One by One

by D. W. Gillespie

  Footsteps left the kitchen, and for a brief moment, Alice thought her parents might be coming to get her, to put her in the hot seat and demand answers for her sudden curiosity. Instead, a second set of footsteps followed.

  “Oh, you’d like to put the blame on me, I’m sure, but you know full well…”

  The voices faded, the argument carried upstairs like a leaf on the wind. The heavy footsteps carried on overhead, but the squabble faded to nothingness, mixing with the groan of wind and softly drifting snow.

  Alice went back the way she’d come, and jumped – Dean was standing in the hall between their rooms.

  “Jeez, I didn’t see you standing there.…”

  “They’ll get a divorce,” he replied, seeming not to hear.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I didn’t know before. I mean, I thought they might. When you were little, Mom was working two jobs, and Dad got laid off for the first time.… I thought it would have happened back then.”

  He walked to the hallway door and peered up the crooked staircase. “They got better though. I don’t really know how, but they did.”

  “It’s just stress,” Alice answered.

  “They don’t do good with stress.”

  “Does anyone?”

  Dean shook his head and waved a dismissive hand. “You were too young to remember. They came close to splitting up once, really close. This shit show of a house might be enough to finish the job.”

  “They’re fine. Once we get settled…”

  “You feel settled?” he asked, looking back at her. “I wish we hadn’t come here.”

  He left her standing there to ponder what the future might hold for them. Dean stopped at his door and turned around. The light from his room lit half his face but hid his expression from her.

  “Don’t listen to me,” he said. “Who knows what could happen? Things’ll be fine.”

  Alice wanted to smile at that, but the sentiment was too weak, too half felt for her to buy into it.

  “Either way,” he added, “we got each other.”

  He closed the door behind him, too quickly to see that she was smiling.

  Chapter Eleven

  The footsteps grew quiet, and the new house creaked and moaned all around her as Alice slipped into bed, table-side lamp on, diary in hand. It felt even stranger to hold it, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was tied to Mary somehow, as if her soul was trapped inside it like Tom Riddle’s soul in the Harry Potter movie they’d watched that afternoon.

  If she felt absurd about the way her imagination was getting away from her, it was hidden under thick layers of apprehension and fear. She snuggled down under the comforter, feeling warmer and safer than she had all day, as if cotton and polyester could somehow protect her from the madness of this place. She opened the diary. This time, instead of flipping around from page to page, she started from the beginning. The page was ragged and worn, but still readable.

  I can’t believe my birthday is over. I didn’t even have fun at my party. I told Mom I was too old for an actual party. It was all little kid stuff. Balloon animals. A big, huge cake that looked like a dress. It was nice, but silly. I just wanted friends over. Just wanted to do something that wasn’t so kiddy. I’m ten, not six.

  That confirmed one detail Alice didn’t know. She wasn’t sure how many years Mary had written in the diary, but now at least, she knew when she started. Ten years old. Same age as Alice herself.

  She remembered her own tenth birthday party. It probably wasn’t very different. No balloon animals, but still very childish. It was at a local place that rented out huge rooms full of inflatables. She’d had a few birthdays there, and it was always a good time, one of the few times that everyone in the family seemed to get on the same wavelength. Even Dean would put up his phone and jump down one of the huge, bouncy slides.

  But there was something else there, something she hadn’t considered much before reading that page. She had, in her own way, felt the same as Mary. She wouldn’t have dared tell her mom the truth though, especially once she’d seen the excitement in her mom’s eyes.

  “Want me to book the bounce house?” she’d asked.

  She imagined what it would have taken to stick a pin in her mother’s excitement, to watch it deflate in front of her. Alice had gotten her ears pierced for her tenth birthday, years later than most of her friends. She’d wanted a makeover party that year, something where she could pick out new earrings, get her nails done, get pedicures. Most of her friends were doing birthdays like that. None of them made any pretense to actually be grown-ups, but it was time to start pretending, to start acting like you understood what was coming.

  Women made themselves up. It was a skill, an important one even. Alice didn’t have it in her, not yet at least, but the makeover party wouldn’t have been for her anyway. It would have been for her friends, pretty girls, prettier than her, each of them somehow already understanding this strange, frightening new aspect of life. She was only now starting to realize, several months later, that her friends hadn’t been frightened at all. They were, somehow, brought into young adulthood knowing exactly what the strange world of boys, sex, and looks was all about.

  Mary seemed to be that type, the type that took to junior high like a fish to water. A sneaky idea crept into her mind. She imagined what it would have been like if the two of them had been friends. She could actually see it, Alice as a lost little puppy, Mary as her chatty guide into adulthood. As she read on, the notion remained, firmly planted in her mind.

  She did get me this though. I rolled my eyes when I opened it. A diary. Such a little girl thing. I promised I’d sit down and write in it, just to make her happy. So, here I am, writing, killing time, waiting for her to stop walking by my room so I can toss it into a drawer.

  Oh, Mom. So predictable.

  That was it. The first entry from start to finish. No revelations. No grand truths. Just a little girl writing to appease her mother. She flipped to the next page. This one was written with a different pen, now in purple ink.

