by Abe Moss
She stabbed the chopped fruit with her fork and dragged it around her plate in slow circles. The fork grated the plate’s glass underneath. Joanna and Nuala watched her with raised eyebrows. Addie kept her head bent toward her food. She didn’t take any bites.
“Not hungry this morning?” Nuala asked.
Addie grunted.
Meatball sat at the side of the table next to Joanna’s chair. He gazed up at her with his darling, hungry eyes. She fed him pieces of fruit from her plate. It was only then that Addie glanced up, watched the dog nibble the red slice of strawberry from Joanna’s fingers. Her breathing quickened. She felt the need to say something and held it back, reminding herself of Lyle’s similar outburst that time regarding Joanna feeding the dog at the table. Why it irritated her so suddenly she didn’t know. Maybe Lyle’s insanity was catching.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?” Nuala asked.
Addie pushed away from the table and made her way to the front door.
“I’m going to speak to Bud.”
Nuala jumped up. “Addie! Please! Now is not the time for this…”
Addie paid her no mind. She stormed outside, left the door wide open in her wake. She heard Nuala following and decided to run.
“Addie!” Nuala called.
She cut quickly across the yard—her calloused feet found more purchase on the hard dirt than ever now—and bounded up the porch steps. Nuala continued calling after her. At the top of the steps she barged through the front door without pause and headed inside. The fear that the doctor might stop her lingered in the back of her mind but it didn’t make a difference. She went directly for the stairs and started up. She nearly tripped up a few of the steps and caught herself on the wall. At the top she hurried along to the second to last door. The doctor’s room was open, but either he wasn’t inside or he hadn’t yet detected any commotion. She slid to a halt at the second guest bedroom and knocked loudly.
“Bud! Are you in there?”
Nuala was downstairs, still calling.
“Bud, answer me!”
She tried the door and found it locked. She pressed her ear to it and listened.
“Addie!” Nuala shouted on her way up the stairs. “What are you doing?”
She thought she heard something in the bedroom, a voice. He wasn’t speaking. It sounded as though he was in pain, groaning.
“Bud? Are you all right?”
She saw movement in the corner of her eye and watched as Nuala reached the top of the stairs. Nuala stopped, head tilted, hands on her hips, breathing heavily.
“Bud?”
She listened more closely but heard nothing.
“Bud!” she shouted. “Answer me!”
There was only silence.
“Addie…” Nuala whispered down the hall, but Addie waved her hand while she listened.
“Bud?”
“Go away,” came his voice, low and listless.
“Huh?” she asked.
“Leave me alone, Addie.”
She listened for something more, to hear any other sounds there might be, but there was nothing.
“Bud, are you okay?”
Nuala drew ever so slowly down the hall toward her, feet missing the floor like a ghost’s, until she stood beside her. She put a hand on her shoulder. Addie pretended not to notice.
“I don’t want to see you. Not right now.”
“Is something wrong?”
“I just don’t want to see you.”
Her knuckles, resting against the door by her listening ear, fell to her side.
“Come on,” Nuala said. “Let’s go downstairs.”
Addie followed her blindly back down the hall and down the stairs into the front room. Her mind couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.
“I don’t get it,” Addie said. Nuala sat on the sofa and patted the spot next to her, but Addie wouldn’t sit. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s got many competing emotions right now after the altercation with Lyle. The doctor is helping him through it. Just give him time.”
“He should want to talk to me. He knows I’m here for him.”
“Just give it time.”
Unable to focus her eyes on any one thing, her thoughts messy like loose pages in a binder, Addie left Nuala sitting alone and headed back to the guesthouse.
✽✽✽
When she stepped inside, Joanna was waiting in the foyer.
“How was he?”
Addie shut the door. “I didn’t get to see him.”
“They stopped you?”
“No.”
Meatball came running to follow Joanna, nails clicking, tongue lolling, and Addie’s eyes cut through him, narrowed like knives.
“So what happened?”
She shook her head. It was hard to think straight.
“He wouldn’t see me. He told me to go away.”
“He did? You heard him say so?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think was wrong?”
Meatball whined at Joanna’s heels and she bent without thinking, scooped him into her arms. She cradled him there. Addie couldn’t take her eyes off him.
“Hmmm? Oh. I don’t know. I feel like I must have done something, but… I know he was upset with me about Lyle, I just…”
Joanna listened carefully. Her eyes said as much, brow furrowed. She dug her fingers gently behind Meatball’s ears and he lapped at her wrist while she did. Addie couldn’t hold it any longer.
“Joanna, how can you stand that?”
She cast her accusation first at Joanna, then down at the dog in her arms, and Joanna returned her gaze with confusion.
“Stand what?”
“That.” Addie nodded at the dog. “I don’t understand how you can put up with it.”
“He’s just licking me. It’s what dogs do…”
“That’s not a dog, Joanna. That’s not Meatball.”
Joanna clutched the dog tighter. “Clearly it is a dog, and yes, it is Meatball. I would know.”
“Meatball is dead.”
“Yeah, we went over this already. What’s your deal?”
