by M Sawyer
The forest looked a lot more intimidating from this close. The trees were taller, sharper, stretching into the sky like church steeples. The woods looked deeper. Trees farther back loomed into view—thin aspen with pale bark, tall evergreens bristling against the silence. Nolin’s ears pricked for any sound. All she heard was the soft crunch of grass and weeds under her feet.
Ten feet from the edge of the trees, she paused. For the first time, she realized what a bad idea this was. What if she did see something? What if it was something dangerous like an aggressive animal, or a serial killer hiding out in the shelter of the woods?
She should be afraid. Though her mind thought it, she didn’t feel it.
Now that she was close she saw nothing. Not even a leaf waving in the breeze.
The full moon illuminated the trees for about twenty yards into the woods. The thick canopy blocked out any light farther in. Nolin slipped her phone out of her pocket, snapped it open, then turned the glowing screen to the forest. She wished she’d sprung for the fancy smartphone with the flashlight app instead of relying on a dim little screen. The light of the screen did absolutely nothing, so she flipped the phone closed and stuffed it back into her jeans.
She could see back a little farther now. The darkness of the woods seemed like a dark mist rather than the simple absence of light. This darkness had form, maybe even a mind of its own.
Nolin shook the thought from her head. Darkness couldn’t think. It didn’t have mass. The canopy was just very good at blocking out the moonlight.
I really need sleep.
Satisfied that she’d simply imagined something moving, Nolin turned back toward the house.
A light breeze rose. The leaves of the trees hissed.
Then, a soft laugh from somewhere in the trees.
Nolin whirled around.
“Hello?” she called.
Again, a gentle sound like a child’s giggle, so soft that it could have been leaves rubbing against bark, or wings soaring between the tree trunks. Did she just imagine it? Nolin didn’t feel chilly anymore. Adrenaline rushed through her veins, and her heart thudded in her throat. She took another step forward, then another, until she could reach out and place a hand on one of the thin tree trunks.
Sweat beaded at her hairline. She leaned forward, supported by her hand on the tree. She didn’t dare enter the woods, so she strained to peer farther into its depths.
“Hello!” she shouted. Her cry fell flat against her ears. The sound didn’t penetrate the murky darkness. She might as well have hollered into a tiny closet. Nolin fought to keep her breath steady while she listened and watched.
In her ear, she heard a soft sigh, like an exhale. Nolin held her breath.
Again, the tiniest hush of a breath against her ear. She jerked her head to the side, but there was only open pasture and moonlight.
She was really losing it now. I need sleep. I just want to sleep.
Finally, Nolin stepped back from the edge of the trees and turned to walk back to the house. Her heart started to slow. The cold night air nipped at her nose and fingertips again.
This is all a dream. A vivid, lucid dream.
With one hand, she pinched her other arm. It stung. She blinked. Nothing changed. She was still walking through the field, her pant legs were still soaked, and she’d hardly slept at all though it was early in the morning. Definitely not a dream. A hallucination, maybe. Didn’t that happen to people who were severely sleep-deprived?
She reached the fence and scrambled over it, back into the yard. Casting a nervous glance over her shoulder at the woods, she crossed the lawn to the back door. She could have sworn she felt eyes on her, the same feeling she got in a hospital full of security cameras. The same feeling that had followed her as a child.
She jogged the last few steps to the door. As she let herself in, the soft laugh echoed again, not from the trees this time, but inside her head. Violently, she shook her head, stepped into the house, and locked the door behind her.
Chapter 24
NOLIN’S MOUTH TASTED like sawdust when she woke on the lumpy couch later that morning. Her limbs were heavy as lead. For a moment, she didn’t remember where she was.
Memories of the previous night rushed back to her. Driving into the town she’d thought she’d left forever, Melissa’s rail-thin body in the doorframe, the stinging slap across her face. She remembered the woods, the smooth bark under her hands, the chill of the dew on her feet as she stared into the forest’s depths, and the tinkling laugh inside her own mind.
It wasn’t a dream, she was sure of that. It was far too vivid. A hallucination, on the other hand...
