What Remains of Her

by Eric Rickstad

  She picked up the doll and squeezed it.

  No sound came.

  She squeezed it again.

  Nothing.

  What had she heard it say? Help me? I’m hurt?

  She squeezed its belly. Its face.

  Silence.

  She’d heard it. She’d swear. She had heard it cry out. Her old Beverly doll had not been able to do that.

  She dug her fingers into the doll. Pierced its cloth with her fingernails and ripped the doll open. Pulled out its stuffing.

  Nothing. Empty. No voice box.

  Her jaw throbbed. Her eyelid spasmed. Her vision wouldn’t focus. It was as if she were seeing through the film of a dusty window. With the room growing dark, she dropped the doll to the floor and fled from the house; she could not get out of there soon enough.

  A Knock at the Door

  Jonah tried to prop himself up on his elbows, dazed, brain fogged, the cabin shadowed. He peered at his hand, soaking in a bowl of warm water. The swelling had subsided, some. He thought. Maybe. No. No, it hadn’t. The purpled palm remained numb and monstrous, the fingers ballooned, taut skin inflamed and chafed, rimmed with salt from the soaking solution.

  She’d done it, soaked his hand.

  She sat now, hunched at the card table, scribbling.

  Jonah sat up, a wave of nausea forcing him to slump on the edge of the couch. Breathe, he thought, breathe. He hung his head between his knees. Then he planted his palm on the couch arm and tried to stand, lame and feeble. Famished. A salty thirst begged to be slaked.

  He needed to leave with her, but he could not venture in the woods in this state, risk the mines in the dark. His energy would flag well before he got to his truck, and he’d never get far driving before sleep or sickness took him. One more night of rest. That’s all they needed. Then, they were gone.

  He stood behind her at the table, hands on the back of her chair to support himself, his body humming with fatigue. She had a coloring book open and was working away at a horse.

  A scrap of notepaper lay beside the book, colored completely black.

  “Pretty horse.” He pointed at the blackened notepaper. “What’s that?”

  Her face pinched.

  “Nighttime?” he said.

  She shook her head, her eyes dark. Black.

  He saw she’d drawn another stick figure, lying in the grass. A girl. Or a woman. She’d scribbled red crayon all over the girl and was coloring everything on the page above the woman in black.

  “Why are you drawing these?”

  She shrugged.

  “You must know. Tell me. Who is it?”

  A knock pounded at the door.

  Jonah gasped: the last breath of a drowning man before he went under for the last time.

  She looked up.

  Jonah placed a hand on her shoulder. He hadn’t heard an ATV.

  The knocking pounded on the door. Louder. Insistent.

  The girl whined.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. “Shhh.”

  A shadow crossed by the front porch window.

  Jonah moved in front of her to block her from sight.

  Someone peered into the grimed window, a shadowy figure. A man. It disappeared from the window.

  The knock came again.

  “The back room,” Jonah whispered. “Go.”

  She stared at him.

  He picked her up from the chair and hauled her to the back room and set her on the trunk. “Stay here. Understand? Don’t make a peep. No matter what. And don’t come out. If you do, they’ll take you and I’ll be in big trouble.”

  She nodded.

  The knocking came.

  He kissed her forehead then left and shut the door behind him. He took the drawing and coloring books and hid them under a plate, looked around for more evidence of Sally. Saw nothing.

  A fist pounded on the door.

  Jonah took deep breaths, trying to wake himself, prepare himself. He grabbed the rifle from the corner, cracked the door open, and peered out.

  Nostalgia

  Lucinda peered at her face in her Wrangler’s rearview mirror. She looked like she’d been pummeled with a length of firewood. Cheek gashed. The bruised flesh around her eye, purpled and swollen; it glistened like mica. She pressed her finger to it, hissed in pain.