“How can you hold that thing knowing it’s a lie? It isn’t your dog. Your dog is dead.”
“The doctor brought him back. Why are you being like this? You’re acting like—”
“Whatever you think that is, it’s not a dog. You can’t bring things back from the dead. You can’t. You’re insane to believe otherwise.”
“You’re the one acting insane right now.”
Addie scoffed. “I know it’s probably a comfort to think you have Meatball back, but that’s not helping anything. The doctor…” She gave a short laugh. “The doctor doesn’t know how to help us. I don’t think he truly knows what he’s doing at all.”
“What happened to you? This isn’t what you were saying a few days ago.”
“That was before this place started turning into a shit show.”
“Everything that’s happened these last few days has been Lyle, not the doctor. Lyle needs more help than any of us.”
“Well then Dr. Lull isn’t helping him, is he?”
“I’m sure he’s doing the best he can.”
“How do you think giving you a replica of your dead dog is going to help? How is that supposed to help someone’s grief? That’s not your dog. You may as well be holding a pillow right now.”
“Addie, however impossible you think it might be, I’m telling you… this is Meatball. I can’t explain it more than that, but I know it. I know my dog. I loved him more than anything. I’m not just hoping, I know. This is him. He’s everything he was before. I don’t know how the doctor did it, but he did. And I’m grateful.”
Addie watched them both in stewing silence. She tried to think Joanna’s words over but couldn’t arrange them right. They wouldn’t sit. More and more thoughts interrupted. Her mind was like an aviary out of control. Her teeth gritted. Her fists ached. Then she saw the look on
Joanna’s face, pinched with hurt and uncertainty, and the sudden need to agree with Joanna flashed like a lightbulb, a need to reason with her own thoughts and salvage something before she turned Joanna against her. But then the bulb popped and she only saw the dog in her arms, the lie, and she had to force herself away before anything else popped.
I don’t want to be like this. Please don’t let me be like this.
She fled to her bedroom and didn’t come out for the rest of the day.
✽✽✽
The previous few nights, sleep had teased her but remained out of reach. That night, however, sleep packed its bags and left without a trace. She lay in bed wide-eyed, wide awake. Her sore body didn’t melt into the bed like it normally did when she turned in. She lay stiff and hot on top of her blankets, tortured with boredom and a thinning temper, body tense as though she lay on a bed of nails.
Her eyes were glued to the window above her. She wanted to look but feared it just as much. She wanted to see, to make certain of what she already felt was an obvious truth, but the possibility she was wrong was too great. He could be out there, she thought. He could be waiting in the trees, or even worse…
In the bathtub, like her…
But that had been a hallucination, she was sure—the night of the thunderstorm. The previous night with the doctor… that had been real. She felt it. She’d seen exactly what the doctor meant for her to see. Surely he must have seen it, too. And the voice from the woods… it was his.
I haven’t been a very good father.
Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes down her stony face.
Where did these come from?
She wiped them away.
She sat up in bed and slowly climbed to her knees. She waddled near the window over her head and paused just out of its frame. He wouldn’t be there. It hadn’t been real. The doctor had summoned his likeness as an exercise. A fucked up exercise, yes, but just an exercise. Her father wasn’t really alive in the woods. He wasn’t waiting in the grass. He didn’t creep along the sides of the guesthouse in search of her window late at night, waiting for her to peek over the window’s edge before popping out like a Halloween gimmick. No, he was in the cemetery, in his grave deep under the ground, decomposed and long dissolved of his personhood. Dead. Gone.
She looked out the window. The night was patchy with shadows and moonlight, and the fields rippled in a breeze. The woods in the distance were solid darkness save for the bright green, moonlit treetops. There was no one out there she could see. Though, the longer she looked the more nervous she became, sweeping her eyes carelessly in fear that looking too closely would reveal something sinister.
It’s in my head, she thought. I only need to get it out of my head.
She lay back in bed and pulled her sheet over her legs. She closed her eyes.
Why would the doctor do such a thing? There was nothing to gain from it, she thought. She’d relived her troubled past in the bathwater and thought that was plenty. To have a conversation with a creature which wasn’t actually her father would prove nothing. Her father wasn’t the man she pretended he was. She understood that well enough now. There was nothing to be done for that…
Loudly through her door and through the walls of the house, the front door slammed. Addie opened her eyes. She turned her head toward the bedroom door. Feet scuffed loudly through the house and a cold, prickly dread ran along her insides.
He’s come.
The footsteps plodded into the hall. Acting first, thinking last, Addie rolled out of bed and started for her door and froze halfway there. She focused her eyes on the floor beneath the door, waited for the red glow to appear, to bleed under in a smoky haze, but nothing came, only the footsteps. They arrived just outside her door. There was a pause. Addie trembled in place, legs about to buckle in their indecision to advance or retreat. Then the door opened. She opened her mouth to scream. A figure rushed in, accompanied by a metallic jangling, and Addie couldn’t utter a sound.
