I’m ice on the water. Cracking. Every word hits me like a stone. That’s what Ingrid heard coming out of my mouth?
“She’s not like that. You don’t even know her.”
Listen to you. You’re pathetic. You deserve each other. You’d just run away if she wanted you. And she never did, you know. Go drown in the dark and see if she saves you. Give the rest back to me. It’s mine.
“I don’t understand.” I will stay calm. I will not run from this. “What is it you want?”
The figure in the mirror steps closer, a twisting silhouette. It lifts its hands to press them against the glass. I cringe away from it and almost fall. Its voice drops to a scant breath, shivering with rage.
What you have. What you stole.
I don’t even know how to answer that. What could I possibly have taken? Did I pick something up, unknowing? Ron’s half-smiling question flashes through my mind. No cursed antiques or anything?
“What is it? What did I take? I’ll give it back, I swear!”
Liar!
“I never meant to take anything from you!” I wail. “This has to be a mistake! Please just tell me! What is it?”
Everything. Everything you have you took from me. The wind. The sun. Your beautiful friend with the painted face. Your mother! Where is she?
“Leave my mother alone.” I try to make it a command; it comes out pale and weak.
It’s me she wants. Not you. You’re an imitation. A replacement! You’ll leave her just like he did. I’m the one who loves her. I’m the one who’s real.
“Listen,” I begin desperately, but it ignores me, speaks over me.
She told me she wanted me. She said so. The words are a keening moan. She said she’d stay with me. I want her back!
“You can’t have her! Don’t you get it? She ended up in the hospital because of you!”
You took her from me. The hands on the glass are fists now. You took it all! And it’s MINE!
The voice spirals into a scream, shriller than a human voice should go, and I can’t take any more. I run, pausing only to slam the door behind me, ignoring the sound of smashing glass as I bolt back to my room, to refuge. I retreat to the very farthest corner of my bed, where I can’t see the mirror, willing the ghost away, willing it gone. For a long interval the only sound is my blood thundering in my ears, the rattle of the wind at the window.
Knock knock knock.
I jump at the sound, although it’s not loud. Knock knock knock.
“Mom?” I quaver. Like I’m a kid again, waking up from a nightmare. It’s not her, of course. The sound echoes down from the ceiling, from the wall beside the bed. Knock knock knock. Knock knock. Covering my ears doesn’t block it out. Knock knock knock.
“Stop it!” I scream.
And it stops. But instead there’s a scrape and a crash as the books sweep themselves off a whole set of shelves. They lie scattered over the floor with the pages still fluttering.
I edge my hands down from my ears, waiting for something else to happen, but there’s only one final, mocking noise. Knock. Knock. Knock. And then silence, broken only by the rain, and nothing else moves.
Mom’s door clicks open down the hall, and I scramble over to scoop the books back into place. I’ve only gotten an armful of them back on the shelf when the door opens. Mom’s brows quirk, puzzled, when she sees me crouched guiltily on the floor. I want to throw myself into her arms, I want to cry until I can’t anymore, I want her to pet my hair and tell me everything will be okay. I look up at her and I don’t move. I don’t move.
“Do you want some dinner, Marianne?” she says eventually.
Which prospect is worse, lying here waiting for it to do something else or waiting for it to do something that Mom might see? But the hurt and weariness growing on her face as I stay silent decides it.
“Sure.”
The house is full of echoing silence as we pad through it, the rainy light fading by near-visible increments. In the kitchen, Mom slides into a perch at the peninsula, resting her head on her arms. There’s not much in the fridge, but I manage to put together two ham sandwiches, skipping the mayo on Mom’s, and bring them both to the counter. Mom hasn’t moved; she only looks up when the plate clinks against the stone surface.
“Thank you, sweetie,” she says, with the shadow of a smile. “You’re taking such good care of me.”
I sit down next to her and take a bite. It’s glue in my mouth. There are lines on Mom’s face I’ve never noticed before. Everything seems so upside down. How many times have we sat here together with a snack she made while I worried about high school, complained about the idiots in my class, cried about Ingrid moving?
The ghost’s words whisper through my thoughts. It’s me she wants. Not you. She told me so. She said so. That can’t be true, can it? When would she have spoken to it? That night I can’t remember? I can’t ask her. I don’t know what to say to her. I’m afraid I’ll make it worse.
She pushes the plate away with the sandwich half-eaten. “I’m sorry, Marianne, it’s delicious. I just can’t eat very much lately.”
“Yeah. Me neither. Mom, listen. Can I ask you something?”
She shrugs.
“I’m an only child, right?”
She looks up at me, squinting. “Did I hear that right?”
“I didn’t have a twin who…who died at birth, or anything like that?”
Mom’s eyebrows have gone up in a look that’s half bafflement and half amusement. “Why on earth do you ask?” I can’t answer, and after a moment, her faint smile fades back into a weary line. “No, Marianne. It was just you.” She puts a hand to my cheek; her fingers are chilly against my skin. “You were all I ever wanted.”
I try to smile back, but something changed around us as she spoke, some quality in the air. She pulls her hand away.
“Have you spoken to your father?”
