by Abe Moss
Something which had already occurred to Addie occurred to her again now, and as fruitless as her previous questions had been, she couldn’t help asking.
“Are we dead?”
Nuala laughed. “What do you mean ‘are you dead’?”
“I mean… did I die? Is this what happens?”
Nuala laughed again, an empty sound. Condescension. “No, you didn’t die. Thanks to us.”
She carried the platter to the table finally. Addie felt defeated—or rather, she felt the purpose of her questions slipping from her fingers like dust. She was about to ask when she might see the doctor when Joanna dragged her feet into the room.
“I always know when there’s food,” she said. “It’s my one and only gift.”
Nuala fetched Bud, who joined Joanna at the table. Addie watched him intently, waiting for him to look at her likewise but he never did. Once again Lyle couldn’t be bothered to leave his room.
Without any discussion the three of them ate. Nuala only watched.
✽✽✽
After lunch they returned outside to paint, and this time Joanna joined them, but only under one condition: she was to paint on her own side of the house, away from Bud and Addie, alone, where she could paint at her own pace and not have to be bothered by their conversation or glances. But that proved unnecessary, as Bud and Addie didn’t speak a word to one another as they painted the rear of the house. Addie knew Nuala hoped the painting would provide them an opportunity to bond and acquaint themselves, but if anything they only demonstrated how quiet and self-sufficient they could be. Addie didn’t mind it, although she couldn’t shake the guilt she felt for Bud. She realized—after little consideration—that he’d done nothing wrong. Carter had hurt her and Bud had unknowingly been his weapon. He couldn’t help that. Addie burned like a furnace inside, angry with herself for ever wanting to take it out on him, and feared that she might never get the chance to reconcile that. Even as they painted side by side, speaking never felt appropriate. A need to be left alone exuded from him.
They quit when the sky turned a golden pink, night closing in on them. Supper consisted of a hot beef stew. Nuala was an excellent cook, and Addie had to wonder how many times she’d made these same meals for others like them. Still Lyle did not join them, and Joanna inquired jokingly that should he starve, if she could have his meals instead.
No one but Joanna laughed.
✽✽✽
Despite still being pestered by guilt and a multitude of questions, Addie surprisingly found herself able to sleep much easier than the previous night. However, the others wouldn’t let it be that simple.
Sleeping very lightly, an opening door awakened her. She sat up in bed, head heavy, tugging her back toward her pillow. Floorboards groaned in the hall as someone made their way through the house. Probably Joanna again.
Addie climbed out of bed to investigate. Peering through her cracked door, she saw the hallway was empty, and then another door opened—the front door. She tiptoed to the parlor and discovered it was just as she expected. Joanna stood in the open entryway, staring out into the night how a cat might perch in a window and watch cars go by. She was drawn to something. Feeling braver than before, Addie approached her from behind.
“What are you looking at?”
Joanna flinched. She turned to Addie, hand over her heart. When she saw it was only her, she turned back toward the yard and said, “I might be crazy, but… do you see what I’m seeing? Over there, at the doctor’s house. Look…”
She stood aside, and Addie joined her in the doorway to see for herself.
The yard was illuminated silvery by the moon, which hung in the sky beyond the main house so that the main house was only a black silhouette, not a single light in any of its windows. Addie scanned it a couple times over and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“What? I don’t see anything…”
“On the porch.”
Addie looked closer. The porch was mostly indiscernible from the rest of the shadows, but she could see its white railing just barely.
“By the door…” Joanna added.
And there it was. There they were. Addie’s heart began to pound then.
“I see them,” she said.
“You do? What do you see?”
“Eyes.”
Two glowing white orbs hung next to the front door. If not for a subtle movement—a slight bobbing—Addie might not have noticed them as being anything peculiar. But they were there, high against the darkness near the porch’s ceiling. Moving. She knew she’d seen them before. Those white eyes, set deep in that misshapen, feathered head…
“They were by the truck last night,” Joanna said. “Just watching me… watching them.”
“Have you seen them before?” Addie asked.
“I think I have.” Addie felt her shudder. “Have you?”
Addie was about to answer when another voice startled them both.
“What are you looking at?”
It was Bud, also apparently unable to sleep, or at least awakened by their stirring. He stood behind them, watching over both their shoulders.
“The doctor’s house,” Addie said. “On the porch. Do you see?”
It took only a second and he gasped softly. “I see them. The eyes.”
Addie thought about it for a moment while they all watched, and realized it was strange that they should all consider the white orbs as eyes when there wasn’t much about them to compare to any eyes she’d ever seen. They knew, of course, because…
“You both saw it too, then,” she said. Bud and Joanna turned to her. “The night you were taken. You saw it too.”
“I don’t know what I saw,” Joanna said. “All I know is we’re never getting out of this place. Even in the middle of the night she never sleeps.”
“She? What are you saying?”
“It’s her,” she said, and she backed away from the door. “That thing… I know it’s her.”
“Who? Nuala?”
Joanna fell farther and farther away from the door toward the hallway, pressing her hands together between her bosom as if in prayer.
