As she walked these things parted for her. They made an aisle down Main Street. She waded through the rain that fell, and the smoke, and the darkness of the night. The skin on her body was loose now, sliding off her bones. She walked, because there was one final place she wanted to visit before this night was over. A familiar place. The place where the girl she’d once been had lived. She was going home.
THIRTY-THREE
The Third Billy Goat
No matter how hard you try, she’ll never get any better.
A branch banged against the window, and his thoughts left him. Where was he right now? What was this place? Oh, right, he was in his room. Sitting at his desk, looking out the window into noisy blackness. His limbs felt heavy, as if his blood had turned to lead, and every breath he took was an effort.
What was this on his face?
Oh, right, he’d been crying again. Why was he crying? There wasn’t anything wrong, was there? No, nothing was wrong. He always cried. He cried when he was happy, he cried when other people cried, he cried like a pussy. He shouldn’t be crying now like some kid. There was something he was supposed to be doing, wasn’t there? Something important? Something to do with his family? No, not his family. Something to do with the girl. What was her name? Liz. That’s right, they’d broken up today.
Bobby frowned. Break up? Why would they break up? He looked out the window, into the darkness. It moved like fog taking form. Just the night, he told himself. This is what it looks like at night, only I’ve never noticed it before; it looks like faces at my window.
His stomach growled, and he realized he was hungry. When was dinner? Funny, it was two in the morning, and his mother hadn’t yet served dinner. Where was Liz? They’d broken up, that’s right, they’d broken up today.
He shifted in his chair. His arm had gone dead.
Pins and needles, needles and pins. It’s the bitch in the blue dress who always grins.
The branch of an oak tree banged against the side of the house and it lulled him. How long had he been sitting in this chair? What about the girl? He’d been in her house and it had smelled rotten like mill air. No, not like the mill—like death. And he’d wanted to tell her to come back with him. He remembered now. In that house he’d started to believe. Her sister was alive, and had somehow woken up the dark part of Bedford.
Why had he left her there?
The branch of a tree knocked at his window. He blinked, and his thoughts were gone. Like a dog chasing its tail, he’d been asking the same questions all night, tears running down his cheeks, but they led nowhere, like wind. Like being stuck in the same moment over and over again.
Why was he sitting in his room while the rest of his family was sitting in the kitchen, listening? Listening to what?
When he got back from dropping Liz off tonight, his family had been waiting. His dad had come home early from work with day-old gray stubble on his face. “Give me a hand, will you, Bobby?” he’d asked. The two of them had gone from room to room, checking for leaks and locking windows. They’d shoved dishrags under doors so that nothing would get through the cracks, and made sure the roof was not leaking. When they reached the study, his father had pointed at the bookcase filled with medical texts and leather-bound classics by Dickens and Shakespeare. “You take that end.” His father pointed, and the two of them had heaved the entire thing into the hallway and propped it against the front door. “In case someone tries to get in,” his father explained.
“Who would try to get in?” Bobby asked.
His father looked him dead in the eyes in a way that had made him feel as if he’d failed on some very basic level to understand the fundamentals of adult life.
Then the family took their seats at the formal dining room table: Alexandra, Adam, the twins, Katie, Margaret, and Bobby. They sat like that for a long time, no one speaking. Power went out, and Adam placed a lit candle at the center of the table. Shadows flitted against the walls. They blanketed his family’s faces so that it looked like they wore ever-changing masks.
“Shhh,” Alexandra said when Michael started crying. “Shhh, it’s just rain.”
But no one cooked dinner, and no one got up, not even to pee. No one laughed or teased. The scene was familiar, like something lived before. Margaret squeezed his fingers tight. Across the table the twins shared a chair, and held each other close. They wore matching SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas. His father slumped down in his seat, and for the first time he saw that the old man really was getting old.
“I wish Liz was here,” he thought, only his mind made a sound that carried through the air.
“You never should have brought her into this house. It’s her fault. It’s all her fault,” his mother hissed, pulling Katie close and looking around the table at her children like an angry wolf. Only she didn’t say a word.
“Let him alone,” his father answered in a tired sort of way. “You can’t blame some girl.” But again, no lips moved.
Bobby stood. Margaret squinted to keep from crying. His father wore only a pair of red polka dot boxers, and his round belly flopped over the elastic waistband. Something smelled, and Bobby realized that Michael had taken a crap in his pants and no one had bothered to clean it up. The bottom of his pajamas sagged.
His family turned to him in unison. In his mind he could hear all of them speaking. Stay, they said. Sit with us. Watch the rain. You belong to us. But was that them speaking, or was it Susan Marley looking out through their dead eyes?
“I don’t belong here. I have to go,” he whispered.
It took all the energy he had to climb the stairs and sit in his chair. In his room he thought about the girl. What was her name? Liz. He picked up the phone to call her, but couldn’t remember what to say. Couldn’t remember who she was. Only that she was important. Only that he had failed her. How had he failed her?
He sat like that for several hours, and now he wondered: Am I dreaming?
A tree branch banged against his window, and his thoughts circled. A voice, it might have been his own (hidden deep down someplace where this night could not touch it) told him: Put away your toys. You can’t hide in that room forever. They belong in this house, you don’t.
