by Dawn Napier
"Why did you kill yourself?" she asked.
"You should know. You think you'd be able to go on living without your babies?" Sarah sat up and stretched. She wasn't wearing a bra, and the shirt was hugely baggy. She was so skinny that Megan could see every bone in her shoulders and arms. Her pants were the baggy shorts that Dad had always worn to the gym. In the last months of their marriage, Dad had given up weed and gone on a health kick. It hadn't saved his marriage, and it had probably killed him. The autopsy after his deadly heart attack had revealed a cocktail of weight-loss drugs in his system.
"If you're trying to make me feel bad, it's not working," Megan lied. "You were going to kill yourself one way or another anyway, with all the drugs you were on. At least now your kids are safe."
"Oh, I know. I don't blame you now." Sarah touched the side of Megan's face where she'd scratched her. "Death has a way of teaching a person perspective. But you need to get off your ass. Our little girl needs you." Her words were urgent, but her tone was lackadaisical.
Sarah got up and padded out the door, scratching the back of her scrawny neck. Through the doorway Megan saw nothing but black darkness. Then the door clicked shut, and Sarah was gone.
"Why do I keep seeing her?" Megan asked Jack. "This is my childhood, and she wasn't in it."
"You're not the only child here anymore," Jack reminded her. "My guess is she came out of Paige's imagination."
"So Paige is here somewhere?" Megan perked up. "She must be close by. I should follow Sarah."
She turned toward the door, but Jack caught her arm. "You can't follow her. She's dead, and you're alive."
"But is she going to Paige? She must be."
Jack's touch became a firm squeeze. "Look, you have a long way to go from here. You really fucked up when you left the path. You found your mother, and that's a step in the right direction, but since you left the path, you have to go the long way around."
Megan was tense with longing for her daughter. But the last time she'd ignored Jack's words, she'd almost been killed by the trolls, and then almost eaten by sea creatures. She forced herself to relax and open her mind. "What do I have to do?"
Jack's grip loosened, and his face relaxed. "Good. You're still moving in the right direction. The first thing we need to do is get out of this house. Then we need to find Debbie again. I wish you hadn’t left the path. You were almost home."
"I knew better," Megan admitted. "There's no excuse. In the stories, bad things always happen when you leave the path. But at least you're back now. I still have hope."
"Hope will never be gone, not in this place. Now how do we get out of here?"
"Out the front door, I imagine." Megan went to the door through which Sarah had exited. She almost expected it to be locked—even though the real door had never had a lock—but it opened easily. She walked out into the hallway and looked around.
Chapter Fifteen
It was like staring into a funhouse mirror, or a weirdly twisting time warp. It looked like the home she remembered; there were the family portraits hung up in chronological order along the hallway, and there was the board with the red X painted on it in nail polish, the one that Megan had always avoided at night because it squeaked. She stepped on it now, just to listen to the long, dry creak. She was amused to find that the sound still set her heart racing with fear. She felt like a burglar suddenly confronted with a spotlight and a snarling dog.
She walked out into the living room and saw the same dust and filth covering the den. The picture window was shattered, and the yellow curtains were green with mold. She pulled back one curtain to see outside, and grey clumps of dust fell into her hair. Temporarily blinded, she stumbled back and frantically brushed the dust out of her hair and face.
It wasn't all dust. Three or four small grey spiders dropped to the floor and scurried away. Megan screamed. She had never been frightened by spiders, but she hated them touching her. She slapped her head all over until she felt like the clapper of a bell. No more spiders fell out of her hair, and nothing squished under her hands.
"Fucking nasty," she breathed.
"Your sister was always afraid of spiders, wasn't she?" Jack asked. His tone was casual, but a very deliberate and careful casual. Megan had the feeling that he was trying to tell her something without saying it.
"Yeah, she was," Megan said. "I used to tease her about it. But I stopped, after. After it happened. She was scared of everything for weeks after that. Crying fits over everything. You couldn't even show her a monster mask without her freaking out."
