And the last time she had done something this horrible—an image of Kevin’s face filled her mind, and she shook it away—and had left a note, it had not been well received.
Maybe Martin is out looking for me.
The alternative was that he had given up on her, that this afternoon’s outburst had been the final straw… that after seven years of pressure to have a child, this most recent eruption might have broken even his rock-solid resolve.
Arielle did her best to force thoughts of either Martin or Kevin from her mind as she tossed her bag into the backseat of her Audi. Ignoring these thoughts wasn’t easy; every time she pictured her husband, he was making the face he had made the night they had made love after she’d told him she was pregnant—it was his ‘wow’ face.
But as Arielle put the car into reverse and backed down the driveway, her husband’s phantom face changed. It changed in a way that reminded her of how she had screamed at him, of all the terrible things she had said.
Martin’s face, like his heart, had broken.
This better work, because I don’t know if he’ll forgive me this time.
Chapter 14
For once, Arielle wished that she had been wrong.
Not only was Coverfeld Ave near Stumphole Swamp, but it ran right through the damn middle of it.
She had no idea what she was looking for, and her driving slowed to a mere crawl once she turned onto the almost hidden road. There were no houses—none that she could see, anyway—and the way her tires continually spun in the soft mud made her wonder if anyone had even driven their car down the street within the past century. In fact, she was perplexed that Google had actually given this shithole the dignity of including it in their Maps. But, hey, it was probably part of their plan for global domination.
And why global domination would include this shithole, would include Coverfeld Ave, only Google knew.
Arielle’s mindset had gone from excited at the unlikely prospect of finding Mother to just wanting to get the hell out of this creepy place—to drive anyway but on this damn mud-packed road. But then she saw something, and her mindset shifted once more.
Lying in the mud by the side of the road was a familiar shape covered in rotting moss.
It was a mailbox.
Muttering ‘shit’ over and over again like some demented mantra, Arielle slammed her car into park and sat there for a moment, staring at the unmistakable shape of the mailbox in the mud. The stake that had once rooted it into the ground was completely gone, leaving just the box portion. Squinting hard, she thought she could make out numbers emblazoned on the side of it with a Sharpie. A fucking Sharpie—like whoever lived there couldn’t be bothered with actual fifty-cent numbers from the hardware store.
1818, the numbers read.
1818 Coverfeld Ave.
A shudder ran through her. For some reason, she knew that this was the place, that she had somehow found the place—the exact place—that Mother had directed her to. This, despite only being given a street name. A common sounding street name, nonetheless.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
Her eyes flicked to where the driveway should have been, but of course there wasn’t one; there was only a trail of mud that led from the road—and even the word ‘road’ was more a reflection of the use of the dirt-packed terrain that her Audi struggled through than any resemblance to an actual road—and through the long, thin, and generally leafless trees that were indigenous to the swamp.
Arielle sat in the car for a moment with the engine off. Her eyes drifted from her left—the swamp, a stagnant, boggy inlet of Stumphole covered in a blanket of moss—to her right—the mud-packed trail that led though the spindle-like trees to where she assumed must be a house in the distance.
Back and forth her eyes whipped until she feared getting dizzy and closed them tightly. Her hand subconsciously went to her forehead, massaging her temples with the pads of her fingers.
What in God’s name am I doing here? And how the fuck did I even find this place?
She didn’t want to—couldn’t—answer the question with any rational response, so instead she threw the car door open and stepped into the stagnant air.
She expected it to smell bad outside, given the thick patch of green-brown vegetation in various states of decay that suffocated the swamp bank to her left.
Arielle scrunched her nose.
But this time, she had been wrong; it didn’t just smell bad, it smelled God-awful. There was the unmistakable scent of rotting leaves and something else… an underlying funk that was difficult for her to place. Sulfur, maybe? Eggs left out in the sun too long?
Regardless, the smell was horrible, and she immediately switched to gulping air through her mouth instead of breathing through her nose.
She checked her watch next, then turned her gaze upward to the pathetic tendrils of sunlight that leaked through the tall tree trunks. The trees themselves weren’t completely devoid of leaves—wrong answer number two, Steve—she realized; rather, all the foliage had congregated at the top, forming a canopy so dense that it was more like a professorially made brick-and-mortar awning than something organic… which she cared very little about, save for the fact that it trapped the nasty smell like a greenhouse.
Arielle adjusted her shoes next—grateful that she had chosen to wear flats on this day, what with the Woodwards’ barbecue—and then shifted her blue sundress. The underlying reason for these innate rituals was not beyond her—basically doing anything and everything to postpone turning up the mud drive of 1818 Coverfeld Ave—but this realization did nothing to hasten her step.
What the fuck am I doing here?
Adjusting her dress, fixing her hair, and tree-gazing were all better than trying to wrap her mind around that incessant question.
With a deep, open-mouthed breath, Arielle eventually turned to the mud-packed drive and took her first step. And another. And another. With the fifth or six step, she finally saw the house.
