by Micol Ostow
I saw some place dangerous.
Dangerous, and inviting.
In the dream, I traveled, pulled by an invisible string, from my bed, to the basement, to the boathouse, and beyond, until I hovered, holding still, waiting to hear from her.
Waiting for Amity to speak to me.
I was over the river. Or in the river. Or maybe I was the river. Churning, angry and hungry and wild. Around me, on all sides, pale, bloated bodies thrashed and paddled, wide-eyed, panicked, pulling against the current. They were doomed, I could tell. But their energy fed my own.
My own, and Amity’s.
We were melting together, becoming one. We were the same now.
She was a part of me.
When I lifted my hands from the river, they were washed in red, soaked in bloody stains.
Cold, clammy hands clamped down on my ankles, making me gasp, dragging me under the surface of the water, and now I was actually bathed in blood, drowning-like, trying to breathe and gulping it in, tasting it like rusty metal in my throat.
Peeking through the ripples in the water, I realized: the fingers at my feet, tugging at me—they were shredded, strings of flesh and knobby bones and who knew how many years of decay. Some were witches’, like Jules had said. But that wasn’t Amity’s only story. The boneyard beneath Amity was more than a specific place … wide and stuffed with bodies.
The fingers at my feet and the people all around me …
Who knew how long they’d been here, rotting, slowly dissolving into the Concord? Feeding Amity. And now feeding me.
I gagged. Shut my eyes. Let myself sink into the thick, sticky mud of the river’s bottom.
She was a part of me, Amity. Growing, gaining power, every day. Amity wanted me.
And I welcomed her in.
NOW
DAY 8
I WASN’T REMOTELY SLEEPY, and more than that, the images I’d come to see in my dreams lately had left me feeling … discomfited, to say the least. But my parents were worried, watching me; I could feel their gaze like
(a shotgun?)
twin drills trained at my back, more and more of the time now.
Pretending at normal became increasingly imperative for me.
The image from the bathroom mirror hadn’t been back. But that didn’t mean that her presence, heavy with threat, had gone. Not at all.
I needed to pretend at normal, so that night I changed into my pajamas as quickly as I could, loathing the creeping chill that passed over my bare skin like a breath from the beyond. I buttoned the flannel top all the way up under my chin, then turned my bedside lamp to its brightest setting. The glare made me squint, but I still preferred it to the alternative, the dim shadows that danced along the walls, taunting me, chipping away at my sanity.
Pretending at normal was easier said than done.
I wanted to say good night to my mother, to leave her with a sense that I was normal, happy, doing “well.” I stepped into the hall, and my bedroom door swung shut behind me, banging like a clap of thunder and making me flinch.
Normal, Gwen. Normal. It was my momentary mantra.
I did not trust old houses, I decided. Or their histories. Histories were far too complicated, too potentially fraught. I had complications enough of my own.
I found my mother tucked in her bed, down comforter wedged beneath her chin, threatening to swallow her whole. She was leafing through a glossy, oversized design magazine, and I smiled bitterly to think anyone might successfully convert Amity, transform her, or reinvent her against her will. We couldn’t keep the phone lines open, couldn’t drive a nail into the wall, and lightbulbs never burned for longer than a day or two. Amity wasn’t interested in ornamentation. She was no one’s canvas.
“Gwen.” My mother peered at me over the wire rims of her reading glasses. Her face glimmered with a heavy sheen of moisturizer, making her seem, in the purplish lighting of night, slightly hazy. Ghostly, even. “Going to bed?”
“Yes.” I crossed the room to her side, bending over to kiss her on the forehead. Her night cream left a chemical aftertaste on my lips. “I was thinking …”
But what was I thinking? What alibi might keep my parents’ hovering, their suffocating concerns, at bay?
“I was thinking that I might go into town tomorrow. Check out the local library.”