  She got out of the Wrangler and scooped snow off the top of her father’s mailbox and pressed it to her tender cheek. The bone ached. The cold snow stung her skin, yet she kept it to her face until it melted. Snow swirled in a dim fan of lamppost light far down the street. If not for the lone pale light from its kitchen window, her father’s house would have been lost to darkness.

  Lucinda picked her way up the iced driveway, holding on to the side of the vehicles to make her way without falling.

  She knocked on the side kitchen door, heard the skid of a chair backing up from the table, footsteps. The door opened.

  “Luce,” Dot said, “I thought— Oh, your face, darling, what happened?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I’ve seen nothing. That’s not it.”

  “I fell on the sidewalk.”

  “They ought to salt those walks sooner with the taxes we pay. Come in.”

  The kitchen was hot from the oven being on and smelled good, of baking dough. Of roast chicken.

  Her father sat in the chair in the corner, his chin tucked to his chest. Asleep or dead, it was impossible to tell. It would be the latter soon, for certain.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Lucinda said.

  “A fall like that. You should be home. Resting. Having a stiff drink with your man. I’d be. Nice you came by at all after such a spill.”

  “He’s my father,” Lucinda said. It was true; Lucinda ought to have been here hours ago for her daily visit, and she wanted to be here now; but she’d not come just to visit.

  “I hope my own kids come around as much as you do when my clock winds down,” Dot said.

  Lucinda sat beside her dozing father, his breath so faint it was a wonder it was enough to keep him alive. Lucinda took a tissue from a box on the table and dabbed drool from his lip.

  “He have a good day?” Lucinda asked Dot.

  “He did.”

  Lucinda touched his cheek lightly with the back of her hand. She took his hand in hers. “Dad,” she said.

  Her father lifted his chin. Blinked and looked at her. His eyes brightened. “Lucy,” he said.

  “How are you?”

  “Just . . . dozing. Happy now. You’re here. Happy to be . . . awake.”

  “You want to stay?” Dot said. “I made a chicken potpie for myself. It’s a frozen store-bought. But a good store-bought. Far as that goes.”

  “I just want to see him.” Lucinda eyed the cellar door. “Speak to him, in private, if I could.”

  Dot nodded and left the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Dad,” Lucinda said. “I need you to look at something. Can you do that?”

  “My eyes work okay, today.” He grinned, his face hollowed out, the skull pronounced beneath his skin.

  Lucinda slipped her hand in her jacket pocket and took out one of the drawings she’d found in Sally’s room. She held it up to show her father. His fingers squeezed her fingers, tight.

  “What is it, Dad?”

  “Where—”

  “I found these in Sally’s room. There were a bunch.”

  “Why did you bring them?”

  “I wanted to see what you thought about them. I think she was scared. I think she was scared of the man in the woods, more than she ever told me. I mean. Look at them.”

  He didn’t look at them, he looked away.

  “Too long ago now,” he whispered, his voice as frail and brittle as his bones.

  “It’s not too long ago. It’s never too long ago. And. There’s a missing girl, now. And I think . . .” Lucinda did not know what to think. She had no concrete theories. But the drawings, they set her on edge, set her mind to trying to draw c
onnections. Connections between what? Gretel and Sally? Sally’s mother? “What do you make of these drawings? What would you think if you’d seen them all those years ago?”

  “Kid. Imagination.”

  “If it was some other kid, maybe. But . . . These were Sally’s.”

  “She’s gone.”

  “I know. But what would you think if you’d found them then? Would it have made you—”

  “I did. Find them.”

  “You found these?” Lucinda said.

  “Some. Like them.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this, why—”

  “You were a child.”

  “But . . . What did you think, what do you think?”

  “They were. Ominous. Gave them to him.”

  “To who?”

  “Jonah.”

  “Jonah knew about these? Why didn’t you keep them, the ones you found, for evidence? I don’t understand? They were evidence.”

  Her father worked his tongue as if trying to rid a hair stuck to the roof of his mouth, making a wet clucking sound.

