And then when it was ready, it would call, call to her like it did earlier last week.
Speak to her in dreams, in visions.
“Home,” the monster would say. “You have to come home.”
Bria reached into the breast pocket of her red and brown plaid shirt and brought out a crumbled, half-ripped piece of paper. She took a cigarette out from behind her ear, lit it, and studied the paper. Tonight, she would write the note, and tonight, this all would end.
She tucked it back into her pocket, kept it close to her heart.
A shrill screech pierced through the air and wrapped itself around Bria’s head. It settled in her hair like a poison flower.
“I’m coming, Mom,” she said.
The air was cold despite the shining gold overhead, and when she took a deep breath, her chest tightened. Bria took to the right side of the road, kept her head down, and mouthed the address over and over again, afraid she would forget it if she didn’t. The ground, uneven and cracked, steamed beneath her in hisses and whispers, its invisible hands grabbing at the laces on her boots as she trucked up the hill to the familiar, yet unfamiliar, address. She knew where she had to go, but nothing ever looked the same. Sure, it was similar enough to how she remembered it, but something was always off. Askew.
“What’s your plan this time?”
“Not sure. Need to concentrate on finding the house first.”
“Finding it won’t be the problem,” said the monster. “You know that.”
Something brushed against her neck, light but wet.
“I know,” she said as she rolled her shoulders to get rid of the chill.
Bria swatted at her hairline as what felt like spiders crawled up and down her spine, a tiny pitter-patter of too many legs.
“Remember the pain, Bria. Just focus on the pain. Listen to it.”
Bria walked the streets of her childhood, reminiscing and rebuilding the images that swarmed through her head. The streetlights were broken and shards of glass littered the sidewalks. Doors hung off the hinges of the houses she used to visit after school. Buses were flipped over and pressed, their windows blown out and crying against the faded urine color of their paint job.
She passed the pharmacy on Lincoln where she used to buy Advil and cover-up. Its neon sign flashed “Open” until it sparked and died out, a stream of smoke coming from the “O.” Her cheek exploded in pain. Bria picked up a piece of glass and scoured her reflection. A bruise painted her face black and blue.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said. “It’s nice to know you’re still around.”
Her voice cut through the air as a blur of a person crossed the road, turned to face her, and then disappeared into the bar across the street. The figure wore a ball cap, a loose pair of jeans, and it moved like a hologram. A type of walking static.
Not real, not real.
Bria continued to move even though she could feel him behind her.
A sour taste settled on her tongue. She spat it out, trying to wipe the memory of his taste away from her palate.
She walked through the playground where she used to cry at night. The jungle gym was turned upside down, its metal spikes piercing the air in cruel jest as it beckoned her to climb and sit on its rods. The swings creaked as they swung back and forth for the ghost children who played on them. Her chest tightened. It seemed like it was only yesterday when she was curled inside the tube slide hiding at sundown.
Bria passed her elementary school, or at least, what was left of it. Half of the building was missing and the ground was littered with broken chairs, half-sharpened pencils, and fragments of chalkboard with faded pink and green flowers drawn on them.
Two blocks down from it, plain as the day her parent’s built it, stood her house, broken, dilapidated, but unmistakably hers. Her bicycle lay in the front yard upside down as the front wheel turned in constant rotation.
“Okay, okay,” she said as blood started to pour down her face. She ripped off the bottom part of her shirt and rolled it up, stuck it in her nose like a plug. “I can do this. I know I can.”
The house was a two-story Victorian with black shutters and a red door. Bria remembered thinking her front door was the color of roses, but she was a child then. Now, she didn’t think of flowers when she saw the crimson stain. Inside, someone screamed.
“Remember,” said the monster. “You didn’t kill anyone who didn’t deserve to die.”
With her first step on her property, Bria’s head exploded in migraine. Razor-like teeth chomped on her temples as invisible toothpicks inserted themselves behind her eyelids. The drum of her heartbeat lodged itself in her forehead in a steady crescendo with each step she took.
She grabbed what used to be the mailbox to help steady herself. These days, the damned thing was just a wooden stake in the ground, but somehow, that seemed fitting. Almost like a weapon or a bad omen warning her of disaster. There were unopened letters nailed to its body, and mold-soaked packages littered the area around its feet. Bria could see her mother’s name in bold with the message ‘return to sender’ stamped on top of everything. She kicked them out of her way and trampled through the overgrown lawn, the sidewalk nowhere in sight.
“Good girl,” said the monster. “You’ve already gotten farther than last time.”
The closer Bria got to the door, the harder it became to breathe. She licked her lips, but her tongue, a pink slab of sandpaper, rubbed her raw instead.
Bria reached for the front door. The peephole was busted and shards of wood and paint collected on the doormat. She tried to open it, and it stuck at first, but when she pushed it open, her mouth filled with blood. She hunched over and threw up into a cracked flowerpot. Cherry spittle trickled off browned, dead petals. Flies settled in the red, drinking it in.
“She’s just a child, John,” someone cried. “I won’t stand here and let this continue.”
Shit.