The urge to turn and run, to get back in her Audi and haul ass back to her urban life with her husband, was so strong that she nearly succumbed. It was only the thought of returning home to face Martin, with no hope of ever getting pregnant, that kept her moving forward.
Arielle realized that she had probably been staring right at the place when she had first looked up the drive, but it blended in so well with the trees that she hadn’t seen it.
It was a large, Victorian style-home with heavily washed-out red bricks that bordered on gray, which was one of the reasons that it was nearly indistinguishable from the thin trees that both flanked and surrounded it. If someone wanted to build a two-story house with the intention of camouflaging it in a swamp, then 1818 Coverfeld Ave would most definitely serve as a formidable template.
The right half of the building was set in front of the rest, and was covered with a large, peaked roof and a bay window that was boarded up with plywood. A roofed porch was off to the right, above which were several rounded-top windows. These windows weren’t boarded up, but might as well have been: the thick black curtains that hung in them completely blocked out the interior. The brick, in addition to being a washed-out gray, also had to contend with tendrils of dark green moss that reached nearly to the roof.
It was getting late in the day, and deep shadows shrouded the porch, making it difficult to make out much of anything beyond the front rail.
Arielle glanced down at herself and then back at the house about forty paces up the muddy walk.
The scene was so absurd that she nearly laughed out loud.
It was as if Alice from Alice in Wonderland had found herself lost in front of an abandoned crack house.
Screw Alice in Wonderland, this is Alice in the Crack Den.
Arielle took a deep breath in through her nose and immediately gagged. The smell was worse near the house, and she had forgotten to breathe through her mouth.
Spitting a hunk of phlegm on the ground beside her loafer, thoughts of regret, confusion, an
d disapproval again flooded her mind.
What am I doing here?
If she hadn’t driven for the better part of two hours, and if she hadn’t exploded at the party, she would have left the creepy place right there and then.
Probably.
But then there was, ‘A life for a life.’
There was always that.
Her hand made its way to her stomach, and she massaged the still swollen abdominal flesh through the thin material of her dress.
Where did you go? You were in there once, but now where did you go?
Knowing that if she continued down this path she would break down into tears and collapse in the mud, Arielle forced her hand away from her stomach.
No. No self-pity. You are here to get things done. One hundred percent guarantee, remember?
Part of her knew, and had known ever since picking up the payphone, that this was borderline insane, but it was all she could think of that would help move her forward.
Arielle gritted her teeth and took another few steps toward the house.
I’ll knock, then leave, she compromised. After all, there is no way someone lives here—not in this place.
The air suddenly stirred, and a shiver traveled up her spine. After the sensation passed, the cool air was actually a welcome relief to the stifling stillness of a few moments ago. The moving air also served to clear out some of the foul smell from the roof of her mouth and nose, for which she was also grateful. She was almost able to breathe through her nose again.
Amidst the sound of rustling leaves high above her and the drip, drip, drip of water somewhere behind her slowly filling the swamp, she started to pick up another sound: a rhythmic creaking noise, like a rusty chain being gently caressed by the wind.
Has it been there all along and I just didn’t hear it because of the crazy shit running through my head and my loafers being deep-throated by the mud?
The sound unexpectedly increased in both tempo and volume, and a vision of the hawkish woman in the church, the one with the tears still wet on her cheeks and trembling hands, suddenly filled her mind.
Filius obcisor!
It wasn’t really the words that had frightened her, although they’d carried an undeniable condemnation, but it was the way the words had been spoken.
Filius obcisor!
They had been uttered like the words of a grieving father at the sentencing of his child’s murderer. They had been filled with sadness, malice, and vengeance.
I shouldn’t be here. I need to leave.
This sentiment was so jarring that it actually stopped her forward progress.
I need to leave this place. I need to leave now.
And this time she would have—Arielle would have spun her heels in the mud beneath her feet and high-tailed it back to her Audi and gotten the fuck out of there—except the creaking suddenly stopped.
The sound had been coming from the porch, of that she was now certain. Squinting hard, Arielle leaned toward the house.
There was someone on the porch.
A woman.
An old woman.
“Arielle, is that you?”
Chapter 15
The porch swing creaked once more as an old woman craned into view.
Arielle could only stare; any words that she had prepared to say, which, granted, were bizarre in and of themselves—Hi, I’m here for a baby? Oh, hi there, we spoke on the phone? I’m looking to get pregnant—stuck in her throat like an over-sized olive.
The woman staring at her from the porch swing had a face like worn leather. A ribbed sun hat had been pushed back from her face, revealing high cheekbones with enough creases to make a relief map of Utah blush. The woman’s thick blue eyeshadow and pale pink lipstick stood out on her heavily tanned skin. Gray hair seemed not to fall out from beneath her hat as it appeared to crawl out, only to give up just above her shoulders.
