“Here.”
I jump a little and look up. Ron is standing in the doorway, a bundle of fabric in her arms.
“Thanks,” I manage as she passes the clothes to me. She keeps her distance. We stand there for a minute in charged, awkward silence before she speaks again.
“I suspended my disbelief before, right? Well. Not anymore. Now I full-on believe you.”
“Yeah. I know. Me too.”
Her lips tilt into half a smile, there and gone again, as fleeting as the sun glimpsed through clouds. I want to ask her not to go, to forgive me for whatever happened in the park, but she clears her throat.
“You should get changed. There’s no way this stuff fits, but at least it’s dry. Just hang yours over the bathtub.”
The clothes smell a little bit like cigarette smoke and a little bit like perfume, a faint, summery smell, like lilacs or roses. I breathe it in deep on my way up the stairs, trying to hold on to it. In a few minutes I’m shuffling out of the bathroom in a faded, swishy black skirt that I have to roll up at the waist so I don’t trip, and a hoodie emblazoned with tour dates for a band I’ve never heard of. There’s no help for my socks and shoes, which are still wet and cold, but I keep them on. At least they hide my feet.
To my surprise, Ron is still in the living room when I return, curled on the couch and worrying at the edges of her black-painted nails.
“So you listened to it,” Ron says. I nod. She folds her arms. “I can’t get the file to play back on my phone.”
“Figures. My phone doesn’t work at all lately.”
“So.” She looks at me, finally. “I guess you don’t remember any of it?”
“No. I mean, I didn’t hear any of it then, while it was happening. I was somewhere else. That place from my dream, I think.” I try, brokenly, to describe the roaring in my ears, the pull of the water, my useless attempt to run away from it. “Until I heard you yell my name. And then I saw… There was something horrible there, just for a second. And I think it saw me too. But then I was back in the park with you.”
“What was it?”
I shake my head. “It was person-shaped, I think. It was hard to tell. I saw it in the bathroom mirror today too, but the light wouldn’t work. All I could see was this…shadow.” I tug nervously at the drawstrings at the neck of my sweater. “It hated me.”
“It said something about you drowning it. Did that tell you anything?”
I shake my head. “I’ve definitely never drowned anybody.” Although in a dream-logic sort of way the accusation makes sense, somehow, with the water at Aunt Jen’s and the water in my dreams.
“Could you tell what it was?” I ask. “What was it like?”
“I don’t know. At first you were just acting weird. You took your shoes off. And my necklace. You laughed a little bit, and threw it away. I didn’t start to get really scared until you undid your hair. It was floating.” She waggles her fingers expressively. “Like, like seaweed, all twisting around. And—I don’t know how to explain it. It was dark, but still, it was like your whole face had changed. And it was you talking. I mean, it was coming from you. But, well, you heard it. And after a while… I didn’t know what I was seeing at first, I thought you were getting taller or something, but it had lifted you right off the ground; I could see your feet hanging there in the air.”
Just like what Mom saw. I lean back on my heels a little bit, feeling for the reassuring pressure of the floor.
“I asked what it wanted, and it just said that same thing again, about ‘this is mine.’ I think maybe it meant your body? It sort of…” She makes a raking gesture across her arms and chest. My fingers steal to my shoulder, to the little bruises still lingering there.
“And I—” She breaks off, closes her eyes for a moment. When she continues, her voice is ragged. “It was a bad mistake, Marianne, the whole thing. It was stupid of me. I should never have tried it. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”
“We had to try something,” I protest, but Ron shakes her head.
“You said more stuff happened,” she insists. “Like what?”
Reluctantly, I tell her about the water in my room at Aunt Jen’s, the knocking, the pins, the writing on the mirror. And then at home, the books flying off the shelves, the pictures swirling in the sink. The knives hanging in the air.
Ron hides her face in her hands.
