[2016] Slip

by SH Livernois

  Zelda released her hand. Logs split and crackled in the hearth. Ma had finished her business in the kitchen. Harriet swallowed and forced herself to look into Zelda's eyes.

  "Thank you, Zelda. That was very interesting and informative."

  She nodded serenely. "You're very welcome, Harriet," she said. Her eyes flicked behind Arthur's head, to the curtain.

  Harriet slowed her breathing to slow her pounding heart. She focused on keeping her voice calm.

  "Could I trouble you for today's date?"

  Zelda leaned back in chair. "It's November the third, I believe."

  November. This afternoon it was August.

  Harriet glanced at Arthur, found him scowling. The sheet was still.

  "I'm terribly sorry to be so strange," she said, "but what's the year?"

  "The year?" Pa guffawed.

  Harriet giggled politely, with no humor, and nodded.

  "Why, it's 1822, of course. You folks have been on the road a long while, ain't ya?"

  A hiss cut the silence. A couple seconds later, Harriet realized it came from her own mouth.

  1822. The date on the paper.

  Across the table, Pa folded his arms, glanced at his daughter, and then at the hidden corner. His face was resolute. Harriet coughed to cover up her shocked exhale.

  "May I have some water, please?"

  No one answered. Perhaps she hadn't said a thing, the words echoing only in her head. Zelda crossed her legs. Pa puffed smoke. Ma stood in the doorway.

  "I'm afraid I'm not feeling well," Harriet said. Next to her, Arthur's face had finally lost its excitement; he placed his hand on hers, spreading warmth up her arm. "I'd like to lie down, I think. Sweetheart, will you come with me?"

  Arthur nodded as Pa pounded the table with his large fist. "Nonsense! Dinner is almost ready, and Ma has worked so hard. You don't want to be rude, do you?"

  "I'm sorry —" Harriet began. She pushed her chair back, turned to Arthur, and he nodded. Relief took her breath away. "I really don't think I could eat anything tonight."

  "Well, I'm afraid that just won't do," Pa said.

  Footfalls again. Breath being drawn in and held. A fluttering sound.

  The first thing Harriet sensed was Arthur's grip on her hand. He flinched and the fingers tightened and he held on until her bones hurt. Then a grunt and a squeak as he sucked in a breath. Her eyes understood the sight last — the sheet drawn back, an arm, and a pale face with pale eyes, bent over Arthur's shoulder. Grinning.

  Arthur twitched and his other hand seized the table. He searched the room, found Harriet's face and opened his mouth. Blood trickled from the corner and down his chin.

  He jerked again. A wet sound followed and Zeke stood. He held a long knife in his hand, the metal dulled and rusted. Bright red smeared along its entire length. Her inner voice told Harriet the red was blood, but she didn't believe it.

  It's 1822. And that man just stabbed Arthur.

  A voice repeated the facts in her mind.

  It's 1822. And Arthur has been killed.

  Arthur's limp figure fell back in his chair. His chest rose and fell slowly. Logs spit embers to the floor. Wind buffeted the house. Pa snuffed his pipe with a hiss, placed it on the table. A chair scraped the floor. Zelda rose and met her mother and they went into the kitchen; pots clanged, things were moved around. Pa wiped his mustache and stared at his victims. Arthur gurgled at his chair, struggling to exhale his last breaths. Harriet stared at her reflection in the black glass of the window, hands on her thighs, lips pursed, and eyes blank.

  "As I've told you," Pa began, "The next town is quite far. There's a neighbor, 'bout five miles down the road, though, west. You could run there, but it's cold as hell outside. Bound to be a couple inches of snow by now, I'd think. Now it's your call, o' course, but I think that's a fairly burdensome way to spend your last minutes on this Earth. Cause we'll catch you. Might as well stay here, where it's warm. Die warm and toasty, by the fire, like my friend Arthur here."

  Zeke took a couple steps towards Arthur, bent down, grabbed him by the forehead and yanked his head back to expose his throat. Arthur screeched weakly and Harriet's eyes fell on a small spot of blood near the mole on his neck. He'd cut himself shaving just that morning.

  He was still alive. She hoped he could make it another few minutes.

