The Twisted Ones

by T. Kingfisher

  Bongo was extremely bitter about the fact that he hadn’t gotten a cheeseburger this time and lay draped across the back seat while I unloaded the groceries. Presumably he thought if he just looked tragic enough, I would turn around and go back to the diner.

  I bribed him with a dog treat and put him on a tie-out in the front yard, since I was going to have the front door open for a while. I set up the radio on the clear spot on the kitchen counter.

  There wasn’t a lot of signal out here. I got a country station, something called “Scripture Talk with Pastor Jonah,” a salsa station, and NPR out of Chapel Hill. It was Pledge Week. It is an immutable law of the universe that whenever you listen to NPR in a strange place, it will be Pledge Week.

  Pledge Week at least had human voices, even if they had the frazzled cheerfulness of people who have been begging for money for days and see no end in sight. I fiddled with the dial until I got the least fuzzy version, cracked open a bottle of water, and rolled up my sleeves.

  Then I spent about two hours dragging everything else out of the kitchen.

  Most of it was just the usual run-of-the-mill stuff you’d expect in a kitchen, only more of it. There were bags of flour that were probably riddled with moth eggs and jars of dried rice. I’m not actually sure if rice goes bad, but this didn’t seem like the time to risk it.

  I threw the glassware into a plastic bin. Some of it cracked, but I wasn’t planning on reselling it anyway. There wasn’t any Depression-era milk glass or whatever the ritzy stuff is supposed to be.

  I suppose I could have lugged it out to Goodwill, and undoubtedly not doing so made me a terrible person, but I wanted that house empty.

  I kept a couple of plastic tumblers for my own use, then pulled open a drawer at random. It held about two hundred chopsticks, the wooden kind you get with takeout, which had been washed and put into Ziploc bags. The ends were stained with use. I stared at them for a little while.

  Yep. She was reusing disposable chopsticks.

  Well. All right, then.

  I took the Ziploc bags out gingerly. I was wearing gloves and I’m sure she used soap, but there was just something desperately unsanitary about the whole thing.

  I got halfway to the door and Bongo started barking.

  It sounded a bit like the UPS guy bark, so I hurried out to check on it.

  There was a man in the front yard, and he was big.

  He was at least six feet tall and extremely fat, but he had the kind of build where it goes out sideways, so he was broad as well as tall. He had sloped shoulders, but there was a lot of muscle underneath.

  I hoped like hell he was friendly, because he could probably break me in half with one hand. You think things like this when you’re a woman and there’s nobody around to hear you scream.

  “Hey!” he said, waving.

  I waved back. Bongo’s barks had gone from “Die, UPS scum!” to “Pet me pet me why aren’t you petting me?!” His tail wagged frantically.

  “Can I help you?” I said, trying not to sound unfriendly.

  He shrugged. Up a bit closer, I could see he was Latino, probably in his late twenties. He had a rather sheepish grin. “Hey, just saw your truck over here and thought I’d come over.” He paused and scratched at the back of his neck. “Does the old lady know you’re movin’ stuff out of her house?”

  I relaxed a little. There wasn’t a car on the road, so he’d probably come over from the commune. If I’d seen somebody cleaning out a neighbor’s house, I might come check things out too. “Well, she passed away last month, so I don’t think she’d mind.” I tossed the chopstick bags into the rocking chair, came down the steps, and stuck out my hand. “I’m her granddaughter, Melissa.”

  “Ohhhh…” He gave a short, relieved laugh. “That’s good. Not that she’s dead, I mean, but it was gonna get real awkward if you were robbing her.” He had a fairly pronounced accent, although I couldn’t place it. Somewhere farther south, but that could cover anywhere from Miami to Mexico, with a whole lot of Texas in between.

  “There’s nothing in there worth stealing, I’m afraid. I wish there were.”

  He shook my hand and glanced over at Bongo. “Is he friendly?”

  “Ridiculously so.”

  He crouched down in range of Bongo and stuck out a hand. Big he might be, but he didn’t move like it slowed him down at all. “Hey, buddy…”

  Bongo licked his fingers and jammed his head into the man’s elbow.