“I made it worse. Oh God, Marianne, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know. It was already looking for me, I think. I could feel it. Maybe it was just a matter of time. I’m just afraid it’s going to hurt me. Or someone else.” I swallow as something occurs to me. Your beautiful friend with the painted face. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here. It… I think it remembers you.”
There’s a tense silence, but nothing happens.
“That’s kind of weird, though, isn’t it?” Ron says slowly. “I mean, with those knives. It could have really hurt you. It could have killed you. Why didn’t it? If it hates you that much?”
“I don’t know. If it’s just trying to scare me, it’s doing a pretty good job. But why, then?” The voice from the tape drifts through my mind. I want what is mine…this is all mine! “I have something it wants. It said I stole something. But when I asked it what I took, it just went on about the sun and the wind. And my mom.” And Ron. I don’t want to tell her that. My hands go to my shoulders again. “I don’t get it.”
“Maybe it’s just jealous of you. Maybe it really is a ghost. In the sense of someone that used to be alive. Maybe it wants to have the world back.”
“I guess. But then why me? I don’t know anybody who’s died. If it wants the world back, why does it think I’m the one who took it away? How could I have done something like that?”
“And where did it come from?” She’s frowning now, as puzzled as I am. “Is it just the kind of creature that does this to random people, or what? It’s definitely acting like a poltergeist now, but I never read anything about—”
The light flickers, comes back on with a faint rattle and buzz. Ron and I exchange a look.
“I should go,” I whisper.
“Don’t,” Ron protests, jumping to her feet. “You can’t go back out there alone with this thing after you!”
“You don’t understand. It was talking about you.”
“It’s my fault it saw you.” She pauses, lifts her chin. “I’m not running away this time.”
We both jump as one of the mugs from the side table crashes onto the parquet, but Ron doesn’t hesitate; she grabs my arm and hurries toward the stairs.
“Mom? Mom!” She bolts up the stairs ahead of me. Picture frames rock back and forth on their hooks on the wall as we pass, a sway more pronounced than our footsteps could possibly cause. At the top of the stairs a door swings open, a waft of incense rolling toward us. Niobe stands there, beckoning for us to hurry.
She slams the door shut behind us, makes a sweeping gesture with one arm, as if to bar the way or beat something back. A volley of knocks comes rattling down from all around the room, and then subsides into quiet. My heart thunders in my ears. The room is lit by candles, little tea lights quivering in jars and shallow bowls on artfully ornamented bookshelves. The ceiling, the walls, are all draped in fluttering swaths of fabric, ranging from plush to gauzy, some spangled with patterns that catch the light.
Niobe turns slowly, squinting, and peers at me for a long moment without speaking.
“I thought so,” she breathes. Her gaze travels to a point over my shoulder. To Ron, I think at first, but Ron’s across the room, fists clenched, looking back and forth between the two of us.
“There’s someone…” Niobe reaches out to grasp my arm, her voice an urgent whisper. “Listen. Do you know anybody who’s drowned?”
And then there’s a loud smack and abruptly, with a cry, she lets me go, staggering b
ack a step with her hand to her face. Her eyes, meeting mine, are wide and shocked.
“I should go. I have to go,” I choke out, and push blindly toward the door, but Niobe’s hand clamps down on my arm again.
“I think that would be unwise,” she says. “Someone’s terribly angry with you.”
I stare at her. She doesn’t let me go, but massages her cheek with her other hand.
“Well,” she says peevishly, shooting an accusing look at Ron, “you sure put your foot in it, didn’t you.”
Ron looks away, scowling, and folds her arms. “We’ve been over this already,” she mutters.
“We certainly have! Just because you’re a cement bunker doesn’t mean you can’t put other people in danger!” She turns to me. “Rhiannon’s gotten a little too used to being invulnerable, I’m afraid. She’s very grounded. But being made of solid clay has its disadvantages.”
“Um,” I say.
“She means I’m about as psychic as a fence post,” Ron puts in flatly.
