by Micol Ostow
I thought, I could tell you.
And I didn’t know what I meant by that.
But I still knew it was the truth.
“YOU BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU TELL PEOPLE when you answer the phone.”
Dad glowered at Jules—past her, really. Vacant. His eyes were flat.
“She’s always careful,” I said. We were all careful, in our own way. You learned to be, right from the start. Thanks to Dad.
“I’m—I will,” Jules stammered. “I will.” She shot me a look, asking me not to make things worse. That was always Jules’s part to play: damage control. I rolled my eyes at her, small enough that no one but she could see, and tore my chewed-up crust in half.
Then came the crying. That was always Mom’s part to play.
Her tears were sudden, like a faucet coming on out of nowhere. It reminded me of the sound Butch, our old pit bull mix, made years ago when I ran over his tail with the front tire of my mountain bike.
That was an accident, of course.
Old Butch was long gone, and Dad never let us replace him no matter how much Jules begged. That might’ve been my fault. But that yelp Butch made when he was hurt, it wasn’t a sound you could just forget.
It grated, made my skin feel too tight. Kind of like Mom’s crying was doing now.
Jules scrambled over to squeeze Mom’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “New places are hard. Change is hard. It’ll be fine.
“It just takes time.”
She sounded so sure. Maybe she just wanted to shut Mom up before the waterworks could get worse. As it was, Mom’s slobbering made Abel screw up his face even tighter, balling his fists all up at his sides.
Dad sighed, then pulled the phone cord out of the wall, leaving it to dangle like a loose thread, or a noose.
A noose?
Yeah, I thought, watching the loop of the cord sway. A noose.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll be good.” Jules really meant it, I could tell.
Maybe she felt what I did: that low hum from underneath, lulling me. I couldn’t explain it—it would’ve probably sounded crazy if I tried—but Amity felt sturdy beneath me, like she had … good bones.
Amity felt safe to me, right from the start.
Jules wasn’t worried about Amity.
Neither was I.
I WAS WASHING UP, sawing a toothbrush back and forth in my mouth while the water in the thousand-year-old faucet splashed back up onto my face like rain on a windshield.
I was actually feeling a little hypnotized, watching the trickle from the faucet seep down the opening of the drain. There was a smell coming from the drain while I brushed, scrubbing until my gums felt raw and bloody. It was like wet leaves gone kind of rotten. I spat, and the foamy dribble was cloudy pink. I shut the water off, twisting the taps tight enough to wrench my wrists. The faucet clanged off with a rattle.
That was when I heard it. The telephone.
It rang out, just like during dinner, all sharp and accusing.
I went into the hallway to see if anyone was going to answer it, but the doors to all the other bedrooms were closed. I could hear the noises of everyone getting settled in for the night. The phone rang one more time, and I stood there, stock-still in the hallway, curling my bare toes against the wide, rough floor planks.
The phone cut off mid-ring.
I heard a doorknob rattle and realized that Jules had come into our bathroom from her bedroom. “You don’t knock?”
“Sorry,” she started. Then she saw the bloody, phlegmy mess in the sink. “Gross, Connor. If we’re going to be sharing the bathroom, we need to set up some ground rules.”
“Like knocking.”
She sighed, the little breath sending the shorter curls dangling over her eyes bouncing. “Fine. Whatever.”
I moved into the bathroom and shoved her aside, maybe a little harder than I really needed to, but not hard enough to hurt her or anything. I wasn’t that way with Jules. “I’ll rinse it. God.”
I twisted the taps back on and splashed the spurt of water around, watching as the gobs of foam and flecks of pink washed away. When everything was clean enough again, I looked at Jules. “So who do you think keeps calling?”
Jules’s eyebrows came together. “What, at dinner?”
“And just now.” It was still kind of echoing in my eardrums.
She tilted her head. “What are you talking about?”
“You were in your room. You didn’t hear it?” In old houses, sometimes sound carried weird and stuff. “It rang, again. Just now.”