Nolin shoved herself into a sitting position on the couch. Bright sunlight streamed through the window, stinging her groggy eyes. She rested her elbows on her knees and placed her face in her hands, palms pressing gently into her eye sockets. When was the last time she’d gotten more than two hours of sleep in a row? She couldn’t remember.
A thump above her startled her out of her grogginess. Melissa was awake. Nolin lifted her face from her hands to gaze up at the ceiling. The filth of the room dawned on her, and something inside her withered. This awful house, the stacks of junk, and the thick layer of dust that covered it all… she’d take care of it and finally leave this whole train wreck behind her forever.
Nolin pulled her phone out of her pocket and flipped it open to text Rebecca.
This is going to take longer than
I thought. I’m not sure when I’ll
be back.
Should she tell her about the hallucination from the night before?
Nolin could guess what she’d say. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you need to see a doctor. Find out what’s wrong. Get some sleep meds. Whatever you need to do to sleep, do it. The thought of seeing a doctor made Nolin feel sick. If she never saw another doctor again as long as she lived, it would be too soon. And she would never, ever take medication again. She’d had enough drugs to last a lifetime. And then some.
Nolin pressed send and snapped the phone shut.
Melissa’s footsteps pattered above her. Nolin sighed and heaved herself off the couch to make breakfast.
Nolin remembered when she needed to stand on a chair to cook. Now, she still had to stand on tiptoes to reach anything higher than the bottom shelf. The kitchen felt smaller than she’d remembered. She’d grown since she left five year earlier.
In the entire kitchen, she only managed to find a bag of white rice, pancake syrup, and some raisins hard as gravel, all of which had probably been there for years. After determining that all of these were still safe to eat, she concocted a sort of rice pudding with raisins. Though it wasn’t something she’d ever crave, it was definitely edible.
Looks like I’m going shopping today.
Her mother was still shuffling around upstairs. Nolin assumed she’d be leaving to work soon. Hopefully, she’d remember that Nolin was there and wouldn’t just regard the previous night as a bad dream.
Nolin washed the dust out of two cereal bowls and scooped the porridge into them. A few minutes later, Melissa appeared on the stairs, dressed in a white button-down shirt and a khaki skirt that were both too big. Her thin hair was clean and combed. She kept her eyes down, veiled behind her glasses and bangs, and retrieved a tan jacket off the back of a kitchen chair.
“I made breakfast,” Nolin offered, sliding a bowl and spoon across the bar.
“I’m not hungry,” Melissa said flatly.
Nolin reached over the bar, picked up the spoon, and stabbed it into the porridge so that it stood up like an exclamation point.
“Yes you are. Eat something. It’s good for you.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Pantry Surprise. I had to get creative. I’ll go shopping today.”
Melissa wrinkled her nose, but she approached the bar and spooned a minuscule bite into her mouth.
“Is this really all I have?” she asked quietly.
“That and
some stale saltines.”
Melissa took another small bite, her expression blank.
“Huh.” She slung her purse over her shoulder and walked down the hall and out the door without another word.
What was that supposed to mean? Nolin hadn’t expected gratitude, but it wasn’t like Melissa to leave without making a biting comment. “What the hell...” Nolin mumbled, and she turned to the front window. She split the blinds with her fingers and peered out. Melissa walked down the front walk, then turned down the sidewalk toward the bus stop at the end of the street.
Nolin’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen.
Don’t take too long. Stay in touch.
It definitely won’t take longer than two weeks. Buoyed by the thought of icy Alaskan rivers, Nolin finished what she could of her porridge and got to work.
Empty tissue boxes, plastic cracker sleeves, gum wrappers, old newspapers and piles upon piles of junk mail littered the kitchen and living room. Empty toilet paper rolls and hand-soap bottles piled up in the corners of the bathroom, spilled out of the garbage cans.
There were no signs of feminine hygiene products in the bathrooms. No wrappers, no empty boxes. Melissa wasn’t menstruating, Nolin realized. She was too malnourished.
