by Micol Ostow
There was one other person in the store, a fat, bearded guy in a T-shirt pulled tight over his sagging beer gut. The top of his head was bald, with a semicircle of grayish fuzz hanging on for dear life, tracing a scraggly path from one temple to the other. The dull fluorescents overhead bounced off his bald patch. He flicked his eyes in my direction, then shifted a little. It wasn’t like he had his back to me, completely, but there was an angle to the way he was standing. It wasn’t friendly.
That was fine. I’m not always too friendly, either. It depends on the situation, you know? What the situation calls for.
Anyway. There was something I needed. For Jules. So I figured: Who cares? Just get in and get out. Get it done.
The man behind the counter plucked a toothpick from somewhere up alongside the register and popped it into his mouth, rolling it around on his tongue real energetic, keeping an eye on me the whole time. His friend still wasn’t turned my way, really, but I could see his shoulders creep just a little bit higher toward his ears, his shirt catching on his belly and rolling up over itself.
“Do you know where the nearest hardware store is?” I asked, thumbs hitched into the pockets of my jeans. Through the angry fuzz of my headspace, I could hear how my voice sounded in the cold, stale fortress of the store, all flat and closed and not trying to make any good impression. I had a feeling that these guys, they wouldn’t appreciate my tone, the way it was so clear, how I felt so distant in my head, you know … but I didn’t care.
“Or maybe you have something here,” I went on. “I’m looking for a latch, you know, like for a shed. To keep the front doors closed. Even a set of chains and padlock would be good, if you had hooks for the chains. I’ve got a drill at home to get the hardware onto the doors.”
Hell, maybe a padlock would be better. Maybe I could find a way to make that boathouse my own little hideout, or something. There had to be a way to make that happen, no matter what dear old Dad’s plans were for the place.
When I wanted something, I usually found a way to make it happen. And now the static in my head was swarming, like a nest of wasps, buzzing, all eager, like really into the thought of making the boathouse my own. Right now that felt like a pretty terrific idea.
“I guess the wood might be pretty old, so I’m not sure how solid it is. But I’m pretty handy with a drill, so I think I could make do.” I’d always been good with power tools, even before I started working part-time at the dealership, before I had any good reason to be handling drills.
The man behind the counter pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. He tossed it under the counter, where there might have been a trash can. He slapped one hand down on the Formica and leaned forward, the paunch of his midsection flopping over the edge of the counter.
“Yeah, I guess that wood’s pretty old,” he said, squinting until his eyes were mean, narrow little slits that were probably supposed to intimidate me. “Rotten. You’re not going to get a drill through that crap.”
I stepped a little bit closer. “You don’t even—”
“—’Course I do. Amity, right?”
My face got hot and my throat felt tight. I must’ve given myself away. That didn’t happen too often.
His friend, the one who’d been so determined not to look me in the eye, finally pivoted, swiveled on one scuffed-up work boot. “You can’t come to a place small as Concord and expect people aren’t going to notice.”
Well, that was bad news for my dad, who had been hoping just that—that we’d come here and lie low for a while. That he’d outrun or just plain wait out his debts. But it made sense. A place as small as Concord? It was anonymous, yeah. But also—
“—you can’t expect people aren’t going to notice newcomers, not around here,” the friend went on, rubbing a grease-stained thumb against his forefinger. “And you can’t expect nothing to go into the wood at Amity. That place is rotted to the bone.”
“To the bone,” the man behind the counter agreed in a nasty singsong, sniggering. Wet little flecks of snot and dust floated in the air in front of his face, catching in those sour yellow overhead lights.
I nodded, those wasps in my brain flapping their wings real insistent now. “Are you …?” Are you trying to tell me something?
The shop worker waved a hand. “Couldn’t if we wanted to.” As if he could hear what I was thinking out loud.