  Wow. This will be interesting to look back on one day. I threw this thing in a drawer and lost track of it. Mom must have given up on me quicker than I thought she would have. No surprise there.

  All right, just for the record, here I am, three years later. A thirteen-year-old! Hold your applause for the teenager. This thing looks different to me now. Still a little silly, but…different.

  For starters, I actually like English class now. We have to write essays in Mrs. Carmichael’s class. I expected to hate it, but the fact is I’m good at it. It’s all basic stuff, things like picking out the meaning in Beowulf or Othello or The Red Badge of Courage. And Mrs. C thinks I have real talent. I mean, I’m eating shit in geometry, but that’s life for you.

  Alice laughed out loud to herself, her voice harsh in the quiet room. Mrs. Carmicheal. Could it have been the same one? Were she and Mary even more alike that she even imagined? Alice did the math in her head, trying to figure out how old Mrs. Carmichael was, if it was possible that she could have been teaching that long. She hated geometry too. She read on, the strange connection between them deepening.

  I’m surprised by how well this little book has held up. I couldn’t appreciate it back then, but this was a good gift. Did Mom see something in me? Something I didn’t see?

  Either way, I think I might start keeping up with this. Not an everyday thing. Just when I need it. Who knows, after everything that’s been going on with Mom and Dad lately, I might have plenty to write about.

  They’ll get a divorce. I know it.

  All Mom does is talk about him when he’s not around. How lazy he is. How worthless.

  And Dad…all he does is go off into the woods on his own. Wander around. Says he’s hunting, but you never see any animals anymore. Never hear any shots.

  I don’
t know what’s going on between them, but I can tell where it’s going. Doesn’t take a teenager to know that.

  Something shuffled out in the hallway, and Alice closed the book for a moment, listening to the house, listening to it breathe. She froze, expecting to hear something that never came. The clomp of Dean’s big feet as he went to the kitchen for a snack. Her parents’ whispered voices as their argument continued.

  Baxter.

  Yes. With a grim sense of humor, she realized she was waiting to hear him as well.

  He’s back. Just like Pet Sematary…

  Alice shushed that part of her mind. She didn’t need to hear that, not now. But instead, something worse entered her mind, a tiny seed of an idea that she couldn’t dig out once it started to grow.

  The painting…

  Yes. That was what she heard in the hallway. Someone, maybe Dean, maybe Frank, maybe even Debra, was crouched in front of the wall, paintbrush in hand. Someone was responsible for the entire thing, and at this point, even if it felt impossible, she clung to the image, clung to the hope that everything that had happened was just some kind of trick, a cruel practical joke that everyone else was in on.

  You won’t like what you see, the dark part of her mind whispered. She fanned the thought away like smoke. She didn’t just want to see the picture again; she had to.

  Alice climbed out of bed and opened the door slowly. The only sound past the pounding of her heart was the brush of carpet as the door slid open. She stood like that for a while, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness and, above all else, listening for movement.

  She heard nothing, so she slowly crept out into the hallway. The house was silent then, and even the familiar light peeking out from under Dean’s door was dark now. The house, in all its strange glory, was hers. And yet, more than ever before, she felt eyes on her, felt a presence, something so close she could touch it.

  Alice rounded the corner, still fully expecting to see her parents, her brother, someone crouched there in the dark.

  Someone in pink…

  But the hallway was empty.

  The painting glowed blue in the moonlight spilling in from the bay window. She looked down at her feet, positioning herself just right, just where Mary must have been those years before, kneeling down to the height she imagined she must have been. She reached up, imagining the brush in her hand. How long had it taken her? Did she have a plan, or did she just start painting the way that little kids do? It felt like Mary had left her brand on this place, something indelible, something that would be there when she was gone.

  When she was dead.

  “Mary…”

  Alice said the name aloud, and the house seemed to groan in response. She turned and took a few steps forward, peering into the blackness of the front sitting room. There was nothing in there, no furniture yet, nothing at all besides boxes. It was one of the several rooms that expanded her family’s footprint, one that would stay empty until the springtime sales started hitting the furniture stores. She stood in the doorway, certain that there was something inside the room, that there was someone. The room was sliced into a grid of blue light and black lines from the window panes, and beyond that, the edges of the room were black as pitch.

  With a deep breath, she took a single step in. Something shuddered within. A shape stirred in the darkness. A shadow passed in front of the moonlight. Alice didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. For a long time, the house was frozen, a broken watch, a moment pulled out of time.

  Was it minutes of her standing there, not moving a single muscle? Was it hours?

  Finally, when she couldn’t stand it any longer, Alice stepped back out of the room, into the hall, and the world un-paused. She noticed the snow falling out the wide window. It was white everywhere – the ground, the trees, everything covered in a fresh blanket, glittering like handfuls of quartz.

  She never heard anything else move, never saw another shadow, and when she made it back to her room, the clock told her that nearly two hours had passed since she had left. It seemed impossible, but then again, this was no normal house. Something was here, she knew that, and the longer she stayed, the more convinced she had become that it was guiding her. That she was guiding her.