Jules put her hands on her hips. Her eyes were that mossy green they sometimes turned when she was really, kind of … feeling.
“Connor,” she said. She sounded really tired and fed up. “Just don’t. Come on. Dad unplugged the phone. You saw him do it. And look.” She pointed to the end of the hallway where Mom and Dad’s doorway loomed. “He was serious about not wanting any calls out here. No one he wants to hear from. Shocker.”
I followed her arm, and blinked. I’d been standing here, just seconds ago, literally, all by myself in the hallway. And there was nothing—not one single thing—to see when I’d looked around. But there it was, right where Jules was pointing, coiled like a snake.
The phone cord. The only phone cord, from the only phone in the house. Still black, and twisted like a vine.
Or vines, I thought, like more than one. Because sometime between after dinner and now, Dad had hacked the cord into pieces and dropped them in a pile outside of his bedroom door, a wiry little nest of tiny black tentacles.
That echoing, thrumming sound was back, humming against the soles of my feet, and when I looked at the pile of phone cord again, it felt like the door behind it buckled. For a second, I thought that if I wanted to, I could have passed straight through the door myself.
“Keep it together, big brother.” She clapped me on the back. “You didn’t hear the phone ring again. There is no phone to ring again. And I … well. Keep it together.” She said it softer the second time.
I heard the bathroom door slam behind her, but didn’t turn. I couldn’t look away from the shredded phone cord. It didn’t matter what I could see with my own two eyes, or what Jules needed from me, how she needed me to be. I knew what I’d heard.
There is no phone to ring, Jules said.
But it did. It rang, and I heard it.
And I was the only one who did.
I didn’t know what that meant—to be the person who heard the phone ringing. But I thought it meant something.
I smiled, and went back to my room.
I WAS READING—SOME ANCIENT, BATTERED TRUE-CRIME CRAP from a used bookstore when Jules popped her head into my bedroom. I couldn’t even say what the book was, but that didn’t matter. They’re all the same anyway. I’d just got to the good stuff. Some not-so-great things were happening to a cute brunette with the bad luck to end up in a stalled elevator with a deranged ex-con. (Cute women should avoid situations like stalled elevator cars, but where would the fun be in that?) I’m not much of a reader or anything, but I was pretty well into things when Jules peeked in, so her quiet “Hey” sent me straight up in bed, like I’d been goosed.
“Hey.” I was annoyed but pushing it down, putting the book facedown next to me to keep my place. If Jules was still thinking about the thing with the phone, she was pretending she wasn’t. That things were all normal, which I preferred.
“You found the books?” She nodded at my cracked paperback. “I went through so many boxes … decided it was a lost cause for tonight. I’m too fried to hunt anymore.”
“I just got lucky, I guess. Kept it in my bag, close all day.”
“Smart,” Jules said. “I have no idea where any of my stuff is. It took me an hour just to find this sweatshirt.” She fingered the well-worn cotton, then shivered, rubbing her arms hard. “This house is freezing. Aren’t you freezing?”
“Jules, it’s August.”
It wasn’t really an answer to
her question. Truth was, it was cold in the house. Strange, given how soupy and thick the heat felt just hours ago. But it didn’t bother me too much. Neither did the cold itself. We’d packed up sleeping bags, separate from all of the boxes and other crap—Mom’s idea, and a good one, even if she did pose it all uncertain and questioning, like always. So I was stuffed in mine right now, stretched out on a bare mattress on the floor. The chill couldn’t reach me in here.
I felt safe.
“I know what month it is, Connor.” Jules made a face. “It’s still freezing in here.” She shivered again, more dramatic this time, and let her eyes go to the window behind me. “It must be because we’re right on the river.”
Her expression went dark. “This window is filthy.” She tapped at the smudged glass, then jerked back, like it was hot.
“Feel free to clean it,” I snapped. All at once, I didn’t want her touching that windowpane, didn’t want her putting her hands on Amity again. “Tomorrow. I’m going to sleep.”
