Deep Cuts

by Angel Leigh McCoy

  “On Tuesday night I ran into Mallory in the hall, and last night I woke up and she was standing right over me. And every time she’s there, he’s there."

  Alice shook her head slowly. “He never mentioned it to me.”

  “I told you something was wrong with Mallory.”

  “Sleepwalking is perfectly normal, Annie. Quit with this obsession over Mallory.” She slugged her coffee and trudged upstairs to get dressed.

  That night I waited for Mal to take her pre-bed shower, then I hid in her massive closet, snugged in behind her collection of second-hand prom dresses. The room was still full of Mom and Dad’s stuff, but she didn’t light all the candles at once any more. She was back before long, and I heard the light click off and the rustle of sheets as she got into bed. I counted to one thousand three times before sliding out from behind the dresses and over to the crack between the doors.

  Mallory’s bed was opposite the closet, between two windows, and for a few moments all I could see was deep shadow and the vague square shape of the mattress. Then the cloud cover shifted, filling the room with a dim glow.

  She was sitting up in bed, the light summer blanket spread neatly over her feet and legs, hands at her sides. At first I thought she’d fallen asleep sitting up, but the moonlight glinted off her eyes. She was staring in my direction, and it felt like she could see me straight through the closet door. I had thought I’d just watch her for a bit to see if she really was sleepwalking, but suddenly I realized that I was trapped in that closet until she went to sleep.

  I waited, kneeling on the floor with my eye glued to the crack for what felt like hours, but she never once looked away. If she blinked, I didn’t see it. A few times I dozed off, only to jerk awake when I started to overbalance, hoping she hadn’t heard me, but she didn’t move.

  Her clock faced away from the closet door. I didn’t have a watch, but I guessed it was two a.m. when Doug came into her room. The creak of the floor pulled me out of one of my upright catnaps, so it seemed to me like he’d suddenly materialized. Mallory didn’t look at him, just kept her gaze fixed on her closet door. He kneeled by the edge of the bed, so their heads were on level, and turned her face so their mouths met.

  I was too shocked to move and nearly burst out of the closet to ask what the pervert thought he was doing with my little sister. When he didn’t do anything else, I kept still. It wasn’t exactly kissing. He was breathing hard, like he was giving her mouth-to-mouth, and Mallory just drank it in. When he pulled away, she gave a gasp like she’d just chugged an entire bottle of water at once. His head dropped forward like he was overwhelmed by the force of her underage mouth. I felt sick, wondering what he would do next, and if there was anything in the closet long and hard for me to whack him with. While I was still groping around for a weapon, he got to his feet. As he turned to go, the moon slid behind clouds again. I couldn’t see anymore. The floor creaked a little, and then I heard the sound of his bare feet sticking to the wooden floor in the hallway as he walked down it and the click of Alice’s door closing.

  The moon came out again, but the only thing I saw was Mallory’s eye, no more than a foot away, staring directly into mine.

  I jumped, stifled a scream, and sprang out of the closet and across the room. Her eyes followed me, barely more than glints in the dim light.

  “I was just…I wanted to borrow…I fell asleep…” I gave up and bolted for the door. She followed me with measured steps but stopped at the threshold of her door. “Good night,” I whispered as I skittered into my room.

  I shut and locked the door, sliding my dresser in front of it: there was no way in hell I was waking up again with her standing over me. I locked my window for good measure, said every prayer I remembered from when I was little, and got into the bed.

  As I closed my eyes and tried to settle down, I heard soft footsteps come out of Mallory’s room and stop in front of my door. The knob rattled, then turned, but the door thudded into the dresser. She tried it again, and again the dresser held it closed. I smiled to myself and settled in to sleep. She couldn’t get to me.

  I heard her footsteps again, going slowly down the hall and into the empty room next to mine—our parents’ room—and coming to stop right where the head of my bed pressed against the wall. There was silence for a moment, and then the quiet scratching of her nails against the wall. She stopped after a few seconds, then took it up again—scritch, scritch scritch—right above my head. I closed my eyes and rolled over, but even asleep I could hear it. It only stopped when the light through my blinds turned golden, and the springs of Alice’s bed creaked as she and Doug got up.