As Arielle watched in what could only be described as sheer wonderment, the woman brought a thin, wrinkled hand adorned with several large turquoise rings into view. She placed a cigarette between her lipstick-marred lips and slowly inhaled. A moment later, she exhaled, and when the smoke cleared, the woman leaned forward even further, revealing earrings that matched her turquoise rings.
Filius obcisor.
They looked eerily like the stones from the church, the ones that desperate woman threw into the bowl beneath the painting of Raymond Nonnatus—like the one that Martin had stolen.
“Arielle?” the woman asked again. Her voice was the same as Arielle had heard on the other end of the payphone, which seemed to not only be separated by an inordinate amount of time, but the vast reaches of space as well.
What the fuck am I doing here?
She gaped, unsure of how to respond.
The woman looked away as she took another drag of her cigarette. When she turned back to Arielle, she was grinning.
“Of course it’s you, Arielle.” The woman patted the spot on the porch swing next to her. “Come, sit beside me.”
A slurping sound came from her left, and Arielle immediately swung her head in that direction.
For the second time in less than a minute, her heart skipped a beat.
At first, she thought that two of the long, thin trees had been chopped down and were going to crush her. But when they articulated in an awkward, uncoordinated fashion, she realized that they weren’t trees but legs.
She tried to step backward, but her feet stuck in the mud, and it was all she could do to keep from falling on her ass.
And she gaped. She couldn’t help it.
The man that shambled toward her was so tall that his face was obscured by shadows, his head blocking out the sun. He must have been close to seven feet tall, dwarfing her five-and-a-half-foot frame. Dressed in a red-and-black checkered shirt and a pair of soiled overalls that stopped just short of his ankles, he looked like a caricature of an emaciated lumberjack. His feet were plunged so deeply into the mud that he had to pull his leg at least a foot out of the ground before putting it down again. And when he did, he revealed a knotted mess of mud that lacked any semblance of a foot. If she were a betting woman, she would have put her money on him not wearing any shoes.
In the end, all of Arielle’s preparation for what to say should anyone be home at 1818 Coverfeld Ave—and now two people! Who woulda thunk it?—were for naught, as two words spilled out of her.
“Jesus, fuck!”
She tried to move her feet again, but the mud held fast. Her hands instinctively balled into fists, and she stopped just short of raising them in front of her face as Kevin had first taught her so many years ago.
Punching would do no good here; she could not possibly fight this giant of a man, no matter how uncoordinated he appeared.
The porch swing creaked loudly from somewhere off to her right, but Arielle kept her eyes trained on the man who simply stood there, teetering on one foot about ten paces from where she was rooted.
“Jessie!” the woman from the porch hollered. “Back off!” She let out some bizarre a hiss/whistle combination, and the man responded immediately with a head nod and a sound that might have been construed for agreement. Then he planted his leg in the mud, the movement accompanied by a horrible suckling sound, and turned without another word.
Arielle watched him awkwardly shamble back into the trees, her mouth still wide.
What the hell was that? Jessie?
When he finally retreated out of sight, Arielle took a deep breath, her heartrate returning to somewhere near normal.
The wind had died, and the foul air had returned.
“Don’t be bothered by him, sweetie. He’s harmless. Just an overgrown oaf that takes care of the yardwork for an old woman.”
Arielle glanced around briefly at the muddy lane, the overgrown moss creeping up the side of the house, and the tall, branchless trees that raced up to a canopy that nearly blocked out the sun entirely.
Yardwork?
“Completely harmles
s, my dear. Now, why don’t you come here and sit beside me?”
The woman’s grin returned, and against her better judgment, Arielle took two deliberate steps forward.
Two steps. That was all it took before her rational mind kicked into gear again, telling her that this was ridiculous, probably even dangerous. But the other half of her mind was curious. Interested. Determined.
And, as usual, the latter won out.
There was something about the woman’s voice, something that drew Arielle in. The soothing quality that had been apparent on the phone seemed amplified in the calm, swampy air.
“Who are you?” Arielle asked breathlessly. Despite her years of training, moving through the muddy driveway was proving exhausting.
The woman brought the cigarette to her lips and took another drag. Then she smiled, revealing a perfectly white and perfectly straight set of teeth that couldn’t possibly have been her own.
“You know who I am,” she replied simply.
Arielle continued toward the porch, finding herself nodding as she put her muddy shoe on the first wooden step. Like the rest of the house, the porch was a bland gray, the color of microwaved meat.
The woman’s smile grew.
“You know who I am, sweets,” she repeated.
Her smile was so wide now that it seemed to literally stretch from ear to ear, nearly splitting her leathery face in two.
Arielle sat down beside the woman, breathing in her lavender scent. It was too cloying for her taste, but it was still a welcome relief to the general sulfurous funk of the swamp.
“Mother,” Arielle heard herself whisper.
The woman nodded.
“That’s right, sweets, you can call me Mother.”
* * *
When the sun weakened to the point that it could no longer penetrate the dense canopy above, Arielle and Mother decided to head inside.
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