Her voice is very low, but I stiffen. Here we go. There’s a shivering, musical sound from the cabinet—the wine glasses jittering against each other—and I look up in alarm, but they fall silent again. Still, I can feel the presence seeping through the room, thick and cold, the weight of its regard. Is it my imagination?
Mom doesn’t look at me, doesn’t speak. She’s waiting for an answer. I have to say something.
“No. Well, yes.” And then, unwillingly, “He sent me an email.”
“An email. God.” Mom pushes herself up from the counter, swipes her hair back from her face. “His only daughter, and he can’t even be bothered to call? Did he explain himself, at least?”
I pick up the plates and turn toward the sink, trying to figure out a safe answer.
“He tried. I guess.”
“He didn’t explain it to me,” Mom cries. “What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to do with this…this nothing? If he’s seeing somebody else, why doesn’t he just tell me?” Tears well up in her eyes. “I know he’s seeing somebody. I know it.”
“I don’t think he is, Mom. Really.”
“Why?” She pounces on this. “What did he say?”
I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to—”
“Never mind.” She closes her eyes; the words are dull and flat. “It doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t tell you if he was, would he.”
One of the plates jerks from my hand and falls to the floor, smashing in pieces on the smooth red hardwood. I jump back from it, my heart hammering. Go away. Go away.
“Watch your feet!” Mom exclaims, distracted, thank God. She jumps from her seat. “Let me—”
“Never mind!” I put out a hand, not wanting her to come closer. “Never mind, I’ll get it.”
Mom watches me pull the broom from the closet and then sits heavily down again, buries her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m such a mess. You don’t deserve this.”
I tip the shards of china into the garbage.
“He’s your dad. I understand that, Marianne. Even if we’re not together anymore, you still need to have a relationship with him. Of course you do. Okay?”
I nod, hoping she won’t pursue it any further.
“I’m just so afraid. I’m afraid of what will happen if he finds out about what’s been going on with me, since he left.” Her voice has gone weepy again. “I’m afraid he’ll try to take you away from me. I’m afraid this makes me, I don’t know, an unfit mother. And you’re all I have left.”
“I won’t tell him, Mom.”
“It’s not on you to keep secrets. I know that. But I can’t bear losing you.”
Around us, the room is filling up with a wintery silence. “Mom. Please—”
“You’re the sun in my sky. Nobody’s taking you from me! I can’t lose you too. I can’t.”
The glasses in the cabinets rattle and chime, and the green numbers on the stove clock flutter into indecipherable dashes and lines. I wheel to face my mom, but she’s not looking at me, she’s staring in horror into the air between us, and when I follow her gaze I stagger back a step against the counter.
Knives. Dad’s kitchen knives, lovingly sharpened. All suspended in midair above our heads, gleaming in the dim light like icicles.
Pointing at me.
“Marianne,” Mom whispers. Her eyes flick toward me, then back to the knives. “Marianne, I think I’m—”
But in answer, like arrows from a bow, like axes, the knives fall. All at once. I don’t even have time to put my hands up; by the time I’ve lifted them the knives have landed all around me, a ragged chorus of hollow thunks. It takes me a few rabbit heartbeats to realize that they haven’t touched me. Something tugs at my hair and I flinch away, finally opening my eyes. The biggest one, the one I’ve always been afraid to use—its point has bitten into the cupboard door, barely an inch from my face. It stands in place, not even quivering. The others are lodged in the polished floor at my feet and scattered over the stone countertop.
Mom sits frozen for a moment with her arms outstretched, then slides off her stool and runs over and clasps my hands, pulls me gently away from the counter and, once we’re clear of the blades buried in a little semicircle around where I was standing, throws her arms around me. She’s saying “oh my God” over and over again, a near-voiceless whimper. I stand rigid, barely breathing.
Mom finally lets me go and bends to retrieve the closest paring knife. She hisses in surprise when she touches it, snatching her hand away, then pulls her sleeve down over her fingers. She can’t budge it and quickly gives up, shaking her hand out.
“It’s cold.” She fumbles backward till she bumps into me, and wheels to face me, her eyes pleading. “Marianne, was that me? Was that real?”
Here it is. The proof I’ve been waiting for: something objective.
And a witness. Another one. Someone who might believe me.
“It’s real.” The words rise up with tears close behind. “It’s real. And I’m so scared. It’s getting worse. I don’t know how to make it stop.”
Mom’s lips tremble as she pulls me back into a hug, and I cling to her, let myself sob into her shoulder. I’m making awful sounds and I don’t care, I don’t care.
“What do you mean?” she whispers. “Are you saying…this whole time… Marianne, what’s going on?”
“There’s a ghost,” I wail. “Some sort of ghost. And I don’t know what it wants.”
A cabinet door slams open so hard its glass face cracks. Wine glasses tumble to the floor, one after another. Gravity seems to lose its hold on their shattered remains; broken stems and curved, sparkling fragments of glass ricochet into the air, spinning in all directions. Mom cries out, clutching me tighter, trying to shield me from them.
I can’t explain any further. I don’t have time. I’m putting her in danger.
“I have to go,” I choke out, pulling away. “I have to go before it hurts you.”