“Amity’s different for everyone.” His friend hitched up his pants with a squeaking little groan. Finally, he faced me direct, and nodded, sharp, right at me. “You just let us know how it goes for you.” His tone said he meant just the opposite, that neither of them thought I’d be back to tell tales.
That I probably wouldn’t get out, get away from the house again.
Are they right?
But more than that—did I care?
The wasps rushed forward, so determined it was all I could do to keep myself from moving forward with them, from grabbing both of these guys right around their pudgy necks and wringing until their faces were the same bright red that flashed in my eyes, on my tongue, under my fingertips.
I thought: Never mind.
I thought: Things would be just fine for me, with Amity. I wasn’t like most people.
I wasn’t the one who had anything to worry about.
“Thanks anyway,” I said, short.
I decided to go straight back to Amity. I didn’t bother checking out another hardware store, or any other place that might be nearby. Jules would just have to deal with the boathouse banging.
All those wings beating against my brain, they wanted me to get back home.
NOW
DAY 2
BY THE LIGHT OF THE MORNING, things felt bright and airy again in a way that made me almost laugh to myself, sheepish, as I rubbed my eyes and propped myself up in bed. The sun streaming through my window was so vivid it nearly felt surreal, reluctant as I was to think about things in those terms.
The surreal was dangerous. Anything other than actual, real reality couldn’t be trusted.
I couldn’t trust my own mind.
But …
But what about my eyes?
I flexed my fingers gingerly beneath the covers. My left hand, the one that had been more doused, ached. The pain was dim, but solid enough, still present. The pain felt real.
But seeing was believing.
I drew in a nervous breath.
What are you afraid of, Gwen?
If the blisters that had formed last night were gone, then all was normal and safe again. Safe enough anyway. If my hands were intact, I could tell myself I’d been dreaming, seeing things last night, that I was hysterical, exhausted, out of sorts from the first night in a new house.
If my hands were unburned, unblemished, then all was well. I’d only been having a moment of temporary …
Well, the expression is “temporary insanity,” isn’t it?
Yes. Insanity.
Everyone has those, Gwen. Everybody.
Everyone goes a bit crazy now and again.
If the blisters were still there—and they felt still there, oozing and prickling and protesting, angry and wet—
Well. If the blisters were still there, then this place, Amity—it wasn’t safe.
If the blisters were still there, I had issues to worry about other than the question of my own insanity.
Everyone goes a bit crazy.
Now and again.
I slid my hands up, out from the covers, splaying them open before my eyes.
I WAS HUMMING AS I MADE MY WAY DOWNSTAIRS, memories of throbbing hands running off me like chalk lettering in the rain. I flexed the smooth, unmarred fingers of my left hand for good measure, cupping the cool, polished banister as I descended. It felt solid and reassuring.
The kitchen was thick with breakfast smells: coffee, bacon, anything swimming in a pool of butter. A pile of dishes in the sink confirmed that a meal had taken place sometime while I was still upstairs, cowering in bed. I tried to ignore the ripple o
f shame that rose at the thought.
I had just set a kettle of water on the stove when my mother wandered through the doorway, stretching her arms above her head.
“Good morning.” She quickly crossed the room and kissed me on the cheek. “Did you sleep well?”
“I—”
(she was shot in the head)
“—I slept fine.” I nodded.
“Me, too.” She didn’t seem to remember being woken. She inhaled again, deeper. “Must be the river air. I was out cold as soon as my head hit the pillow. I slept like the dead.”
It was a figure of speech, of course. Still, she offered a nervous glance my way. I did my best to avoid taking a peek at the delicate blue road map of veins lacing my inner wrists. The blisters from last night were gone, but I had other scars.
Go away, go away. The refrain echoed like a pulse. Sleeping like the dead is not the same as being dead.
I knew that, of course.
A hollow pounding blared from the other side of the wall. “What’s going on in the dining room?” I asked, deliberately (if not subtly) changing the subject. Better not to talk about the sleep of the dead. Better not to think about it at all.