  ◙

  I waited until the front door slammed shut before going down and finding Alice.

  “Look,” I said, “I know you think Mallory’s just fine, but I watched from her closet last night. She’s not sleeping. She’s just sitting up in bed staring into space.”

  “Just listen to yourself: ‘I watched from her closet last night?’ If I get a shrink for anyone, Annie, it’ll be you."

  “Okay, it’s a little weird. But then Doug came in and started giving her mouth-to-mouth or something. He’s sucked out her soul, or he’s feeding on her youth, or he just really likes tongue.”

  Alice had been staring, bleary-eyed and tired, into her coffee, but that woke her up.

  “That’s just gross. Don’t even make stuff like that up.” She stood to go upstairs.

  “But it’s true!” I said.

  “It’s sick and weird is what it is. And it’s crazy. Doug’s just as likely to be making out with Mallory in the middle of the night as he is to be feeding off her life force, which is not at all. Knowing the way she usually behaves, I’d think you’d be down here telling me she was sucking out his life force, rather than the other way around.”

  “Okay, maybe saying he’s feeding on her life force is a little ridiculous, but I was there and I saw mouth action. Lots of it.”

  “Annie, stop this. There is nothing wrong with our sister. Doug is not making out with her in her sleep or sucking her soul out through her mouth, and you’re going to drop this now. Do you hear me?” She left the kitchen, and I followed her to the stairs.

  “But Alice—”

  “This is the last conversation we’re going to have about this,” she said. A few minutes later I heard the shower come on.

  I went back to the kitchen, plunked down in one of the chairs, and watched the early light moving through the trees in the backyard. Something had to be done. The question was what? Briefly I considered cutting Doug’s throat while he slept, but immediately discarded the idea. Alice would wake up, it would be way too messy, and I didn’t think I could bring myself to cut anyone’s throat. Something that didn’t involve blood, that wouldn’t necessarily be associated with me. I’d waited long enough for her to just get better; she wasn’t going to as long as he was doing things to her.

  One of Dad’s old computers was set up in a corner of the kitchen for anyone to use, and I trudged over and sat down in front of it. One eye on the door and one ear cocked towards upstairs, I opened the Web and started searching “brake lines.”

  ◙

  Dad’s red-handled cutters clunked against my leg every step of the walk into town. They barely fit inside my pocket, the point occasionally digging into my leg. I didn’t run into anyone, and I didn’t really think about anything specifically, especially what I was about to do. I did wonder, as I passed the gas station that marked the edge of town, what on earth people did before Google.

  Doug’s blue Ford Ranger was parked at the far end of the gravel lot outside the welding shop where he worked, which was on the edge of a small industrial park full of glasscutters and auto mechanics and metalworkers. I saw no one as I wandered down the central road. None of the buildings had windows, but I looked around anyway before I crouched under the front of the truck. The cutters were sharp, but my hands were small. It took a bit to get all the way through one, and most of the way throug
h the second. I slipped them back in my pocket afterward, scuttled out from under the truck, and headed towards home without looking back.

  Alice got a call from the hospital while she and I were doing the dishes. Doug had pulled out of the parking lot, made it all the way out of the industrial park before his brakes failed and slammed into the stoplight post. He was alive, awake, but not talking or responding much to anyone. She grabbed her purse and ran out, telling me to make sure that Mallory went to bed at a decent time.

  I waited until I heard Alice’s car pull out before I went upstairs to find Mal. She was sitting on her bed, a book open in front of her, staring at the wall.

  “I took care of Doug,” I said. “You’re going to be all right now.”

  She looked at me, looked through me it seemed, but didn’t say anything.

  “You can start talking again. You’ll be all right.” I sat down on the bed and put my arm around her, but she just kept staring. Her skin was cold against my arm, made my flesh crawl. When she didn’t respond, I let my arm drop away.

  “Maybe you’ll feel like talking tomorrow,” I said weakly. Had I gotten it wrong? “Alice said to go to bed on time, okay?”

