by Nic Sheff
I nod.
“Perfect.”
“And . . . uh . . . be sure to wear some real shoes,” he says.
I tell him I’ll see him tomorrow.
I run back to the house.
I pull myself up and back in through the same window I used before—locking it shut behind me. Then I go back out into the hall and lock the storage room, too. The standing grandfather clock chimes ten times, over and over—low and resonating.
Ten a.m. I count it out loud.
That means I have two more hours of cleaning before lunch and then my dad’s stupid lessons.
I put my headphones back on.
Marc Bolan sings, “Life’s a gas.”
Obviously, he never had to come to Harmony House.
After listening to Electric Warrior in its entirety, I move on to The Slider, and then Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, and then finally, after lunch, it’s time for my first day of homeschooling. My dad sits me down at the kitchen table and we go over Bible verses for a long, long time. Then we practice some algebra problems.
I actually kind of like it, believe it or not. Doing problems . . . I don’t know . . . there’s something fun about it—like playing a game. My dad doesn’t really know shit about math, so all he can do is give me workbooks to get through. It’s a good excuse to get out of here for a while. What I ask him is, “Hey, Dad, can I take this math work into town? I noticed a little diner when we drove in. Maybe I could pick us up some dinner from there, bring it back? Do these problems while I wait? Then you won’t have to go to the store or cook anything.”
My dad nods slowly, scratching at his jawline. His thick fingernails are chewed down so they’re bleeding in places.
“Yes,” he says. “Yes, that’s a good idea.”
He lets his shoulders rise and fall. I play, absently, with the ring in my pocket.
“I gotta go change,” I say.
My dad catches my wrist in his rough hand.
“What’ve you got there?” he asks.
“N-nothing,” I say.
He takes the ring from out of my pocket and holds it up, staring. He grits his teeth together. His face flushes bright red.
“Where did you get this?” he almost yells.
“Oh, uh . . . I found it. It was in a back room.”
My dad takes the ring and puts it in his own pocket. “Don’t take things that aren’t yours,” he says.
He shakes his head.
Then he laughs.
“It’s okay,” he says. “Anyway, I’ll take a BLT.”
I blink. “What?”
“From the diner.”
My dad is a psycho, I think. But obviously I don’t say that out loud. What I do say is, “Sure.”
“With French fries.”
“Okay.”
“But I mean it,” he says. “There are things in this house. They’re not . . . to be played with. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
I run upstairs quickly and change—noticing that black devotional book laid open on my bed to the page where my mother’s name is written out in delicate cursive letters.
It’s strange—I don’t remember leaving it here.
I pick it up off the floral bedspread and flip through the pages, feeling a knotting in my stomach.
For the first time I see that some of the words have been crossed out, as though with a black Magic Marker.
I turn to the Prayer of Saint Francis—
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is discord, harmony
Where there is error, truth
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
I shiver.
It couldn’t’ve been that way before. I mean, I would’ve seen it.
Could my dad have done it? That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe he’s trying to send some sort of message.
I wonder, then, if he’s been looking through my things. It’s the only explanation.
I drop the book on the floor and pull back the sheets and comforter on the bed. I reach my hand under the pillow, where I left the photograph of my mother.
My breath catches. It’s not there.
I throw the pillows off the bed and pull the bed frame back from the wall, to see if maybe it fell, but I can’t find it anywhere.
“Motherfucker!” I say out loud.
Then I run to the closet and feel in the lining of my coat for where I left that bag of pills. Thank God they’re still there, at least.
But why would my dad take my mom’s picture?
There’s a high-pitched whining creak of a floorboard behind me and I turn, startled, feeling someone’s eyes on me.
“Dad, what the—”
But as I spin around, there’s no one there.
Helplessly, I decide to take another Percocet to calm down. My mind is really fucking with me. Sweat beads on my forehead and my shirt clings to my back. But I’m still cold and . . . again . . . I shiver. I put on my jacket and a pair of black boots and sling my backpack over one shoulder.
I go down the stairs—hurrying past the second floor and my dad’s room.
I go out into the coming dark.
The walk into town is long and I listen to another Bowie CD, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. A few cars drive slowly past.
By the time I get to the diner the sun has set almost completely and a cold wind blows discarded trash and newspapers up the mostly empty street. I push the swinging glass door open to the warm, brightly lit diner, where the smell of coffee and baking pies makes me suddenly very hungry.
There are already a few older people inside, hunched over tables and drinking coffee at the counter. For the first time I notice a framed poster of Patsy Cline, live at Carnegie Hall, hung up on one of the white, pristine painted walls.
At a corner table, Christy is there with two girls sitting in front of, but not eating, a plate of French fries.
