by Неизвестный
He slept, but he didn’t rest.
Danny’s mother didn’t mention the terrifying dream the next day. She went about her routines as normal, making breakfast and talking to him as if nothing had happened. Once breakfast was over, and her work day began, she closed the kitchen door and left him on his own to play. Danny was out of school for the summer, and they lived so far out in the country he didn’t have anyone to play with. So he spent the long summer days reading in his room. He was reading a book about a coven of teenage witches who helped people with their supernatural powers, but he set it aside after he had visited his Nana the day before. He decided to stop reading about witches after she told him what she told him.
Or rather warned him.
That night he woke again with that same feeling of someone watching him. Danny sat up and glanced about his room. To his delight he found no one there. He breathed a sigh of relief as he lay back down. That’s when he saw her, hovering above him, stretched out across the ceiling as easily as he was stretched out across his bed.
“I will have what’s mine,” she growled.
Before he could open his mouth to scream, she dropped from the ceiling. Danny rolled out of his bed and hit the floor in a painful thump. A great cloud of dust puffed up from his bed where the old woman landed. The stale aroma of graveyard dirt and cobwebs filled his room. Danny scooted across the floor, knocking over his nightstand and shattering his lamp as he scrambled into the corner. His heart leapt into his throat, once again choking him into silence. Cowering in the corner, Danny drew his knees to his chest and trembled as he stared at the thing on his bed.
The old woman lifted herself from his mattress, rising to all fours. She turned to look at him, her grin now a nasty snarl. She gave a short growl then she pounced at him. Just as she reached him, just as she laid her cold hands on his warm heart, light pierced her horrible form and in an instant she was gone.
“Danny?” his mother shouted. She ran across the room and scooped him up into her arms. She hugged and hugged him. “Danny, dear god, honey. What happened? What’s wrong?”
He pushed his face into his mother’s chest and wept. They stayed like that for a long time; Danny crying in his mother’s arms and his mother hugging him for all she was worth. At length, the weeping ebbed, dwindling into sniffles. Danny’s mother leaned back on her heels and wiped away what was left of his tears.
“Come on now,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
“I saw her again,” Danny said.
“Who?”
“The witch.”
At his words, her face lost the light of worry. She set her jaw in frustration. “Honey, I already told you there is no such thing as witches.”
“But Nana said she made a deal. She said the witch owned me before I was born. She said-”
“Danny,” his mother said sharply over him. She grabbed his shoulders and held him still as she stared into his swollen eyes. “Listen to me. My mother likes to make up stories about stupid things just to scare people. She didn’t make any deals with anyone. She didn’t sell your soul to a witch. It’s all just made up. She made it up. Do you understand?”
“But I saw her,” Danny whispered.
“You’ve had a nightmare, honey. That’s all. You’re having nightmares because my stupid mother can’t keep her stupid mouth shut.”
Hot tears rolled down Danny’s cheeks again. “Nana said she owed the witch.”
His mother wiped away these fresh tears as soon as they fell. “Then the ugly old witch can go and take Nana’s soul. Okay? No one is coming for you. I won’t let them.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” His mother got to her feet and held out a hand to him. “Do you want to sleep with me? Would that help?”
“Yes please,” Danny said, and took his mother’s hand.
She walked him back to her empty bed, and the pair of them curled up, cuddling under the covers, together. He didn’t think he would get to sleep, not after what he had seen. Not after what the old woman had nearly done. Danny could feel the echo of her cold hands around his heart.
He didn’t rest, but he slept.
The next day was filled with the usual summer routine. After breakfast, at which his mother didn’t mention the night before, Danny settled in the living room to read. He didn’t want to read in his room, for fear he would see the witch during the day. At night was one thing. If he saw her during the day, he thought he might lose his mind.
Danny was deep into a novel about knights and kings and other things, when he heard his mother’s voice coming from the kitchen. She was talking to herself. No, she was talking to someone else, and she sounded mad. He got to his feet and snuck to the edge of the living room and listened. He knew listening in on other’s conversations was rude, but he did it anyways.