Jack ran his fingers through his black hair and the bells on his sleeves jingled. They were still muted and heavy-sounding, like they were being shaken inside an enclosed fist.
"What's wrong with your bells?" she asked.
"Nothing that can't be fixed."
Jack wouldn't look at her.
Fine, be that way, she thought. The front door was warped and cracked, but there wasn't much dust and no spider webs in sight. She twisted the deadbolt and squeezed the handle. There was a little give but not much, and the door did not budge.
"Must be jammed," she said. She jammed down on the latch—it looked like a tarnished gold tongue, and as a child she'd had lots of fun making faces back at it—and now she felt a little more give. But the door still didn't open when she pulled. It didn't even wiggle, as a locked door usually would. It was like pulling on a block of wood. She sighed and turned to Jack.
"All right," she said. "What's the big secret this time? Do I have to answer three questions or maybe confront another monster from my past? I'm getting pretty sick of this."
"Don't shoot the messenger." Jack held up his hands. "I didn't invent this place, you did. I don't know how you think I'm responsible for this mess you're in."
"Who is responsible?"
"I still can't say her name. She doesn't have much control over me, since I'm all you, but she has some."
"Of course." Megan looked around. She could try the back door, she supposed, but she thought she'd have the same lack of success there. Getting out of here was not a matter of physics or geography. She had to do something or remember something. That was apparently how this house of horrors worked.
"This place is filthy," she remarked. The hardwood floor was grey and furry with dust, except for the footprints she'd left. Some of the grey was wiggling. More spiders. Megan tucked her sweat pants in down around her ankles and tried not to look too closely at the floor.
"This place is gross," she said. Then she added, "Icky grody." That was the strongest language she'd ever used to describe foulness as a child, and it was Debbie's favorite. "Icky grody," she repeated. It felt good to say it. Childish, but childish was good. It felt good to act like a kid.
"Well, you haven't been back here in a while," Jack said.
"The house was sold," Megan started. Then she understood what he meant. "This isn't the actual house. It's the house in my head. Right? And it's dirty because—"
Because she hadn't been here in years. She'd avoided thinking about the place for most of her life. After the incident of the broken plates, she'd stopped riding past it, stopped remembering what it was like to live here, and she'd pretended to herself and her friends that she's always lived in an apartment. Strange how painful happy memories could be when there weren't any more to be made.
"I have some cleaning to do," she said.
Jack held out a bright yellow sponge almost as big as her head. It looked like the sort of thing used to wash cars. In his other hand was a bright pink bucket filled with soapy water. Not a washing bucket or mop bucket: this was a child's plastic pail. It was the bucket Megan had played with at the beach in Florida, the last time they'd gone. There was a yellow daisy sticker on the side, its edges peeling just a bit.
"I can help with this," Jack said. He put the bucket down and picked up a mop as long as a bo staff.
Megan dunked the sponge into the bucket, and the warm water splashed up her sleeves. She didn't
mind. It felt sort of good. The water was warm, and the soap smelled sweet and fruity, like bubble bath. Strawberry, she thought. Or maybe cherry.
She started by wiping down the door, and she wasn't surprised to see the warps and cracks disappear along with the filth. She could try to open it again, she supposed, but there was probably no point. She still had a lot of cleaning to do, and she wasn't supposed to leave until the job was finished.
Next she moved on to the bookshelves. She cringed a little as the wet sponge ran over the rows of moldy paperbacks, but she reminded herself that none of this was real. The house wasn't really a house, the water wasn’t actually water, and the books were only representations of the books her parents had owned. If she picked up any one of them and opened it, the pages would probably be blank. Megan had never read any of these books, so their contents would not be part of this world.
The books brightened in color, and the cobwebs were swept away. Behind her, Megan could hear the slop and slosh of Jack Benimble mopping down the dusty and spider-infested floor. The spiders weren't spiders, either. Was this place like a dream, where everything was a symbol for something else? If so, what did the spiders mean? Maybe fear, since Debbie had been afraid of them.
