by Aaron Polson
Fuck her.
When the others, followed by the cameras, had made their way into the parlor for post-dinner chit-chat, Sarah had turned for the stairs.
“I’m going to chill out upstairs,” she had said.
It was easy to lie. It was easy to travel the extra flight of stairs and find herself at Johnny’s door. She opened it with ease, too. His suitcase called her. She’d seen him with a gun, hadn’t she? Why did he have a gun? Why would he bring a gun to this God-awful house? Her hands touched his clothing. She ran fingers over his soft, cotton shirts and found the pistol.
It was heavy and metal and almost black. The barrel was narrow, almost so narrow her little finger wouldn’t fit inside. The gun forced a shudder through her body. She stuffed it back under the shirts and lifted her face.
On the wall behind the little table a mirror gave her a reflection.
The mirror hadn’t been there before, had it? She could almost swear it was new.
God she looked fat.
Steak and potatoes and fat.
That was Johnny’s problem. She was fat—she’d really bloated out since he’d been away, and now he wanted nothing to do with the new, chubby Sarah. She touched her cheek. Fat. She could purge again. One more time wouldn’t hurt, would it? It couldn’t. She’d been clean for years… One more tickle in her throat, one more purge in the third floor toilet…
Sarah turned away from the mirror and found the small bathroom down the hall.
The others, all of them chatting away on the first floor, wouldn’t hear her at all.
Chapter 18: Whiteout
Sleep dueled with Kelsey until, at last, the woman surrendered.
She’d dreamed of Jared so often of late that she expected to see her old friend and his simple, comforting smile. She anticipated the same, horrific end to the dream—the discovery of his desiccated body in the stand of trees near the house or his emaciated corpse walking through the second floor hallway. She’d wrestled with dreams of that type before.
But Kelsey’s dreams brought her father, healthy and fit as he had been long before the stroke. He came to her in his pale blue work shirt, the one with his name stitched in red above the left breast. He held out his hand and led her into a maze of brown, aged wood. They turned into the maze, and she followed her father past several turns. In the dream, she felt the need to speak to her father’s ghost. She opened her mouth, she tried, but the dream remained as silent as a lonely tomb. But, as if he heard her, the man stopped, turned his head slightly, and held a finger to his lips.
The face began to decompose, thin strips sliding down the sides until yellow bone pushed through. As it did so, the skull rotated until Kelsey stared deep into the black and empty wells in her dream-father’s eyes once floated.
She gave a gasp and woke, sweating. Sunlight played at the edge of the window shade.
Another day.
She came closer to the end with each night. Five nights more…
Sarah’s bed was empty. Kelsey sat up and stared into the corners of the room. The travel clock read 7:43 AM.
Just a dream.
Just a dream.
~
Downstairs in the dining room, Sarah dumped a heaping mass of hash browns onto her plate. She dropped the lid on the chafing dish and moved on to the next.
“I know hash browns don’t travel well, but these look pretty crispy.”
She removed the next lid and forked three links of sausage.
“The sausage is still steaming, too. Good to know Ma and Pa home-cookin’ weren’t slowed down by the snow.”
“Not yet,” Johnny muttered.
Behind her at the table, Johnny nursed a mug of black coffee. Erin leaned on her hands across from Johnny, an empty plate in front of her. Dark smudges marred the skin under her eyes, making it appear she hadn’t slept much the night before. Wayne stood in the corner, his face behind the camera.
Kelsey’s eyes went to the camera as soon as she entered the room. Its black eye hovered over the room, all-seeing. She squirmed slightly, but found a smile when Johnny looked at her.
“Good morning, Kels. Breakfast is served—that is as long as Sarah saves you any.”
Sarah frowned and scraped her fourth sausage link back into the dish. “Funny, John.”
Johnny shrugged.
“Are you all right, Erin?” Kelsey asked as she slid into a chair at the table’s end. “You look a little sleepy.”
“Right. Sleepy,” Sarah muttered through a mouthful of sausage. “Looks like you were up all night.”
