[2016] Slip

by SH Livernois

  She shut the door and entered darkness, crossed to the far corner. A slab of meat grazed her shoulder and cheek. She cringed away, stomach sloshing up her throat. She dropped into a corner and waited.

  Harriet's shallow, shaking breath bounced off the close walls, vibrated in her ears. She felt suspended, a consciousness floating in the dark. The body, soaked in blood, aching, wracked with exhausted breath, wasn't her own. The hands that clutched her weapon, now slick with blood, belonged to someone else, too.

  The world was silent. She searched for shadows through gaps in the building, but it was sealed tight and pitch black.

  She wondered — had they seen her run here? Or would they search every outbuilding, unsure which hid their quarry? A stone dropped in her stomach: they wouldn't miss her footsteps.

  But they wouldn't expect her to fight back. Or kill them.

  She would.

  Harriet planted her feet on the ground, readying herself to pounce like a wild animal. A red rage boiled through her.

  Just three more, and I'll come back for you, Arthur.

  "Well, well," came a voice.

  Harriet jumped, a knife of cold panic slicing down her middle. It was Pa.

  "I believe we've got you cornered now."

  A high-pitched laugh.

  "This has been more trouble than it's worth this time 'round." Pa's voice had moved; he stood on the other side of the wall next to Harriet. "These two better be worth it."

  For a couple breaths, nobody said a word. Harriet strained her ears, desperate for any breath of sound. She pictured Zeke's harsh face, then imagined it bloody and deformed, like Ma's.

  Come on in. I'm waiting.

  "Well, go on, boy."

  No footsteps sounded on the snow. Harriet held up her rolling pin and muttered "you can do this," under her breath. "You're strong enough..."

  A voice in her head responded: you're too small, too weak. Ma was one thing.

  These two men would cut her down.

  The door burst open. Silver light pierced her eyes as it filled the tiny smokehouse and traced the hanging meat and the animal's ribs. She stared at the curves.

  Not an animal's.

  Zeke's figure stood against the glowing white snow, the sparkling stars. His arm fell lazily at his side, the soft shape ending in a sharp point that he swung back and forth.

  She clenched the weapon tighter. Arthur's blood stained that knife. And before she could swing this rolling pin in her hand Zeke would cut deep into her belly.

  The man took one step forward into the smokehouse. Harriet wailed, her voice echoing sharp in the tiny space and ringing painfully in her ears. She lunged forward at a crouch, rolling pin swinging, and aimed for Zeke's shins. The bone splintered.

  "Bitch!" he hollered.

  She lurched her arm back for one more swing. A strong hand caught her wrist and wrapped tight around its width, squeezing it like a twig.

  A pained growl simmering in his throat, Zeke yanked her to her feet to stand in front of him and nudged her face close to his. She stared at the curve of his jaw, the dark shape of his shoulder, over which she could see the yard. He groaned and her eyes flickered to his face. His mouth was open, and a thin pointed tongue slithered out and across his lips.

  "Quit playing with your food now, boy."

  Zeke dropped her, wrenched the weapon from her hand and took it in his own. Harriet's world dissolved in a spark of white light.

  —

  "I knew this one would be a fighter."

  The voice was deep and breathy, bored, female. The second one was more like a growl.

  "Didn't think she had it in her to kill Ma. Bitch." Harriet struggled to understand the voices. "They got some odd things."

  Fear tore at her stomach. The voice terrified her. Before she could remember why, or scream, oblivion found her again.

  The hazy veil lifted. A sharp ache cut through the top of her head. She swallowed down vomit.

  "Where'd you put Ma?" said the woman's voice again.

  "She's in the barn. Animals won't get to her there."

  A crackle and a hiss sounded, somewhere in the room. A warmth spread across Harriet's body, the skin on her knees and face singed with heat. She dozed again, wondering how close she sat next to the fire. She thought about moving.

  When she woke next, her brain was clearer. The warmth was still there, the voices still chatted and moved about the room. Harriet tried to back away from the fire, but her legs were weak and immobile.