  “Why did you let Jonah have them?” Lucinda said.

  Her father mumbled, his head wobbling as if the muscles in his neck were too weak to hold it upright.

  “Why did you let him have them?” Lucinda pressed.

  “Better. That. Way.”

  “Why?”

  He closed his eyes, his jaw muscle pulsed. Drool leaked from the corner of his mouth. His fingers slackened from around her own fingers, his hand falling into his lap, and he fell into a doze.

  “Damn it,” Lucinda said. “Damn it.”

  Dot cleared her throat behind Lucinda.

  “Everything all right?”

  No, everything was not all right. Nothing was right at all. It was not all right that after twenty-five years someone had been in Jonah’s house. An adult and a child. It was not all right that Sally had drawn such violent, disturbing images. It was not all right that a new girl was missing, the date of her disappearance coinciding with that of Sally and her mother. It was not all right that her father had not logged Sally’s drawings as evidence. It was not all right that Lucinda was hearing dolls speak and keeping Dale in the dark. “Everything’s fine,” Lucinda said.

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “I had a doll once,” Lucinda said. “Beverly. I never let her out of my sight. I took her everywhere. I cried whenever my mom washed her. Afraid she’d drown. Needed her with me at all times. Now I have no idea where she is. I lost her at some point. You love something so much and can’t live without it and then one day you don’t even know what became of it. How’s that happen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think she’s in the basement. Or the attic. I thought I’d look. I’m feeling . . . I don’t know. Nostalgic. You haven’t come across a doll, have you?”

  “Never been in the cellar or the attic.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I looked?” Lucinda said.

  “It’s your house,” Dot said.

  It was absurd to ask. Yet, technically, the house was not Lucinda’s house. Not yet. It was her father’s house. She’d only grown up in it. “It’s silly. It’s just . . . Something happened today. I saw a doll that looked so much like mine. Like Beverly. It shook me. It’s made me sentimental. I feel badly that I don’t know where she is. Like I’ve let down the little girl I once was. And—” It sounded ridiculous, but it was true. Yet only in part. Looking for the doll was also a ruse. If her father had let Jonah keep the drawings, possible evidence to at least establish Sally’s state of mind, what else might he have kept out of the light to protect his friend? She wondered if he kept files or other evidence in the house no one else knew about. Looking for Beverly might be a waste of time, but searching for old files or evidence of her father’s was not.

  “It’s not silly,” Dot said. “Our pasts are important.”

  Lucinda patted her father’s hand and stood. She kissed his forehead then tried the cellar door. The deadbolt was locked. She went to the cupboard and rummaged until she found a brass key and unlocked the door.

  The hinges creaked as she opened the door, and a fungal odor rose as from a shut tomb.

  Lucinda tried the light switch but no light came on.

  She dug a flashlight from the drawer and covered her nose and held the stairway rail as she slowly descended into the cellar.

  The flashlight beam glowed weakly.

  The stairs moaned.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she looked back. The doorway seemed miniature and far away, the meager light from the kitchen dying halfway down the stairs.

  She shone the light around the cellar, a tighter space than she remembered, the ceiling so low she was forced to duck. Cobwebs clotted the beams and pipes above her head, and a cold dampness stuck to her skin as her boots sank into muck, the dirt floor reduced to a swamp from water leaking in from the stone foundation. She sneezed in the fetid air, her body trying to expel the mold spores. She stepped to a bowed shelf, mud water sloshing at her boots. On the shelf sat a few boxes, cardboard wilted decomposing from dampness. An old lamp and an iron stuck out from one box. One box was marked board games, another glassware.

  Lucinda poked around from box to box. Bric-a-brac. Junk. No stuffed animals or dolls. Or files. A noise in the corner made her jump and swing the light toward it. Nothing. Darkness. Dirt. Mud.

