The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

  When he has been gone twenty minutes Dee walks over to his house. She follows her plan carefully. She rings the doorbell. When there is no answer, she lifts the mail flap.

  ‘Hello?’ she calls into the bowels. The mood of the house strokes her face. It is dust and old despair.

  ‘Hello,’ she calls again. ‘Neighbour, here to help!’ It took her a while to come up with the right phrasing. Something the little girl would understand, but would also sound innocuous to anyone else listening. The house breathes at her. But there is no other sound. Then Dee puts her lips to the aperture and whispers, ‘Lulu?’ She waits for a minute, and then two. But the silence of the house only thickens.

  The day is getting brighter. Some guy passes, walking his dog. There can be no breaking and entering. Sooner or later someone might start to wonder why she’s loitering on Ted’s steps.

  She takes out her flashlight, gets on all fours and crawls quickly into the rhododendron. Cobwebs cling to her face like tiny hands. Adrenaline punches her heart. It makes her feel good, alive.

  The cassette lies half buried in dry leaves. A beetle sits atop it, waving curious horns. Dee brushes the beetle off and puts the cassette in her bra. She backs slowly out of the bush. The rush is seeping away and she feels cold. To her right something moves through the leaf litter in a long thin line. She gasps and backs out of the undergrowth, hitting her shin painfully on the edge of a step. She beats her head frantically with her hands, feeling the phantom weight of a scaled body clinging and coiling in her hair. She runs, panting, to her front door.

  Ted

  It’s bug-man day at last. I have to see it through. I have to do this for Lauren. But I should not have yelled at him last time. I saw the light come on in his eyes.

  The walk is nice. Not too hot. I stroke the little pinecone in my pocket. I found it by the front steps. I love pinecones. They have very individual personalities.

  I stop with my hand on the door handle. The bug man is talking in his office. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen or heard another patient, here!

  ‘Goddamn small minds,’ I hear the bug man say. ‘Small towns.’ It makes me feel weird. I knock so he knows I’m there. I really respect privacy. He stops muttering and says, ‘Come in!’

  The bug man’s round eyes are calm behind his spectacles. There is no one else in the room.

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Ted,’ he says. ‘I thought you might not show up. There are more scratches on your hands and face, I see.’

  ‘It’s my cat,’ I say. ‘She’s going through a rough patch.’ (Nails on my face, her screams as I put her in the crate.)

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘How are things?’

  ‘I’m good,’ I say. ‘The pills are good. Only, I run low real fast. I was thinking maybe I could have a prescription I could refill, instead of getting them from you.’

  ‘We can talk about increasing the dosage. But I would rather you continue to get the pills from me. And you would have to pay to fill a prescription. You don’t want that, do you?’

  ‘I guess not,’ I say.

  ‘Have you been keeping your feelings diary?’ he asks.

  ‘Sure,’ I say politely. ‘All that is great. Your suggestions have been very helpful.’

  ‘Has the diary helped you to identify some triggers?’

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘I am very worried about my cat.’

  ‘Your gay cat.’

  ‘Yes. She shakes her head all the time, and she claws at her ears like there’s something in them. Nothing seems to help her.’

  ‘So,’ the bug man says, ‘that makes you feel powerless?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I don’t want her to be in pain.’

  ‘Is there any action you can take? Could you take her to the veterinarian, for instance?’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘No. I don’t think they would understand her at the animal clinic. Not at all. She’s a very particular kind of cat.’

  ‘Well,’ he says. ‘You’ll never know if you don’t try, hmm?’

  ‘Actually,’ I say, ‘I have been wondering about something else.’

  ‘Yes?’ He looks expectant. I almost feel bad. He’s been waiting so long for me to give him something.

  ‘Do you remember the TV show I was telling you about – with the mother and daughter?’

  He nods. His pen is still. His eyes are flat blue circles, fixed on me.

  ‘I am still watching it. The plot has been getting more complicated. The angry girl, you know, the one who keeps trying to kill her mother – well, it turns out she has another … nature, kind of?’

