‘You were alone when I found you,’ he says. The man stares at me and I stare back. How are you supposed to talk to the person who saved your life?
‘How did you find me?’ I ask.
‘Someone had been blazing young trees with yellow paint. I’m a park ranger up in King County, so I didn’t like that. It’s toxic. I followed the trail, to tell them to stop. The dog got a blood scent. That was you.’
The doctor comes and the orange-haired man goes into the hall, out of earshot. The doctor is young, tired-looking.
‘You seem better. Let’s take a look.’ He does everything gently. ‘I want to ask you about the pills they found with you,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ I say, anxiety settling on me like a cloak. ‘I need them. They keep me calm.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m not sure about that. Did a doctor prescribe them?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘He gave them to me in his office.’
‘I don’t know where your doctor got them – but I would stop taking them, if I were you. They stopped manufacturing these pills about ten years ago. They have extreme side effects. Hallucinations, memory loss. Some people experience rapid weight gain. I am happy to recommend an alternative.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I won’t be able to afford that.’
He sighs and sits on the bed, which I know they’re not supposed to do. Mommy would have been upset. But he looks exhausted, so I don’t say anything. ‘It’s tough,’ he says. ‘There’s not enough support or funding. But I’ll bring you the forms. You might be eligible for aid.’ He hesitates. ‘It’s not just the medication that concerns me. There is a great deal of burn scarring on your back, legs and arms. There are also many scars from sutured incisions. That would normally indicate many hospitalisations in childhood. But your medical records don’t reflect that. They don’t seem to reflect any medical intervention at all.’ He looks at me and says, ‘Somebody should have caught this. Somebody should have stopped what was being done to you.’
It never before occurred to me that Mommy could have been stopped. I consider. ‘I don’t think they could have,’ I say. But it’s nice that it matters to him.
‘I can give you the name of someone who can go over your medical history in detail, someone you can talk to about … what happened. It’s never too late.’
He sounds unsure and I understand why. Sometimes it is too late. I think I finally understand the difference between now and then. ‘Maybe some other time,’ I say. ‘Right now I’m kind of tired of therapy.’
He looks like he wants to say more but he doesn’t, and I’m so grateful to him for that that I just start crying.
The orange-haired man brings me a toothbrush from the gift shop, sweatpants, a T-shirt and some underwear. It’s kind of embarrassing that he bought me underwear, but I need it. All my clothes were ruined by blood.
Doctors come and give me the stuff that makes the world go underwater. It keeps the others in here quiet, too. For the first time in many years, there is silence. But I know that they are there. We all move gently in and out of time.
Through the window I can see tall buildings, gleaming in the sun. I feel how far I am from the forest. I ask to have the window open, but the nurse says no, that the heatwave is over. This part of the world is returning to its cool, deep-green self. I feel like I’m coming home after a war.
The nurses are nice to me, amused. I’m just some clumsy guy who slipped and fell on his hunting knife, early one morning in the woods.
The orange-haired man is still here when I wake again. It should be weird, having a stranger in the room. But it isn’t. He is a peaceful person.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.
‘Better,’ I say. And it’s true.
‘I have to ask,’ he says. ‘Did you really slip on that knife, or not? There was something in your eyes while I was trying to stop the bleeding. It looked like maybe you weren’t sorry to be – you know. Dying.’
‘It’s complicated,’ I say.
‘I’m no stranger to complicated.’ He takes off his cap and rubs his head so his hair stands up in red spikes. He looks exhausted. ‘You know what they say. If you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them.’
If I tell him the truth, I guess I won’t see him again. But I am so tired of hiding what I am. My brain and my heart and my bones are exhausted by it. Mommy’s rules haven’t done me any good. What do I have to lose?
Lauren stirs, watchful.
I ask her, ‘Do you want to start?’
Lauren
This is how it went, the thing with the mouse – how Ted found the inside place.