“I told you already, Mom,” Danny’s mother said. “He is scared to death.”
It took a moment before Danny realized she was talking on the phone. Nana lived several hours away, in a whole different state. His mother had taken him to see her a few days before because it was his birthday and it was the only present he had asked for. He had never met his grandmother, and he thought it would be fun. It was not fun. His Nana wasn’t quite what he expected. Unlike his polite and kind mother, his grandmother was rude and nasty. She smoked awful cigars and used bad words and yelled very loudly at his mother for no reason.
Then, when his mother left for a little while and his Nana got him alone, she told him about the witch.
“I don’t know what you told him, you crazy old bitch,” Danny’s mother said, “but he can’t sleep now.” There came a pause. “Mother! You’re not listening to me! He is scared out of his wits because of your stupid stories.” Another pause. “Yes, they are stories. They’ve always been stories. You might have ruined my childhood with your ridiculous supernatural obsessions, but you won’t ruin his. In fact, you won’t see him again. Goodbye, Mother.”
Danny heard a soft beep as his mother disconnected the call. A steady sob drifted out of the kitchen. He steadied himself, then went to her. His mother stood over the sink, head hung low, shoulders heaving as she sobbed.
“Mom?” he said.
His mother whipped about, a surprised look on her face. She blinked a few times, then wiped at her damp eyes. “Danny? What are you doing here? I through you were in your room?”
“I was reading in the living room because the light is better.”
“Come on then,” she said, pulling out a kitchen chair. “Lunch won’t be long. You can tell me about your book if you like.” His mother began rushing about the kitchen, as if she hadn’t been crying her eyes out only moments before.
Danny climbed into the chair, his heart beating hard while butterflies did loop de loops in his stomach. “Who were you on the phone with?”
“No one important.”
“Was it Nana?”
His mother paused in her rushing about, her shoulders slumping. “You heard.”
“I didn’t mean too. I’m sorry. You were shouting and I-”
“It’s all right, baby. You don’t have to apologize to me. You never have to apologize to me.” His mother joined him at the table, sitting beside of him as her eyes grew damp again. “You remember what I told you about my mother. Before we went to see her. About why we don’t ever visit her?”
Danny remembered. It wasn’t pleasant, but his mother preached it like some kind of family gospel. “She’s a lonely old woman who will say anything to make everyone else feel just as lonely.”
“Right. I would never say that if I didn’t mean it. You know that.”
“I know.”
She took his hand into hers, squeezing it hard as tears rose to her eyes again. “She told me I could never fall in love. That I could never have a family of my own. Not that I wouldn’t, which is bad enough. She said I couldn’t. She kept me locked away, Danny. She believed some fairytale about evil coming to claim the children of her ch
ildren. All because she made a deal to have a child of her own.”
Danny smiled at his mom. He had heard this story before. The next part was much better than Nana’s tale. Much happier. “Then you met Dad and he took you away from all that.”
His mother smiled in return. “That’s right. Then we had you.” She brushed Danny’s hair back from his face. “I wished he could be here to see you. How big you’ve gotten.”
“I know, Mom. I wished he was too.” She lingered, cupping his face in her hand.
They shared this connection for just a moment, then it was gone. His mother leapt to her feet and returned to cooking, chattering about this and that and everything except the obvious. Danny watched her with worry. His mother was smart. She was the smartest person he knew. Certainly she was right, and his nana was a crazy old lady.
That night he slept in his own bed again, if just to prove to himself that his mother was right.
“You can sleep with me if you like,” his mother said.
“No,” he said. “I’m okay. I won’t have any bad dreams again. I promise.”
“If you have another bad dream, just shout and I’ll come and chase it away. Okay?”
He smiled. “Okay.”
“Do you want me to leave the door open again?”