  Sleep overtook Alice the instant she was under the covers, and she dozed fitfully, dreamed of faces leering in through the window, of a girl with wild, unkempt hair in a pink jacket, beckoning her to some unknown place, some unknown time.

  Chapter Twelve

  Alice could hear her parents in the kitchen when she opened her eyes. It didn’t sound like they were arguing, not completely. It was more of what her father called an “enhanced conversation.” Heated, but not angry. They were like that a lot in the morning when both of them had to be somewhere. Alice sat up, her body aching, not quite feeling rested yet. The first thing she did was look over to the bedside table, at the diary that still lay there. A small bit of her feared it had all been a dream, feared and hoped at the same time. Mary was real to her now, as close as the bed, the floor, the walls themselves. There was more work to be done today, and she was actually excited to get to it.

  Alice walked into the hallway, glancing over at Dean’s room. The door was ajar, just slightly, but none of the usual sounds bellowed out from within. She shrugged and walked toward the kitchen, toward the sound of her parents.

  “It will be fine,” Debra insisted. “It’s front-wheel drive.”

  “I know, but the truck would be better. I don’t mind letting you take it. I promise.”

  Both of them had to work that day, but Alice was confused for a moment about what they could be arguing about. Then she caught a glimpse outside. The snow. The night before returned to her, the sight of it, blue and glowing. It was still falling, and already, there was enough of it to cover every surface in sight, turning the lawn a flat span of white.

  Unstoppable, childlike glee stirred up in her. They rarely got much more than a dusting of snow, but this was the real deal. This was sled snow, snowman snow, snowball war snow. For a brief moment, all the fear and uncertainty of the new house disappeared, and she was just a ten-year-old girl, excited to see the world transformed.

  “Wow,” she said as she entered the kitchen. Her parents kept talking, neither of them completely acknowledging her. “I mean, how much is it? Is it supposed to keep going?”

  Debra turned to her, eyebrows raised, lips narrowed. It was a familiar look, one that Alice had seen her entire life. It seemed to say to her, Yes, dear? You’ve interrupted me, so what’s so important?

  That look usually came without any actual words attached, and it was no different this time. Alice repeated herself.

  “Yes, honey. It’s a lot of snow. Your dad and I have to get some work done today, at least for a few hours.”

  She trailed off a bit, mumbling to herself, picking the thread back up in Frank’s direction instead of Alice’s. They were close to an argument from the looks of it, both of them stressing about work and oblivious about the once in a decade snow they were getting.

  “Is there anywhere good to go sledding?” Alice interrupted.

  Debra shook her head. “I don’t know.… For god’s sake, can you go get your brother up?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he doesn’t need to sleep all day for one thing, but I need him to get those tubs in off the porch – they’ll get soaked through if the snow starts melting. It’s all his crap in them anyway.”

  “It’s not melting anytime soon,” Frank said, looking at his phone.

  “Jesus.” Debra stared at the ceiling. “Please just go get your brother up.”

  Alice sighed, frustrated that the fun of the day was already draining out, spoiled by her family’s familiar, boring nonsense. She took one last, distant look at the snow and walked back down the hall, past the stairs.

  Then she screamed.

  The con
versation in the kitchen died, replaced by footsteps, hurried, panicked. And there they were, one at each side, Frank turning her face toward his, Debra checking her as if she were a piece of fruit that might be bruised. Neither of them saw. How could they not see?

  “What the hell is it?” Frank asked.

  Alice raised a finger and pointed at the wall in front of them. Debra saw it first. She didn’t scream. She didn’t seem to be able to. Finally, Frank saw it too. While Alice and Debra stood, aghast, he was the one to make a run for Dean’s room.

  “Dean!”

  Something in the sound of his voice must have brought Debra back as well, and she followed along, leaving Alice alone to stare at the painting on the wall, at the fresh, black X drawn over the older brother.

  “Mary,” she whispered as her parents tore Dean’s room apart, looking for him.

  “Check the bathroom,” she heard her mother say. “I’ll try his cell.” More footsteps. More panic. Alice could hear it in their every movement. A thoughtless hurricane of fear had swept them both up, and with each step, with each word from their mouths, the panic grew deeper. Alice realized she should join in with them, that three people might find her brother faster than two. But she didn’t. She only stared at the painting for a moment longer before reaching up and tracing the X with the tip of her finger.

  It was still damp to the touch.

  “Did you see anything?” Frank asked, running back into the hall. He looked down at the black tips of her fingers, and his hands clamped down on her shoulders, squeezing.

  “Did you paint this?” he demanded. His voice was lower now, gruffer. Alice looked from the paint to her father to the paint again. Her eyes were watering.

  “Answer me!” He gave her a shake, and her head bobbed forward and back. It didn’t hurt, not quite, but it was the sort of thing that would hurt if it kept up. The idea that her father, her daddy, would intentionally do something to cause her pain made the welling corners of her eyes begin to drip. This was the man who had never even spanked her once in her life.