Night-times were the most special times for Little Teddy. He loved sleeping by his mother’s warm, white-clad form. But before that, she would tend to his injuries. It used to be once a month, maybe, but lately Teddy hurt himself so badly and so often that Mommy had to spend all night sewing up his cuts. They did not look bad to Ted, some were barely scratches. And some of the cuts were the invisible kind, he couldn’t see or feel them at all. Mommy told him that these were the most dangerous kinds of wounds. She opened these cuts again, cleaned them and sewed them back up.
Teddy knew that Mommy had to do it, that it was his fault for being so clumsy. But he dreaded the moment when she turned on the bedside lamp and angled it just so. Then she set out the tray. The things gleamed there, the scissors and the scalpel. Balls of cotton, the bottle that smelled like Daddy’s drink. Mommy put on white gloves like skin, and she then went to work.
I don’t think Ted really liked me, especially in the beginning. Ted is a polite, peaceable boy. I am loud. I get very angry. Rage flows through me in waves. But it is not my job to make him like me. It is my job to protect him from hurt. I took some of his pain – I came forward so that we shared it. I couldn’t make it go away altogether. Sometimes the pain wasn’t even the worst part – it was the sounds. The little noise as the flesh parted. He really didn’t like that.
That night, as the tip of the scalpel met his back, I came forward as usual to share it with him.
‘Stay still, please, Theodore,’ said Mommy. ‘You are making this very difficult.’ Then she continued her dictation, pressing the red piano-key button down with a click. ‘The third incision,’ she said, ‘is superficial, outer dermis only.’ Her hand followed the words.
Ted knew that Mommy was right – this only got worse if he fought it. He knew if he stepped out of line Mommy would put him in the old chest freezer, in the disinfecting bath of vinegar and hot water. So Ted tried to let it happen. He tried to be a good boy. But the pain and the noises got so bad, Ted was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stop himself making a sound – even though he knew what happened if he did that.
We were lying alongside one another, and I felt all his thoughts and fears. It was hard to take at the same time as everything that was happening to the body.
And Ted did it, he let out a little high ahh, barely a sound at all, really. But it fell into the quiet like a pebble into a pond. We both held our breath. Mommy stopped what she was doing. ‘You’re making this very hard for both of us,’ she said, and went to make the vinegar bath ready.
As she lowered us into the freezer, Ted started crying properly. He wasn’t as strong as me.
The dark closed over. Our skin was a gulf of flame. Ted was breathing too fast and coughing. I knew I had to protect him. He couldn’t take much more of this.
‘Get out of here, Ted,’ I said. ‘Go.’
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘Do what I do. Leave. Stop being.’
‘I can’t!’ His voice was really high.
I pushed him. ‘Go away, you big baby.’
‘I can’t!’
‘Well, maybe Mommy will go too far this time,’ I said, ‘and we will die.’ This neat solution had never occurred to me before. ‘Ted! I just had an idea!’
But Teddy was gone. He had found his door.
Ted
The air changed around me, so
mehow. I was standing by the front door to our house. But there was no street, no forest, no oak tree. Instead everything was white like the inside of a cloud. It wasn’t scary. It felt safe. I opened the door and stepped into the house, which was shrouded in a warm, dim calm. I locked the door behind me, quickly. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Mommy couldn’t come here, I knew.
The air was suddenly filled with the sound of purring. A soft tail stroked my legs. I looked down and caught my breath. I could hardly believe it. I was staring into a pair of beautiful green eyes, the size and shape of cocktail olives. She regarded me, delicate ears alert and questioning. I crouched and reached for her, half expecting her to vanish into nothing. Her coat was like silky coal. I stroked her, ran my finger down the slice of white on her chest.
‘Hi, kitty,’ I said, and she purred. ‘Hi, Olivia.’ She weaved herself in a figure of eight about my legs. I went to the living room, where the light was yellow-warm and the couch was soft, and took her on my lap. The house looked almost exactly like the one upstairs – it was just a little different. The cold blue rug I had always hated was orange down here, a beautiful deep shade, like the sun settling on a winter highway.