“She’s always watching us because she never sleeps.”
And then she left, back to her room.
Bud and Addie remained in the doorway, watching the eyes across the yard which never blinked. It felt as though they stood there a long time, possibly waiting for the eyes to move, or for something else to happen to reveal that they were mistaken in thinking they were eyes at all. Or perhaps, Addie wondered, they waited because they both wished to say something to the other.
“Bud, I’m sorry.” She didn’t look at him. She didn’t want to see his eyes, or the way he might look at her. “I know I already said it, but I’m sorry for how I treated you that night… and for how I might be treating you now.” What she was about to say next caused her throat to ball up again. “I’m sorry if… if I made you do what you did.”
Only silence for a moment.
“Why would you be sorry?” he asked, and she turned to see him then. Through her wet vision, she could only just see his face, and there was genuine confusion there. “You didn’t do anything to me… and I deserve much worse.”
Giving one final glance to the white eyes watching in the night, Addie closed the front door and turned to face Bud in the pitch dark. Luckily there was just enough moonlight coming through the windows to tell their shapes apart.
“I don’t know why I was mad at you to begin with. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Didn’t do anything wrong?” He cocked his head back. “Don’t you know what I am?”
Before she could compute what he’d said, Bud turned and left her alone in the foyer, back to his room. She took a step toward him as he went, but stopped, knowing there was nothing to say. Not now.
Soon after, she went back to her own room and tried to sleep as best she could. Her body was sore. She fell back to sleep quickly enough.
Chapter Eleven
The following day was more or less the same. They had breakfast, which consisted of waffles and an assortment of fruits. Lyle did not come out of his room.
“I’ll have to intervene before too long,” Nuala said, speaking in a low voice mostly to herself. “If I let it go on much longer, either he’ll root himself to his protest, finding it an acceptable way to give up… or he’ll become rooted to his stubbornness, unable to face the rest of us for fear of becoming an outsider because of it…”
After breakfast they resumed their painting, of which there wasn’t much left. Bud and Addie finished the rear of the house and moved on to the front, and soon after Joanna finished her side. Rather than join them on the front of the house, she simply returned indoors, where she lounged on the sofa, waiting for their next meal.
During all their painting, Addie and Bud continued to not speak. However, their silence was different now. Bud didn’t seem to be outright avoiding her. When Addie’s bucket of paint was emptied, and she stood for a moment looking about herself, Bud noticed her idleness and placed his own bucket evenly between them near the front door—and that was that.
Nuala remained elsewhere during most of this. It was hard to tell where she went or where she might come from, and she always seemed to appear just as you were no longer wondering. When Addie and Bud finished the front of the house, they took a drinking break at the water pump. It was then Nuala made such an appearance.
“Well look at that!” she exclaimed, and Addie doused the side of her face beneath the pouring spigot, startled. Nuala was standing right beside them, one hand on her hip and the other shielding her eyes, gazing toward the guesthouse. “Looks brand new! You both did a fine job.” She looked between them both, beaming. Neither of them returned her enthusiasm. “You both ready for lunch?”
Nuala made straightforward peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, filling another platter. Joanna was asleep on the couch, and Nuala gently shook her awake when it was ready. They each gathered around the kitchen counter, standing as they ate.
“What about him?” Joanna nodded toward the bedrooms, referring to Lyle. “Hasn’t he starved to death by now?”
“I can’t force him to join us,” Nuala said. “But I can’t give in and bring him food, either. It’ll only encourage his isolation…”
Joanna took a bite of her sandwich. As she chewed, she said, “I think you should hogtie him over the fire pit outside until he’s begging to be saved.”
“That’s not funny,” Nuala said. She sighed and her shoulders drooped with the weight of her conscience.
“Well, you can’t force someone to want your help. If he wants to die, let him. Just like you should have let the rest of us.”
“It’s a sickness,” Nuala said. “You can’t make good choices for yourself when you’re sick…”
“What is he sick with?” Joanna took another sandwich from the platter. “Why does wanting to die make someone sick?”
“A healthy mind doesn’t choose to—”
“Healthy bullshit. A person can look at their life and evaluate it just like anything else. It’s not all about survival.”
Addie couldn’t help being impressed. For a sixteen-year-old, Joanna was more articulate and thoughtful than her usually crude behavior otherwise suggested. Whether Addie agreed or not—that was another story.
“You have an obvious bias,” Nuala said, shaking her head.
“And maybe you’re making assumptions based on how you feel. You don’t know.”
They held eye contact for several seconds while Addie and Bud stood quietly behind them, enthralled by their argument.
“She makes a good point.”
The four of them gasped in unison. They each turned toward the voice, toward the hallway entrance.
A young man stood there, wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and a wrinkled, damp, white t-shirt. He watched them, all of them watching him with naked guilt, and there was humor in his expression.
“Lyle…” Nuala spoke. Her next words might have been ‘it’s not what it looks like…’ judging by the shame in her voice. “I’m—I’m so glad you’ve come to join us.”
