One by One

by D. W. Gillespie

  Debra was sitting in the living room, the uncovered windows revealing the world of white that was slowly, surely, swallowing the entire house. Had it ever snowed this much here? Alice couldn’t be sure, but it certainly hadn’t in her memory. She sat down next to her mother, who was staring at the blank TV, one leg twitching up and down rapidly. At first, Alice wasn’t sure her mother even noticed her.

  “I’ve never seen this much snow,” Alice said, slipping the diary under one leg. It was warm through her jeans.

  Debra looked up, surprised. “Oh. Yes. It’s a lot.”

  Her eyes were red-rimmed, dark blue wells that spoke of unspeakable fear and grief. All of Alice’s bluster, all of her pride at standing up to her parents, vanished when she looked into her mother’s stricken eyes.

  “Probably five or six inches. Haven’t seen it like this since…I don’t know. Maybe since I was a kid. I can’t remember, honestly…”

  The thought died away, another rabbit disappearing into the woods.

  “Where’s Dad?”

  Debra seemed shocked by the question, as if she had already forgotten her husband existed.

  “He’s…out there. I think. Somewhere. I saw him walk past earlier. It was almost like he was checking everything out. The pool. The fence. The porch…maybe the woods.”

  She looked down at her phone, which rested on one leg, a quiet little square of black plastic and glass. She checked it for what had surely been the hundredth time.

  “He’s been out for a long time now,” she said to herself.

  The seed in Alice’s brain rattled like a can of spray paint.

  What’s Dad up to?

  “What about the police?” Alice asked.

  “I called them back a little while ago. They said they were slammed. There was no one to send yet. People aren’t used to this kind of weather. Lots of people in worse spots than we are. Wrecks. Things like that.”

  She laughed a bit. It sounded like a puppy whining. “I guess we’re on the list.”

  “When will they be here?” Alice asked.

  “I don’t know, baby.” Her leg started twitching again, dancing up and down like a piston, the fabric of her pants shuffling with a thwip, thwip, thwip sound. After a few seconds, the sound of it was wearing thin.

  “Mom,” she said, finally placing a hand on her mother’s knee. Debra stopped bouncing her leg and looked over, her eyes still dazed, glassy.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s something I want to talk about.”

  Debra’s eyes brightened. Alice read the hope springing in them, the hope that maybe, somehow, this was all still a joke that had gone on for too long.

  “I found something,” she said. “A diary. I think it belonged to the girl who lived here before us. The girl who drew that picture on the wall.”

  She held the little book up, pausing long enough to give Debra the opportunity to confess, to tell Alice that she was the one who put the book there. Debra was silent.

  “Have you ever seen it?” Alice asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Yes. Honey, what does this have to do with anything?”

  “Mom, I think there’s something…wrong with this house.”

  Debra tried to smile, Alice could tell. She watched as her mom tried to do that motherly thing that she always did. Honey, there’s nothing in the closet, or, Alice, you’re being silly, it’s just the wind. It never worked, even when she was right, and this time, she couldn’t just smile, nod, and ignore what was happening.

  “What are you talking about?” she finally asked, her voice skeptical.

  “There’s so much, it’s hard to explain it. But this book, it tells about what happened here. What happened to her.”

  Debra’s face darkened. “What do you know?”

  Alice glanced down at the diary. “I know her name was Mary. That she lived here with a brother named Peter. A dad named Walker. Not sure what the mom’s name is.” She paused, waiting for Debra to respond. Her mother only stared at her with numb eyes.

  “Walker was…bad, I think. He did things to her. Stuff that she doesn’t want to think about. And…I think she died. Here.”

  A look of pure, grim sickness washed over Debra’s face. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know,” Alice said. “But…I heard you and Dad talking about it last night.”

  Debra ran both hands up her face, through her hair, smearing her eyeliner. She didn’t say anything. She only kept shaking her head from left to right.

  “Please, tell me what happened,” Alice begged. “I think she’s still here. I think she’s got something to do with what’s happening.”

  “No.”

  “I need to know.”

  “You don’t need to know anything; you’re just a kid.…”

  “Did you put the diary in my room?” Alice asked, suddenly angry at her mother’s refusal to listen. “Did Dad?”

  Debra reached for the book, and Alice pulled it back reflexively, as if her mother’s hand might steal it and burn it to a crisp.

  “I just want to take a look at it,” she said defensively. “I’ve never seen it in my life. There’s some…rational explanation for all this. There has to be. Books don’t just show up; someone puts them there.”

  “She did.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Debra said, slapping a hand on her knee out of frustration. “With everything else going on, the last thing I can deal with is you going off on some…crazy fantasy.”

  “Look at it then,” Alice said, pressing it into her mother’s hands. “Tell me how I know all of this. Tell me what you know. If I’m crazy, at least prove that I am. Then maybe we can figure everything out.”