Yes, that would work. Town: with people, public landmarks, and other fixed, immutable objects. In fact, why hadn’t I ventured out before now? None of us had, really, beyond absolute necessity. It was almost as though Amity were emitting some sort of slow gravitational pull on us, as though Amity were willing us not to leave.
It was a crazy thought. But nonetheless …
“That’s a good idea.” My mother nodded, seeming satisfied.
Good. I had appeased her sufficiently. “Anything interesting in there?” I jutted my chin at her magazine.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mom replied. “I had some thoughts about fixing up the boathouse. Making it into a proper workshop, or something like that. Luke was down there the other day, and he mentioned that the floorboards were beginning to rot. Apparently there’s a huge storage locker in there, though, with all sorts of tools. Probably from the previous owners, but some of them look old. Murray chewed through a weak spot in the flooring, pulled up some old … well, something, maybe iron? So now Luke wants to dig, and see what else is down there.”
I felt a by-now-familiar twinge in my palms. Reluctantly, I glanced down.
My hands, pink and raw, had sprouted blisters again, open and sore.
(go away, crazy)
I blinked, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes, feeling the wet, weeping skin of the blisters on my cheeks, and when I looked up again, it was only my mother, her lips knit together in a thin line.
“Gwen?”
I forced the corners of my mouth up. Normal, Gwen. Normal. “Yes?”
“Are you … happy here?”
I swallowed, hard. Normal, Gwen, I reminded myself. You have to be normal now.
“Of course.” I paused. “Aren’t you?”
Of course, I’m happy. Of course, I’m normal. Of course, I’m not losing my mind.
Again.
“I am,” she said finally. Her voice was clear, definitive.
But I could still hear the hitch, the waver, lurking underneath.
WITH MY MOTHER’S DOUBT REVERBERATING IN MY EARS, I traced a tentative path back to my bedroom.
Something in her tone—that tremor, that poorly concealed ripple of distrust—had worked its way into me, and now the hallway, which I knew by daylight to be a quick, straight path from point to point, now it yawned and stretched, so that my doorway beckoned as though calling from across a looming chasm.
And more than that, worse, more worrisome:
The door, which had swung shut behind me hard enough to rattle my teeth, was now slightly ajar.
And the light, which I’d so deliberately switched on?
The light was out.
From behind the gently swaying door, the room was utterly dark, utterly black.
The wiring, I thought, heart skittering frantically in my chest. Fuses blow all the time here. They do.
It was the truth. But it didn’t make the darkness any more inviting.
I crept forward, one hand clapped over my mouth, forcing each footstep against the growing dread. Though the door continued to shift and twist, playing tricks on my mind, I reached it sooner than I expected, sooner than I would have liked. I stepped through the threshold of my bedroom.
The door snapped shut behind me.
I muffled the squeak that so desperately wanted to escape my lips. In the dark, I heard a scrabbling, a scrambling … the movement of some indefinable presence, defiling my space.
Well, that’s the problem, Gwen. That you think of this as “your space” to begin with.
This space belonged to Amity, after all.
HEART HAMMERING and breath shallow, I edged my way alo
ng the floor to where I knew the nightstand stood. I fumbled in the inky dark, terrified.
The light flickered, casting a sickly glow over the space. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I caught the outline of a long slim leg, pale and mottled, escaping beneath my bed as the room brightened. Again, I swallowed back a scream. I shut my eyes tightly, and when I opened them again, the area beneath my bed was clear.
Whatever I imagined I had seen or heard had vanished.
But something else had appeared.
HOME, GWEN, YOU ARE HOME
I gaped, wide-eyed, at the mirror that hung from my closet door.
HOME, GWEN, YOU ARE HOME
It called to me in blocky scrawl, hand painted in jerky, frantic streaks of something thick and muddy.
(home home HOME)
The words covered my reflected face like graffiti, stark against my pallor, thrumming in my ears like a drumbeat, insistent and undeniable.
With a strangled cry, I raced through the joint bathroom and into Luke’s room.