Erin straightened in her chair. “I always have trouble sleeping in strange places.”
“Don’t tell the house,” Sarah said. “It might not like being called strange.”
“I don’t mean the house, exactly.” Erin pushed a strand of blonde hair from her forehead. “It’s just new to me. That’s what I meant by strange.”
“Maybe you wanted to listen for more footsteps,” Sarah offered. She dumped ketchup on her potatoes, spilling an extra blob next to the sausages. “What?” she protested when Kelsey flashed a glare at her.
“I believe Erin heard a noise two nights ago,” Kelsey said. “I believe her.”
Erin rubbed her cheek. “Well it was too quiet last night. If anyone else heard steps, they were mine. I got up around three and walked around a little. Somebody upstairs snores. The whole house was quiet. Crazy, eerie quiet. The snow stopped sometime before four. The flakes were big and fat and tumbling slowly, and then nothing. The sky is still pretty grey Someone should check the weather, just to be safe.”
“Safe?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah… I’m just thinking how none of us, really, wants to be stuck here with no food.” Erin surveyed the others’ faces. Sarah shoveled fork loads of hash browns into her mouth. Kelsey dropped her attention to her hands, both of them spread on the table top. Johnny cleared his throat and tossed back another shot of coffee.
“No one wants that, Erin.” Johnny set his mug on the table. “Ben mentioned stock in the pantry. I’m sure he’s planned for the contingencies. The odds are against it snowing enough to trap us here, anyway. Especially in December.”
Sarah wagged her fork in the air. “Yeah. I know you might not be familiar with the cold white stuff, but most blizzards dump on us in January or February.”
“What if something else happens?” Erin asked.
Kelsey leaned forward. She heard a hint in Erin’s voice, a tiny trace of fear. “What do you mean, something else?”
“Someone gets hurt. An injury we can’t deal with here in the house. What if someone needs medical attention and we can’t call for it? What if we can’t get out because of the snow?”
Sarah wiped her mouth on a paper napkin. “My car might not be much to look at, but she’s pretty good in slush. I had two new tires put on, too. Mary Jane is a front-wheel drive scrapper.”
Johnny chuckled. “You still drive Mary Jane?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Somebody stuck with me, at least.”
Erin’s face was still pale, still stretched and afraid. She chewed her lip, staring at the surface of the big dining room table with blank, long-distance eyes. Kelsey read what she could in Erin’s face—maybe she read too much, maybe she assumed too much, but Erin wore the face of real fear, almost like she knew her anxieties were going to happen, they were going to come true. Someone was going to be hurt. Somehow this girl knew.
“Speaking of cars…” Johnny pushed his empty mug toward the middle of the table. “Where are ours, anyway?”
Sarah speared a sausage. “Dunno. I figured Wormsley’s guys did what he said.” She bit off half of the sausage and started chewing.
“Which was?” Johnny asked. “I got here late, remember?”
“They parked them somewhere else. He didn’t want to sully the shot or whatever. They must have taken them around back… Parked them behind the house.”
“Have you looked out back?” Johnny asked.
&
nbsp; “I have,” Kelsey said. “I glanced out there yesterday afternoon when the power was down.”
“Any cars?” Sarah asked.
“No.”
Johnny rose. He looked at Kelsey and then back at Sarah. “I’m going to peek. See what I can see. If this is another one of Wormsley’s little games…” He sighed as he strode from the room, ducking through the archway leading to the kitchen.
The three women didn’t speak. Tension rose in the room, thick like humidity in the air. Kelsey’s stomach turned as she imagined the three of them vying for Johnny’s attention. Is that what they were doing? Once upon a time, she might have felt that way, a certain loathing for Sarah because of her relationship with Johnny, but now—
Erin’s sob came so quickly, so unexpectedly, Kelsey jumped and banged her knee on the underside of the table. She rubbed her leg. “Erin?”
“I’m… I’m okay…” Erin blotted her face with a napkin. Her eyes were red and glistening with tears, but something else lingered there, a knowing. “Just a little… Homesick I guess.”