But he did not leave. He sat in his chair, his limbs like lead. He was safe here, in this house at the top of the hill. His family knew better than the rest. They locked their doors.
From whom? What was happening to him?
It was two-thirty in the morning. By now the twins should be in bed. Long ago he should have heard pots banging, and been called for dinner. Someone should have knocked on his door and said, “Hey, Bobby, what are you doing in there?” But they were still sitting at the table, weren’t they? All this time, hours, they’d been sitting there, quiet as mice. Sure, everyone else was supposed to act weird, sure, everyone else was in trouble, but not him, not his family. His family was safe, watching from a distance. His house was on solid ground.
But this year was different, wasn’t it? This year was worse. Because she’d been right, hadn’t she? She’d been right. Bedford was haunted. Bedford never forgets. It’s in the air and the dirt and the rain and this year someone had set it loose. Susan Marley had unleashed it, and he could feel it crawling inside him, making him dead.
Who had been right?
He tried to make a fist but couldn’t. He knew the answer to this question. The girl. Liz. She needed him. More to the point, he needed her.
He could picture her in his mind. Long, shaggy hair that got tangled when they made love. Always looked on the verge of tears except when she was laughing. Not so pretty. He’d always thought she was pretty, but maybe that was because she was the first (only) girl he’d ever had sex with. Not so pretty after all.
What was happening in her house?
She’ll die in there. She wants to die, that’s why he broke up with her. Not because she wouldn’t tell him things, not because she had problems. Because it hurt so much to know that no matter how hard he tried, she’d neve
r get any better.
The branch knocked against his window, and his thoughts left him. They fled like shadows in light. The lead in his limbs felt heavier, and his whole body went numb. How long had he been sitting here?
He’d been crying again. He was always crying. He hated that he was the type of kid who cried. The type of kid who got quivery lip at the slightest teasing about his height in the schoolyard. The type of guy who even now practically browned his pants (Pants? The twins?) when someone raised their voice at him.
Just then, he heard a knock at his door. “Yeah?” he called, only his voice was very low. Only, had he spoken at all?
Margaret joined him at the window. She pulled on the fabric of her Project Greenpeace T-shirt, stretching it from inside out with hands balled into fists so that little knobs of fabric jutted out over her flat belly. She sat very quietly. She always sat quietly. She, like Liz, had a fear of breaking the things she sat upon with her weight. “I hate the rain,” she said. The statement lingered in the air and he thought he could touch it.
“I do, too,” he told her.
“It’s not going to end this year,” she said. Then she nodded her head in the direction of the rest of the family. “They’re pretending we’re safe but they know we’re not.”
“It’ll end,” he said. “It always does.”
She looked out the window and pointed at a thick cloud blowing from the direction of the mill. It was most dense near the valley, but its tendrils reached up the hill and toward the river, and even into the woods. “It’s getting closer.”
“Stop it, Margaret.”
“It’s a sickness she brought back. It makes us forget who we are.”
“Margaret—”
“We’ll die in this, all of us. And then we’ll never get out. We’ll be stuck here forever, just like all the other ghosts.”
In a quick and terrifying moment he was tempted to strike her. But just as quickly the moment was gone. Margaret rubbed her hollowed-out eyes, and he knew that she had not slept for some time. He felt a swell of affection for his sister, the odd duck of the family who never seemed to measure up in looks or smarts or charm. The one who stood on the outside. And yet he loved her no less than the rest. “Why aren’t you with Mom and Dad?” he asked.
“Did you dream about her?” Margaret asked him.
“Yes.” It was the thing he had not been able to tell Liz. The thing he wanted to forget. He’d dreamed that he and Liz got married. He transferred to UMO to be with her, and they lived in a cheap apartment that she decorated to look like a home. In his dream he came home one day, and instead of Liz sitting at the kitchen table, he found Susan. She smiled at him, her lips stretching so taut that they ripped apart and blood splattered all over the floor. Only she didn’t care. Only she liked it. “Hi, Bobby,” Susan gurgled. In the dream her voice was just like Liz’s, and he realized that they were the same girl after all.
“I’ve had the same dream every night since Susan Marley died,” Bobby said.
“Me, too,” Margaret said. “I dream the valley burns to ashes. In my dreams, we burn, too.”
The branch knocked on his window, and his thoughts circled. Where was Liz right now? Why had he left her all alone? Not alone. “What’s happening?”
Margaret pointed out the window and into the darkness. “She brought back the dead.”
Bobby got up from his chair and opened the window. The rain rushed in, along with the voices, a din of voices, like madness the color black. Like the things he’d been hearing in his head all these hours, the things that had made him forget, for a little while, the name of the girl he loved, only louder. Only worse. Only shouts and moans and laughter all at once. He heard April Willow crying. He heard Paul Martin laughing a death laugh an hour ago, he heard his mother screaming inside her head right now. How could you possibly remember yourself if you listened to this? How could you possibly remember who you were? No, not even this house was safe. Nothing was safe. His nose itching, his eyes burning, he shut the window, picked up the phone, and called Liz.