Aunt Rose sees me first. She’s chopping a big stack of carrots with her back to me, but turns when the door dings open and smiles.
“Jen! Hey, how are you?”
And then to Christy, “Chris, you see Jen is here?”
I raise my hand meekly to say hello.
Christy gets up and bounds over to me, surprising me with a hug. She’s wearing an orange-and-white down vest over a turtleneck, and her blond hair is tied tight in a high ponytail.
“Hey! Come and meet my friends!” she says. Before I can argue she takes my hand in hers and leads me, still bouncing, back to her corner table.
A girl she introduces as Candace is around our age, very pretty, with dark skin and a weave cut shoulder-length with bangs. The other girl, Mercedes, looks maybe a little older. She has long black hair and pale skin with the etchings of dark circles under her large brown eyes. We all wave stupidly at each other and I sit next to Candace, across from Christy and Mercedes—who I notice is wearing a Joy Division T-shirt.
“Were you guys all at school today?” I ask.
“Yeah,” says Candace. “One more day ’til the weekend.”
“Thank Christ,” says Mercedes.
Rose comes over and takes my order, which is coffee and eggs and bacon and toast. They serve breakfast all day. It’s not a bad place, I think.
“Jen’s the one I told you about,” says Christy. “The one who’s living at Harmony House for the winter.”
“W
hoa,” says Candace.
“Creepy,” says Mercedes.
They both laugh.
I do not.
Instead, I put sugar and milk in my coffee.
“How’s it going so far?” asks Christy.
I tell her it’s okay, I guess.
“What’s the house like?” Mercedes asks. “I’ve never been up there.”
I let my shoulders rise and fall. I drink some coffee and spin the cup around absently in my hands.
“I don’t know,” I say, feeling awkward suddenly.
“What I heard,” Candace says, “is it used to be like a house for unwed mothers—run by like nuns, or something. And I heard the monsignor guy, you know, who ran the place, used to torture those girls. Like he used to do all these terrible things to them.”
“Terrible things like what?” I ask.
The three girls all look at one another. Finally, Christy says, very quietly, “Those are just rumors.” She puts a delicate hand on mine, halting the endless turning of the coffee mug.
“No, it’s okay,” I say. “I don’t mind.”
“You know what else I heard?” Candace says. “That the guy who built the house back in the 1800s killed his wife and daughter.”
“No,” says Mercedes. “I heard it was the daughter that killed her mom and dad.”
Christy shakes her head. “I’m pretty sure the daughter just killed herself. Then the mom killed herself, too. And the dad went crazy. That’s what Rose told me.”
“Nice,” I say. “So, basically, I’m staying at the Overlook Hotel.”
They laugh.
“I think it’s cool you’re staying there,” says Candace. “I’m impressed.”
“Well,” I say. “You guys can come over. Anytime. Is there a video store in town?”
“They rent ’em at the deli,” says Christy. “Maybe we could get some scary movies and sleep over.”
“I’d like that,” I say, meaning it. “Tomorrow night, maybe?”
The girls look at each other again, then nod and smile.
“Sure, that’d be great,” says Christy.
I smile now, too.
“Perfect,” I say.
We go on talking like that for a while and, I guess not surprisingly, I don’t end up doing any math homework. I eat the eggs and bacon and toast and then order a BLT and French fries for my dad.
I say good-bye to the girls and to Rose and decide to cut over to the deli, real quick, to rent some videos before going home.
Again not surprisingly, the selection of videos at the deli pretty much sucks. But I end up renting The Omen with Gregory Peck, a movie with Donald Sutherland called Don’t Look Now, which I’ve never seen, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Devil Rides Out, and The Silence of the Lambs, in case the girls haven’t seen it, though they probably have. By the time I leave the deli, I’m pretty well weighed down with bags of videos, candy, and all the food from the Double R.
Out on the street the wind has picked up and I feel chilled all over as I walk back toward the house.
Thankfully, I’ve only been walking for about half a block when that girl Candace drives by in a silver Volkswagen Jetta. She rolls the passenger window down and tells me to get in.
“Thank you so much,” I say, stepping off the curb.
A voice calls from behind me. My breath catches and my stomach goes tight. I turn back to see Alex walking out of the shadows.
“Hey,” he calls out. “Where you think you’re going?”
I stand staring at him for a minute.
“Yo, Alex, get fucked!” Candace yells, flipping him off.
“Come on,” she tells me. “Come on, get in.”
Alex is looking directly at me, his eyes black and vacant.
“Come on,” says Candace again.
I climb quickly into the car.
Alex watches us go.
“What was that about?” Candace asks, taking out a cigarette from a pack of Parliaments and offering me one.