  “As you can see, he’s a terror,” I said.

  The man grinned up at me. “Definitely. Hey, I live across the road at the commune.”

  I took a guess. “Thomas?”

  “Tomas,” he corrected. “How’d you know?”

  “Frank at the dump.”

  “Ahhh, yeah.” Tomas laughed. “Good guy.” He stood up, to Bongo’s sorrow.

  There was something infectious about his grin. “He volunteered you, actually. But it’s okay. I won’t hold you to it.”

  Tomas groaned. “Ah, man.” He ducked his head. “What for?”

  “Helping me move appliances.”

  “Ohhh, is that all? Man, I thought you wanted me to hide a body.”

  “Maybe later. I haven’t gotten into the attic yet.”

  He laughed again. So did I, although I wasn’t entirely joking.

  “Sure. What do you need moved?”

  “Just the microwave so far. It’s one of those giant heavy ones. I’m sure there’ll be other stuff eventually.”

  “I’ll do it right now, if you want,” he said.

  This was unexpected, but I wasn’t going to look gift muscles in the mouth. “Sure. Follow me.”

  He got in through the door and whistled.

  “I know, right?”

  “Didn’t know it was this bad in here.” He shook his head. “I only talked to the old lady a few times, you know? Man.”

  “Same here, actually. I had no idea she’d been living like this until Dad called me.” I braced myself to defend my father, but Tomas just accepted this without comment.

  He had to turn sideways to get through the newspaper stacks. I pointed to the heavier microwave. “There’s the beast.”

  He laughed again. “No problem,” he said, and picked it up as if it weighed nothing. I felt a pang of resentment at evolution for stiffing me on upper-body strength.

  Tomas carried it out. He started to set it in the truck, then paused. “Hey, you gonna take this to the dump?”

  “That was the plan.”

  “Mind if I take it?” He jerked his chin over to the cluster of houses across the road. “Believe it or not, I think it’s newer than the one Foxy’s got.”

  “Foxy?” I said, a bit dubiously.

  That infectious grin came out again. “Foxy. You’ll know her if you see her.”

  I felt bad inflicting a microwave that old on anyone else and told him so. Tomas laughed.

  “Foxy won’t mind. She likes old stuff. Still has a landline phone and everything.”

  “Well, all right. The microwave’s yours,” I said. “I don’t know if it works. If it doesn’t, just bring it over and toss it in the truck and I’ll haul it away. Heck, once I’m done here, if you want the other microwave, I know that one works.”

  “Sure. Thanks.” He paused. “You need anything else moved, just come on over and bang on the door.”

  “Will do.” I waited with my hand on the doorknob, ready to turn away.

  He didn’t leave immediately, though. He glanced upward, over the roof, and then said, “Hey, be careful, yeah?”

  “Careful?” I said, a bit more sharply than I intended.

  “Ah, you know. Things in the woods around here.” He fiddled with the knob on the microwave.

  “What kind of things?” I asked.

  He was silent a little too long. I filled in the silence, which is a bad habit of mine. “Like… skunks or something?”

  “Yeah.” He seized on that as if he was relieved. “Skunks. Some of �
��em got rabies.”

  “Bongo’s had his shots.”

  “Good. Yeah. That’s good. Thanks for the microwave.”

  I waved as he ambled across the street. He’d been friendly and helpful, but it had been a more awkward parting than I’d expected.

  I went back inside the house and started scrubbing the spot where the microwave had been. There was a wealth of stains awaiting me.

  The NPR people offered me the chance to win a trip to Paris, travel dates nonnegotiable, if I called now. The largest of the stains looked a bit like a map of France if I squinted.

  I hummed and I scrubbed and I still couldn’t shake the feeling that by “things in the woods” Tomas hadn’t meant skunks at all.

  4

  I had ramen for dinner that night. I am not a cook. Bongo had dog food. He indicated that he would be more than willing to help with the ramen, but I declined.