Danny thought about this. “Yes. Please?”
“Sure thing, kiddo. You’ll get some sleep tonight, and you won’t have any bad dreams. I just know it. You know, your dad had a saying for times like this.”
“What was it?”
“Third time’s a charm.”
Danny went cold at her words. Third time’s a charm.
“Goodnight, kiddo,” his mother said. And with that, she went to bed herself, leaving him alone with his worries and thoughts and doubts.
Danny slept, but he didn’t rest.
When he woke a few hours later, the old woman stood at the foot of his bed. She bent over, almost doubled, staring down into the open mouth of his toy box. She made no noise, no wheeze of breath nor creak of bones. Nothing. She just hovered over the open trunk, like the shadow of a tombstone shadow stretching over a silent grave. Danny cowered under his covers, peeking out from the edges of his trembling fortress of linen and cotton.
At that moment Danny wished, more than anything else in the world, that he was invisible. If he was invisible, if she couldn’t see him, then perhaps she would leave. Leave and never come back, instead of seeing him and swallowing him whole. And Lord help him, she did want to swallow him whole. He knew this fact as well as he knew his own name.
Because Nana said the witch would swallow him.
As if hearing his silent prayer, she turned her eyes to him in the moonlight. Not her face, no. She remained bent at the waist, still hovering over the toy box at her feet. Her eyes, just her eyes, shifted toward him. They slid across her motionless head, the left eye skimming the length of her cheek while the right eye slipped across the bridge of her nose, until at last the pair came to rest on the left side of her face. She stared at him for a few moments of silence, her uneven eyes closing and opening in a sickening out of synch laziness.
“I will have what’s mine,” she whispered in that chittering voice that wasn’t a voice.
The door swung closed on its own with a slow, soft click.
Without warning, she was bent over him. She didn’t move this time. Didn’t scurry or float. She was by the toy box one moment, then beside him the next. Danny wanted to scream, to call for his mother once more, but he couldn’t find the strength. Dampness gathered in the seat of his pajamas, soaking his mattress with warm fear.
“I will have what is mine,” she growled. She raised a hand and pointed to the ceiling, and with the gesture the overhead light exploded in a shattering shower of glass. “Nothing will stop me from taking what was promised to me.” The old woman reached out to touch his heart with her cold, dead hands.
Danny closed his eyes and waited for the light to save him. Waited for it to flood the room and drive the witch away, back to the evil place she had come from. Only, the light did not come this time. His mother didn’t rescue him. Without his shouts and sounds of struggle, she probably didn’t even know he was in danger. How could she? She didn’t believe in the witch. She didn’t believe her own mother’s warning.
As his essence disappeared into the darkened pit of the witch’s stomach, Danny had just enough time to think that his Nana was right after all. Not because she had said the old woman would come and swallow his soul. She was right because of the last thing she said before his mother came and took him away from her forever. The last thing his Nana said on the only occasion he had ever met the woman. The same thing his father had said long before Danny was even born.
His Nana had also said that the third time was a charm.
Tonia Brown is a southern author with a penchant for Victorian dead things. She lives in the backwoods of North Carolina with her genius husband and an ever fluctuating number of cats. She likes fudgesicles and coffee, though not always together. When not writing she raises unicorns and fights crime with her husband under the code names Dr. Weird and his sexy sidekick Butternut. You can learn more about her at: www.toniabrownauthor.com
BALLERINA
by
SARAH DOEBEREINER
“Kaaaaami,” a voice whispered from a window on the opposite side of the room.
Kami pressed her eyes closed with enough force to send colors dancing through the blackness. Hu hu hu – tiny breaths puffed into her mouth. Calm down, she instructed. She repeated the phrase over and over in her mind and hoped the notion would stick. The outline of her lips pinched closed. The girl counted to five while sucking air into her nose. When she exhaled, she counted to seven. Longer on the outstroke was supposed to slow a racing heartbeat, but she couldn’t fall asleep, not with noises hovering over the edge of the bed.