  Debra scanned the pages as Alice talked, flipping through quickly. She turned to the end of the book, her eyes narrowed as she studied the pages. Then she turned back to an earlier page.

  “It’s nothing.” Debra stared down at the pages. “It’s less than nothing. You could have written all of this in half an hour if you wanted to. And if you’re just messing with me, it’s not funny.”

  “Do I look like I’m messing with you?” Alice asked, on the verge of tears.

  “What is this then?” Debra asked, holding the book in front of Alice’s face. “Look at the handwriting at the back pages. Look at how new it is. Go ahead, compare them. You can tell some of this looks old, but the last few pages are someone else. Someone new.”

  It was true. Alice had noticed it the first time she paged through the book, even if it hadn’t really sunk in – an entirely different hand had written the last twenty pages or so. The handwriting was scrawled and uglier somehow. Like the hand writing it wasn’t as steady as it once had been.

  “What happened to her?” Alice demanded, taking the diary from her mother and setting it on the coffee table.

  “What does it matter?”

  “Please, just tell me. Was it an accident? Was it something with her father?” Hope surged through Alice’s chest as another possibility dawned on her. “Maybe you got the wrong story and she didn’t actually die. Maybe she was just hurt so bad it messed up her handwriting.”

  Debra took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  “We should have never. Come. Here.”

  She said it with finality, as if the words were demons that she was exorcising from her own body. She opened her eyes and met Alice’s gaze.

  “This girl. This Mary, if that was her name. She didn’t get hurt. She didn’t injure her hand or go into the hospital or anything like that. She died. And I didn’t get the wrong story. They have to tell you, you know. Real estate agents? It’s part of the deal. If someone dies tragically, it affects the house. It was in the news and everything. And lucky us, it really dropped the price. It was a steal
, as your dad says.”

  Debra sighed and shook her head. “She fell down the stairs. They had been messed up for years. Apparently, the father…”

  “Walker?”

  “I don’t know anyone’s name.” Debra rolled her eyes. “All we know is we had to have the stairs professionally repaired before we moved in. They were loose from the frame, and she just fell.”

  There it was. The truth she’d suspected was out in the open now. Alice already knew something bad had happened here, but the details were awful to consider. She’d already walked up and down those stairs a dozen times, and she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d walked over the very spot where Mary died.

  “Was that all?”

  Debra shook her head in frustration. “Yes, that was all. It was an accident. A genuine tragedy. And that’s the end of it. Honey, I don’t know what’s going on here any more than you do, but this house isn’t… Jesus, I can’t even say it out loud.”

  Haunted.

  “There’s something else,” Alice added, feeling self-conscious.

  “What is it?”

  “Dad.”

  Debra’s face twisted a bit with…something. Guilt, perhaps? Alice didn’t know for sure. “What about him?” she asked, glancing out the windows.

  “He’s…different, isn’t he?”

  Debra tensed, as if she expected Frank to leap out of hiding at any moment, as if the entire scenario were some kind of trap just waiting to be sprung.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This place is changing him,” Alice said bluntly. “I’ve seen it. And I think you’ve seen it too.”

  Debra opened her mouth to argue, but she seemed to think better of it. There was no denying the scene that morning or the night before last.

  “It’s stress,” she said softly. “I don’t expect you to understand that. Honestly, I don’t know if I understand it. He’s put so much of himself into the idea of this house. Of what it could mean to all of us. He’s…not been doing well since he lost his job. And I think he needed a win – and he wanted all of us to have a win.” She shook her head. “I think he hoped that this house could fix something in our marriage. Something that might be broken. That’s why he’s acting like this. He’s a good man. A good father. You know that.”

  “Of course I do,” Alice said. “That’s why I’m scared. He’s not the same, I know it.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  What are you trying to say? one of the voices whispered. Alice was too exhausted to try to figure out which one. It was as maddening as it was painful, this split inside her. She wanted her mom to understand, to be on her side, but she didn’t want to say it. It felt wrong, it felt like a betrayal, but it felt true as well. Debra’s eyes softened. She leaned in to Alice, rubbing her shoulder gently. “Honey, just tell me. It’s fine. I’m here, baby. It’s okay.”

  Alice swallowed hard. “What if he had something to do with Dean?”

  Debra jerked away. The look she gave her daughter wasn’t one of fear or disappointment or anger. This was new, something that Alice had never seen on her mother’s face, at least not directed at her. It was a look of pure disgust.

  “How can you say that?”

  “Mom, please…”

  “You need to leave this room,” Debra said coldly.

  “Please…just listen to me—”

  “Now. I don’t want to see your face for a while. Go. Before I actually punish you. And take this thing with you.”

  Debra pointed to the diary on the coffee table. Alice stood and scooped the book up before backing out of the room.

  “If I see that book again, I’ll burn it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Alice left her mother sitting there, a single thought racing through her head, the seed of an idea now in full bloom.