“Home improvement.” Luke appeared in the doorway, brandishing a hammer. “Mom wants shelves, Mom gets shelves.”
“Mom wanted shelves before Ro gets here,” Mom clarified. She looked at her watch. “Mom isn’t convinced that’s going to happen.”
Luke’s mouth twisted apologetically. “Mom has a healthy grasp of reality,” he agreed. “Lunchtime feels really, really soon.”
He winked at me, a tacit reminder that by daylight, all was swept clean. “Are you impressed by my manly-man skills?”
“Um,” I said. “You were saying something about a healthy grasp of …” Reality? I tripped on the word.
“Correct,” he replied, cheerfully spanning the broad space between the archway and the kitchen table with two smooth strides and placing the hammer down. “The walls here are kooky. I haven’t been able to get a single nail in.”
He pulled three bright orange mugs from an overhead cabinet as the teakettle began its pre-whistling hiccup of steam. Those mugs were a cheery, hopeful color, and it warmed me just to see them set there on the counter. A kettle on the burner, easy banter, and the still, calm air settling, feather-light, over our new house.
It was a cloudless morning, and I was a regular girl.
“There is something strange about the walls.” Mom wrinkled her forehead. “Thick plaster? Heavy support beams? I wish I knew more about these things.”
A shadow crossed the four-paned window overlooking the backyard, shading the room gray for a beat.
“I’ll show you,” Mom said.
Casting a questioning look back at Luke, I moved closer to the wall, hugging the curve that outlined where the dining room began. It was like running my hands across Braille. The plaster was speckled with pinpricks of varying sizes, a constellation of crumbly pockmarks.
I glanced to the floor. Nails were scattered, crooked and bent like beckoning fingers. “None of those would go into the wall?”
Mom shrugged. “Must be a stud there, or something.” She knocked on the wall to demonstrate, but instead of the flat, expected reverberation, an echo called back.
It didn’t sound like a stud.
It sounded like a chasm.
A cavern tucked away inside the walls of Amity. Those grottoes, that dank network of underground warrens from the basement came back to me, ringing an internal alarm. It didn’t sound like a stud.
It sounded like a hideout.
But a hideout for what?
(she was shot)
My hands throbbed, sharp and insistent, the sudden, pulsing pain mimicking the flat echoes of Mom’s raps against wall.
I tilted my chin down, trembling, and reluctantly I uncurled my right palm.
Hot yellow pus oozed from the raw, gaping mouth of a blister, a bloodless stigmata.
Gasping, I thrust my hands behind my back. Droplets of pus had pooled on the floor beneath me, and I willed my eyes away, willed my mother not to follow my gaze, not to see—or not see—my flesh, my fears, spilling forward.
(i slept like the dead)
(like the dead)
(the DEAD)
She knocked on the walls again, and again my hands twitched, prodded with imaginary pokers. “Who knows?” she said, sounding puzzled, not really concerned.
She reached for me, and though I shrank back, she grabbed my hand firmly in her own. I bit my tongue to avoid crying out, watching in horror as viscous fluid seeped between our interlaced fingers.
My mother, oblivious, squeezed my hand.
“Maybe we’ll get that contractor back here. The one who did the inspection,” she mused. “I’d love to get my hands on the original plans for the house.”
Would you? Really?
She dropped my hand and stretched again, shaking out her shoulders like she’d suddenly gone completely boneless. Like she was made of rubber.
I waited a moment, then chanced another quick look at my hands. They were smooth again.
I decided it was just as well.
BETTER, FOR SO MANY REASONS, TO FOCUS ON AUNT RO’S VISIT. She was coming for an overnight stay, our first visitor at Amity. I would have been thrilled to see her under any circumstances, never mind the grounding presence she had on me, on my … unreliable nerves.