MURRAY GROWLED from the foot of Luke’s bed as I rushed inside, blood pounding in my ears.
Luke was hunched over his desk, intent on something I couldn’t see. He didn’t stir until I grabbed for his shoulder.
“There’s something,” I gasped, “in my room.”
Luke whirled around. His gaze was narrow, piercing. “What do you mean?” His pupils were slits, and I couldn’t help but notice how sallow his skin was, in sharp contrast to the patchy stubble creeping up his jawline.
He looked tired, I realized. Drained. Like something was sucking the life out of him.
“I heard noises,” I said. “And—there’s something written on the mirror.”
“You’re nuts.” His voice dripped with derision.
I bristled against his tone, his implication. Luke knew better, had always been kinder, than to say such things to me. Luke had always been the one to tolerate my intermittent madness. His dismissal now spurred me in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible.
“Come look.” I grabbed his wrist, dragging him back through the bathroom and into my room.
“See for yourself.”
LEADING LUKE INTO MY BEDROOM WAS LIKE leading a rag doll. He wasn’t protesting my guidance in any active way, only he seemed thoroughly uninterested, thoroughly absent from the entire experience. Murray followed reluctantly behind us, his ears flat against his head and his tail drooping in disapproval.
I paused in the bathroom, déjà vu washing over me like an unwelcome hug from a stranger.
The lights were out in my bedroom again. Before us, the space called like a deep, open wound.
“Congratulations, Gwen. You’ve really gone all out to create an ambience,” Luke cracked flatly. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see in the pitch-dark, though.”
Frustrated, I pulled him into the room, taking shuffling steps and trying my best to block out the slithering, scurrying noises that had—of course, of course—returned.
If Luke heard the scratching, crawling sounds himself, his body language gave nothing away.
A moment or two of flailing found the pull chain on the lamp again, which I tugged triumphantly. The lamp blinked on, and the room glowed butter-soft.
“There.” I pointed toward the mirror.
“Where?”
I looked up, following Luke’s gaze, shrinking at the irritation in his voice.
The mirror was empty.
Clean.
The message—it was gone.
Murray, however, was whining, exhaling little whimpers and moans that built up steadily, increasing in intensity as he pawed at the gap beneath my bed skirt.
At the space where the streaky, ghostly leg had vanished just moments ago.
Luke kicked his leg out, connecting foot to dog rump. Murray squealed and fled the room.
“What are you doing?” I whispered hoarsely. Luke had never been anything but gentle with Murray, or any other creature.
He turned to me, his face blank, and put his hands on my shoulders.
“Gwen,” he said gravely, “I won’t tell Mom and Dad about this. But you have to … you have to get it together, you know? You can’t unravel.”
Again was the word that went unspoken. Always again.
His eyes bored into mine, blazing, and I turned from the heat, from the cut of them, craning my neck back to see our reflections in the mirror.
“I know,” I mumbled, a choked sob cutting off as I took in the details framed before me.
There, in that mirror image, Luke’s hands draped like talons over the tight points of my shoulders.
My stomach clenched.
Luke’s hands.
Luke’s hands.
In the mirror, Luke’s hands were covered in dirt.
I FELT MYSELF SINK, panic flooding my body like a current. I trembled, and the bloody, gaping specter of my first night returned, rising up from behind me, from over my brother’s shoulder. Her matted, clotted hair swung toward him, and I swallowed, steadying myself, but Luke remained motionless, even as the clumpy strands brushed against his cheek.
You have to get it together. The words echoed, ominous. I forced my breath, my heartbeat to an even pace, forced myself to look back at Luke, back at our entangled figures in the mirror.
His hands were clean now.
The bloody, broken being—whatever, whoever it was—was gone.
All that remained was my own tense expression, and next to me, Luke, solid and stern.
I pushed his arms away, stepped back against my bed.