Megan didn't feel like she was working hard; the filth disappeared almost as soon as she touched it. But after a few minutes, her arms and back began to ache. She wanted to drop the sponge and take a break, but she forced herself to keep moving. She had a long ways to go, and she knew that this was a key step in finding her way back to Paige. She pretended that she was a character from a story, forced to work by her wicked mother. Ella the Cinder Girl, the filthy and abused waif who would someday catch the eye of a handsome prince with her dainty feet. Megan had never cared for the story past the age of twelve or so (when puberty kicked in and her own feet grew to their adult size ahead of the rest of her body), but she had taken comfort in the image of the hardworking abuse survivor making good. The harder she worked, she told herself, the better she'd have it when this nightmare was finally over. That was what she'd always told herself when Mom had her scrubbing the bathtub or washing the house on a sunny, beautiful Saturday.
Looking back, Megan thought that it wouldn't have killed her to cut Mom some slack in that area. She’d been working two jobs at the time, so it wasn't like she could come home at midnight and do dishes, vacuum, and make dinner. But still, Megan relished the bittersweet comfort of self-pity as she reveled in the growing ache between her shoulder blades. They're all jealous of how sweet and beautiful I am, Megan thought mournfully, allowing herself to fall into the pretending. Someday I'll go to a magnificent ball and forget all my troubles for one night. I might even meet someone kindhearted and rich who will take me away from all this.
Her pink sweat pants were grey from the dust, and the clumps of hair and dead spiders made her T shirt look ragged. As Megan continued to scrub, moving down the hall, back toward the den and the bedrooms, the pink disappeared completely, and she was dressed in a ragged grey dress that one might see on a poor street urchin from any fairy tale. A lock of sweaty hair fell into her face, and she was only slightly surprised to see that instead of grey-streaked brown, this Megan's hair was brilliant, shining gold. She flipped her hair over her shoulder. "I always liked the name Ella better than Megan," she said to Jack, who was mopping the hallway behind her.
"I remember when you were six and you made everyone call you Ella for a week," he said. The floor where his mop touched shone like a ballroom dance floor.
"I remember that."
"Your best friend called you Cinderella once, and you yelled at her because in the original story that's what the stepsisters called her to tease her."
"Yes." Megan remembered that, too. Dad had always read his daughters the older, original versions of the fairy tales, and most of them were quite different from the animated movies her classmates had seen. Ella the Cinder Girl was not the most extreme example, nor was that the last time she would fall out with a friend over creative differences.
"I've changed again," Ella murmured, looking down. Her hands were rough and calloused, but when she touched her face, it was supple and youthful. She knew that if she had a mirror, she would see a blue-eyed waif instead of the crinkle-eyed matron who thought of herself as Mom even when Jenna and Paige were nowhere in sight.
Her new look meant something. She'd been too angry to pay attention when she'd been the dragon, but now she was getting smarter. She'd become the dragon out of anger. That was easy enough. As a child she'd always drawn dragons when she was pissed off at the world or at her mother. So what did Ella represent? What had she been thinking and feeling during that week she'd insisted on calling herself Ella? What fantasies had played in her head while she'd spun around her bedroom and pretended to be encased in a magnificent ball gown and shining glass slippers?
Ella hugged the damp yellow sponge to her chest and closed her eyes. This isn't the end of the world, she thought dreamily. This isn't how my life will go. Someday I'll meet someone wonderful, and then I'll—
Her eyes flew open. "Escape," she whispered.
"Bingo." Jack grinned.
"But Ella didn't escape by herself. She had to meet someone. So I have to find someone before I can leave this house."
"Right again."
"It can't be a prince. There were never any princes in the stories I told Debbie—Debbie! I have to find that little girl again. That's right, isn't it?"
"How do you suppose we do that?"