  She flinched to raise her arms, but something rough scraped her wrists when she tried. The same with her ankles. When she rooted her feet to the floor and pushed up, something pressed against her thighs.

  Rope. She had been tied — arms to armrests, legs to legs, thighs to seat. She flinched again, trying to shimmy the ties loose; the chair legs screeched against the floor.

  "Someone's stirring," hissed a shrill and unfamiliar voice. "Didn't take long."

  "You shoulda smacked the bitch harder, son."

  Harriet peeled her eyes open. A slit of light sliced through the blackness, the scene within it blurred. Shapes moved about, backs bent, hands busy in front of them. She was seated close to a fire. Blurred flames danced.

  "I've never seen such curious things," came the bored voice again. She stood up with something in her hand and held up to the others. "What d'ya suppose this is?"

  Harriet forced her eyes open the rest of the way. Lines focused, colors sharpened, faces were given names.

  Pa, Zeke, Zelda. Ma was the one in the barn. Blood splashed black against white. A weapon, slick and heavy in her hand. Ma's smashed face and motionless, plump body.

  And Arthur.

  Harriet whipped her head toward the dinner table and her head swam as she fought to not throw up. A searing pain spread across the top of her head like cracking ice.

  "Poor thing," Zelda said. "It'll be over soon, Harriet."

  Arthur's chair still sat before the curtain — the place of honor. The chair had been drawn back and out. Blood dyed the table in front, puddled on the seat, smeared across the floor at its feet. A red trail led from the chair, towards Harriet, and disappeared behind her.

  Arthur. How long had he sat there, waiting to die?

  "I've not a clue what that is," Pa said. Harriet turned to find Arthur's nose-hair trimmer in her hand. The woman shrugged and allocated it to a pile on the floor.

  Their luggage had been brought in and all the pieces were now flung open, their contents spilling from their sides. Several piles littered the floor and the table. Her slacks and blouses, shoes. A small collection of jewelry, including the ring from her finger and pearls around her neck. Razors, shampoos, books, cell phones.

  "Not bad, not bad," Pa exclaimed, looking about the room as his children rifled through the loot. He turned to Harriet and pointed at her with his pipe. "You and your husband have been very generous."

  He walked over, heavy boots thudding against wood planks, set his hands on his knees and bent down to gaze into her face. The eyes were kindly this close. A watery blue, twinkling with laughter. They narrowed, hardened, and a thick dirt-stained finger thrust into Harriet's face.

  "But I'll tell you what I don't appreciate, is you killin' my dear wife. That was uncalled for." He stood up and strolled back to his corner, a white cloud of sweet tobacco smoke floating above him. "Don't worry, Harriet. We'll make it up to you."

  Every nerve in her body shivered.

  "Where is Arthur," she croaked.

  Pa turned to his son-in-law, who lifted a road map from Harriet's suitcase and threw it into another pile.

  "Boy."

  Zeke slowly lifted his head from this task to sneer at Harriet. He stood up and reached for something on the mantle. It scraped the stone as he drew it out.

  His knife.

  "Where is my husband?" Harriet screeched as she struggled at her binds, the rope burning her skin. She kicked her feet against the floor and the chair screeched back a couple
more inches.

  "Do it slow," Pa ordered. "Right here."

  Zeke limped forward, rested his hands on his knees, just like Pa had, and shoved his face to within a half-inch of Harriet's. He smiled, thin lips drawn back from yellowing teeth.

  "They ain't never gonna find you. You or your husband," he said in that snake voice, a laugh just beneath the surface. "You gonna rot under the house, just like the rest."

  He pressed the knife under her chin, lifted her head with it. The skin resisted its point for a second, then the cold metal pushed through and sliced upward behind the bone, cutting through almost into her mouth. Zeke held it there. Harriet tried to freeze, but her muscles trembled. The knife moved inside her skin, cutting deeper. She screamed in her throat.

  "Ain't no one ever going to know," he whispered.