She rolled her eyes. “Calm down. Sleep. No one’s stopping you.” But she twisted her mouth into another little grimace as she leaned, kind of tentative, toward the window again, so close she could have breathed rings onto the glass herself, if she wanted to.
She didn’t want to. She pulled back again.
“Tomorrow I’m going to hang shades,” she said quick, definitive. Then, like an afterthought, “Sleep tight.” She turned and left the room.
“You too,” I called, after a beat.
But she was moving away, through the bathroom door, maybe to wash her hands again after griming them up on the window. So she didn’t hear me. I might as well have been talking to myself.
I might as well have been talking to Amity.
I WOKE UP DISORIENTED, thrashing like an animal inside my sleeping bag. I was slick, bathed in sweat.
It was what waking up in your own burial shroud would feel like, I thought. I wasn’t sure where that idea came from, but it was vivid to me right then. I woke up feeling like I’d just come back from death.
Honestly, I’ve always felt like a little part of me’s been dead since the day I was born.
So this waking up thing, it was almost like coming back, like a jagged moment that reached out and pinched me through the dark, heavy hood I hide under most of the time.
Strange.
Missing that hood, I took a quick scan of what was real, right then and there: I’d been dreaming. Slowly, I wriggled one arm out of the bag, fiddling with the zipper until the bedroll unfurled, letting the cool air blast my legs.
I was still only semi-awake. But dimly, in some miles-away corner of my brain, I could hear a steady clap, a banging, that reminded me of firecrackers, or that old cap gun I used to aim at the neighbors’ cat. Back when I was younger, downstate.
(Just about the only fun times I could remember from downstate.)
But, wait.
Forget firecrackers, the cat. Forget downstate.
Like the burial shroud, it was one of those thoughts that bubbled up from nowhere. It was a clear image, solid and sturdy.
A shotgun.
I saw it: a cold, heavy shotgun, twin barrels trained …
Where?
I couldn’t say. But not on me, I didn’t think. So, where, then? Steel barrels, like close-set eyes, bearing down …
And then the image was gone. Vaporized. Along with that feeling of thick, bleak … something, I couldn’t even say what.
It was gone.
I exhaled. Piece by piece, the room came back into focus. That’s when I realized:
The window over my bed was open.
Not too much. Not, like, wide open or anything. Just cracked an inch or two. But, yeah: open. And Jules had made that whole big thing about the window, and how dirty it was, and getting all creeped out by it. And she went on about how cold it was in the room earlier, too. And what was especially nuts about it all was how it was so cold, even in August. Even with that dirty, creepy window closed.
But it was open now. No doubt about it.
And that damned clapping noise from outside banged out a crazy Morse code.
The boathouse, I decided. Dad must’ve forgotten to fasten the door latch when he finished down there.
I sat up, kneeling at the window, fingertips braced against the sill, and watched, almost hypnotized, as the boathouse door swung open and closed, open and closed, open and closed, again, and again, and again.
Open and closed.
Open and closed.
Open and closed.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The wind howled, sharp. I moved to pull the window shut, jimmying it a little to get it sitting tight against the sill. The moonlight, higher now, bounced against the pane, and I saw what Jules meant about the window being dirty. It was dirty—really filthy, like she’d said, smeared and cloudy and maybe even crusted over with something yellowish and chipping. But now that I was standing just a few inches in front of it, I could see that it wasn’t just streaky. The smears and clouds caked onto the glass made a raised pattern, like bathed in spotlight, shining and calling to me.
A handprint.
On the window, spiraling out into five perfect points, a ghostly splotch hollowed away where the palm would be, was a handprint.
It looked about the size of my own hand, I thought. Like it could have almost been my own handprint, even though, obviously, it wasn’t. It was pretty much the exact same size as my hand.
So I stretched my hand out, covering the print, and pressed down, hard, against the window.
The room fell away.
