That thought, that goal, steeled me for a few seconds as I went deeper into the house. I saw with unsurprised dread that there was a large, lop-sided Christmas tree in the living room now, its discolored branches decorated by a combination of lights, old-fashioned ornaments, and various small dead things and bits of bone. Even from a distance, I thought I saw pieces of at least three small animal skeletons strung together and draped around like macabre tinsel. Just then I saw movement at the corner of my eye and turned. They were coming out to greet me.
I don’t know how to describe this next part in a way that will make sense, but I will do my best. One of them, the man that appeared to be human, was stepping out of a door made into one wall that I never knew existed. It swung closed behind him with a silent solidity that left no seam in the wallpaper or other sign a secret door existed at all. But the other two…
They flowed down the walls somehow, their shapes pushing beneath the wallpaper and making it stretch before going back with no sign of what had just passed beneath it. The moving bulges slowly worked their way to where the wallpaper met the baseboard, and there they pulled themselves out into the room like decaying toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. I have trouble remembering this, I think because my mind couldn’t really understand what it was seeing, but in a matter of moments, they were standing before me even as the other man was approaching me slowly.
“Easy now. It’s better if you don’t fight. Just give up and it will be easier. Promise.” His mouth twisted into a cruel smile at the last part, and the next moment I was dashing back through the house with the goal of either finding Melanie or making it out the back door to get help. I never should have come here alone, I never…
And then I woke up to my sister drowning.
****
I think she had been dead for the last two jugs worth of their rancid eggnog concoction, my screaming and tears during the last few minutes having pushed me into a kind of exhausted stupor. I felt burned out, used up, and for the moment I didn’t care what they did. I deserved it for letting Melanie die. But when the man touched my chin gently, I jerked back in surprise, and looking up at his somber expression, I felt a new wave of anger and hatred filling me.
“You motherfucker. I’ll fucking kill you for what you did.” I looked behind him to where the two monsters were gently wiping Melanie off like they were apologetically cleaning up a spill. “Don’t you fucking touch her, you fucking freaks!”
The man tapped my chin lightly, and when I looked back up, his gaze was hard. “Don’t be rude to my parents. They meant your sister no harm. We’re only doing what we have to, and you’re the one that brought her into this.”
I gritted my teeth. “That’s a lie. I told her not to come here.”
He nodded, a small smile passing over his face. “That’s true. But while I’m not special like they are yet, they have passed along a few tricks and talents.” The last few words sounded like my voice, and my widening eyes brought the smile back. “None of us wanted to trick her or hurt her. We don’t want to hurt you either. But we need you to believe.”
I shook my head slowly. “You’re insane. Believe? Believe in what? God?”
That small sour laugh again. I saw that his monstrous parents had finished cleaning Melanie, neglecting to get up the gallons of strange eggnog congealing on the floor. “No, no. Nothing like that. Just believe in the holiday of Christmas. We’re not after religious or spiritual belief, just the trappings.” He leaned closer as he continued in a conspiratorial whisper. “You know, reindeer, sleigh bells, mistletoe? We’ve been trying to give you Christmas spirit for days, but you haven’t been very receptive.”
He raised his hands as he continued in a lower voice. “I know, I know. They’re methods can be…off-putting. They put out the gingerbread house without my knowing about it.” He gave a chuckle. “I mean, I’ve been staying in the house a lot since you moved in, but I still have a job and other responsibilities.” Sighing, he looked back at them over his shoulder as they began to move closer. “To be honest, I think they’re going insane. But you need to understand it’s not their fault.”
“They’re going insane? What about you?” I was tired of this. If he was going to kill me, just do it and get it over with.
The man tapped my chin again, a bit harder this time. “Touché.”
“Tell her.” The man-thing’s voice was booming, but at the same time it was somehow hollow, like a storm’s wind pushing between dead winter trees. “Explain why she must believe.”
A look of irritation passed over the son’s face. “Getting to that.” He stood up and took a couple of steps back. When I was a teenager, my parents got a mysterious invitation to a hotel out west called The Imago. They had never heard of it, but when they asked around, they found out it was some big deal fancy place that only the super-rich and powerful ever visited. We’re talking ten stars out of five-star hotels.”
“But, the hotel apparently picked “lottery winners” once a year. How they selected them, or even knew my parents existed, we never found out. But my father was an accountant and my mother worked the front office for a pediatrician. They’d never have another chance like this, so they jumped at it.”
The man sat down on one of the other kitchen chairs, seemingly oblivious to the liquid soaking into his pants. His expression had grown darker, but also more sane, as he looked off at the far wall. “When they came back a week later, they were different. At first it was in positive ways. They both seemed younger and stronger. Smarter even.” He puffed out a breath. “And they could do things. Things that seemed like magic. When I would ask them about it, they would laugh it off, but I knew they were lying.”