  She shone the light on the workbench. Her father’s place of escape. She twirled the handle of the workbench vise, remembering the night she’d come down to find him, so upset for his friend, and at his failure to help him or solve the case. How awful, to balance friendship and official duties.

  Her father had stopped coming down here years ago, lost interest in his birdhouses.

  Lucinda spun the handle of the vise. Socket wrenches and chisels, jars of rusted screws and nails, caked in dust, cluttered the workbench. Lucinda opened a drawer. Bins of nails. Brads and nuts. A staple gun. No Beverly. No files.

  In the far, dark corner, a mouse skittered out from under an ancient trunk that sat rotting in a depression of pooled water. The mouse squeezed into a crack in the foundation wall. From behind Lucinda rose a roar. She shrieked and dropped the flashlight and tripped her way up the stairs, heart beating in her throat.

  “What is it, dear?” Dot said.

  Lucinda waited for her breathing to calm. Then, smiling, feeling foolish, said, “Just the furnace kicking on.”

  “Find your doll?” Dot said.

  “I’ll check the attic.”

  Leave

  The man stood on the cabin porch, tugged on the waist of his duck-cloth pants. Despite his gut that slopped over his belt and seemed to force him to leave his snowmobile parka unzipped, he possessed the assured posture of a man assessing the value of property—his property—as his eyes roamed over the front of the cabin. It was the man from earlier, the one on the ATV.

  “Get out of here,” Jonah said.

  “You can come outside or I can come inside. I got something you have to hear.”

  “I don’t have to hear a thing from you.” Jonah started to close the door.

  “Law sees different,” the man said and sniffed, ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip as if to extract a dip of tobacco.

  Jonah paused, one hand on the door, one hand on his rifle behind the door.

  The man tipped his grubby camo ball cap back off his brow, his skin red and indented where the hat had dug into his flesh. “The law says I got to deliver you this message in person and make sure you understand it. Make sure it sinks in.”

  What was this? Law. Bullshit. Jonah glanced back at the door to the back room to make sure it was shut and the girl hidden. It was. She was. For now.

  “Here’s something for you to understand,” Jonah said.

  He opened the front door and stood with the rifle aimed at the man’s gut. It was work to keep the rifle level, the effort threatened to sap what meager energy he’d been able to muster
to simply stand at the door.

  The man sucked in a breath and stepped back. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t—”

  “You forget the promise I made you or do you just think I was full of shit?”

  Jonah’s thumb worked the rifle’s smooth hammer. Cocked it.

  The man shoved a yellow piece of paper at Jonah.

  “I don’t want that,” Jonah said.

  “This ain’t your cabin. You’re on private land. A squatter.” The man’s voice quavered. “Most these trees are coming down come spring. This letter tells you that you need to get out come December one. If not, you’ll be escorted out.”

  Jonah looked at the paper. The visit had nothing to do with Sally.

  If he’d not been bitten by the spider, they’d have been long gone by now anyway.

  “Tell your paper people I’ll be as far away from here as I can by then,” Jonah said. “Not because they say so. Because I can’t stand it here anymore. Now leave.”

  The man backed away, leaving the piece of paper on the porch rail.

  Jonah watched until the man disappeared in the dark trees; then he let out a breath and rested the rifle in the corner, the metal lever action slick with sweat.

  He would have shot the man for certain if he had come for her.

  He opened the door to the back room.

  The room was empty.

  The Past Packed Away

  Lucinda climbed the stairs to the second floor of the house, the runner rug as worn as an animal trail up the middle of the steep old steps. Photos of herself and her father and mother hung from the stairway wall, each of them staring back at her from past lives. Lucinda and Sally on the tire swing in the backyard, pigtails flying, gap-toothed and laughing. Photos of Sally and her parents with Lucinda and her parents, picnicking, camping, sledding.

  Except for Dot dusting and vacuuming the house, no one had been up the stairs in years, her father sequestered in the downstairs bedroom where he’d slept every night since her mother’s passing nearly twenty-three years ago.