  Before I left, I glanced down at the book. “Whatcha reading?” I asked, and flipped it cover-side up without losing her place. The Forbidden Art was printed large across the front, white on black. It didn’t have a library barcode. She must have ordered it through one of our local bookshops. Mom and Dad wanted us to figure out religion for ourselves, but I had a feeling that even they wouldn’t like her reading this.

  “Mind if I borrow it?” I asked, and tucked it under my arm as I stood up. Of course, she didn’t say anything.

  I left her sitting on the bed, her eyes boring into my back as I walked out. Nothing had changed with Mallory. Maybe it was because Doug was still alive. Maybe I didn’t just have to get her away from him but had to get rid of him entirely. That would be hard to do with him in the hospital with nurses everywhere, but I’d think of something.

  There was a doubt niggling at the back of my mind. What if I’d made a mistake? What if Doug wasn’t the reason Mallory was acting weird? But I’d seen him. And hadn’t he turned up every time she’d gotten out of bed in the night? The two had to be connected, cause and effect.

  The other thing I didn’t want to think about was that I might not be getting my sister back. That she might be gone, that she wouldn’t start acting normal even once Doug wasn’t around. And then there was this book. None of us had noticed her with it, probably because she hadn’t wanted us to notice it.

  I locked my bedroom door and checked my closet after getting ready for bed. I didn’t expect her to be hiding there, but then I didn’t expect her not to be. I really didn’t know what to expect anymore.

  The Forbidden Art was heavy, printed on thick paper, probably to make people feel like they were getting their money’s worth. I didn’t want to read it myself, but I felt like Mom would want me to get it away from her. I stared at the book for a second, stood it on its spine on my desk and let it fall open. The pages ruffled, then rested right in the middle of a chapter titled “Reincarnation and Reanimation.” I flipped to the title page. Practical Necromancy and Blood Magick was printed in smaller type beneath the title.

  Mom had said once that people believed crazy things if they thought it would give them what they wanted. I knew Mallory was too smart to think that some book she’d gotten off eBay would let her bring our parents back to life, but really it wasn’t much different than wishing on dandelions, only on a larger scale. Maybe Mal had tried, half expecting it to work, but realizing she was never getting them back had pushed her over the deep end. Or maybe it had gone wrong in some other way. “Blood Magick” sounded nasty, sounded like it could go bad even though it wasn’t real.

  I closed the book and again dragged my dresser in front of my bedroom door. I thought magic was silly and magick even more so, but Mallory was acting weird. I’d rather feel silly in the morning than wake up with her standing over me again. I got in bed and turned out the light.

  Alice came home a few hours later, quietly as possible, but I still heard her car in the driveway, her steps on the stairs, her door closing and the rustle of her undressing. Even with her home, the safety of having her in the house, it was a long time before I fell asleep.

  At two a.m. I jerked awake. I couldn’t figure out what had woken me up, but then my bedroom door bumped quietly against the back of my dresser. She was trying to get in again. I listened to the bump bump, then to her footsteps walking slowly away. A few moments later the scratching came, right over my head.

  “Nice try,” I called to her. “I’m not letting you in if you’re going to be a creep-ass jerk, Mallory.” My voice quavered, and I cleared my throat before saying more firmly, “Now get back in bed!”

  The scratching paused. Her footsteps went down the hall and down the stairs. The back door creaked open and smacked closed.

  That worried me. I debated going down to figure out what the hell she was doing versus staying safe where I was, when I heard a scraping from the aluminum siding below my window. I shot up like I had current passing through me. I got up and went to the window. I pressed my forehead to the glass so I could look down.

  She did it like climbing boulders, wedging her fingers in and pulling herself up by her skinny arms. Her face looked up at me, her eyes glittering in the moonlight. I screamed for Alice, then jerked the window open and leaned out.

  “Get down right now, or else!” I shrieked at her, but she kept coming. I smacked the window shut and darted to my closet for something to fend her off, to knock her down. I flung my clothes onto the floor and wrenched the dowel out of place. When I turned back, she was a black shape against my window, clinging with one hand to the top of the frame and smacking the other palm against the glass. The bedroom door thunked and rattled against my dresser, Alice’s shouting muffled by the door. Mallory raised her foot and gave the glass a kick, and it shattered.