“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Niobe snaps. “Now you had better tell me exactly what it was you did so I can try to undo the mess you’ve made of it!”
“I was just trying to get it to talk to me.”
“By yourself.”
“I didn’t think it would work!”
I shift uncomfortably and try to catch Ron’s eye, but she’s glaring at her mother, who scrubs her hands over her face in a give-me-strength gesture.
“That was a profoundly stupid thing to do.”
“Look, I get that, okay? I tried to tell it—”
“There, see,” Niobe interrupts, “that was your next mistake. Never argue. Just listen. You need to just be with it.”
“Yeah, sure. Take it on a meditation retreat, that ought to do it.”
“This is a task that demands a certain amount of empathy, Rhiannon. Cultivate it. I can’t believe this. You should have known better.”
“Fine. Great. Now that we’ve established that, can we please—”
“Did you do anything about protection?”
“Of course I did! Marianne had my necklace. The obsidian one. We burned sage, I cast a circle, the whole nine yards.”
“Did you try silver? Amethyst?”
“Well, no, but I don’t see why those would work if the other stuff—”
“And what about Marianne, did you show her how to defend herself at all?”
“I thought all that was defense!”
Niobe massages her temples. I should say something, anything, but Ron rolls her eyes, and Niobe erupts again.
“Don’t start with me, Rhiannon! Did you at least teach her the blue star exercise? Or how to ground herself? They’re very simple visualizations, even you should have been able to—”
“Give me a break!” Ron yells. “It’s throwing knives at her and you think—”
“It’s what?” Niobe’s voice goes up half an octave. “You told me this was about doors slamming and—”
“What good are blue stars supposed to do? How the hell do you even call that defending yourself? Or are you just mad because you didn’t get the chance to hand her a bill?”
“Back off!” Niobe yells. “Haven’t you done enough damage here already?”
Ron, who was opening her mouth to interrupt, subsides, her chin stuck out, breathing hard. Her eyes are bright in the light of the candles.
“If you want to do something useful,” Niobe continues, the words biting and brittle, “get out of the way. Go smoke or whatever. I need to focus.”
Ron meets my eyes for one long moment, then lowers her head and stalks from the room, slamming the door behind her. The little flames on the shelves and the shifting drapes of fabric tremble in her wake.
Niobe shakes herself, exhales long and slow, then makes some fluttering motions with her hands like she’s brushing herself off.
“All right,” she says at length. “Come over here, please.”
“I’m sorry,” I stammer as she draws me into the middle of the room.
“Not your fault,” Niobe says gruffly. “Except that I wish you’d made that appointment right away. I tried to warn you.”
“Do you know what it is?” I ask, swallowing the rebuke. “Ron said it sounded like a poltergeist.”
“‘Poltergeist’ is more like a set of symptoms than an actual type of entity.” Niobe looks me up and down, pulls a black-silver stone from a nearby shelf. “Here, hold this.”
The stone is cold and slick in my hands, drawing the warmth from my fingers. “Can you make it go away?”
“It’s not quite that simple,” she sighs, rummaging through a drawstring bag sewn with bits of sparkling mirror. “It’s been a long time since I tried anything on this level, but despite what my daughter may have told you, I can manage some real witchery occasionally. When I have to. I’ll do my best to help, all right? The first order of business is at least some basic self-defense. So you have a better chance at fighting it off.”
That phrasing isn’t exactly reassuring. I clutch the stone. I have to ask.
“Do I…do I have a chance?”
“Everyone has a chance.” But she gives me a troubled look. “You really can’t think of anyone who drowned?”
I shake my head. “Does that mean it’s a ghost? A ghost of someone who drowned in the river?”