He took a couple steps toward them. They watched, frozen, like camera-wielding tourists in awe of an exotic animal. He took a sandwich from the platter. He bit into it.
“I was hungry,” he said, mouth full. “Thanks.”
As quickly as he appeared, he turned and left back to his room.
For a whole minute following his departure, they stood and said nothing. Then Nuala looked at the three of them, nodding, obviously pleased.
“Well,” she said. “Any start is a good start, I say.”
✽✽✽
After lunch, Addie, Bud, and Joanna spent the rest of the day sitting about the house. At one point, Addie left outside and sat under the shadow of the main house next to the water pump, watching the sky and the woods in the distance. During her normal life, she probably would have been bored to tears by such an activity, when she could be reading old texts on her phone or a book in her bed or watching a shitty talk show on her mother’s outdated television instead. Distractions. But here, in the oddly basic yet beautiful landscape, with nothing but the simplest pleasures, she found sitting and watching rather comforting. She was here, with nowhere else to be, with none of the old responsibilities, and she felt as though she was truly present for the first time in a long time.
Once while she sat, Lyle emerged from the guesthouse to use the toilet. She froze at the sight of him, though he didn’t see her in the shade. When he was finished, he stood just outside the outhouse door and examined the yard, the grassy fields and the forest beyond that. He looked rather silly to Addie in his underwear, with his hairy, gangly legs under his billowing white shirt. But there was also something agreeable about him—about his face. His features were strong and defined, almost handsome—like a grown man’s head on a boy’s body. Awkward, but interesting. After a moment of taking in his surroundings, he suddenly noticed her watching him and he visibly stiffened. He took one last glance around himself and quickly left into the guesthouse.
Before too much longer the sun was giving its farewell dip and the sky was running blue to purple. Addie headed inside where she found Joanna lounging comfortably on one of the sofas and Bud sitting opposite her in a rocking chair. Addie took a seat on the empty sofa next to him.
“Where’s Lyle?” she asked in a low voice.
“In his room,” Bud answered.
Just then Nuala came inside, grinning like a nutjob. Her eyes passed over them and when she noticed Lyle was missing her face dimmed, but only a little.
“Anyone hungry?”
“Is that a serious question?” Joanna asked.
“I thought maybe we’d cook hotdogs over the fire pit tonight. What do you think?”
Joanna hoisted herself off the sofa with a moan. “I could go for a hotdog, I guess.” Then, in a mockingly cute voice very unlike her own she added, “Will we have s’mores, too?”
They left outside while Nuala went to bother Lyle. To their astonishment, he followed Nuala through the front door soon after and joined them at the fire pit. They each stared, unable to help it. Fortunately, keeping his eyes down, he didn’t notice.
“All right!” Nuala said, and got the fire going.
There was a cooler by the fire, which she opened and pulled out a package of hotdogs. On a blanket next to the cooler were a couple grocery bags likely containing their condiments.
“I’ve got several skewers, so everyone gets their own. I’ve also got mustard, ketchup, relish, and a couple other things you might like on your hotdogs, and buns of course…”
“Where’d you get this stuff?” Joanna asked.
“At the store.”
“What store?”
Nuala gave Joanna a crafty grin. “A grocery store, silly.”
“Is there a grocery store nearby?”
“No,” Nuala said. “It was a long journey.” Then,
before Joanna could say anything more, she continued. “Come get your skewers and hotdogs and whatever else. I got some chips, too, and paper plates here…” She bunched the empty bags up and set them aside. “Oh! And if you’re thirsty, I have cups you can fill at the pump. Water’s all we’ll be having. I’m sorry if you prefer something else.”
Soon they were all situated, skewers in hand, hotdogs sweating over the fire. Addie had never been camping before, though she’d seen it done in movies. It never appealed to her—sleeping in a tent or shitting in the woods—but this she thought she could get used to. The smell of the crackling fire, the hissing and popping of the hotdogs being turned above its orange flames. If she’d been with more familiar company, her face might have shown her enjoyment. The only thing missing were the stars above their heads…
“I’d like another stab at what we started a couple nights ago,” Nuala said. “Would you all be up for that?”
“Fine,” Joanna said.
Addie and Bud only nodded. Lyle stared into the fire with his skewer held limply in his hand, his hotdog submerged in the flames.
“All right,” Nuala began. “Adelaide, let’s start with you tonight.”
Addie became rigid. The wooden handle of her skewer darkened with her palm’s sweat.
“If you’ll tell us your name again, and your age.”
“Um… my name is Addie. I’m twenty years old.”
“Tell us a little about yourself,” Nuala urged.
She twisted the skewer in her hands. The hotdog twirled against the fire, and in its bright light she could hardly see the others in the night’s dark peripherals. If she focused closely enough, it was almost as though she were alone with the fire in a dark room…
“I don’t know what to say.” Her voice was faraway, listless. “Give me something more specific.”
“What are some of your hobbies? What do you like to do?”
She was taken back to her date with Sam. Her answers to his questions had been less than interesting, she recalled. Yet when she thought back on that night now—the snapshots of him in her memory—he was always smiling or curious. Strange…