  As she stepped into the room, I raised the pole and jabbed straight at her middle. She caught it in both hands and jerked it away. She came towards me, bare feet crunching on the broken glass. I wrenched at the dresser blocking the door. As it began to slide, Mallory put her hands around my throat. Her breath sounded like a file on iron, like rocks in a food processor, but that was the only sound she made as her hands pressed tighter. I grabbed her wrists and tried to push her off me.

  The door burst open, the dresser shrieking across the floorboards, and Alice stumbled in. My lungs burned and my head swam. Alice was screaming, I was screaming, but Mallory still had not made a sound.

  Alice was on Mallory, arms around her neck in a chokehold. We staggered across the room and toward the window, locked together in a kind of macabre dance. I swung my body, kicked at Mal’s ankles, then I went limp.

  There was a moment of satisfaction as the surprise showed on Mallory’s face. Her hands loosened. The back of my head hit the floor with all my weight behind it. Alice was still hanging on around her throat, shouting at Mallory to calm down, to stop. The glass crunched under them. They were right by the window. There was a moment when I believed that Alice would get her down, would stop this craziness.

  Mallory bent forward, whipped her head down. With a thin shriek Alice pitched over Mallory’s head and out the open window. The wet thud as Alice hit the ground was almost instantaneous.

  For a moment Mallory stood there, looking first at me and then out the window—back and forth, deciding who to go for first. Then she climbed up onto the window ledge, the jagged bits of glass still embedded in the frame crunching as she stepped on them. She climbed head-first down the outside of the house, like a bat.

  I pulled myself up on hands and knees and managed to hang my head out the window. Every single piece of glass in my skin felt white hot and sickening. My vision blurred.

  Mallory was crouching over Alice, who lay on her back, limbs twisted, body crumpled, but sobb
ing with adrenalin, trying to get her breath back. She tried to turn her head away as Mallory put her mouth to hers, but Mallory was stronger now. It looked like mouth-to-mouth, except for the way Alice’s feet and hands twitched, like she wanted to run away or fight it off. Mallory pulled away suddenly, triumphantly.

  I heard the rasping of her breath over the rushing in my ears. My vision narrowed from the edges in, then everything went black.

  I woke up the next morning with a crushing headache, but in my own bed, in my own pajamas. There was a lump throbbing on the back of my head, but no glass in my feet, though the parts of my skin I couldn’t easily see felt pulled tight, as if by a thousand tiny scabs. The floor was clean, the dresser pushed back against the wall where it belonged, my clothes hung neatly in my open closet. The window was glassless, though covered over with a thick sheet of plastic.

  Mallory was at the kitchen table when I stumbled down, her head bent over a book. Alice was hunched across from her, cup of coffee between her hands, peering into it as if trying to see the future.

  “Hey guys, do either of you know what happened to my window last night?” Simple reasons existed. I could have just had a wild dream.

  They both looked up at me, their eyes blank, their faces empty.

  “How’s Doug?” I asked, figuring that, if anything, would get Alice talking. She just stared at me. "You went and saw him last night, didn’t you?” I prompted. She raised her coffee to her mouth and drank, put it back down and stared at me, silently.

  As I got up and went back upstairs to get dressed, I could feel the pressure of their eyes on my back, like the pressure of Mallory’s hands on my throat the night before.

  Michael Haynes on Frances Garfield's

  “Come to the Party”

  I love ghost stories, and Frances Garfield’s “Come to the Party” has a wonderfully increasing air wrongness that suffuses the environment the characters inhabit. It reads, in a way, like “Hotel California” put into prose but with a deeper sense of surrealism. Originally in Stuart David Schiff’s Whispers, I read it in 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories. The story having a connection to the writing life only deepens my affection for it. The characters are originally searching for the home of one of their publishers, who is having the author in to sign flyleaves for her book. A book, which one of her traveling companions reminds her, was rejected by a dozen other publishers. Garfield had reason to be familiar with the writing scene; she and husband Manly Wade Wellman were published in Weird Tales and other venues. Her published works are few, though; I only wish there were more.