  This place is changing them both.

  After dropping the diary off in her room, she hurried into the bathroom just off the hallway. It was a simple, square room, nothing more than a toilet on one end and a wide vanity on the other, but like most of the house, it had an oddness to it, something that just didn’t seem to fit into the modern world. She pulled the door closed and locked it behind her before dropping onto the toilet, her chin in her hands. She was tired, even then, barely halfway through the day. The entire ordeal was draining her, and there was no end in sight. She imagined the police, the questions, the searches through the house, through her room, through their boxes. She tried to think up the questions that they might ask her.

  “What did you know?”

  “Did you want your brother dead?”

  “How long have you hated your parents?”

  It was as if she were trapped in the center of a murder mystery, the kind of thing they showed on network TV at nine o’clock at night. As much as she tried to talk herself out of it, to tell herself that Dean was fine, that Mom and Dad were fine, she simply couldn’t. She was almost completely convinced the police would find them all dead, and this house would become an urban legend that people in town shunned, that teenagers drove past on Halloween.

  Alice went to wash her hands before gazing into the mirror. Her eyes looked different, heavier now than before.

  You look old.

  “We look old,” she said aloud, wondering if she was going crazy.

  The mirror took up the entire wall from the vanity up, and it came out a few feet on each side, making two, wide C-shapes of reflective glass. She’d never really noticed the strange effect it made; she climbed up onto the counter and leaned forward, turning her head one way, then the other, finding herself in her own personal hall of mirrors, where an endless string of Alices in a neat row. The effect made her feel smaller, more insignificant, as if she were a speck of sand on a beach.

  That’s not true. You’re everything.

  The voice in her head was convincing, welcoming. She sat there, letting herself get wrapped up in the fantasy, in the dream that this house had broken her into all those reflections, knowing she would only be whole again if she could figure out what was going on.

  Alice couldn’t have guessed how long she was trapped in the world of the mirror – minutes? hours? – but as she stared into her infinite selves, the doorknob behind her began to twist. The squeak of it was soft, too soft for her to hear, and seconds later, the heavy, old-fashioned brass knob fell to the floor with a solid thud, startling Alice from her reverie. She turned. Was her mother trying to come in?

  “I’m in here,” she said aloud.

  No answer.

  “Mom?”

  She hopped down and walked to the door. A rough wooden hole was all that was left of where the knob had been. Alice tried pulling the door open, but it was stuck, the locking mechanism still in place even though the handle was already off.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  A scream. It was her mother’s voice, somewhere upstairs, from the sound of it. It was too far away for her to hear anything other than the fear, a terror that cut through the walls, through the door, through her heart. Something was after her mother. She could hear it, as clearly as she could hear the thumping of her own heart.

  “Mom!”

  Alice didn’t know if anyone could hear her, but she kept screaming all the same. She pounded at the door, kicking it, trying to turn the mechanism in the hole with her fingers, trying so hard that it hurt.

  “Mom!”

  She heard shuffling, feet scuffing across the wooden floor upstairs, short, strange bursts of words from her mother.

  “No! Don’t you touch me. No! I said, get back!”

  She’d never heard her mother so desperate, so frenzied. The sounds changed suddenly, the words becoming little more than distant whispers. Whoever it was, the situation became clear: her mother was fighting with someone.

  It’s him, the voice whispered. It’s y
our father.

  She was trapped, caged like an animal, and the fear and madness began to spill out of her. She’d been there once in her life that she could remember, a single moment in time that was so awful that it seemed to have changed her DNA. It was the time that she hid in the trunk of her mom’s car after she took the groceries out and Dean had slammed it shut, knowing she was inside. It was that same feeling, that throat-closing suggestion that you were just moments away from death, that the only thing that could save you was to get free, to breathe free air.

  “Mom, please, let me out!”

  All at once, she didn’t care about what was happening upstairs. She was cutting her fingers, bruising her hands and knees, fighting the door as if it were something alive, something she could tire out, something she could defeat. But this was a real, solid door, not a hollow thing from her old home. She could beat it for the rest of her life and it wouldn’t make a difference.

  “Momma, please!”

  Her voice was a shriek. Her heart was a drum. Her body shook. The rumble overhead grew louder, and she stopped her assault on the door, listening. There was a scream followed by a heavy thud. Then, furiously pounding footsteps.

  “Alice.” Her mother’s voice, breathless, her footsteps tumbling down the stairs.

  “Mom, I’m in the bathroom. I’m stuck!”

  The footsteps stopped, and the door began to rattle as Debra pounded on it from the outside.

  “Alice, what happened?”

  “I don’t know; the knob just fell out. Please, help me out of here!”

  Her mother’s long, delicate fingers slipped through the hole. There was blood on them.

  “Mom, please, hurry!”

  More footsteps. Heavy. Thudding down behind her.