THIRTY-FOUR
I Heard a Fly Buzz
It was one o’clock on Thursday morning. Liz heard humming, like dissonant music from far away. A collective sound, like a thousand voices. The buzzing made her think of a fly: There was a little girl who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed that fly. I guess she’ll die.
She was curled up underneath her bed right now, a flashlight in her hand, shaking so hard that the arc of the light was unsteady and her teeth chattered. She held her other hand over her mouth to muffle the sound of her breath.
The walls were painted pink, like the clean inside of a lung, and right now they were breathing. With every drop of rain that fell and churned in the bucket near her bed and every groan coming from the floors, the walls moved. They expanded and constricted as if she were inside the stomach of an animal.
She had to pee, and so she let go of her mouth and held her crotch. Her shaking became jerking, silent sobs. Still, she did not let go of the flashlight.
A part of her was under the bed right now. Another part hovered in the corner, urging her not to give up. Another part giggled hysterically: Oh, waiter, there’s a fly in my head!
After Bobby left she’d said good night to her mother. The power went out and she’d stood at the foot of the basement steps but had been unable to bring herself to go down those stairs. Good night, Mom, she’d called into the darkness below. Sleep tight, Mom. Don’t let the bedbugs bite, Mom. And her mother, after some time, called back. Yes, Liz. Go to sleep, Liz. It will all be better in the morning.
For a second or two, she had puzzled before walking away. A slight narrowing of her eyes. Had she spoken, just then? Had her mother answered her? Yes, they had spoken, but not with words. In their thoughts, carried through this rotten house like a secret whispered by an old man. And then her frown was gone. Yes, it was all fine. Not to worry, fret not. It would all be better in the morning, right? And if not, who cared? How much worse could things get if she didn’t wake up tomorrow?
She found a flashlight, and took it to the room she and her sister had shared more than a decade before. Plink, plink, plink went the sound of the water dripping down from the ceiling and into the tin bucket near her bed. She climbed under her soft quilt but did not close her eyes. There might, just might, be things that hid in the dark. They slithered, moving slowly, until you fell asleep.
She kept watch in her room for a very long time. So long that she forgot what she was watching for. At some point, she could not remember when, she started to hear snippets of conversations, soft chattering from the walls. A game of hide and seek, a game of quicksand, jumping from bed to dresser to bed without ever touching the floor. Two sisters sitting before a mirror. The elder smearing two lines of red lipstick across the glass, the younger adding black circles of mascara in a figure eight above. Each taking turns looking into the mirror, and becoming this conjured woman trapped inside a vanity.
She held a pillow against her side like an old stuffed animal or a missing boyfriend. (Bobby. How could he? How could he pretend to care and then leave her like this?) She covered her ears. She burrowed beneath her blankets. She decided that if she was quiet maybe all of this would go away. If she was very quiet. The same as smearing lambs’ blood on her door; God’s murdering angel would pass her by.
She circled the flashlight, looking behind her, in front, above, under the bed. Shadows moved. Forms took shape and then collapsed like ice turned to water.
This haunted place, she thought, you carry it with you.
She tried to think happy thoughts. It reminded her of a time, years before, when she had done the same thing in this very room. She had closed her eyes and thought of nice things like swimming in the summertime and her mother reading bedtime stories and she and Susan playing parts from movies after covering their faces with baby powder because Susan had said: That’s how they did it in the old movies, they had to be very pale, and help
ing her father plant beans in the garden, be sure to leave the little plastic label so people know what you’ve buried, just like a headstone, and yes, she remembered this like yesterday, like it was happening right now, hiding in her in room and trying to conjure happy thoughts while unspeakable things took place in this very house. She remembered quite well.
When the walls started to move, puffing in and out like damp skin, she crawled under her bed. Drool trickled along her chin and she held her crotch. Her thoughts fell downward, like letting out every last bit of your breath and sinking into deep water.
You know why they all stare at you? You know why they hate you? Because his love came from blood.
Hadn’t her life always been like this? Hadn’t the last year with Bobby, when things seemed nice and wonderful with the possibility of a future, really been the nightmare? The tease that could never happen? Yes, this was her life. Right now. This was what she deserved.
You. It should have been you.
She let go of her crotch and pee trickled down her legs. She urinated all over the floor. The shameful warmth made her blush and her sobs became audible.
Oh, no. Please no. Please let this stop now, she prayed, to whom she was no longer sure: I’ll do anything.
Just then, a sound startled her. Shrill and violent, like broken china. It sounded again. And again. And again. She thought she might scream. And then she saw the phone, ringing. It was the phone. She picked it up without speaking into it, and listened for a voice.
“Hello?” she heard on the other line. “Hello? Mrs. Marley? It’s Bobby, Bobby Fullbright.”
“Bobby?”
“Liz, it’s you! I shouldn’t have left. I was being stupid. Are you okay?”
“Bobby?”
“Are you okay? You sound funny. You sound really far away.”
She took the phone away from her ear, and looked at it, trying to decide whether to hang up. She heard him speaking, asking her to please come back, please talk to him, don’t be mad. She put the phone back to her ear. “It’s bad, Bobby. It’s worse than I said.”
The Keeper Page 23