As I sat on the couch stroking Olivia, I heard it. The long, even passage of breath, great flanks rising and falling. I wasn’t afraid. I peered into the shadows and I saw him, lying in a great pile, watching me with eyes like lamps. I offered out my hand and Night-time came padding out of the dark.
So I got my kitty in the end. Actually it was even better than I had hoped, because I got two.
And that’s how I found the inside place. I can go down when I like, but it’s easier if I use the freezer as the door. I guess I could have made the inside place a castle or a mansion or something. But how would I know where everything was, in a castle or a mansion?
I am Big Ted now but Little Teddy is still here. When I go away, it’s because he has come forward. He does not use the face in the same way that grown-ups use their faces. So he can look scary. But he would never hurt anyone. It was Little Teddy who picked up the blue scarf and tried to give it back to the lady as she sat crying in her car, in the parking lot of the bar. She screamed when she saw Little Teddy. He ran after her, but she drove away fast through the rain.
Lauren
Ted was gone and all the pain that had been shared between us rushed into me. I had not known the body was capable of standing so much. I tried to follow him down, inside. But he had locked the door against me. I wonder if he could hear me screaming, from down there. I expect he could.
Mommy put us back in our little bed when she was done. The gauze was itchy over the stitches but I knew better than to scratch. The room was full of moving shadow and the mouse’s pink eyes gleamed where it watched from its cage.
I’m scared, I tried to tell Teddy. Teddy didn’t answer. He was deep in a good place full of black tails and green eyes and soft coats. I tried not to cry but I couldn’t help it.
I felt Ted soften towards me. ‘You can sleep now, Lauren,’ he said. ‘Someone else will watch.’
I heard the pad of great paws as Night-time came upstairs. I sank into the soft black.
I was woken in the morning by his weeping. Ted had found Snowball’s bloody bones in the cage. He was so sorry about it. ‘Poor Snowball,’ he whispered over and over. ‘It isn’t fair.’ He cried more about that mouse than he did about the new little railway of black sutures that ran down our back. He wasn’t there when it was done, I guess. He didn’t feel it. I did, each one.
Ted knew it wasn’t Night-time’s fault. Night-time was just obeying his nature. Ted told Mommy that the mouse got out of its cage, and a stray cat got it. It was true, in a way. Of course, Mommy didn’t believe him. She took Teddy to the woods and told him to hide who he was. She thought he had a hunger in him. Ted was afraid that she would find a way to take Olivia and Night-time away. (And then it would be just me and him. He didn’t want that.) So he let her think it was the old sickness, the one her father had, the one who kept his pets in the crypt beneath the iliz.
I had begun to understand what Ted could not – what he would not allow himself to know. Each time the thought bobbed up he pushed it down harder, harder. Up it came again like a cork or a corpse surfacing. The sickness had indeed been passed down, though not to Ted. I wonder what the people of Locronan would say, if you asked them why they cast Mommy out. Maybe they have a different story to hers. Maybe it wasn’t her father who had the sickness.
At school they sensed that something had changed in Ted. He was like a mask with no one behind. Everyone stopped talking to him. He didn’t care. He could go inside, now, with the kitties. For the first time he could recall, he told me, he did not feel alone.
To me, who had been with him for all of Mommy’s repairs. He said that to me.
Teddy began calling the inside house his weekend place, because there was no work or school down there. Soon he found that he could add to it. He couldn’t keep his job at the auto shop in Auburn, so he made a basement where he could work on engines. He liked engines. It was a good workshop, full of tools in shining boxes and the scent of motor oil. He put white socks in the drawers, the kind that Mommy would never let him wear, because she said they were for girls. He put a window in the ceiling on the landing, where he could watch the sky all night, if he wanted, but no one could look back at him except the moon. He fixed the music box and put the Russian dolls back on the mantelpiece. Down here, he can fix everything he breaks. The picture of Mommy and Daddy can never be taken off the wall. Olivia walked through it all, her tail held curious and high. He made sure she had a peephole all her own. For her, it is always winter outside: Ted’s favourite season.
