One by One

by D. W. Gillespie

  “What did you do that for?”

  Alice answered, cutting her brother off. “I wanted to see Baxter.”

  Frank nodded. If there was anything else to be said, he didn’t seem to know what it might be.

  “We found this weird little shack way back in the woods. Like way back.”

  “Well, the property goes back for ten acres or so. Hell of a deal. You hit a fence back there?”

  “No.”

  “There’s supposed to be one at the edge of the property. Maybe it wasn’t as far back as you thought. It’s easy to get lost once you lose sight of the house.”

  “There wasn’t any fence,” Dean said.

  “Okay,” Frank replied. “I might take a stroll down there myself in a bit and see what it’s all about.”

  Alice was staring at her father, at the unsure look in his eyes.

  Up to something, a voice inside cried like an alarm.

  “You see anything else?” Frank asked.

  “Yeah,” Dean said. He glanced over in Alice’s direction, but he didn’t make eye contact with her. He paused for a long time, but she finally spoke for him.

  “Something dug up Baxter.”

  She said it plainly, without a hint of emotion in her voice. To hear her tell it, the event was just a thing that happened, not something worth getting worked up over.

  “What?” Frank said, incredulous.

  “She’s right,” Dean said.

  “Must have been a coyote. Dammit, I meant to get back out there today and put some rocks on it. Son of a bitch.…”

  Frank left the supplies where they were for the moment. Normally, this was the type of big, family excitement that everyone would want to be a part of, but Alice and Dean just sat there and watched as he strode back outside.

  “You didn’t tell him about the dress.”

  Dean’s face scrunched up into a sneer. “I never said it was a dress. I just thought I saw something.”

  He stood up, retreating finally to his room. Now that he wasn’t the oldest one in the house, the one in charge, Alice knew he was ready to be alone once again.

  “Besides, there’s nothing to tell.”

  Alice waited for a moment before turning of the TV and venturing back to her room as well, pausing just long enough to stare at the painting in the hallway. She wanted to look at it longer, to study it, to imagine the hand tracing it on the wall. But just then, the front door banged open again, and she walked into her room without a word. She pressed her ear to the door, listening as her dad shook off the cold and snow. Night would fall soon, and that reality swirled inside her, darkening her insides like old coffee poured into a cup of milk. Unless something strange happened, they were all here to stay, snowed in for at least a few days. That was more than enough time to paint over the picture in the hallway, to cover it up for a second time, to erase it from memory for good.

  Except. It felt wrong, the idea of the history of this place painted over. It felt like kicking over someone’s tombstone.

  Why?

  It was a fair question. One she hadn’t considered before then. The diary wasn’t necessarily a memorial. It could have just been a keepsake left behind, something that her parents stumbled across. Maybe the diary had been long forgotten and Alice was just dwelling on someone’s abandoned history, puzzling over details that Mary herself had already put in the rearview mirror of her life.

  It’s not that simple.

  But it could be. Whatever was happening in this old, strange house didn’t have to be some grand adventure, even if part of Alice’s heart longed for it to be. Mary could be a teenager now, living somewhere else, somewhere warm, the beach maybe. She could be even older than that, a college graduate, maybe a wife or a mother. Maybe she even had a daughter of her own.

  She’s dead.

  No, she’s not.

  She might even be buried out there, buried and forgotten, like a cat that no one loved enough to cry for.

  Stop it.

  Or maybe, whatever is left of her is locked away in that shack, moldering, covered with maggots, her eyes rotted away.

  She tried to banish the thought, tried to chase it away like a rabbit, but she couldn’t. The idea was too powerful, the clues too enticing.

  Mary was dead.

  Someone had given Alice her diary.

  Someone had been peering in through the window.

  Someone had followed them through the woods in a pink dress.

  And someone had dug up Baxter.

  No. None of it made sense.

  Of course it makes sense. The dead get hungry, you know. And they aren’t picky. She probably went for the cat because it was still fresh.

  Alice heard the outside door open and close once again, followed by the soft sound of conversation between her parents. Normally, her parents had an almost cute way of arguing in the most polite way possible, but lately, that had begun to change, get meaner and more heated. Alice told herself it was just the stress of the move, though if she was being honest, it had been getting worse for months – long before they finally decided to move. She never understood grown-up problems about money or work or anything like that, but she had hoped in some deeper part of herself that the house would actually be a good thing for them. And for a while, at least, it had seemed to be the Band-Aid her parents’ relationship needed. Now, that idea felt amazingly naïve.

  Debra almost always made the rounds through the house after the small talk was over, so Alice decided to preemptively head out and greet her. She caught the tail end of the conversation, a whispered retelling of the scene with Baxter. Both of them stopped talking when they heard her footsteps. Debra turned and managed a tired smile, the stress of the move, the cat, the snow all visible in her mother’s eyes.

  “Hey, honey,” she said, smiling. “You okay?” She stopped short of actually talking about what happened, but the implication was clear enough.