  The bug man doesn’t stir. His eyes are fixed on me. ‘That can happen,’ he says slowly. ‘It’s rare … and it doesn’t work like it does in the movies.’

  ‘This movie wasn’t like those other movies,’ I say.

  ‘I thought you said it was a TV show.’

  ‘That’s what I meant, a TV show. So in this show, sometimes the daughter is a young girl – but at certain times she seems completely ... different.’

  ‘As if another personality takes over?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Like there are two people inside her.’ Two different species, actually, but I think I’ve told him enough.

  The bug man says, ‘I think you’re talking about dissociative identity disorder, or DID.’

  Dissociative identity disorder. It sounds like something that goes wrong with a TV or a stereo. It doesn’t sound like anything to do with Lauren.

  The bug man is watching me closely, and I realise that I am murmuring to myself. Being weird. I fix him with a firm gaze. ‘That’s very interesting.’

  ‘It used to be known as multiple personality disorder,’ he says. ‘DID is a new term – but we still don’t really understand it. I deal with it extensively in my book. In fact, you might say the whole thesis—’

  ‘So what do we understand?’ I say, keeping him to the point. I know from experience that if I don’t he’ll just talk about his book for ever.

  ‘The girl in your TV show would probably have been subject to systematic abuse, physical or emotional,’ he says. ‘So her mind fragmented. It formed a new personality to deal with the trauma. It’s rather beautiful. An intelligent child’s elegant solution to suffering.’ He leans forward. His eyes are bright behind his glasses. ‘Is that what you saw, on the show? Abuse?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe I missed that part while I was getting popcorn. Anyway the mother doesn’t know what to do about it. What should she do? In your professional opinion.’

  ‘There are two schools of thought on this,’ he says. ‘The first sets as its goal a state known as co-consciousness.’ He sees my look, and says, ‘A therapist would try to help the alternate personalities, or alters, to find a way to live harmoniously with one another.’

  I almost laugh out loud. Lauren could never live harmoniously with anyone. ‘That wouldn’t work,’ I say. ‘On the show the two people don’t know that they’re one person.’

  ‘Her imagination could be made to work for her,’ he says. ‘She doesn’t have to be at its mercy. She should construct a place inside herself. A real structure. A lot of children use castles, or mansions. But it can be anything. A room, a barn. Big, with enough room for everyone. Then she can invite the different parts to congregate there safely. They can get to know one another.’

  ‘They really don’t like each other,’ I say.

  ‘I can recommend some reading,’ he says. ‘That could help you understand this approach better.’

  ‘What’s the other school of thought?’

  ‘Integration. The alters are subsumed into the primary personality. Effectively, they disappear.’

  ‘Like dying.’ Like murder.

  He looks at me carefully over his glasses. ‘In a way,’ he says. ‘It’s a long therapeutic process, which can take years. Some practitioners think it is the best solution. I don’t know. To merge fully evolved personalities into one another might be difficult – inadv
isable. Some practitioners consider these personalities, these alters, to be people in their own right. They have lives, thoughts. For want of a better word, they have souls. It would be like trying to merge you and me.’

  ‘But it can be done,’ I say.

  ‘Ted,’ he says. ‘If you know – someone – with this condition, they are going to need help with this. A lot of help. I could guide her …’

  His left hand rests in his lap. His right hand lies palm down on the small table at his side, an inch or so from his mobile phone. I pick up a pen from the table and play with it, watching his right hand, the one near the phone, very carefully. I wait for him to make the next mental leap. I wait for him to reach for the phone. I hope he doesn’t. Strangely, I have grown fond of him.

  ‘Such a rich puzzle,’ he says dreamily, and I can tell that he’s not really talking to me any more. ‘It’s a question I ask in my book. Of what does the self consist? You know, there is a philosophical argument that DID could hold the secret to existence. It theorises that each living thing and object, each stone and blade of grass, has a soul, and all these souls together form a single consciousness. Every single thing is a living, component part of a breathing, sentient universe … In that sense we are all alternate personalities – of God, essentially. Isn’t that an idea?’