Bria tried the window instead. She kicked out what glass was left, each shatter and break a reminder of all the times she’d done it before. The sound hurt her ears and she covered her face with her sleeve as she eased herself into the house.
Oh. Ow. Ouch.
A stray shard bit her shoulder.
The house was awake and it was hungry.
And if repetition served her right, by the time she got in the house, her mother would be dead.
***
Bria stood in the living room, quiet, still, and focused.
The last time she remembered being alive and standing in this spot, she was seven years old and in a mint green dress her mother bought her for her birthday. Now she was seventeen and dressed in wrinkled clothes that were outdated and loose on her scrawny figure. Every time she came back to this spot, she thought about that dress and the girl who used to wear it. The one who used to be innocent, pure.
“I still think you’re beautiful,” said the little girl who grabbed her hand.
The monster laughed.
“Hey Brianna,” said Bria, smiling weakly. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” A tear rolled down her cheek. “You ready to walk me through it again?”
Brianna nodded. Her grip on Bria’s hand tightened as she walked the older version of herself through the memories that she’d continued to block out time and time again. If Bria could just find the out, find the missing piece of the puzzle, she could break the cycle and move on. She could leave this place, forever.
Give in to the hurt, said the monster. Face what you don’t want to see.
Home looked different this time and there was an unsettling tension as if someone left the room angry and the house wasn’t over the argument yet. Bria could almost taste the apprehension, but instead, she swallowed the chalky copper spit left over from the blood balloon earlier.
Bria walked into the kitchen, and Brianna let go of her hand. Her younger self sat down on the floor where the table used to be while she looked around. Knives dressed the ceiling, their points dug in at different angles and entra
nce points.
“Well that’s strange,” said Bria. “Who would do something like that?”
The world shifted around her. A quick fade in and out.
Bria shook the static off her skin. “I’ll have to tell Dad. He’ll take them out later on.”
The air grew thick at the sound of his name.
“Bria,” said Brianna. “Daddy won’t take them out. He put them in Mommy’s throat for a reason, remember?”
Bria laid down and looked at the metal collage above her. She pretended to throw a knife herself as she imagined the sound it would make as it wiggled and inserted itself between its brothers and sisters in Dada suicide.
They looked beautiful up there like that.
Them, and her mother, their bodies spread out and glistening in metallic silver.
Her mother’s corpse blinked a pair of hazel eyes. A drop of blood dripped out of her mouth.
Bria shook her head and screamed as her mind played back the film. She watched her seven-year-old-self check for her mother’s pulse. She watched herself pull the knife out of her mother’s throat. She watched her hands start to shake.
“No, no, no,” she said, pulling the image out of her head. When she opened her eyes. The knife was in her hands. “I don’t want the knife. I want my pen. I want my note. I want my fucking life back.”
She dropped the knife but it flew up into the ceiling and pierced her mother’s chest.
“I TRIED TO SAVE YOU AND YOU KILLED ME,” screamed the corpse as the room exploded in red. Bits of her mother’s flesh slapped against Bria’s face. Broken fingernails scratched her arms. Blood fell like wet confetti.
Bria crawled backwards into the living room, stumbling while her legs shook uncontrollably. Her chest stiffened as she watched the red storm in the kitchen. Lightening cracked, thunder rolled, and in the distance, someone started to cry.
“Brianna?” said Bria through hushed breaths.
There were white sheets over all of the furniture, and the TV was still on, shooting waves from underneath its virgin robes. All the carpets had been removed, and in their place was an inch or so of dust attached to clumps of stray hair. Most of the doors were locked and the grandfather clock was stopped, fixed on 9:23.
Its bells chimed.
“Fuck. 9:23,” said Bria to herself. “Where am I? Where did I go?”
An urgency ripped through Bria’s body as she started to flip over furniture and run through rooms. Her younger self couldn’t have gone far, and the house itself wasn’t that big, but even still, most of the rooms held nothing but yellowed-sheets and dust bunnies. Even the personal stuff, like the pictures? They were still there. Cracked, faded and worn. She just wasn’t in any of them. They were all absent of scared little girls.
“Brianna?” she yelled. “Come on, this isn’t funny. Where are you?”
The bells continued to chime.
Bria turned the corner and walked up staircase after staircase after staircase after staircase. She tried to get to her room, but the steps kept coming, kept expanding. Pictures slid down the wall as water streamed from the ceiling, while droplets slid down her arms as if she were collecting rain. Her boots filled with water, her socks drenched and sloshing with each step she took. Bria could barely see through the storm inside her, and she kept wiping her face like a windshield wiper in an attempt to see.
“This is your fault,” said the monster. “You killed your mother, and now you lost yourself, and now she’s probably dead, too.”
The water was up to Bria’s knees.
Each step became harder, heavier.
She put her hand on the wall, walls that were like waterfalls running through the house.
The thought made her calm, made her relax.
“See,” said the monster. “It feels good to give up, to give in, doesn’t it?”
A wet slap caressed her neck as the staircase leveled into a path that lead to a single room. A bathroom with a white door.
Bria stood on the top step and stared at it. She choked on a mouthful of water as a goldfish slid out of her mouth.