Kami shared a room with Jill. The sisters currently slept in bunk beds in a living room located in the center of the house. Adjoining hallways fanned out to bathrooms and other bedrooms. One wall of their room even butted up against the doorway to the kitchen. As a result, members of the family were always wandering through. Boredom brought them to the refrigerator twenty times a day. Then, there was cooking, groceries, washing dishes, and heading to the back yard through the kitchen door. The room was an in-between space that everyone used freely. There weren’t even barriers in the doorways to give the illusion of privacy.
When Kami and Jill took over the room, Mom moved their bunk beds into the corner that seemed the most out of the way. Shortly after that, their parents stopped sharing a room. They both agreed that Kami’s father had back problems too severe to accommodate a sleeping partner. That was the summer after the family’s eldest sister, Natalie, turned eighteen and moved out. Kami was supposed to inherit her room when she left, but Father got it instead. It was the nature of Kami’s existence; she was the girl who got passed over.
Kami cracked her left eye just enough to see the weight of Jill’s body sagging against the mattress above. She considered reaching a finger through the metal bars and poking at the thick fluff until Jill woke up. The action should look like late night stretching from the window as long as she moved quickly.
“Kaaaami, aami, mi, mi. Kaaaami,” the whispers came again. This time, a multitude of voices floated through the room. Kami settled deeper into her pillow. It was late. Her chest rose and fell too sporadically for her to be asleep, but the voices wouldn’t notice that. Would they?
Subtle pangs of terror racked her small body. Something watched her, just out of sight. The voices grew loud enough that they could have been standing on her feet. Jill remained stiff in placid slumber. No one else in the house could hear the whispers, or if they did they pretended not to. It wasn’t a ticking clock, or branches against the window. It was too nearly human to be the howling wind or the house settling. Those were all excuses meant to quiet her complaints. Kami didn’t understand. The voices were so loud and so c
lose, like a whisper in her ear. That thought squirmed over Kami’s nerves until she cracked her right eyelid to check their proximity.
On the far side of the room, there was a small window facing south that never caught the light. The room was always dim and shadowed since it was the heart of the house. Most of the houses on the block had the same layout. If you looked out this window, not only could you see the side yard and driveway, but you could also stare into the living room window of the neighbor on the right. Mom was uncomfortable enough with the view to start hunting for curtains. Young ladies needed separation from the outside world while they were in their bedroom. It would be too easy to peep through the window.
“Kami?” The voices spoke. The word tapered off. Kami pulled her arms tightly against her chest. The pressure helped her focus because it was something real – something that wasn’t all in her head. Kami squeezed her body until it hurt a little. She wondered how it had gone that far, and why no one cared about her miserable nights.
The truth was that it started innocently enough. Jill loved to dance. She was on a competition dance team that practiced twice a week. Even though their father was unemployed, Mom called off work to take her to events. The woman said it was a family affair, but Father never woke up early enough to attend. Mom forced Kami to tag along to the competitions so she wasn’t home alone. The whole ordeal lasted an entire afternoon. The girls drove an hour or more to a school, or gym, or other location big enough to house hundreds of chattering girls. Jill’s routine was fifteen minutes long. She performed in the advanced category- middle school bracket. Kami had to admit, she was beautiful when she danced.
It wasn’t Kami’s thing. All that work, just to parade about in frills and poms for fifteen minutes. Jill and she shared a womb already. They had shared a birthday and a bedroom for as long as either girl could remember. The whole thing made Kami wonder if one of them got switched at birth. Jill was the more involved twin. Maybe that was the reason Mom spoiled Jill so enthusiastically. She would have spoiled Kami too, but she never asked for anything. She didn’t want anything. It was no surprise when Jill selected pink paint for their new room. Kami was even less shocked at the carpet to match, and the identical comforters on the beds. Then, the time came for the curtains to cover the unsightly window.