“Homesick? What is wrong with you, California?” Sarah snarled as she spoke. “Blubbering like a toddler.”
Kelsey pushed from the table, her knee throbbing.
Erin’s tear-stained face lifted “Why do you hate me?”
“Hate you?” Sarah set her fork next to her empty, ketchup-stained plate. “What do you mean, hate you? Such harsh language.”
“Always picking at me. Calling me California. I have a name, Sarah.”
“Right. I know.” Sarah’s face was a piece of stone, hard and cruel and unbending. “We all do.”
Kelsey’s tongue was stuck in her mouth, cemented to her teeth.
“So back off, okay? I didn’t ask for you to attack me—”
“Yes, I attacked you. You’re right, Erin. I don’t like you. You’re an outsider. You’re not part of our little club. Do you feel better? At least you know where you stand. I’m never going to like you, your shiny pony tail, your perky tits—any part of you.”
“Sarah…” Kelsey stood up and held out a hand. Her own voice sounded so tiny, so far away. She felt the camera’s black eye on her neck. “Sarah…”
“Damn. It’s Johnny, isn’t it? I’ve seen the way you look at him.” Erin’s knuckles whitened on the table’s edge. “He doesn’t love you anymore, does he?”
“You bitch.”
“Is that why you stuff all that shit in your face? Tying to fill the hole he left in your—”
Erin didn’t finish her sentence because Sarah hurled a plate at her head. The younger woman ducked just before the plate whizzed past, collided with the wall, and shattered in a mass of jagged, white shards with a sudden clatter. The camera caught everything.
“Sarah?” Kelsey called, but Sarah was gone, darting around the corner of the dining room toward the parlor. The cameraman turned and followed.
“I’m sorry…” Erin’s face had lost all color. She was on her hands and knees on the floor. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Sarah can be abrupt. She doesn’t mean what she said.” Kelsey reached out to help Erin to her feet. “You just struck a nerve.”
“So Johnny and Sarah?”
“For three years in college. She thought they’d get married.” Kelsey glanced over her shoulder. “I should go and—”
“The snow’s coming down again.” Johnny stood at the kitchen entrance. “What was that noise? I heard something hit the wall.”
“Sarah dropped a plate,” Erin said, gesturing toward the shattered mess.
Johnny’s eyebrows knit together. “She dropped a plate?”
“I’m going to check on her,” Kelsey said. She hurried from the dining room, making for the stairs. A brush of cold air tickled her skin as she passed the front door. She paused to look through the window, and sure enough, snow. A dark iron shroud had replaced the sky, and from the grey mass huge flakes fell. Kelsey rose to her toes and peered past the porch. The ground already wore a light dusting of white. She took the stairs two at a time.
On the second floor, she checked the yellow room and even Erin’s blue room in case Sarah turned her anger into more destructive and vindictive tendencies. Both rooms were empty. Kelsey made for the the third floor.
“What is the hurry?” Daniel said as Kelsey burst from the stairwell. His dark hair was disheveled as though he’d just woken up.
“Sarah—have you seen her?”
“Maybe in the bathroom. The door is locked.” He held up his toothbrush. “I will have to go downstairs.”
Kelsey took a deep breath before rapping her knuckles against the third floor bathroom door. She waited for an answer. A loud click pulled her attention toward the end of the hall. Howard, the sound man, smiled and nodded as he walked past her. He’d been in the end room.
“Mornin’,” he muttered before starting down the stairs.
Kelsey knocked on the bathroom door again.
“Occupied,” Sarah’s muffled voice came through the door.
“It’s me, Kelsey.”
“I said it was occupied.”
“Let me in.” Kelsey held her breath.
Moments passed. The lock clicked from the inside. Kelsey touched the knob and turned. She found Sarah on the floor, her face the color of bleached flour, and a line of wet, sweaty hair at the top of her forehead.
“Sarah?”
Sarah held her head in one hand. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
Kelsey’s gaze flicked to the toilet. Fresh vomit floated in the bowl, bits of brown sausage and yellow scraps of potato.
