Sometimes they surrounded her in the dark. They’d come up behind her in that shadowed corridor that led to the laundry room, or surround her bed in the surreal early-morning hours when night first begins to fade to a pale silvery-blue. They smelled kind of like death flowers, that stomach-churning sweet smell that reminded her of funeral parlors, nursing homes—all the end-of-the-road places that the people who had grown bored with her oldness wanted to put her in. Those creatures smelled of the end of things—which, for all intents and purposes, she supposed they were.
She knew these were beings that suggested awful ideas and made them sound okay. These were things from a wound between worlds, that puddle of darkness, drawn into this dimension. However, these also were things that well-meaning neighbors might call her senility, or the onset of dementia. She couldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t want to wither away in one of those end-of-the-road places, where death hovered close and loneliness came and went like a tide.
She never spoke to the hinshing nor they to her, but she felt their insanity rolling off them in waves like heat. They had never touched her, not yet, but they, or maybe just the contagion of their mere presence, had lately begun to change things around the building. She’d only noticed little things at first—their moving the hands on the clock to confuse her, moving her slippers, her keys, her reading glasses. Once they’d mixed up all her pills in different orange bottles. Luckily she’d memorized pill colors and dosages together, or God only knows what kind of terrible damage she could have done to herself. That had really shaken her—it seemed clear to her that they had gone from unnerving to threatening—and had made her more aware of those creatures closing in on her periphery in the darkness.
Lately, bigger things had been changing, things she couldn’t tell herself might be just an old lady’s forgetfulness. Moving the doors and windows was particularly upsetting. So were the faces in the elevator, reflected in the metal. The hinshing rippled pavement, moved trees and then moved them back again. They called on the phone with the stolen voices of dead people. They had even warped the windshield of her car, the very car she’d fought to prove she needed and could take care of. And once, she could have sworn they had made it rain up instead of down.
She could see them now as she sat in the old rocker by her window, looking down over the grounds. She hadn’t stayed long at Myrinda and Derek’s, finding she couldn’t bring herself to do what she’d come to do. She glanced at her pill bottles and bit her bottom lip. She was not senile. She knew that, but instead she’d gone home, curled up on the rocker with a blanket and a mug of tea, and watched the afternoon sun wrestle the shadows on the Bridgewood grounds. That was when they came, skittering in and out of the moments of the afternoon, gathering beneath her window. Their distorted stances seemed threatening to her, but she didn’t dare move. She pretended she was lost in thought and wasn’t seeing them, but they were already working their suggestions inside her, working stomach-wrenching images and ideas into her thoughts. It was all she could do not to scream.
Aggie tried to yank her own thoughts out from the tangle of alien ones. She wondered if the others living in Bridgewood Estates could see the creatures too, or feel their oppressive madness. She worried about the new couple that had just moved in. She had liked them both right away—enough to want to warn them, but....
“Mother, I really don’t think your living on your own is a good idea. There are plenty of lovely facilities for people your age—”
No. The thought of living anywhere that anyone could call a facility made the loose and wrinkled flesh of her face pull tight in a grimace of disgust. She was not something to be stored in a facility.
On the grounds below, one of them caught a rabbit and tore it in half, tilted its head as if studying the dripping insides, then dropped the ravaged pieces on the ground.
The new couple would be all right, she told herself. Smart, strong. They would be just fine. Maybe the hinshing would leave them alone.
She pulled the quilt on her lap over her chest and squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears dampened the thin white skin of her cheeks anyway.
FOUR
Myrinda first heard fingernails scraping inside the walls a few days after they had settled in.
Derek had gone to the gym and to run some errands, and she was making what he liked to call her “Friday Fish Dish,” which usually consisted of tilapia in some kind of butter sauce. The fish baked placidly, tucked beneath a layer of sauce and spice in the oven. The apartment carried its own pregnant silence: the barely audible tick of the oven heat, the low grumble of the pipes, the soft settling of the new walls and flooring. In the kitchen, Myrinda hummed to herself as she chopped up green peppers for the salad. Above the quiet buzz of life and occupancy, a tiny thud and a sliding sound from the living room caught Myrinda’s attention.
She put down the knife, her thin, arched eyebrows knitting momentarily in surprise. A second, louder thump and scrape made her jump. She took a few cautious steps toward the living room.
“Derek?” No answer, no keys on the table, no jacket over the back of the couch.
Scrape. Scraaaaape. It sounded like it was coming through the vents, somehow. From behind the walls, maybe. She took a step into the living room and looked around.
At first, everything looked as it should. The couch and loveseat, the end tables, the lamp—
Scraaaaape.
There under the window, down by the baseboard heating vent.... She looked back at the kitchen, considered getting the knife, and realized that was silly. What could possibly be in the vent that she’d need a knife for? The worst it could be was a mouse or rat, some kind of critter trapped behind the wall somehow, and if that was the case, it wasn’t like she was going to stab it. Hell, no. She’d wait for Derek to get home, and have him get rid of it.
In the fading afternoon sunlight, it was hard to tell for sure, but it looked to her like something was growing out of the vent, some kind of plant or vine with long black tendrils. She crossed the room to the window and crouched down, then grimaced in distaste.