She squints into the distance, like she’s searching for something. “Maybe? That’s not quite it, but…” She shakes her head, letting her breath hiss through her teeth. “Never mind. It’s hard to explain this stuff. It’s like trying to tell somebody what color Tuesday is. Or what justice tastes like.” She glances back to me, and the candles carve deep lines of shadow down her cheeks. “I…haven’t done a very good job of explaining to Rhiannon. As I’m sure you’ve heard. Here, sit down. Right here, please.”
She pulls a silky green cushion from a basket, drops it on the floor. While I settle myself awkwardly onto it, she snaps open a pair of spectacles and perches them on her nose, folding out a third lens to rest in the middle of her forehead.
“No smart remarks about the glasses, please,” she says crisply, rolling up her sleeves. “All right. Listen up. Where you’re sitting is the very heart of my defenses around this house. I don’t suppose you can see the lines?”
I glance around the room, but there’s only flickering candlelight and shadow. A cold draft pours across the floor from one narrow window, sending the shimmering bronze curtains into a slow, trembling swirl.
“Right. Well, they’re there. So you’re safe here, all right? But I need you to stay put. Got that?” She waits for me to nod. “So that’s the first thing. Now. What you’re going to do is close your eyes and imagine a bright white light pouring down on you. All right? Go on, close your eyes. Bright white light. Concentrate on your head, your face, your neck, your arms being wrapped in white light, all down your body, until it gets right to the ground. Or you could imagine growing roots down into the ground and sucking it up. Use your breath. Draw it into you.”
I set the black-silver stone in my lap and reach down to touch the cool, ridged floorboards. Outside a car splashes by. Voices talking and laughing drift in and fade again. And waiting underneath is an evening quiet, a soft, breathless quiet, full of the trickle of water in the eaves trough, the roar of traffic like the distant voice of the river, the sound of my blood in my ears. I shake myself a little, clear my throat, afraid it might swallow me again. It’s like standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down into the dark. Like the road running the wrong way, down toward the water.
White light, white light, I’m supposed to be thinking about white light. I flex my fingers a little against the floor and seize on Niobe’s idea about tree roots, imagining my fingertips growing like green twigs, pushing down through the cracks in the wooden surface, through the brick walls
and the old stone foundation, seeking soft damp earth.
But again there’s only water—and the dark. I try to imagine the sun blazing down from a sky thin and white with the heat of a summer day. But in my mind’s eye, when I look back down to earth I’m standing by the river. Under my feet the sand is cold, and the water is black, stretching out into emptiness. I can feel it rising all around me, stealing the feeling from my fingers, surrounding me like an embrace: ghostly arms winding around me, invisible hands clasping across my chest.
I snatch my hands from the floor. “This isn’t working,” I gasp.
But my lips move without sound. And around me the room has changed. It takes me a second to figure out what’s different. The light is still soft, diffuse, a golden flicker, but it’s sourceless; the candles have disappeared. The cloying smell of incense has been washed away. It smells like rain. Like the river. The curtains, the fabric draped from the ceiling have gone limp, perfectly motionless, catching the square of orange light falling through the window.
The weight of Niobe’s silvery stone has vanished from my lap. And I’m alone.
18
I clutch the edges of the cushion, trying not to panic, resisting the urge to call out to Niobe. She’s gone. She’s worlds away. She told me to stay put. Do I still need to stay put?
“Well, hello.”
Niobe’s voice makes me jump, leaves me twisting around looking for her. It’s muffled, like it’s coming from the next room, though I can hear the words clearly enough. They’re casual, but guarded.
“Niobe?” My lips shape the word, soundless. “Ron!”
And another voice speaks over me, clear as if it stood beside me. Clearer. Clear as a thought unbidden. There’s nowhere to hide from it. I hunker down on the cushion.
What are you doing? the ghost demands. Is this a trick?
“You’re not Marianne, are you?”
Obviously.
“What’s your name, then?”
Don’t fuck with me, it snarls. Whose side are you on?
“I’m not on anybody’s side,” Niobe says soothingly. “I’m here to help.”
The Dark Beneath the Ice Page 18