“Jesus, Sarah.”
“I thought I could keep it together,” Sarah said. “I haven’t done it in almost a year.”
Kelsey knelt and patted her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
Sarah’s body shook. “No… No it’s not. It’s not remotely okay. I did it last night, too. I didn’t tell anybody.”
“It’s the house.”
“No…” Sarah looked up. “God—they’re fucking everywhere.”
Kelsey turned and found a camera peering over her shoulder. Wayne’s face was invisible behind the lens. Rage filled her chest, a white-hot anger she’d never felt before. The cameras prodded her friend’s wounds. They pricked Kelsey’s courage.
“Get out,” she said.
Wayne didn’t move.
“Get out, I said.” Kelsey stood. The black lens rose with her. “Get the fuck out.” She shoved a hand against the camera lens. “Leave her alone.”
The camera dropped. “Damn. You’re both a couple of nutty bitches.” Wayne backed from the room.
Kelsey slammed the door and flipped the lock.
“Thanks,” Sarah said.
“No problem.” Kelsey flushed the toilet and stroked Sarah’s hair. “We have to stick together.”
“We used to be a good team. I don’t know what happened.”
Kelsey slid to the floor beside Sarah and propped her back against the wall. “This house happened. We all lost it then, Johnny… you… me…”
Sarah nodded. “What the hell are we doing back?”
Chapter 19: Memories
Kelsey held her nose against the sharp tang of nail polish. Sarah was painting Kelsey’s toenails this time, an indignity Kelsey endured to help bolster Sarah’s flagging spirit. The two had spent much of the morning cloistered in their yellow bedroom, rehashing the old days. Deep red polish glittered. Kelsey hadn’t painted her nails since junior high.
“Remember that guy you dated sophomore year? The one with the extra nipple?”
Kelsey laughed. “Donnie. I almost forgot about Donnie. We only went out twice, and the first time doesn’t count.”
“Whatever. I think the two of you were destined for one another. Didn’t he have a name for the nipple?”
“Mister Nasty.” Kelsey giggled again. She hadn’t laughed so much since her father’s funeral, and the warmth which spread through her chest felt good. “Donnie called the spare Mis
ter Nasty.”
“Donnie was nasty, wasn’t he?” Sarah capped the nail polish. “Didn’t he jack off in front of you once?”
“Our second and final date. We’d gotten back in the car after watching a movie, and he whipped it out in the parking lot.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “Did he have an extra, you know—”
“Testicle? I didn’t grope around in the dark to find out. But he started stroking it right there, talking gibberish about how Angelina Jolie made him hot and how I reminded him of Angelina Jolie.”
“Not even close. Sorry sweetie, but you don’t have the lips for it.”
“Or the hair. Or the tattoos. Whatever. So Donnie climaxes and shouts ‘Say my name.’” Kelsey closed her eyes, savoring the memory. “Of course I’ve forgotten his name and say Derek.”
Sarah covered her mouth and muttered through her fingers. “No you didn’t?”
“He didn’t notice. Good thing it was his car. Ugh.” Kelsey shook her head and flopped back onto the bed. “I can’t believe I didn’t tell you that part of the story.”
“Maybe you did. Maybe I just didn’t remember.” Sarah hopped from the end of the bed and walked to her suitcase. She stuffed the nail polish in a little zipper pouch on the side. “Why did you always get stuck with the weirdoes?”
“The good ones where already tagged and bagged.” Kelsey closed her eyes, thinking of Johnny. Always Johnny—she couldn’t scrub him from her fantasy.
Sarah moved to the window and pushed the shade aside. “Damn snow is still coming down.”
Kelsey propped herself on one elbow. “Maybe we will get stuck out here. Maybe Erin’s right.”
“Whatever. I still think Erin’s a spoiled little bitch.”
“Can you at least call a truce until—” Kelsey stopped in mid-sentence as the lights flickered. “Not again.”
“More power outage? Please. I bet Johnny’s right about Ben.” Sarah turned away from the window.