  The kitchen was not exactly under control, but I’d taken a break to clear out the bathroom. My shower situation was in danger of becoming dire.

  The bathtub was an exciting range of hard water colors, and the shower curtain… Well, let’s not dwell on the shower curtain. I’d have to pick up a new one in town. I wondered if the hardware store had a frequent-buyer discount.

  I got enough space cleared that I could take something that approximated a shower. The hot water lasted roughly thirty seconds, and Bongo thought that the lack of curtain meant that it was doggy bath time. These are the trials of a dog owner’s life.

  The towels, on the other hand, were unused, still with little cardboard labels on them. I’d found them in the vicinity of the linen closet. They had stiffened in the store-bought folds and smelled like dust, but not mildew.

  Finally clean, I went to bed even though it was barely nine. I didn’t feel like lugging piles of crap outside in the dark, and the truck was nearly full anyway. I settled for pulling some of the newspaper stacks out on the porch after dinner, then called it a night.

  I had downloaded a romance novel—the blurb promised me that it was the next best thing to reading Jane Austen—but found myself picking up Cotgrave’s journal again instead.

  I turned the page quickly to avoid looking at Kilroy.

  The next page started with the by-now-familiar recitation:

  I made faces like the faces on the rocks, and I twisted myself about like the twisted ones, and I lay down flat on the ground like the dead ones.

  Jeez, Cotgrave, I thought, you really should talk to a therapist about this. Still, it was helpful in a way. He’d said that he could go almost two weeks if he wrote it down, so I could date the entry to… oh, a week and a half, say, after Kilroy?

  Have been sleeping in the woods again. So tired. It’s the pills. But if don’t take them, heart gets fluttery. Wish she would let me sleep. Even doctors said was fine to nap, but she won’t let me. Just meanness.

  Sleeping in the woods bad idea, know it, can’t help it. Starting to dream about them. Not like nightmares, but think they’re watching me. They’re close. These hills are full of them, I think. Won’t get too close to her, same way I wouldn’t get close to a dead skunk. Not scared, just don’t like it. But if I sleep outside, then they find me. They must know. Green Book must have left a mark on me. They’re watching.

  If had the book, could maybe find the signs to keep them away, but can’t remember now. Poppets made of beeswax and clay? But could be what summons them instead. So tired all the time.

  I stopped reading and petted Bongo instead for a minute. Poor Cotgrave. It read like dementia, or like the pills he was on were making his mind wander. There was absolutely no excuse for Grandma not letting him nap, though, the mean old bat. That was just cruelty.

  Aunt Kate had dated a guy for a little while, when I was about nine, who was weirdly controlling about food. I went into the kitchen to get a piece of toast for a snack and he freaked out because he was going to cook dinner in a few hours. Like a full-on, toddler-temper-tantrum freak-out, slamming drawers and yelling that he didn’t know why he bothered. It was nuts. I stared at him with my mouth open, and then Aunt Kate told me to go outside. I could still hear the yelling, but he didn’t come back around.

  Being nine, I got it into my head that I’d made them break up because I wanted toast. Kate had to sit me down and explain, as best she could, that he’d had some issues (that was the word she used) around meals, because of the way he was raised, and that it wasn’t my fault and no normal person would have a problem with a kid wanting a snack after school. “And thanks to you and your toast, I found out right away that I didn’t want to date him!” she said, hugging me. “I could have wasted a lot of time otherwise, and life’s too short for people who throw fits over little things. You did great!” And then we had toast for dinner, with butter and brown sugar and apple pie spice on it, and watched movies.

  Aunt Kate was really good at that sort of thing.

  I suppose it’s possible that Grandma had some issues around napping like that. I could have asked Dad, but that would have been a really awkward conversation to have… and what would I do with the information? Feel slightly more conflicted about a dead woman?

  I sighed and went back to the journal.

  There was a gap of presumably about three weeks, during which he wrote nothing but his litany about the twisted ones twice, and then the narrative started up again.

  Found my old typewriter. Had hoped that she’d put the Green Book with it, but no luck. Will write down as much as I can remember. Easier to type it out.