“In time things started to swing back the other way. They were sick a lot, and they seemed to be aging, changing, almost overnight. By the time I was twenty-five, they couldn’t leave the property. They had become bound to it somehow. By the time I was thirty…well, it wasn’t good for anybody to see them anymore, and they had taken to disappearing into the bones of this place by then anyway.”
“We’ve spent so many years trying to fix what happened to them. And despite their problems, I’ve spent all that time trying to become like they once were. Because what they were…it was wonderful. Their mistake was leaving The Imago. They’re sick because they came back here for me.”
This was all insane. “Just kill me. I don’t believe any of this. Bunch of crazy bullshit.”
He leaned forward and slapped me across the face before I could pull back. When he spoke, his voice was hard and dangerous. “Just listen. They want you to understand, so you don’t think they’re being mean. That they’re bad people. They want you to hear it, so you’re going to fucking listen.” Clearing his throat, he continued. “They figured out that whatever magic they got from that place, if they can get a bit of it back, they’ll be able to leave this house and go back to the hotel. To the special room they had there. And all they think they need is someone to believe.”
He stood up, his face drawn as he began to pace. “I tried to do it for them, but it doesn’t work. We’ve had a couple of prior owners, but it didn’t go well.”
“Maybe because terrifying someone with old creepy decorations isn’t the way to give someone Christmas spirit?”
He chuckled and nodded. “You know, you might be right. But like I said, they aren’t thinking as clearly as they used to. Brain rot and all.” Turning back, he looked at me with a glint in his eye. “Sometimes I think I may be slipping a little myself. But we’ve made do with what we had on hand and had to hope for the best.”
The woman-thing stepped forward and pulled something from ragged remains of a pocket on the father’s Santa coat. Her voice was thick and hard to understand as she tried to talk around her moldering candy cane. “Please. Help us. Help us be free…and get back.”
Despite everything, I felt myself feeling sorry for her. I didn’t know what to say or what to believe, and I knew I wasn’t going to be of any
help to them, even if it was true. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was about to die when they saw all this was pointless. And I felt some grim satisfaction in knowing they wouldn’t get what they wanted after what they had done, however pitiful they might appear.
But then the front door was banging open and I heard men shouting. I was turned away from the commotion, but within a matter of moments the son was heading towards me and then being yanked backwards by the inertia of multiple bullets striking him at once. I think he was dead before he hit the floor, and I saw his ruined parents glance at him sadly before fading back into the walls of that place. I caught a flutter of movement as the woman dropped what she had been holding in her twisted fingers.
Two policemen were talking to me now, the same ones that had taken my earlier reports. I could tell they were both shaken, and though they were calling an EMT, I knew it was too late for Melanie or the son of the things that killed her. After I was freed, I managed to swipe the paper the mother had dropped, though I didn’t get to look at it right away. First I had to give a heavily modified version of what had happened, leaving out the monster parents that were still living in the walls of that fucking house.
The police didn’t press hard, and judging by the haunted looks, those two men had caught of a glimpse of the truth before it had faded back into hiding. Either way, I was released to my parents. Released to tell them that their other daughter was dead. I considered telling them the whole truth, but what was the point? They would just worry that their surviving daughter was insane.
When we were on the way back home, back to my real home, I finally dug out the piece of paper and looked at it. It was a faded invitation that was surprisingly clean and well-preserved. I thought of that woman creature holding it out toward me as some kind of pleading explanation. It was probably their most prized possession. It came from the place they needed to get back to, after all.
It said:
The Imago Hotel cordially invites you on an all-expenses paid trip to enjoy our hospitality. You have been selected for this very unique and life-changing experience, which includes access to all our amenities and a seven days/six night stay in one of the most celebrated of our renowned Holiday Rooms. The room chosen for you is The Christmas Room. You will be contacted again shortly to confirm your arrival time.
I studied the card in the dim light of the passing countryside, tears stinging my eyes. I had no idea what any of this was, and I didn’t want to know. All I knew was that I had lost enough and wanted no part of whatever this card had or might still represent.
So I rolled down the window and let the rushing air take it away. I hope it is never found, but if it is, let it be far away from me.
I found a dead bird in the mailbox
Being alone is hard. When I was eleven and my parents split up, I felt really alone for the first time. My world was suddenly so different than it had been just the day before. My parents had been my best friends, and they were supposed to be best friends with each other too. When they told me they were getting a divorce, I just listened and tried not to react. Half my friends at school didn’t have both parents either, and I needed to act mature about it.
But inside, I was screaming.
If they weren’t really best friends with each other, then they probably weren’t best friends with me. And when I saw how they were looking at each other—my father red-eyed and so tired looking, my mother’s face stony except for lips she kept pursing like she tasted something bitter—I saw them for the first time not as parents, but as people. And it terrified me.
In the six months after that, I spent time with both of them, but it was always awkward. I felt like I was engaged in some kind of clumsy, terrible dance with both of them all the time. Don’t say the wrong thing, don’t mention the other one, don’t act like you like something too little or too much. We were all walking on eggshells made of glass, and each misstep left a scar on someone.