I have to get some food in her.
She stuffed trash bags with armloads of garbage until the shiny black plastic bulged, then hauled the bags out to the dumpster in the driveway. When the dumpster was full, she wheeled it to the curb and stacked the remaining bags beside it, praying that trash day would come soon so she wouldn’t have to make trip upon trip to the dump in her tiny car.
With another armload of bags, she marched upstairs, bracing herself for what she’d find. An odd, stale smell filled her nose in the familiar hallway. Her mother’s room on the right, the studio straight ahead, the bathroom at the end of the hall on the right, and her old room. All the doors were closed. The night-light flickered, the same one she remembered from her childhood. She always hated that light, the way it cast sickly yellow light over the narrow hallway like a scene in a horror movie.
Her room was locked. She felt around the doorframe for a key. Nothing. She made a mental note to keep an eye out for the key or, failing that, a tool kit. Next, she tried the door across the hall, her mother’s room.
The downstairs was practically spotless by comparison. Piles of laundry covered the floor and the unmade bed. Dust and debris stood out on the dark carpet where it showed through the clothes strewn about, and it felt gritty even under her shoes. Books, papers, and notebooks were scattered over the floor and half of the bed, the side her father used to sleep on. The nightstand was stacked high with books, prescription bottles, and half-full water glasses, a few of which were also spilled around the room. The same thick layer of dust that coated everything downstairs was present here as well, making the room look like a faded old photograph.
It’s like Boo Radley’s house.
The books were first. She picked them up carefully, one by one, and stacked them against the wall. Some of the pages were bent, maybe to hold a place. Bitterness rose inside her. She bit her lip and straightened some of the corners. She hated it when she lost her spot in a book she was reading.
Then she carried the water glasses down to the counter in two trips. She stacked papers and kicked the laundry into one massive pile in the corner of the room. She avoided the bathroom. Thankfully, the door was shut. A few times, she thought she heard the hiss of the shower or saw a wisp of steam streaming under the door.
It’s your imagination, you baby. Calm down.
For the rest of the afternoon she hauled trash out to the curb, bags and bags of it. The trash collector had probably been doubting whether anyone lived in this house by how rarely Melissa seemed to take trash out.
How was this more exhausting than landscaping a massive cemetery all day? In the hall, Nolin slid to the floor with her back against the wall, eyes closed.
Was this really helping? Hauling all this trash out, cleaning up—what was the point? It would probably all accumulate again over the next five years anyway. She was just chasing her tail. Nolin bounced the back of her head against the wall.
Cleaning was just a placeholder until she figured out what else to do. Nolin would make sure Melissa was secure before disappearing for good. She’d never have to worry about her again. She’d never be free as long as Melissa pulled at the corner of her mind.
Though she knew it was pointless, Nolin reached up and tried the knob of her bedroom again. Still locked tight. Finally, Nolin pushed herself up from the floor and dragged herself down the stairs. There was no way she could try to sleep on that couch again, so she might as well look in the garage for some tools to get into the bedroom. Her creaky old bed would be worlds better than a lumpy sofa.
The garage smelled like a moldy shoe. Nolin flipped on the light, which buzzed like an insect. There was still an oil stain on the floor from her father’s station wagon. The storage shelves on the walls showed their empty gaps like missing teeth; the toolboxes she remembered were gone, along with the boxes of old Mad magazines and yearbooks labeled “Paul.”
Lacy cobwebs draped the shelves and the corners. The typewriter in Nolin’s head rattled off more items for the To Do list.
Find out what that smell is.
Put out rat traps.
DUST, for hell’s sake.
There had to be a tool set around here somewhere, or at least a decent screwdriver. Starting with the bottom shelves, Nolin opened box after box that produced nothing but stacks of old paperwork, clothes long overdue at Goodwill, dusty old books, and odds and ends that probably belonged on the curb with the other trash, but no tools. Not even a pair of pliers.
On the end of the second shelf sat a faded blue tote-box. She yanked it out and popped off the misshapen lid, hoping for the glint of a screwdriver.