  Harriet wrenched her hands against the rope again, but her wrists burned raw. She kept her head still, breathed shallow, and the room spun.

  She pictured Arthur's face, the bloody spot on his neck, his wedding ring, loose on his finger. She hoped to see him again when this was finished.

  There is no order in this world. You can only enjoy the chaos or let it take you over.

  Maybe Zelda was right.

  Harriet closed her eyes and tried to pretend Zeke wasn't standing before her, pushing the knife further into her chin until it popped through beneath her tongue. She tried to ignore the pain, the wash of hot blood down her neck.

  She opened her eyes. The room was blurry again. Maybe that meant she'd passed out. She could only hope. Colors sharpened and gleamed, as if an afternoon sun blazed into the room. Shapes swirled and vibrated, the voices diminished into muffled, distant whispers.

  Was this dying? She waited for the white light they said came to greet you. Squinted her eyes in search of Arthur, seeing only the wall of the dining room, its picture frames and mirror.

  And tree branches. Dim, but pulsing forward through the wallpaper. The pattern and color faded and the tree branches sharpened, leaves stretching across the wall and to the ceiling. The heat and crackling of the fire faded.

  Then the scene vanished.

  The next thing she knew, grass tickled her cheek. She lay in something pillowy, rough, itchy. Bugs crawled up her legs, her arms. Sun baked every inch of her body and made her eyelids glow orange.

  Everything hurt. A spot on her head throbbed. She groaned and pain pierced the bottom of her chin.

  Images flashed behind her eyes.

  Zeke's knife in her chin. Ribs hanging from the ceiling. Ma's bloodied face. Piles of coats and trunks, lines of shoes. A wrinkled old face.

  And Arthur, grasping her hand.

  But she didn't hear their voices. Only birds chirping and the hum of cicadas.

  She opened her eyes on a skull. It faced her with its jaw propped open, blank eyes staring.

  Harriet screamed. For the first time since Arthur's fingers flinched in her hand, she screamed. The sound echoed into a sky dotted with puffy clouds as green leaves rustled against the summer blue.

  When she was done, her body convulsed. She lay back into the weeds and watched birds fly across the sky and the clouds float past in the wind. She cried until the tears dried up, then the sobs died into gasping hiccups and weak groans.

  She pressed her hands into the weeds, rose up, and searched her surroundings. A stone foundation wrapped around her, its perimeter swallowed by brush and small trees. Next to her, ribs curved upward through timothy and thistle. A bumble bee landed on a purple flower.

  She knew where the doorway to the kitchen had been. Now the back of the house opened onto a field that stretched into a line of trees. To the left a half-collapsed stone chimney jutted upward into the sky, a tall maple swaying in the wind behind it. The table had stood on the right. Pa's ghostly figure shuffled through the weeds, tobacco smoke drifting from his mouth and into the clouds.

  At some point, the hiccups and groans stopped. Her mind focused enough to wonder if Arthur was really dead. If not, he was lost in time and that was no different. Grief shoved her back down into the grass and she stared into the skeleton's face, trying to find her husband's features in the bones, if it was even him.

  Somewhere in the distance, a car door slammed.

  Harriet forced her body to rise up from the ground. Her bones ached, chin and head throbbed with pain, ankles and wrists were rubbed raw. She stretched a shaking leg over the foundation, then the other, stone scraping skin. She fell to the grass on the other side.

  Ahead of her, the sloping hill that, 200 years ago, had been a cold expanse of wet, sucking mud, was now laden with wildflowers and weeds. The field swooped down to meet the road, where her and Arthur's car was still parked. Next to it was a police cruiser, a uniformed cop gazing up the hill at Harriet climbing down.

  Thanks For Reading

  If you liked Slip, please leave a review. And if you're interested in more of my work, sign up for my Reading Group to learn about future releases. To get started, visit shlivernois.net.

  About the Author

  S.H. Livernois is a native of the northern Adirondacks of New York. She lives there with her husband and a beagle named Maggie.