  Must do something. Slept in the woods yesterday and woke up and one of them was right there. Went away somehow but saw the whiteness leaving.

  “Getting creepy, Cotgrave,” I said. It was even creepier because he never said what they were, other than a figment of an increasingly demented mind.

  “I bet it’s aliens,” I told Bongo. “It’s always aliens.” Bongo had no opinion.

  I heard the knocking sound again. It was a perfectly normal out-in-the-woods sound, but it made me jump because I wasn’t expecting it.

  Great. Nocturnal woodpeckers. Just what I needed.

  Should have stayed in city, but might not have worked. Woman in story in Green Book lived in town, was burned in town square, so must not have minded. Had hoped when left Wales that would not see again. No white men in this land, only red Indians, so no white people, surely?

  “Don’t get racist on me, Cotgrave,” I warned him. “I know you were a product of your time and all, but if you start spouting white supremacist nonsense at me, I’m gonna go read my Regency.”

  Either his mind was wandering even farther afield than usual, or he meant something that wasn’t coming through the text. Cotgrave had been getting up there in years, but he definitely didn’t date from Plymouth Rock. There were plenty of white men in the land when he’d come over from Wales.

  I hadn’t actually known that he’d been Welsh, come to that. Cotgrave wasn’t the sort of name I associated with Wales. Needed more Ls and Ys and maybe a couple of Fs.

  The frogs were going at it again. They stopped whenever the woodpecker started, though, and took a minute to get going.

  Did woodpeckers eat frogs?

  I dunno. Maybe if you’re a frog, it doesn’t pay to stick around to find out.

  It wasn’t rhythmic at all. It went tap… tappataptap… tap-tap… taptaptap… and sometimes it sounded like there was more than one.

  It’s a woodpecker, I told myself. Or something like it. Unless it’s a bug. They’ve got all the bugs in the world out here. I’d already learned that if I left the lights on in the house, I’d get things on the window that were covered in legs and feelers and wiggly antennae. It made me feel like I was living on the wrong side of a terrarium.

  I’d caught fireflies out here as a kid and let them go again. I’d forgotten that there were a lot of bugs that weren’t nearly so charismatic.

  Tap-tap… tap—tap-tap… tap…

  I dredged my memory and cam
e up with the word katydid. Didn’t they drum or chirp or something? It wasn’t quite like a cricket, was it?

  The tapping held off for a while, and the frogs started in. I was going to have to get noise-canceling headphones or something. Which would allow me to sleep through Bongo whining to go out, and then I’d wake up with poop in my shoes. Hmm. Tough call.

  I went back to reading.

  So many in the hills here. Crossed the ocean? Or here originally? Can’t tell. No way to find out.

  Folklore different here, but same too. Poppets and dolls. Plat-eyes. Maybe the same. White creatures, not real beasts.

  Ambrose might know. I must send him a letter.…

  I sighed. His handwriting had been degenerating over the course of the page, and I had to work out some words by context. “Ambrose is dead, remember?”

  Apparently he did, because his handwriting came back more clearly on the next page.

  Have spoken to the doctor and changed pills. Mind was wandering. Kept thinking that I should write Ambrose. Would that I could!

  Sleeping less. Good. Too dangerous to sleep in the woods anymore. They’ve got my scent now.

  Have begun typing. Must finish my transcription before my mind wanders again.

  I turned the page and found nothing but the litany of the twisted ones, written over and over again, for a half dozen pages.

  “Ugh. That’s enough for one night.”

  I flipped off the light and turned over on my side. The last thought I remember having was to wonder what had happened to that typewritten transcription in the end.

  * * *

  I got up the next morning feeling grumpy and much put-upon. Bongo hadn’t needed to go out in the night, but he made up for it for taking twenty minutes to pee and losing his mind over a track in the grass. Probably deer. It crossed the yard, practically up to the steps, a dark trail in the dew-covered grass.

  The dog ran back and forth along it, snuffling frantically, until his bladder finally overrode his nose. It was slightly less thrilling than I’m making it sound, but not by much.