“Addie, it’s me,” the figure spoke. They approached her, a dark, gangly person, something brassy jangling in their hands about their waist. She recoiled, prepared to scream. She couldn’t see their face no matter how close they got, for their head was wrapped in what appeared to be white cloth, tightly wound like a mummy’s head, all but the eyes. The eyes peered out, wide and full of sparkling urgency. “It’s me, Lyle.”
She clutched her heart. “What are you doing?”
He held the ring of keys out to her in the dark, held them right to her face so that she could smell their coppery scent. She knew what they were and where they likely came from, but her mind didn’t connect any dots. She couldn’t think of much else beyond the bandaged face before her and the fear constricting her like a python around her throat.
“What are you doing?” she repeated.
“I’m leaving. I came to bring you with me.”
“Leaving where?”
“It doesn’t matter. But we have to leave. Now.”
“I don’t know what you mean…”
“Addie…” His voice was low and muffled through the thin slit in his bandages where his mouth was. “We’re going to die here. All of us.”
She shook her head. “No, Lyle. You need to take those back to the doctor. You’re not right.”
“Please believe me, Addie. I’m not being crazy right now.”
She looked him over from head to toe, dragged her eyes morbidly across the white bandages and fleetingly meeting the eyes watching out of them. She couldn’t look into them for long. He must have seen this.
“I lost my shit a few nights ago, I know. But this is different.”
Addie said nothing.
“They’re not going to help us. I don’t think they’ve ever helped a single person. They’re going to kill us. The doctor is going to kill us.”
She involuntarily thought about the previous night by the woods, about the growing doubt she’d been feeling since. She couldn’t tear her thoughts away from it all day. She felt the doctor had been wrong to do it, but couldn’t say for sure she was right, either. The doctor might have had a plan. She just hadn’t seen the rest of it, yet…
“He believes he’s helping us, but he’s not. And when we show no signs of progress, he’ll kill us. He’s going to kill us, Addie. It’s true.”
“How do you know this? A dream?”
“No, not a dream,” he said irritably. “I might be crazy but I’m not an idiot. He has files. I’ve seen them. Folders and folders of others like us, detailing their lives and their time here. I didn’t get to read much but I saw enough. They’re all dead. All the ones I browsed through, at least. Enough to assume I wouldn’t find any success stories in those records. He’ll do the same to us.”
“I can’t…” Addie paused. “I haven’t seen anything yet to believe that he’d… hurt us.”
“He’s only gotten started. It’ll get worse, believe me. And I won’t wait here any longer for it. I’m leaving and I want you to come with me.”
“He’s crazy, Addie.”
They both jumped in fright at Joanna’s voice behind them in the doorway. She stood there listening all the while, Meatball cradled at her side.
“I’m not crazy,” he said. “You can come too, Joanna.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Lyle turned his attention back to Addie. “Please come with me. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I think she’s right. I haven’t seen these files. Those keys might not be to anything at all. How did you even get them?”
“I saw them sitting in a dish in the doctor’s room and noticed they looked just like Nuala’s. They’re the doctor’s copies. He never uses them, I figure, since Nuala does most of the locking up. I took them yesterday and he still hasn’t noticed. Anyway, I was able to let myself out at night. I snuck into his room last night when he was gone.”
When he was with me, Addie thought.
“What else are the keys for?”
“I don’t know, other doors, I guess. I didn’t get to try them. I only opened the filing cabinets. It’s all I had time for, but it was enough.”
“Addie, you don’t believe him, do you?” Joanna said. She scratched behind the ears of her dog with such force the dog whimpered up at her. “Oh, sorry…”
“I’m not leaving,” Addie said. “Nuala says there isn’t anything out there for us. I think I believe her…”
Lyle held the keys by his belly and they clinked as he shook with nerves or frustration or both. Finally he clutched them in his fist by his side.
“Fine. I’ll go alone. At least I warned you.” He paused and looked down at the keys in his hand, and after a moment he began fidgeting with them until he removed one from the ring. “This is the key to the truck. I’m giving you the rest. That way you can look for yourself if you’d like. But I’m leaving now, with or without you.”
He shoved the keys into Addie’s hand.
“I know I’m not a good person,” he said. “I’m sorry if I hurt you at all. I’m sorry I hurt Bud, too. I’m a real cunt …” He searched Addie’s eyes for a while and she looked into his. “If anything, you should use those keys to check on him. I think they’re hurting him.”
With that he turned and pushed past Joanna into the hallway. Addie stared dumbly at the keys in her hand and after a moment she crouched and shoved them under the mattress of her cot. Then she followed after Lyle down the hall. Joanna followed behind her. They stayed behind him through the foyer until he went outside and stood on the porch.
“On the off chance that you actually get somewhere,” Addie said, “send help.”
He turned and looked at them standing in the doorway, both their faces drawn with helplessness, eyes baggy with sleeplessness. Though they couldn’t see the rest of his face, by his eyes it appeared that he may have smiled.
“Of course.”
And with that he stepped off the porch and started across the night-shady yard, the dirt the color of plum under his quick, scuffing feet. Addie and Joanna watched him go, shoulder to shoulder. The truck sat lonely on the other side beside the doctor’s home, nestled in its shadow, waiting for its key to set it to life.