Ted made sure that Night-time only hunted downstairs, after the thing with Snowball. He put lots of mice in the weekend place to keep Night-time happy. Ted didn’t want any more suffering.
He added an attic, which he kept locked. He could put memories and thoughts in there and close the door. He didn’t like some of the inhabitants of the house. The long-fingered, green things, which had once been boys. He was afraid that the green boys were the ones who went missing from the lake. But that was just fine, because he put them in the attic, too. Sometimes they could be heard in the night, dragging their bony stick fingers on the boards, and weeping.
The more time Teddy spent inside, the clearer and more detailed it got. Soon he found that he could go there whenever he wanted. He began to lose time, there. The TV played anything he wanted. He could even watch what was happening in the upstairs house. If he saw something good was happening, like Mommy had got ice cream, he could open the front door and he would be up there again. Usually he found himself lying in the freezer in the acid-scented dark, with the air holes shining above him like stars. He went up less and less as the years went on.
More and more, he left me alone with Mommy. When she angled the light just so, Teddy went down to the weekend place and stroked his kitty.
I came to hate that smug cat. Ted knew it. Sometimes when I tried to come down he kept me suspended between the two places, in the black, vinegar-smelling freezer, because the cat was downstairs. Then when she went away it was my turn. If I did something he didn’t like, he found he could keep me in the dark freezer all the time.
I can’t come forward fully when we’re outside the house, unless Ted lets me. I can do little things – scribble a note, maybe, on the inside of some leggings, or make him lose concentration for a couple seconds. And of course it has to be stuff that doesn’t require the use of working legs. I don’t know why Ted’s broken mind made me like this but it did. He has to carry me through the world, maimed and powerless. I think that’s why he sometimes forgets that it was my strength that kept us alive.
Ted couldn’t say boo to a goose, or so I thought. I soon found out how wrong I was.
One day we were looking for mints in Mommy’s drawers. She didn’t like candy but she liked her breath to be fresh, so she would put one in her mouth for a few m
oments then spit it into a handkerchief. She moved the hiding place but sometimes we found it. We knew to eat just one, no matter how hungry we were. Mommy counted, but one mint was a plausible margin of error.
Mommy kept interesting things in her drawers. An old song book with bears on the front, a single white child’s flip-flop. Teddy was careless today. He pawed through her hose with damp hands.
‘She’ll notice, Teddy,’ I said. ‘Sheesh. You’ll tear them!’ He looked up and I caught our reflection in the mirror on the vanity. I saw it then, in his face. He didn’t care any more. Mommy would punish us and make the body cry. She would put us in the big box with vinegar. But Teddy could just go downstairs. It was me who would feel it.
‘Ted,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t …’
He shrugged and took the box of mints from where it was neatly folded inside a camisole. Slowly, dreamily, he opened the tin and put it to his lips. He tipped it so that the mints flowed into his mouth. Some spilled from his lips and fell bouncing to the floor.
‘Ted,’ I whispered. ‘Stop! You can’t be serious, she will hurt the body for that.’
He shook the last mints into his mouth, which was already crammed with round white shapes. Even in my panic I could taste them, my mouth was filled with sweetness … I shook myself. I had to stop him.
‘I’ll scream,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring her.’
‘So what?’ he said, through a mouthful of clicking mints. ‘Bring her. You’ll feel it, not me.’
‘There are more ways to hurt than the body,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell her about your weekend place, and those cats. She will find a way to deal with that. I don’t know what it will be, but you know I’m right. Mommy knows how to make brains do things, not just bodies.’
The Last House on Needless Street Page 25