  Accept nothing, give in to nothing. Order from chaos.

  The underside of the table was rough against her palms. Zeke inched the knife closer to her husband's throat. Harriet held her breath, rooted her feet, and pushed up with all her strength.

  Wood scraped against wood. Something tipped over — the hutch, perhaps — spilling its contents onto the floor with a clang and crash. Pa hollered and the women shrieked.

  Harriet ran to the hallway, covered its width in a couple of steps, and jumped into the stairwell. She didn't know if anyone followed, but she ran as if they did, climbing the steep steps on her hands and knees, racing into the darkness. The shadows and the cold air swallowed her and she felt safe.

  At the top she scrambled to her feet. A window at the end of the hallway let in the moonlight and silver traced its length ahead of her. She ran towards it, hoping to find more stairs.

  Halfway, a door creaked open.

  "Stop," a voice called.

  Harriet obeyed and turned to the sound. A wrinkled face emerged from inside the room.

  "Attic," the face gasped. A bent finger thrust from the shadows and pointed to a door behind Harriet.

  Footsteps thumped downstairs. She couldn't tell if they were chasing her. They certainly thought she was trapped, that she wouldn't run, or fight back, or find a way out.

  "Fast, now," the old woman said.

  Harriet spun around and launched herself at the door.

  The room was musty and cold and black. Harriet squinted, searching the darkness for a hint of any shape that looked like a door, but the gloom was like a wall. She crept inside with arms out and reaching, fingers grasping blindly at air. Her palms landed against a wall and she dragged them across its smooth, cold length. They met molding, then a doorknob. She grasped it, turned, and thrust open the door. Frigid air gushed into her face as she ran into the darkened room. She closed the door quietly and climbed the stairs

  At the top, a draft pinched her skin with cold and she sensed the room's open breadth. Moonlight filtered in, gray and dim. A shape rose ahead of her, towering and stony, and another one, low and long and misshapen, stretched the length of the attic. A window floated between these shapes. She tiptoed toward the window and crouched next to it in the shadow of a deep corner. Voices rumbled below.

  "It's okay, you're okay," she whispered. "Stay calm, Harriet."

  Downstairs, footsteps drummed back and forth, dim and distant.

  Some composure and clarity returned after the blur of chaos downstairs. Harriet curled her body into a small knot and listened to the sounds below, Pa's low grumble like small explosions, Zelda's voice a mere whisper.

  She had to make a plan. She opened her eyes

  Those people were still with Arthur. Zeke could've cut his throat by now, but he could still be alive. Harriet knew one thing: she had to get them out of that room. They needed to climb those stairs in search of her — all four of them. They needed to leave Arthur behind.

  Plodding, uneven footsteps sounded in the room below.

  And so it would begin. She needed a weapon.

  Harriet's eyes had adjusted and the long misshapen shadow along the attic took form. It wasn't one single shape, but made of several smaller ones: piles. She rose from her hiding place and crouched toward the closest one.

  Trunks and suitcases, hat cases and satchels, columns of them, towering up to the slanted ceiling.

  Downstairs, the distant tread plodded, pacing. A door thudded shut. Her pursuer was in the room downstairs.

  She crept along the piles and tripped on a hill of coats. Rows of shoes and boots were neatly lined up, pair by pair, on shel
ves. There were baskets of watches, necklaces, bracelets, and brooches, hats, gloves, and scarves. Blankets, pots and pans, books.

  And she knew.

  These were dead people's things. The people who'd sat in front of that curtain before Arthur, dozens of them and maybe more.

  The footsteps moved to the stairs and clambered upwards, pausing at every step.

  Harriet fumbled through the piles searching for something heavy, trying not to disturb the victims' belongings. She needed something she could use to crush a skull. As her pursuer ascended the stairs, she knew that not only did she want to do it, she was able.

  Kill them. Save Arthur. Go home.

  Her hand found something hefty. She held it up to the moonlight. A rolling pin, one solid piece of heavy wood. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs and paused at the door. Harriet tiptoed back into her hiding place, but this time she stood upright, every muscle tensed and fingers clasping her weapon.