“Stop talking,” she said. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel anymore.”
The rain stopped, and Bria opened the door. The sink and bathtub were overflowing. The tiled floor was splotched with faded red swirls that danced like an impressionistic Pollock. Clumps of black, wet hair slapped the toilet.
She went to the sink first and turned off the water. Inside the marble basin was a knife, and when she picked it up, her wrists opened in two beautiful lines as Bria watched herself bleed.
Her vision shifted, blurred.
The lights in her head went on and off, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Brianna laying in the bathtub, her mint green dress flowing in sync with the ripples from the dripping faucet. Her porcelain face looked ghastly under the water, a mermaid taken before her time.
Bria walked over to the tub, her wrists leaving a trail of blood on the floor. She reached into the water and pulled herself out. Brianna opened her eyes.
“Put me back,” she said. “It’s cold out here. Dad told me he’d keep me warm.”
Bria shivered from the loss of blood. “I think Dad lied.”
Brianna smiled, and Bria’s wrists started to stitch themselves up. The water drained from the tub, and the bathroom door slammed.
“I think he lied, too,” said Brianna.
Bria sat down on the toilet. In the wastebasket was a crumpled-up piece of paper. She reached in a grabbed it. Opened it up.
Her younger self sat down on the floor and hugged her legs while she quietly sobbed. “I didn’t want him to touch me.”
“I know,” said Bria.
“He told me that it was okay, so I didn’t think Mommy would care, but then she started screaming . . . ”
“And then Daddy filled her throat with knives,” Bria finished.
The little girl shook.
Bria remembered the night she told her mother. Her mother looked at her with disgust as if she was a problem rather than a victim. She remembered sitting at the top of the steps and crying as her mother walked down the stairs knocking picture after picture off the wall. Family portraits broke. Baby pictures shattered.
“You weren’t—we weren’t—responsible for what happened,” said Bria. “We didn’t kill Mom. Dad did.”
Brianna looked up at the older version of herself and locked eyes. “But we still killed—”
“Stop.”
“No, we did,” said Brianna. “And you get to run away from it. But I have to stay here. I have to stay with him, and it’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry,” Bria said. “Truly.” She ran her fingers over the scars on her wrist. A wet pucker walked up the base of her neck.
“Then why do I have to stay here? Why do you get to go?”
Bria looked at the paper in her hand. “David Lawrence, Social Services,” graced the upper right-hand corner.
“You’ve always been the spirit of this house,” said Bria. “The good in all the bad. That’s why you’re here, where it’s safe. You’re the innocent part of us. The part that didn’t know better.”
Brianna stood up. “How am I safe?”
“I’m the soul of the problem. I’m the part that knew better, that knew what he was doing was wrong, and yet I didn’t say anything. I just let it continue.”
She took out the piece of paper from her shirt pocket and stood up, looking at herself in the mirror. The knife floated in a pool of bloody water. Bria picked it up. “Dad did awful things to us,” she said as she dug the knife into her wrist, covering it in red. “And Dad deserved to die.”
Brianna stepped closer to her and grabbed her hand.
“I don’t regret killing him,” said Bria.
The light above the mirror flickered, covering Bria’s face in shadows. Water poured from the ceiling as a gurgle rumbled in the drain.
“But what about us?” said Brianna. “Do you regret killing us?”
A slimy appendage circled around the silver plug in the sink, ripping it out so more of its body could fit through the drain. An acrid, salty scent filled the room and Bria could taste the ocean on her tongue.
Bria smiled. All this time she felt guilty when what she should have been feeling was pride, power. “No. I don’t.” She ripped the paper up and threw the knife on the ground. “I did what I had to in order to set us free.”
The rotted limb, oiled and scaled, shot up and wrapped itself around Bria’s throat. It started to squeeze.
“Wait,” Bria said through gasped breaths. “What’s happening?”
Brianna stepped away, her back against the wall. “You didn’t save us,” she said through tears. “You damned us.”
Bria started to lose consciousness as the monster wrapped itself around her body. Two hard shells clamped over her eyes. Seaweed filled her mouth, gagging her as she tried to beg.
“You did exactly what the monster told you to,” said Brianna. “And now, you’re going away, just like Dad.”
The monster pulled Bria’s body down through the bathroom floor, slamming her against the living room floor. Dust and hair collected on her clothes, and it dragged her out the front door, past the unopened packages and down road.
“You’ll do better next time,” said the monster. “You have to tell her. You have to make her understand.”
***
Bria woke up at a rest stop in Jacksonville, Mississippi two years later. Her clothes were damp, and the taste of rotted fish sat on her tongue, gagging her awake. The clock read 2:32. Bria wiped the crusted sleep out of her eyes and started the car. It sputtered at first, but it kicked into gear after a few minutes. She took a swig of water from a half-empty plastic bottle in the passenger seat and turned on the radio. It crackled for a bit as Bria tried to find a station with service, and finally on 93.2, she picked up a voice.
“It’s time to come home, Bria,” said the monster. “It’s time to come back to Reeds.”
Tales from The Lake 5 Page 14