  ‘Neat,’ I say. ‘Could you give me the names of those books, please?’ I am as polite as possible. ‘About the integration thing.’

  ‘Oh – sure.’ He tears a page out of his notebook and scribbles.

  ‘Please think about it, Ted,’ he says, eyes on the page. ‘I think it could be really helpful if I could talk to her.’ His eyes are full of safe abstractions. He is lit up with the thrill of it. I keep the pen hidden in my fist, held like a dagger.

  If only he knew. I think of the dark nights with Lauren, the clinging moistness of her hands, her sharp teeth and nails, which leave neat scores in my flesh. I think of Mommy.

  I come back from that place. There is a sound like mice running in the walls. The pen nib is buried deep in my palm. The sound is not mouse feet but blood, trickling in patterns onto the pale rug. The bug man stares. His face is empty and white. As I watch, it begins to fill with horror. My own face is not making the correct shapes for pain and it’s too late, now, to pretend that I feel it. The bug man has seen something of who truly I am at last. I pull the pen gently from where it is embedded in my palm. It comes out with a gentle sucking sound, like a lollipop between firm lips. I staunch the wound with Kleenex from his desk.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, taking the piece of paper from his fingers. He tries not to, but he shrinks away from me. I know it well: that withdrawal, as if the flesh of his hand is trying to creep away from mine. It is how my mother touched me.

  I stumble out of the office, slamming the door behind me and fall into the plastic waiting room, with its reek of synthetic blossom. That did not go well. But at least I have a name for it, now. I stop long enough to write it down. Dissociative identity disorder. I hear the office door opening behind me and I run again, stumbling against empty plastic blue chairs. Why is there never anyone else waiting here? It doesn’t matter now, I won’t be coming back.

  Olivia

  I am beginning to wonder if Ted has thrown the knife in the trash. Or maybe he carries it with him, wherever he goes on those long nights, when he comes home smelling of earth and old bone.

  We considered other approaches. But it must be the knife, because it is sharp and fast. Lauren’s body is not strong. There is nothing to eat in the house, poisonous or otherwise. Ted has learned his lesson.

  I don’t want to tell Lauren this, but I think Ted is up to something. He brought home some new books, today. The titles make my whiskers ache. But I think they are about us. I try and mask these thoughts, keep them from her. She can’t hear if I sink them deep enough. Once again I thank the lord for keeping me here. Lauren needs me.

  ‘Maybe I can make a knife,’ Lauren says, doubtful. ‘Like they do on TV, in jail. I wish there was some food. It might help me think.’

  I can feel her hunger. It adds to my own, deepening the ache in our stomach. Night-time growls and shakes himself in the deep places of us like the beating of black wings. I force him down again. He’s hungry like the rest of us.

  It’s not your time, I tell him.

  He snarls but he is still too deep down for me to catch it. It is either, Now, now, now, or, No, no, no. I cannot be sure which.

  We hunt through drawers and cupboards. All we find is dust. To keep us entertained, Lauren makes up songs. The best one is about a woodlouse. It is really, really good.

  We are exhausted. I curl up on the floor under the couch. The cord lies in a pile beside me. It is pale yellow and delicate today.

  Even if we found the knife I couldn’t use it on Ted. Apart from one brief flash, when Lauren took down the wall between us, I have not been able to control the hands, the head, the arms like a ted. I just feel like a cat. And there’s something else, too. I wish I didn’t but I still feel the old pull when I think of Ted. Love doesn’t die easily. It kicks and fights.

  Lauren says, ‘You have to keep practising, Olivia.’

  I’m tired, I say. In my head I think, Practice is horrible and I hate it.

  ‘I heard that,’ she says. ‘How do you think we’re going to get out of here if you can’t use the body, you stupid cat?’

  You are quite rude sometimes.

  ‘At least I don’t go back on my promises, Olivia. You said you’d try.’

  I row with unhappiness, because I know she’s right.

  She sighs. ‘Let’s start again. Go to the bottom of the stairs. What can you see?’