  A shrill, drawn out creak cut through the silent, musty air. Then a breath. Harriet's skin tingled, as if covered in a raw burn. She held her breath.

  The door creaked and closed. Feet slid forward and into the attic. Another pause.

  Harriet clenched her fingers tighter around the rolling pin and held it up. Her heart beat slow and steady, but stomach acid sloshed hot in her throat. She listened.

  Footfalls eeked forward, each trailed by a groan from the floorboards. The steps were slow, the rhythm uneven. Her pursuer crept around the chimney and emerged from behind it, hunched black in the grayness. The moonlight yielded no details.

  Harriet sucked in her breath and belly, tucked her arms in close to her body, and pressed herself against the wall. She wanted to pounce, but she forced herself to be still.

  Come get me.

  And then she'd crush his skull.

  Creak.

  Quiet. Wait.

  Creak.

  A few feet away, the figure stopped. Harriet turned to look, finding a short, slumped form. A reedy whisper erupted from the dark.

  "Did you make it up here?" it said.

  The old woman.

  Harriet released her breath and dropped her weapon.

  "Where are they? Are they coming? Where's my husband?"

  The old woman edged forward and raised her thin arms like a ghost grasping for the living.

  "Shhhh." Moonlight raked her wrinkled face. The black slash of her mouth sunk in a frown. "He's as a good as dead, my girl. Best you forget —"

  "But —"

  "No buts," she said as Pa's voice exploded below, a little closer than before. The old woman glanced over her shoulder at the door. "The gable roof is below that window. Slide down it and run. Run as fast as ya can, that way," she said, pointing west.

  Harriet followed the woman's crooked finger and a sob spasmed in her throat. Arthur was still downstairs with those awful people.

  "I can't leave my husband."

  The woman gripped Harriet's arms with two strong hands and pulled her close, sour breath coating her face like steam. Her left eye glowed, blind and milky, in the dark.

  "I know it, dear. But you have to." A thud, closer now. "Out the window you go, while they're still lolly gagging."

  The woman released her. Harriet turned to the window, unclasped the latch, and yanked it open. A burst of piercing wind screamed inside, freezing the sweat on her face. Another thud, deep voices, and the sound of heavy steps far below on the stairs, coming swiftly up.

  Outside the window, the land stretched flat, white, and gray, a fringe of black trees lining a distant horizon. Between it and the house, not a shape nor a light marred the landscape.

  A hand pressed into Harriet's back. She obeyed.

  Harriet gripped the windowsill. With a heave, she pulled herself up and squeezed her body through the small window frame. She threaded one leg forward, into the air, then the other. Both legs came to rest in wet snow; she turned to her side and stretched her body further out on the roof, wind whipping her hair about her face. Hands touched hers on the windowsill.

  "Down you go. Now."

  Above her, pockets of stars broke out where the receding clouds thinned. And all around, a silvered landscape dusted white to the horizon. No one to run to, no one to hear her scream, no one to save Arthur.

  Just her.

  She shifted to her back, one hand grasping tight to the sill. She said a prayer and let go.

  Snowflakes shot up her shirt, spraying her bare skin with crystals of frigid cold, then up her pants and into her shoes. She soared into the air and the world blurred. She thought she'd never hit the ground.

  It rose to meet her, smacking her hard on the back. For a moment, she couldn't breathe. She lay there, watching the moon as shreds of cloud scraped by. Breath returned in a choked gasp that burned her lungs.

  She sprung to her feet. Something scraped across the roof and thudded to the ground, a black shape in the white — the rolling pin. At the window, the old woman peered down with a ghostly face, calling "just in case," and disappeared.

  A building stood a hundred feet away — a tall, black, narrow thing.

  Harriet ran to it.

  The darkness would hide her sprint across the white field. She'd crouch inside the little building and wait for them to find her. They'd thrust open the door and think it was empty. Search its dark corners, not expecting her to be there. She'd spring from the corner and swing her weapon until it met a skull.

  That's what she imagined as she ran, feet fumbling, toes freezing, her pants sodden. She kept that vision strong in her mind and that building ahead in focus, but it seemed to inch further away, deeper into the dark fields beyond.

  I'll make it. I have to make it.