That’s why I understood when my father said he was taking a contract job in Australia for a year. I was going to miss him, but honestly the main thing I felt was relief. We all needed a break from whatever our family had become, and my hope was that when he came back, things would be better somehow.
Except he never did come back. He had been there just over a month when we got word that he had been killed in some kind of accident. I never knew more about it other than that we had to bury an empty coffin. My mother might have known more, but she was crying all the time for the first couple of months after he died, and after that it just didn’t seem worth bringing back up just to upset her all over again.
That’s the thing. I know my mother loved my father, whatever their problems might have been. And I know how hard losing him and then really losing him was on her. So I try to tell myself that it was just a mistake, a lapse of memory or judgment brought on by everything that happened, that caused her to not give me the last gift my father ever sent me.
He had sent me stuff from the first week he landed in Sydney. Postcards, little books and toys he thought I’d like, things like that. But then they stopped. I’d assumed he was busy or just had ran out of trinkets to send me for awhile. He still called and talked to me on the phone every weekend, and he sounded fine then, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.
But even then, I didn’t know or understand all the inner workings of my parents’ relationship. They would still argue and hold grudges, and in the days leading up to his death, things had reached the point where my mother would immediately hand me the phone when he called, an almost accusatory look on her face as I took the receiver, as though talking to my father was somehow a betrayal.
Even now, I think about things like that and I realize I didn’t know my parents as well as I thought I did. I still don’t.
The last six weeks have been rough for me, and harder on my mother. She had a major stroke, and while she’s been coming back from it, we were told she would likely never be fully mobile again. All things considered, she got off relatively light—having to use a walker is much better than being bedbound and unable to talk, which were the worst case scenarios the doctors were giving when it first happened. But she's still been having to make adjustments in her life. Her ADLs, as the rehab therapist calls them. Activities of Daily Living.
She had to build back up to brushing her own teeth and hair. It sounds easy enough, but fine motor skills were giving her more problems than the balance and strength she needed to get off the bed and grab the walker. And there are some things she just couldn’t do any more. I’d set up people to come over and clean, help her reach things she had a hard time with, and generally make sure she was okay when I’m was back home and three hours away from her.
I’ve spent the last few weeks with her trying to help her get acclimated to the changes in her life, but also trying to get the house more organized so workers could find what she wants more easily. I’ve gone through drawers and boxes, closets and cupboards, and more than once I’ve found some artifact from my childhood that made me smile or tear up a little.
Then last Thursday I was going through a guest room closet when I found a cardboard box I had never seen before. When I opened it, musty air blossomed in my nostrils as confusion and a kind of sad anger filled my heart.
It was packages from my father. Three of them. Things that must have come while they were fighting, things that she hid from me out of spite or pettiness or whatever dark emotion told her it was okay to keep reminders of a father’s love from their child. The boxes were well-wrapped and had never been opened, and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, I found myself hoping that this was all a mistake. That these weren’t gifts from my father she had hidden from me at all.
But they were. The first was a small set of books about animals in the Outback. The second was a koala family that would link together with magnets to form a long chain. The third was a small, ornately carved wooden box.
The box stood out the most, both because it was uniqu
e and because it seemed like an odd gift for an eleven-year old girl. It was similar in size to a pencil box, and maybe my father thought I was getting old enough I’d want to keep jewelry in it or something. It also stood out because of the suggestion that something might be inside. It had thick metal hinges on the back of the lid, and the front was secured by a hasp lock ran through with a flat piece of the same metal that secured the hasp when twisted horizontally.
I was reaching to turn the metal and undo the hasp when I noticed there was a small piece of yellowed paper underneath it in the box it had been shipped in. I felt my vision growing blurry as I saw my father’s handwriting on the note written there. It said:
I bought this from an old man who came to our worksite yesterday. Poor guy looked like he needed money to eat, and he said this box was special. He said there was a bunyip trapped inside it! I asked him what a bunyip was, and he just laughed. He said I should open the box and find out.
But don’t worry. I already checked it out before sending it to my girl. The only thing that is in there is a cool-looking river rock. But the box is neat too, right?
I miss you both a lot, and while I’m enjoying my time here, I’ll be glad when I’m back too. I’m so proud of my girl. We’ll all get through this.
Love you, Daddy.
I wanted to go and confront my mother with the letter. Ask her how dare she keep something like that from me. That he didn’t just belong to her, and it wasn’t her choice whether I got to talk to him. How he had loved us both, and he was dead because she had pushed him away, and I fucking hated her for it.
I wanted to do all of that, but I wouldn’t. There would be no point to it. She was broken, almost past the point of mending, and all I’d be doing by hurting her would be making myself more like her. So I took a deep breath, gently folded up the note and put it in my shirt pocket, and then I opened the box.
Incarnata Page 2