  “I’m fine,” Alice said, letting her mother wrap her in a hug.

  Debra leaned back, studying Alice’s face for some hidden details that might have slipped out. Finally, she shook her head. “This place,” she muttered darkly.

  “What does that mean?” Alice asked. Frank leaned closer as well, ready to pounce at anything negative that his wife might have to say.

  Debra ran her fingers through her hair, her eyes closed, the stress just leaking out of her. Somehow, she found the will to push it back down and manage a smile.

  “Just crazy times,” she answered. “We’re good though. We’re all good.”

  Her repeated phrase made Alice think that she was trying to convince herself, but she didn’t linger on it for long.

  “And,” Debra continued, “on top of everything else, this damn snow.”

  Frank’s face loosened up a bit. Alice knew the look in his eyes, the way that his lips thinned out whenever he was preparing himself for a fight. He didn’t like to argue. He much preferred the path of least resistance, but he had a bit of badger in him, the kind of thing that could bite when cornered. His face told Alice that he was happy this wasn’t going to be the moment.

  “Oh yeah,” he said cheerfully, “it’s piling up out there.”

  The conversation continued, but Alice didn’t pay it much mind. It was clear that everyone, Dean included, had forgiven Frank’s lapse the night before. For a brief moment, the thought offended Alice. Surely her father deserved more punishment; he hadn’t really done anything more than say he was sorry.

  You’re a family, a soft voice whispered. It’s better if everyone is just happy.

  She recognized that part of herself as something very similar to Frank’s own personality, and for just a second she hated herself. But she saw the dark truth at the heart of it. They were a family, and it was just simpler if they all got along.

  After all, he’ll
probably never act like that again.

  A lie perhaps, but a comforting one. Her parents tag teamed a quick dinner of chicken Alfredo pasta, salad, and garlic bread. All except the chicken was either frozen or from a bag, but if Alice squinted, it looked like the real deal. They sat around the living room couches, eating with plates in their laps as they flipped around for something to watch. Christmas had come and gone, but Frank, the eternal child he was, didn’t like to let it go. Before anyone had a chance to object, he’d snuck in the stop-motion Rudolph special they’d been playing since he was a kid.

  “Dad, come on,” Dean complained.

  “Hey, this is a classic.”

  That was all it took to break up the evening’s festivities. Dean slunk away to his room. Debra started cleaning up the dishes in the kitchen, cursing at how small and ineffective the new kitchen was, banging pots and pans like she had to hammer them in place.

  Frank and Alice, the two stragglers, stayed and watched till the end, till the toothy monster was tamed and Rudolph learned his place in the world. The wildness of the past few days had taken a toll on Alice, and though she longed to fall into a quick sleep, she knew it wouldn’t happen, at least not for a while. There was work to do, and as the credits rolled, she felt something dark stirring up within her, like a coyote digging at the fresh dirt.

  “I’m sleepy,” she said, feigning a yawn that soon turned into a real one. If her dad noticed, he didn’t say anything.

  “Tomorrow, we’ll get some real work going. Make this place feel like a home.”

  Alice perked up a bit. “Who lived here before us?”

  “Hmm?” Frank said, as if he didn’t understand the question. “Oh, just a family. Probably like us, I’d guess.”

  “You bought it from them?”

  “Well, no. I bought it from the bank. They foreclosed on it, after the family stopped paying. Pretty normal stuff really, and a hell of a deal.”

  Alice measured every word, testing every syllable, trying to find why he seemed so nervous. So unsure. Finally, she asked, “Do you know anything about the family?”

  He coughed. Whatever else came out of his mouth from that point, Alice knew he was holding something back. He did the same thing whenever they were playing cards. Didn’t matter if it was poker, Uno, or old maid. When he had something he didn’t want you to know about, Frank would clear his throat, just a tiny bit. It was the kind of thing you would miss unless you were waiting for it.

  “No, not really. I think there was some falling out. Divorce. You know. Grown-up stuff. Bad for them, I guess, but good for us. This place will be our home, a real home. Something with personality, not just a cookie-cutter subdivision where every house looks the same. It’ll be great.”

  Unlike with her mother, Alice didn’t have to wonder if her dad was trying to convince himself. He had already done that months ago. He was all in on this place, for better or worse.

  Alice didn’t say anything else. This was the perfect opportunity for Frank to mention the diary if he had been the one to put it in her room. But the moment passed. Alice told him good night, and she went into the kitchen where her mother sat, bathed in the blue glow of her laptop, her reading glasses firmly in place.

  “You going to bed, sweetie?”

  “I think so.” Alice stood there for a moment, picking at the edge of the tablecloth. It wasn’t subtle.

  “Something on your mind?” Debra asked.

  Alice peered back over her shoulder. Her dad was already wrapped up in whatever else was coming on, and the TV was too loud for them to be overheard. She had done a decent job of keeping her secret all day, but she couldn’t hold it any longer. She had to find out who put the diary in her room.

  “Mom,” she said, sliding into a chair next to her. “What do you think about this place?”