I take it and thank her and use her lighter to light it, my hands shaking kind of bad.
“He just wouldn’t leave me alone yesterday,” I say, not wanting to make too big a deal out of it. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with that guy.”
I inhale and exhale.
Candace shakes her head. “He’s an asshole.”
“Seriously.”
Candace drives me up the twisting driveway to Harmony House. She stops the car, stares up at the house a moment, her eyes wary.
“Don’t worry,” she tells me, her gaze fixed on the dark face of Harmony House. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
I thank her for the ride.
And I hope to God she’s right.
CHAPTER 5
When I tell my dad about the girls at the diner and our plans for a sleepover, he agrees to let them come over so long as I do all my work and pray and am a good girl. Of course, I agree. I’ll tell him anything he wants to hear so long as I don’t have to be trapped here with him by myself all the time.
After he eats dinner, he makes me pray again with him up in his room. He kneels with me on the floor and grasps his long, bony hands together.
I submit to this for as long as I have to.
And then I go back downstairs to watch the super-weird Donald Sutherland, Nicolas Roeg dwarf lady serial killer movie.
When it’s over I go upstairs and brush my teeth and then go back to my ugly-ass pink room.
On the floor, where I left it, that book of Bible verses is open to that same page with the Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi on it. Only now, I mean, unless I really am going fucking crazy, it looks like there are even more words crossed out. I can’t understand it. I pick the book up off the floor and read the prayer again.
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is discord, harmony
Where there is error, truth
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Jesus Christ, I think, I’m really fucking losing it.
I go to the closet and get out another one of the pills from the baggie in my jacket lining. This one, I think, is a Xanax. I dry-swallow it and then take some deep breaths and try to relax.
Somehow the window has been left open. The night air is cold and smells strongly of pine needles and the distant ocean. Leaning my body halfway out, I can see the stars clearly now—bright and complicated, glittering in the dark, like a child’s drawing of what the night sky looks like. The wind has died, so there is only the cold and the sounds of crickets and rustling of raccoons or maybe deer in the forest below. I hear what I think might be a horse whinnying not far away. I wonder, then, if that gray cat has found a home for the night, though I’m sure it must belong to one of the neighboring houses.
I decide to bring it in the house and give it some milk if I see it again tomorrow.
Then I turn off the light and go climb into the unfamiliar bed, under unfamiliar sheets and blankets, with unfamiliar smells all around me.
My eyes start to close and I hear someone whisper . . . “Good night.”
It’s my mother’s voice, but I’m too tired to care.
It’s all in my mind, I tell myself, anyway.
And I start to drift off.
And in the coming of sleep, I have a strange dream—or a strange vision.
It enters my brain like a long nail being driven in deeper and deeper and th
en deeper still.
The pain is searing.
But I don’t resist it.
I see:
At a dining room table—set with fine china and crystal glasses, a silver candelabra hung with glittering jewels, and a centerpiece of red and yellow dahlias—a family sits rigidly in their straight-backed chairs. They do not speak.
The little girl, no more than seven or eight years of age, wears a white dress trimmed with lace and black ankle boots. Her inky black hair is combed back behind her ears, which stick out a little on either side. A silver-and-pearl brooch is pinned to her chest. As she picks up her glass to drink, her vivid blue eyes catch the light. Her pupils reflect the candle’s flame.
Next to the girl, at the head of the table, her father sits eating with perfect poise and delicacy. He cuts his lamb into tiny pieces and chews the meat slowly and deliberately. He has a broad face with burning blue eyes like his daughter’s. His nose is sharp and angular.
Across from the little girl, her mother sits drinking wine from a crystal glass, the fine lines around her small mouth like a wood etching.
Rain falls against the windows.
The sound like static.
At the table, the father puts down his fork and knife, then takes a drink from his burgundy-colored wine. “Why, do you know that today I received a letter from General Grant himself?”
He turns to look at his daughter. She freezes. A wan smile spreads across the father’s face, his teeth white, but crooked. Beneath the table, he puts his hand on his daughter’s knee.
“You all right, dear?”
His hand tightens on her.
Her breath catches.
Sweat breaks out on her forehead.
She shivers.
Her mother averts her eyes.
The girl holds her breath.
And then her father removes his hand.
He returns to his plate.
And the girl’s legs begin to shake.
A thud hits the floor at the foot of my bed, tearing me out of the strange dream. I gasp and sit up, alert suddenly, scrambling to turn on the bedside lamp.
“Who’s there?” I say.
I grab the covers up all around me and blink my eyes.
Someone is moving through the room.
From off the floor the figure rises up—big, swaying arms stretched out toward me.
His blond-brown hair is sticking up, matted on one side—his eyes unfocused. He rocks back and forth.