding sleep again. The sun was still behind the trees, if you didn’t know up from down you could easily guess it was dusk and night just around the corner.

  She paused, looked left and right. The benches were empty, no overnighters or early risers, birders out to catch the return migration. She breathed, and the air was thicker now, warmer than that last morning. Spring finally pushing through.

  She looked toward the tree trunk half in the water, scanned for the outline of black wings, the snake neck of the cormorant. But the tree was just a naked, dark finger dipping into the water as if to test its temperature.

  She entered the woods, her feet finding the way even as the light from the lampposts struggled to reach through the branches. She walked, crunching the wood chips underfoot, startling something small and squeaking with her boot. She walked until she emerged again, at the wooden pavilion at the peninsula’s tip. No one sleeping there either on that long sheltered bench. The air was damp but warm and full of the anticipation of growing things—the kind of spring air that drew people into the park, bid them sleep in the bower. And yet, here, a second nest empty.