  "Just where do you think you're going, Harriet?"

  Harriet skidded to a halt, shoes digging into the frozen ground, snow burning cold against at her ankles. She probed her gray surroundings, but saw only hulking clumps of brush, a solitary tree, a scattering of buildings.

  "You're gonna die here regardless. Either we'll get ya, or the cold will."

  Something peeled away from a dark clump to her left. A shadow, short and wide, ambled into her line of sight. It had been watching Harriet climb out the window, slide down the roof and to the ground, then race across the field.

  Ma.

  Harriet said nothing. Ma sidled in front of her. She wore some kind of cloak and a hat over her head, and something dangled from her hand to the ground, grazing her heavy brown dress. A net or a rope. She swung it and leered at Harriet, mean eyes flashing silver in the moonlight.

  "I'm not sure what you think you're going to do, running like this," she drawled in a monotonous, uninterested tone. "Those boys are gonna kill ya. You can't fight them.

  Harriet's hopeful, bloody vision was gone, erased by a flash of anger and a thirst to inflict pain like that Arthur had felt.

  "Where's my husband?" Harriet's voice carried on a shrieking wind that blew mist across her face.

  "At the dinner table still. Hanging on, I suppose."

  "Why are you doing this?

  Ma swung the dangling thing up, caught it with her other hand.

  "I'm just here to help. Ain't no one gotten away yet." She sauntered forward, dress dragging across snow soundlessly. "Just come here, Harriet. Let's do this easy."

  Ma unfurled the thing in her hands, held it forward and up. Harriet imagined it was a rope and that Ma would wrap her in it. Arthur would breathe his last at that dinner table. And their things — his sweater and watch, shoes and pants, the pearls he bought her for their 40th anniversary, her wedding ring — would be sorted into those piles and baskets in the attic.

  Ma raised that dangling thing and lunged forward.

  Harriet ducked and shoved all her weight forward into the woman's fleshy stomach. Ma grunted and both women fell, hard, onto the ground.

  Harriet swung her arms madly until they met flesh. Ma shrieked and kicked and punched Harriet in turn, her meaty fists crunchin
g cheekbone and jaw. Harriet landed a hard blow against bone and Ma stopped. She pinned the woman's arms to her sides with short legs.

  Then, she hoisted the rolling pin above her head.

  Ma's eyes widened. She writhed, but Harriet held on. One arm wrenched free. Harriet swatted the weapon at it, cracking the bone. Ma screeched. Harriet heaved the rolling pin down on a shoulder. Ma screeched louder.

  The raspy noise sounded like an animal howl. It surged through Harriet's brain and exploded in her chest, and in its wake — a burst of rage and power.

  A sickening, dull thud. Blood blossomed from a split in Ma's skull.

  Harriet struck again.

  Ma jerked, grunted, moaned. Something hot splashed against Harriet's face.

  Another crack, then another, and another. Nose, cheeks, and jaw were bent, crushed, dented. Blood sprayed dark against the pristine white snow.

  Harriet's muscles finally gave out.

  Ma was quiet and still, her face smashed and deformed. A gust of wind cut through Harriet's thin blouse and cardigan, but she didn't feel cold. Every inch of her body was coated in sweat and blood.

  Harriet knew she could do it again. Cut through the others to get back to her husband. It wasn't a matter of choice, but necessity, and it was the easiest thing to do in the world.

  The sound of a rattling door murmured beneath the shrieking wind. Harriet spun around.

  Three glowing orange squares pulsed in the distance, three figures silhouetted in their light. Voices grumbled. The door was open a crack — a strip of light cut the shadows, spilling across the frosted ground.

  On shaking legs, Harriet sprung up and sprinted toward the small building. Her muscles twitched beneath her, threatening to topple her forward. She glanced over her shoulder; the way behind her was clear. And ahead, that narrow building crept closer and closer.

  Forcing strength into her legs, Harriet lurched hard into the door, clutched at a latch and thrust it open.

  The same coppery, sickish smell that engulfed her on the front steps crawled into her nostrils. She paused and let the moonlight fill the close corners of the tiny building and it traced something hanging from the ceiling. Butchered animals, several of them, their meat darkened and leathery.