“Marianne, no, please, wait!”
But two steps around the corner and I’m already gone, running for the front door.
• • •
I don’t stop running until I reach the busy street where I usually catch the bus, surrounded by swanky cafés and little boutiques, traffic rushing indifferently past. I stagger to a halt and collapse onto the bench, gasping for breath, bent over a searing stitch in my side. My thoughts are locked in a churning loop of what do I do, what do I do, without answers or direction. I don’t have any money. I don’t have my phone, and even if I did, it probably wouldn’t work. I don’t even have my coat, and the wind is quickly slicing through the last warmth from my flight.
Where do I go now? I can’t go back to my aunt’s, and I can’t call my dad. What would they think of the knives lodged in the floor? Would Aunt Jen have a reasonable explanation for that? And Dad… If Mom’s afraid that a visit to the hospital would make her sound unfit, then what about this? Would anyone believe me if I said it wasn’t her?
I shiver and cram my hands in my pockets. My fingers meet a slip of cardboard, and I pull out Niobe’s business card: a little purple rectangle inscribed with a new-agey rainbow star design and a phone number.
After a moment of frozen indecision, I pick myself up and push through the door of the Second Cup on the corner.
“Can I use your phone?” I ask the ponytailed guy behind the counter.
“Uh—”
“Please?” He looks a little alarmed, and I swallow, try to moderate my voice. “It’s kind of an emergency.”
“Oookay,” he says, frowning. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m fine. I just really need to make a phone call.”
Reluctantly, he leads me to the far end of the counter and hands me a cordless handset. On the other end of the line, the phone rings and rings. My flare of hope is starting to congeal into fear again when a familiar voice picks up the call.
“Hello?” Ron says, and then again, more cautiously, “Hello?”
“Ron. It’s me.”
There’s a long silence.
“Ron, I really need to talk to you.” More silence. “Please. I listened to the tape. And more stuff has happened.”
“Look, Marianne… The other night. That was really… Look, I don’t know what to do with this. You know? I think I’m in over my head. No, I know I’m in over my head. I don’t know if I should—”
“I know. I-I really think I need to see your mom.” Silence. “I can’t talk about it here.” I cast a glance at the barista, who’s frowning at me. He looks away. I turn my back to him and lower my voice, half whispering. “But she was right. And it’s after me now. I don’t know what to do!”
I close my eyes, listening to the static hissing in my ear, to the ordinary coffee shop clink and clatter around me, waiting, waiting.
“Shit,” Ron sighs at last. “Okay. We’re at 745 Stirling. Do you know where that is?”
I repeat her directions back to her, trying to cement them in my mind. The guy behind the counter slides me a pen and half a sheet of paper. I shoot him a grateful smile.
“Thank you,” I tell Ron fervently, stuffing the directions in my pocket.
“Yeah,” she says unhappily. “See you soon.”
17
It wouldn’t seem like such a long walk if it weren’t for the rain. Buses roaring past send water fountaining over the sidewalk. By the time I turn on Stirling I’m so soaked my clothes aren’t even absorbing the rain anymore; it just rolls off me, like down the sides of an overflowing barrel. I’ve been walking so fast that when I reach Ron’s house I’m almost warm despite the clammy flap of my jeans against my ankles.
The address she gave me is half of a small but solid brick square with four windows, their warm golden light spilling out from under the boughs of a l
ooming tree, and two heavy wooden doors that share a rickety porch. Two little dormer windows peer down on the street from the roof.
I hesitate on the porch, twisting my hands. Ron won’t be the one answering the door. Of course she won’t. I hope she won’t. All I can see is the look on her face under the streetlights. The fear in it.
I’m not going to think about it. I’m here, aren’t I? Niobe will fix everything.
I lift my hand, drop it again, wipe it against my sodden jeans. Then I take a deep breath and knock hard on the door.
Footsteps creak toward me. There’s a long pause before the door opens a fraction. And it is Ron looking out at me. Her red-and-black hair hangs limp and straight around her face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without makeup before. It makes her look a lot younger.
“Hi,” I manage. Just to break the silence. But she speaks at the same time, speaks over me.
“Jesus,” she says, “you’re not even wearing a coat? Come in already.”
She ushers me into a disastrously cluttered living room, moving a basket full of colorful yarn and half-finished crochet project off a battered armchair. I sit gingerly on the very edge, trying not to get it wet.
“Mom’s just upstairs. She said she had to get ready, so she’s meditating or something. I’ll go tell her you’re here, okay?”
Her footsteps go thumping up the stairs; floorboards creak overhead. I hear a few words of low-voiced conversation.
I’m not going to think about what they’re saying. I fold my arms, look around the room. In the soft golden glow of an old-fashioned, shaded lamp, amid a clutch of dirty coffee cups and beer bottles, is a picture in a wooden frame. I recognize Niobe by her cloud of hair, although she’s rounder in this picture, younger, her smile bright and daring. Standing in the circle of her arms is a little girl in a dress, her mousy hair in pigtails, scowling at the camera. I lean closer, a smile stealing onto my face. Is that Ron?
The Dark Beneath the Ice Page 17