Amity pulled back a corner of the curtain.
THE FACE IN THE WINDOW’S REFLECTION WASN’T MINE. Honestly, the face in the window wasn’t even really a face, given its state. Human. Or whatever it was, once. Whenever it was.
It would have been direct at eye level, peering right at me, but peering wasn’t an option. Because its eye sockets—muddy and shining with riverbank muck—were hollow, running with flecks of dirt and thick, yellow pus. Something twitched and wiggled from the goop and I watched as a fat centipede slithered out and slipped down one cheek.
Its mouth—the place where a mouth would have been on a person, I mean—hinged open, slow and creaky. A fuzzy, decaying tongue, black with mold, flapped uselessly while those scooped-out, gunked-up eye sockets gazed, blank and intense.
It was trying to talk to me.
I smiled.
I touched my forehead to the glass.
There was another flash, from inside or outside of my own head, I couldn’t really say. The face, the thing, dropped away, and it was just my own hand against that caked-on handprint again, and another shuddering bang. In the distance, the flick of a tail disappeared through the swinging boathouse door. It looked bigger than any backcountry animal I could think of. (And I was pretty familiar with backcountry animals, what with all of my hobbies and pastimes and stuff.)
Then the door clapped shut for what sounded like—what felt like—good. One big last gust of wind, and then, in a blink, I couldn’t be sure I’d seen anything at all. No matter how much I wanted to believe.
I glanced at the clock on my nightstand.
It was 3:14 a.m.
NOW
DAY 1
THE SKY CHURNED VIOLENT SWIRLS of stormy violet steel on the day we came to Amity, thunder clapping so forcefully that the house herself repeatedly sighed in protest as we went about adopting our new home. Again and again I heard them: creaky, grudging bows, buckles, growing pains from a structure we’d been told was some two hundred years old, and then some.
From the way the house hugged her gentle slope of land, looking at once weathered, and yet still somehow eternal, two hundred years seemed a reasonable estimate of Amity’s age. At least.
Our rented truck veered uneasily around the bend of the lonely country drive. No neighbors here, not for several miles; that was something new, something else
to which we’d have to adjust. Only as we turned the corner did I see how odd Amity’s perch actually was. The house was oriented perpendicularly to the road. Probably, Amity had been built before the road itself even existed. So it was the side of the house that came into view as we approached. The side, with a winking set of third-level windows that peered out, coldly curious, rather than anything as expected—or as welcoming—as a front door.
Amity gave you her back as you approached her. That was the first thing I noticed about her. Her back, and her unsettling seat overlooking the Concord River. And of course, the hammering, relentless storm that I might have called portentous, if I wasn’t discouraged by my parents from using such words.
The rain pounded down in sheets, whipping the churning river into frantic egg-white caps. This type of storm, the air syrup-thick and the sky abstract and hostile, was palpable to me. It felt like something I could grasp, could access somehow. Could maybe even harness.
But those thoughts were also discouraged, as a rule.
On our third trip to the truck, Luke pinched me as I climbed into the dank, echoing cargo bed. The rain pinging against the roof recalled for me hailstones—or pebbles, even, bouncing overhead.
I leaned against a cardboard box, its corner pressing into the meat of my thigh, and looked at Luke. His sand-colored curls were plastered against his forehead, and droplets of rain clung to his eyelashes. His T-shirt was one shade darker now, a deep forest green instead of sage, soaked through from the storm, and his jeans dripped a widening puddle on the floor around his feet.
“Ow.” I rubbed at the spot on my forearm where he’d pinched me, and pouted even though it didn’t hurt, and even though he knew that.
“Merry sunshine.” He ran his fingers through his wet hair and shook his head like Murray, our spaniel mix, would. “Lighten up, Gwen. You’re acting like it’s a funeral or something.”
Or something. Because it was a move, not a funeral. Not at all. Because I wasn’t dead, was I? Dead girls weren’t fussed about things like weather. Or much else.