Ella sighed. "Scrub this house clean. Ella always had to do her chores before she could do anything important."
"Better get back to work then." Jack wasn't wearing the rainbow motley anymore; now he wore a grey coverall like that of a janitor or maintenance man. The embroidered name badge over his left breast read ‘Jack B’. Black bells still hung from his wrists and ankles, and they still rang with a muted, joyless sound as he moved.
Soonest begun, soonest done, Ella thought, and she put her back into her own work. She scrubbed her way down the hall and back into the den. Her mother's remains were nothing but a pile of spilled laundry, which Ella picked up and folded neatly on the couch. She scrubbed down the walls and the filthy windows, and as she ran her sponge over the TV, the spider web of cracks disappeared.
Ella went to the closet, meaning to clean it out as well, but when she opened the door she saw nothing but a rectangle of black. A wintry breeze ruffled her golden hair, and she stepped back. She felt like she'd suddenly stumbled to the very edge of a cliff.
"Not that way." Jack grabbed her arm. "That's not till later."
"Later?" Ella shuddered. She didn't want to go through there ever.
"That's one of the boundaries of Far Faraway. But you don't want to cross it before it's time to go. You might not make it home."
Ella closed the door. "Fair enough." Her voice only quivered a little. She left the clean den stiffly and headed for the master bedroom, where her parents had once slept. Then her mother had slept there alone. Slept and sometimes cried and thrown things.
Chapter Sixteen
The master bedroom was a disaster. The dresser had tipped forward, spilling its contents out onto the floor. The vanity mirror was shattered, and the entire room was decorated in dangerous glitter. The bed was filthy, smeared with brown streaks, and it reeked of mold and urine. And the walls—
Cracked plaster, peeling paint, and worst of all there were deep gouges all over, as though someone had punched or kicked in the drywall. This was where Mom had finished losing her mind. She'd been well on her way long before the bad thing, but losing her husband and then her home had pushed her over the edge.
A magic sponge was not going to fix this mess.
She turned to Jack. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked.
Jack shook his head and clapped his hands together once. For just a second, his bells rang with their old vigorous chime. Then they were dull and toneless again. "This isn't your room. It's not your job to fi
x your mother's crazy. It never was."
"I know she had problems. But maybe if I hadn't been such a mouthy brat—"
"Bullshit. She was going to go nuts no matter what happened. It was all her, honey. There was nothing you or anyone else could have done."
Something heavy lifted in her chest, so suddenly that she felt dizzy. Then she burst into tears. Jack put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a brotherly squeeze. "Now let's find your baby sister," he whispered. "She's here somewhere, trapped in your mother's crazy just like you were. Can you hear her?"
She stopped crying. She thought she could hear something, a rustling sound like a bird fluttering in its cage. "Is that her?" she asked.
"One way to find out." Jack let go of her and jumped onto the filthy bed. The broken mirror glass didn't seem to bother him—nor would it, Ella thought. This was her mother's crazy, not his. Mom's undiagnosed condition had hurt her family, but it had hurt nobody as much as she'd hurt herself.
"Ahoy!" he called down to her. "I see no landlubbers of the sisterly persuasion to neither port nor starboard! Avast. Do ye see the wee lassie?"
"Nay, Pirate Black Bells," Ella responded. "I see naught but the deep blue sea and me mother's trashed vanity."
"Keep looking, me hearty. I can feel her in me bells!" Jack grabbed his crotch, and Ella was startled into a laugh. That was not something he'd ever done when she was a kid.
She looked and listened, and after a moment she could hear the rustle again. It was faint as a whisper, and it was coming from the closet door on the other side of Mom's broken dresser. As she listened, there was a faint whimper, like a crying kitten.
"I hear her, Black Bells!" she announced. "I hear the wee lassie, and I believe she be in mortal fear!"
"Yarr, then let's be rescuing the lass!" Jack jumped off the bed and raised his hands in a mock kung-fu pose. "Lead on, me hearty."