She was due to arrive around lunchtime. By eleven, I was peering out the living room picture window every five minutes, sipping rose hip tea from that deceptively cheerful orange mug, hoping to see her key lime green convertible speed up our drive. At 12:15 on the nose, I heard the welcome grind of her engine shutting down out front, and dashed outside to greet her.
I was a few seconds behind Mom, and when I arrived outside, the two were embracing, Hollywood-style, Ro’s arms firmly clasped around Mom’s waist and twirling her a few inches off the ground, despite her seemingly slight frame. Ro was easy to underestimate, stronger than she looked. Her silver-streaked hair was gathered in a braid that whipped back and forth like a lightning bolt as she and Mom hugged and giggled like little girls.
But when they broke apart, and Ro smoothed out the puckers in her short, boxy sundress, I saw that her face looked pinched, her color not its usual peachy flush. She was beautiful as always, but maybe not at her best.
I tried not to wonder why that might be. I was too excited to see her.
I threw my arms around her and squeezed, breathing in the musky lavender oil she always dabbed behind her ears. She grasped my shoulders, then slid her hands down my arms until her fingers covered my own. My palms prickled with sweat at the contact. She looked me in the eye.
The sage. Without words, she was asking me about the sage, and I dipped my chin in a quick nod. Her look of relief was imperceptible to anyone but me, I thought, which was probably as she intended.
My mother waved us toward the house. “You must be tired,” Mom said, even though Ro’s trip shouldn’t have been too long. “Come inside and have something to drink.”
“I was having rose hip tea,” I said. “But there’s also ginger, and some other stuff.”
Ro’s eyes lit up. “You read my mind, Gwen.”
In Ro’s case, I knew she meant it literally.
I DIDN’T HAVE TO READ RO’S MIND to know that she was taking in every last inch of Amity as we made our way through the house to the kitchen—and that she wasn’t exactly liking what she was seeing. Her eyes skimmed over the wainscoting, the pocket doors, the crown moldings … but registered no joy, as my mother’s had on moving day.
I couldn’t completely ignore Ro’s pallor, or the vague caution with which she regarded the
(bones)
beams and floorboards of the house. She was actually looking a little queasy, running her fingertips over the flocked floral patterns in the kitchen wallpaper, pressing into the raised texture like a foreign language, a Mayday appeal in Braille.
“Lemonade from scratch.” Mom pulled a glass pitcher from the refrigerator and set it down on the table. She turned to pull three glasses from the cabinets, calling over her shoulder, “I was feeling very ‘country.’ Rural living suits me, surprise, surprise.”
“Mmm,” Ro murmured, her lips pressed into a line. “And Hal?”
Mom smiled, bemused. “You’ll love this. He’s been looking at secondhand boats—”
I felt a shock down my spine at the thought of the boathouse, that banging door reverberating like a death knell in the night.
Ro took a delicate sip of her lemonade and coughed. “Excuse me.”
“Do you need sugar?” I asked. “Mom didn’t put much in.” I preferred things sugarcoated, saccharine to the point of cloying; not everyone shared my tastes, I knew. Still, I pushed the chipped ceramic bowl toward her.
Ro shook her head, patting at her chest as her coughs subsided. She looked at me, the gold flecks in her eyes catching the sunlight.
“Sugar just covers up the natural state of things,” she said when her throat had cleared. “It takes away from what’s most innate about a substance.”
She traced a circle along the surface of the table and, beneath the tabletop, I felt the pressure of her foot tapping lightly at my own.
“Personally, I’ve never seen the point in that.”
MOM HAD things to pick up at the market; she and Dad had come home from returning the van later than expected, and their grocery run to Concord was cut short. So I was tasked with giving Ro the grand tour of Amity mostly by default. But I was glad to do it anyway. Ro was livelier after the lemonade, but still not back to her usual self. It unnerved me.
“Should we go down to the river? It’s cooler down there.” I placed our empty glasses in the sink. Maybe the air would do her good. “Luke’s been cleaning out the boathouse, I think.”