“I’m fine now.” I tried to keep the quiver from my voice, tried to sound convincing. “I’m …
“My mind was … playing tricks on me,” I finished, hollow. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Luke said.
“It’s nothing.”
I wanted to believe him.
THAT NIGHT, I DREAMED, and the eyes through which my sleep-landscape unfolded, unfurled were not my own.
That night, I dreamed through Amity’s eyes.
I felt her humming beneath my skin like a live wire. Felt her like a second skin, like a shadow draped across my shoulders, like a veil, a scrim, a silk-screened image of the past, the future, the beyond.
Amity was outside of me, pressing against me, choking me off. She was dark, heavy, and clouded with decay. She loomed, her shadow cloaked across the hilltop, something more than a place, more than a particular, specific space, more than beams, blueprints, boards, and bolts.
More than physical matter.
Amity surrounded me like a slipcase, slithering, stealthy, slick with potency. She breathed against my skin, whispering in a language not my own: wordless thoughts, formless shapes. Energy. Intent.
Evil.
Against my raging dreamscape, Amity’s shuttered panes burst open, revealing all: everything of her before, her after. Her always.
Behind my tightly lidded eyes, Amity showed me:
(an expanse of reddish, ruddy clay, rolling toward the riverbank, pebbled and marred and possibly diseased)
(soil and spoil and sour earth)
(a thicket of bramble, ghostly white and glowing, clattering like rolling bones)
(sickness)
(madness)
(fever and filth)
(runes and ruins, chalk-etched patterns and ink-thick pools of blood)
(fire and anger and sacrificed flesh)
Amity was the cold, steady gaze of a double-barreled shotgun, bearing down. She was the glint of pinprick pupils gleaming through a night-lit window, the rhythmic blast of a door left banging in a gale wind. The slither of a flesh-flayed limb beneath a bed skirt, a welcome note etched in blood. Amity’s forever was reflected in the glimmering edge of an ax, in the rushing footprints, the twitching tail, the brushing fingerprints of a zephyr, a cipher, a wordless, formless shape.
That night, I dreamed, and in my dreams, Amity’s shuttered panes burst open, shrieking and spiraling. Calling to me.
Calling for me.
Foretelling. Forewarning. Foreseeing no hope of escape.
Amity called to me, insisting that I understand: her anger, her power. Her energy.
Everything.
Insisting that I see.
FORM #3208A
STUDENT: Webb, Connor
GRADE/CLASS: 5th/L. Harper
EVALUATING COUNSELOR: R. Griggs, MSW
DETAILS: Evaluation requested by school officials after repeated disciplinary efforts failed to have appreciable effect on the student. Webb’s record reflects consistent conflict with his fellow classmates as well as school faculty and administration. Likewise, infractions have increased in scale and intensity since first notation on record (grade K), when Webb deliberately shut the bathroom door on a young girl’s fingers, fracturing two. (Explanation given: “She told me she was real, but I didn’t believe her. I wanted to see if she would bleed.”)
Though Webb is typically reserved (perhaps pathologically so), his temper is quick to ignite. When roused, he has repeatedly shown that he will lash out physically and verbally if pressed.
Historically, he has great difficulty forming connections with his peers; Webb’s most noteworthy bond thus far has proven to be with his twin sister (Julianne Webb), more socially adept than her brother but demonstrating classic signs of enablement.
(*Recommend continued separation of respective class assignments to potentially offset unhealthy attachment. Teachers are also further discouraged from adopting or otherwise encouraging Webb’s personal nickname for his sister, “Jules,” who shall remain Julianne, or Annie, while enrolled in this institution.)
Formal evaluation requested after most recent incident: a quieter student (M. White) attracted Webb’s attentions after the two were paired together for the school’s annual science fair. Topic chosen by the team, as reported to Ms. Harper, was the relationship between sense of smell and sense of taste.
Project trials were conducted after school at the White residence; the boys’ subsequent lack of supervision has been attributed to Mrs. White’s work schedule.