  Debra laughed, but there was no humor in it, just a sharp hiss through her teeth. She shook her head, almost as if she were shaking off the sarcasm before she talked.

  “It’s fine, baby. It will be great once we get settled. It’s just…a lot to deal with.”

  “Yeah,” Alice said, trying to figure out how to guide the conversation to where she wanted it to go. “It’s just… It almost feels like there’s more going on here, you know?”

  Debra leaned around the side of the laptop and peered down over her reading glasses. “What do you mean?”

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, the stuff with Baxter is bad, but you know…things like that happen. But there’s something else. Like, there’s something here.”

  “Honey, the other night was just your imagination.”

  “I know. I just feel like part of the family that lived here before is still here somehow.”

  That was it. That was as good as she could do without coming right out and mentioning the diary. If her mom had found it, this was the perfect opportunity to talk about it.

  “It’s just the new house,” she said with finality. Something in her voice had changed, gotten sharper somehow. She didn’t intend to continue this conversation, even if Alice couldn’t quite figure out why.

  “Now,” she said, turning back to her laptop, “head to bed. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  Alice didn’t know what to make of any of it, of her parents’ knowing glances and deflections, of the strangeness of the house, of the painting and the cat, of the shed and loose dirt. If any excitement about the house remained, it had faded, changed, been replaced by something much closer to pure fear. She had spent the entire day, ever since she had found the diary, expecting her mom or dad to pull back the curtain, to reveal the truth hiding in plain sight. But now, it seemed they were just a part of the sleight of hand, and the realization that she was in this more or less alone twisted knots inside of her.

  Without another word, Alice crept to her room. For the first time, she didn’t glance up at the picture as she passed it. She didn’t want to see it, not then, not at this sudden low point. She closed the door behind her, blocking out the sounds of Dean’s room across the hall. Her first instinct was to grab the diary, to spend the entire night poring over it, studying every detail for the answers she so desperately needed.

  Instead, she sat down on the bed and waited patiently. Her room was near the center of the house, a small little nexus that had other rooms on each side. Close to her door, all she could hear was Dean’s TV, blaring. But, if she crossed the room and slipped into her small closet, she could hear the TV from the living room. There were no details to pick out, nothing specific, but she didn’t care about that anyway. She was waiting until the TV in the living room was turned off to make her move.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Frank had probably kept the show going as he waited for her to leave the room. Now that Alice was officially in bed, she listened as the TV clicked off and her father’s footsteps lumbered into the kitchen.

  Alice slid her door open, but instead of going left, which was the direct path to the kitchen, she went right. There was a small hallway that opened up into a bathroom, and behind that, that strange, unfinished hallway, the “utility room,” whose windows peered into her room. It was like a gray tunnel, unfurnished, unpainted, home to nothing more than some bare storage shelves and the washer and dryer. On the far end was a folding, slat door, the kind usually attached to closets. It was closed at the moment, just like she remembered it.

  This door led right back into the living room, completing the odd architectural loop. She crept forward, breath held, and tilted her head to the slats. Her parents, still in the kitchen, were easily within earshot.

  “…she must have heard you talking about it,” Debra said, the irritation clear in her voice. It was a familiar voice, one that made Alice wonder if her mother had ever respected her father at all.

  “I haven’t said shit in front of them,” he replied, voice raising.

  “Kee
p your fucking voice down.”

  “I’m not even talking louder.”

  “Jesus…just be quiet,” Debra said, her voice dropping. “All I’m saying is that they heard about it somehow. And it sure as hell wasn’t from me.”

  “I think you’re overexaggerating,” Frank answered.

  “Am I? She’s specifically asking about the family that lived here before us. How else would she know about it?”

  “She’s a kid. Kids ask questions.”

  “Oh, sure, they randomly ask questions about the girl who died in this house.”

  Alice gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “You know it was her, right?” Debra asked.

  “Her, what?”

  “She was the one who drew that picture. It had to be her. It’s like she left her stamp here before she…Before it happened.”

  “Look, you’re letting this place spook you.”

  “I’m not doing shit,” Debra snapped. “The cat, the picture, now Alice asking questions. Something is off here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s the truth.”

  “Oh, come on,” Frank said. “Of course you’d go that way with it.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you thought this was a bad idea from day one. I found a deal here, something we can fix up, something we can make amazing for our family, and all you see are the negatives.”

  “How the hell do you think you got that deal?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” Frank said. “There was a tragedy here, yes. An accident. They happen every day. And when the family packed up and left, the bank took over.”

  “And it sat empty for two years because no one wanted to buy a house where a teenage girl died.”

  Alice felt her throat tighten. They had danced around it, neither of them wanting to voice the truth of this place. But there it was, out in the open, impossible to ignore any longer.

  The fire in Frank’s voice faded, replaced by sarcastic defeat.

  “I should have known,” he said. “I should have known that this was a mistake. That you’d throw it back in my damn face the first opportunity you got.”