The box was full of spiral-bound notebooks and loose papers, yellowed with age and covered with Melissa’s scratchy handwriting.
Nolin froze, suddenly feeling like she’d walked in on something private, but intriguing. She glanced over her shoulder through the open door into the house, then knelt on the dirty cement floor with the box in her lap. Her ears pricked for the slightest sound of footsteps on the front walk or the turning of a doorknob. She reached into the box, aware that she was plunging into a well of secrets.
She slipped out one of the sketchbooks. The spiral binding rubbed on the binding of the book next to it and made a zipping sound. Her heart thudded faster. She peeled the cover open.
The inside of the bent cover read “Melissa Michaels, 1988” in black ink. The first page was covered in swirling doodles in pencil, patterns of looping spiral drawing dotted with tiny leaves.
She touched her index finger to the page. It came away dark and shiny from the loose graphite. Gingerly, she turned the pages; more of the same aimless doodles. The spirals twisted into different shapes, crisscrossing, growing rougher and rougher with each page. The smooth, curved lines turned harsh and scratchy. The tiny leaves started to look less like leaves and more like letters. Nolin held the book closer to her face and squinted at the tiny writing.
stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop
The same word, over and over, the line of text running along the doodled lines like train tracks beside a road. Nolin flipped pages. The shapes repeated, though slightly changed each time. The lines grew to a rounder shape. Eventually, she realized she was looking at a human face, slightly feminine with high cheekbones and a thin, pointed nose. It was impossible to tell if it belonged to a woman or a young girl. Nolin turned back a few pages to watch the distortion of the drawings. The lines had transformed so gradually that she couldn’t pick out the point where they’d ceased to be an abstract design and had become a face with hollow eyes and wild hair. The words that formed the lines had also changed, though she couldn’t pinpoint where.
sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry
sorry
Nolin realized how tightly she gripped the book. Her heart was pounding. Was it fear? Excitement? This intimate look into her mother’s mind both thrilled and terrified her.
As she neared the back of the sketchbook, the pages became wrinkled. The back part of the book must have gotten crumpled at some point. The lines became darker and more smudged. The strange face still appeared on every page, looking in different directions, mouth opening and closing as if it were speaking.
Nolin’s ears pricked to the sound of light footsteps up the front walkway, floating taps that could have been the footsteps of a cat. Melissa. Was it late afternoon already?
Damn.
Nolin snapped the sketchbook shut and replaced it, quickly and quietly. Trying to look casual, she stepped back into the house, expecting to see Melissa. She bristled, ready for glares, stinging words.
There was no one.
“Mom?” Nolin called softly.
Nothing.
Nolin shut the door behind her and paused to listen. Something smelled strange, fresh like a breeze. Her skin prickled. Someone had been there.
You just imagined you heard something, she told herself. You’re being stupid. You’re tired.
Nolin shook her head, shaking off the thoughts. Still, she could smell green wood, and she thought she felt the softest breeze through the hair on the back of her neck.
Chapter 25
FROM HER CLOSED bedroom, Melissa smelled something delicious wafting up from downstairs. Her stomach turned, both attracted and repulsed by the thought of roasted chicken. She hadn’t eaten since those bites of porridge made from scrounged pantry ingredients. Nolin must have shopped. Melissa imagined her kitchen stocked with cans of soup, jars of peanut butter and jewel-colored jams, her freezer stacked with frozen steaks and chicken breasts.
Usually, she ordered groceries online at work. Every two weeks, a box of dry ingredients showed up on her doorstep. For the past month, there had been no groceries. No job, no internet access to order groceries from, and no money to buy them with. She’d stretched the last box, eating the least she could get away with, and she’d stumbled into an old pattern. The constant, gnawing hunger was oddly comforting. It grounded her, distracted her, and slowed her down in every way, especially her thoughts. Now, she remembered why she’d left all the meals Nolin used to bring to her room untouched; it gave her a handle, an anchor, something to pull her out of her mind and hold her into her body, to remind her she was alive and breathing.