  I see the stairs, I say, tentative. (I always feel like my answers are wrong.) I see the carpet. The bannister, running up. At the top, I can just see the landing. And if I turn around I can see the front door, the umbrella stand, the door to the kitchen, into the living room a little …

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Enough. So, we’ll call this “Night-time”. He can see what’s down here, but nothing more. Think about that. Imagine him here at the bottom of the stairs. Now, let’s go up top.’

  On the last stair but one, before the landing, she pulls me up. ‘What do you see?’

  I can see the bathroom door, I say, and Ted’s room and your room and the roof light …

  ‘All the upstairs stuff, right?’

  Yes.

  ‘But can you see anything downstairs? The hall? The front door, the umbrella stand …’

  No.

  ‘So, let’s call this “Lauren”. That’s what I can see. Got it?’

  Not really, I say, but she’s not listening.

  ‘Go down again.’

  When I am precisely half way down the stairs, Lauren says, ‘Stop.’ I am on the step where I like to nap. There are seven stairs below me and seven above. ‘Now what do you see?’ Lauren asks.

  I can still see the bannister, I say. I can still see the stairs and the carpet on the landing. If I look down I can see the floor of the hall and if I crouch I can see a little of the front door. And if I look up, towards the top of the stairs I can see the window, the bathroom door and the roof light on the landing.

  ‘So you can see a little of what’s above you and some of what’s below. This is you, Olivia. Night-time at the bottom, and me in the upstairs and you in the middle, joining us. You are the connecting point. Only one person is going to save us. You.’

  The cord glows positively rose-gold as I swell with pride.

  ‘All you have to do is go up,’ Lauren says. ‘Try.’

  But …

  ‘I don’t mean literally go upstairs,’ she says, impatient. ‘I mean, it’s not like any of this is real.’

  OMG. WHAT DO YOU MEA—

  ‘Never mind that now. Again.’

  I shudder. I feel the old stair carpet, rough under the velvet pads of my paws. I like my paws. I don’t want to be a ted. I want to be me.

  I’m sca
red, I say. I can’t move, Lauren.

  ‘Tell yourself a story,’ Lauren says. I can tell from her voice that she knows what it’s like, to be pinned by fear. ‘Pretend something you really want is up there and go to it.’

  I think about the lord, and his many shifting faces, and how good he is. I try to picture him on the landing above me. My heart fills with love. I can almost see him, with his tawny body and tiger’s tail. His eyes are golden.

  I climb up one stair. For a moment the walls shiver around me. I feel utterly sick, like I’m falling from a great height.

  ‘Good,’ Lauren says, voice cracking with excitement. ‘That’s great, Olivia.’

  I look up at the lord. He smiles. Then I see that he wears Ted’s face. Why is he wearing Ted’s face?

  I turn and run back down the stairs, rowing in distress. Lauren is shouting indistinctly in our head.

  I can’t do it, I say to Lauren. Please don’t make me. It is horrible.

  ‘You don’t love me,’ Lauren says sadly. ‘If you loved me you’d really try.’

  I do, I do love you! I say, with a little row. I didn’t mean to upset you.

  ‘You’ve done it before, Olivia, I feel it. You take down the barrier and come up. It happens every time you knock the Bible off the table. There’s thunder, right, and the house moves? You do it when you make your recordings. Remember when you opened the refrigerator door? The meat really went bad! You just have to learn to do it on purpose.’

  I remember but I don’t understand. Of course the meat spoiled – I left the fridge door open.

  ‘What colour was the rug that day, Olivia?’

  It’s not surprising, I guess, after what she’s been through – Lauren has lost it.

  Lauren says, ‘I guess I have, but try anyway?’ Weird having someone hear what you’re thinking. I’m not used to it yet.

  ‘Please.’ She sounds so sad that I am ashamed of myself.

  All right, I say. I will!

  I try again and again, but no matter how hard I wish all I can feel is my silky black coat and my four padding paws.

  After what seems like for ever, Lauren says, ‘Stop.’