A glistening patina made the long, thin tendrils look amphibian and somehow sticky. An odor arose from the whole area that reminded her of unclean cages and animal neglect, of lake grasses left to rot in the sun. It was an unwholesome smell in the new apartment air, out of place just as those dirty tendrils were, plastered against the bright and newly painted wall. She wished she had gone back for the knife. She wanted to scrape the tendrils off, but didn’t want to touch them.
“What the hell...?” she muttered to herself, and the tendrils shivered. She made a surprised little gasp, and would have sworn that the tendrils responded to that as well, their tips reaching out in her direction. She had to work to suppress the shudder of revulsion they inspired.
“Oh, God.” She gave a cleanish space on the wall above them an ineffectual thump with the heel of her hand. Immediately, the tendrils retracted, leaving wettish trails as they recoiled into the vent. She reached a hesitant hand out toward the oily smears on the wall, then pulled back.
Maybe they responded to sound. She thought she’d read somewhere that some plants did that. Hopeful, Myrinda tapped the baseboard vent in a series of dull metallic thunks.
Something from inside echoed back the same.
She frowned, peering as close as she would dare into the dark vents. She supposed it was possible that someone was messing with her, someone from downstairs who could hear her through the vents, but.... She drummed on the vent again, three quick taps followed by two slow ones.
Taptaptap...tap...tap echoed back from inside the vent.
She tried a different pattern, one tap, followed by three quick ones. They were returned in the same sequence. Myrinda pulled back a little.
“Uh, hello?” She didn’t really expect an answer, but found herself glad all the same that none came. She let go of the breath in her chest and stood up, debating in her head if she ought to get the weed killer or bleach (the knife) or
maybe just Windex, and tackle those stains and whatever had retracted into the vent.
Something gray but fleshy pressed against the crack in the vent through which the plants had recoiled. It twisted a little and then withdrew. A moment later, the grayish tip poked out again, and Myrinda saw a long, ragged fingernail emerging from a black nail bed. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. In horror, she kicked at the vent. It was pure reflex, her foot lashing out to loosen that horrible little fingertip from the vent opening. The vent sucked the fingertip back into it like the tip of a tongue disappearing between lips. She shuddered, a sickening lump forming in her stomach. She had to call Derek now. She—
Three fingertips, all gray, with ragged, overgrown nails and blackened beds, popped out of the vent opening. She let out a choked cry and watched, horrified, as the fingers wriggled like blind, jointed worms toward the sound of her voice. The fingernails scrabbled against the baseboard, using it to leverage themselves farther through the opening. The gray flesh glistened wetly where it pressed tight against the vent. They escaped two, then three inches and Myrinda’s breath caught. They had to be fully extended now, and the knuckles would keep them from getting farther, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t be able to drop onto the carpet and flop like little dead fish in her living room.
Of course, her mind told her, the idea of knuckles supposes those fingers are connected to a gray-fleshed hand in there somewhere—a hand maybe connected to an arm, which would be connected to some terrible dead-skinned torso deep inside the wall— She cut the thought off right there. STOP it.
It was something of a moot point, she saw, when the fingers inched themselves farther out of the opening, far enough so that the ragged edges of the nails grazed the carpet. Too stunned for a moment to move, she watched as the rough ends of the nails caught carpet fibers, strained and twisted through the vent, and plunged into the plushness beneath them. Seeing them touch her carpet, a part of her home, her sanctuary, spurred her to movement. The revulsion ignited a simmering rage and an instinct to destroy every part of their foul little presences. Unable to bear the thought of feeling their bones crush beneath her thin-socked feet, she darted back into the kitchen and grabbed the knife. She thought it over a moment, then reached under the sink for the wasp killer. It was in a large gray and red bottle with a sprayer connected by a hose, and the remnant miasmal smell of fast-acting chemical death clung to it. Armed, she jogged back out into the living room.
The fingers were gone. She felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. Her head swiveled in every possible direction as she crossed the room. They had escaped. Oh God, oh God, they had escaped and were loose somewhere in the room, hiding beneath a cushion of the couch or a magazine on the coffee table, wrapped up in the hem of the curtain, maybe, or inching their way along the baseboard somewhere to access the rest of the apartment. She’d never sleep if she didn’t find them. The thought of them writhing in the sink or tub or hoisting themselves up the bedsheets under her blankets to her legs, making their way toward her pillow—it was too much. A wave of nausea enveloped her and for a moment the room went fuzzy. She took several slow, steadying breaths, closed her eyes, and opened them. She would find them. Kill them, was the thought that immediately followed. But could she do that? Was it possible to kill disembodied fingers?
That the stain those plant-like tendrils had left was also gone only managed to cross the periphery of her awareness, and even then, only fleetingly. That the fingers might have retracted into the wall, back down into the fiber of the apartment building, never crossed her mind at all. Panic wouldn’t allow for such thoughts. Her mind did reason, however, that those fingers couldn’t have gotten too far. Chances were, they were still in the living room somewhere. She stopped, listening for the scratching of the fingernails, the small, subtle sounds of movement. She didn’t think she’d be able to hear them on the carpet, but if they brushed a chair leg or one of the baseboards, she might be able to catch them. The silent hum of living once again washed over the apartment, and she strained her ears through the faintest of natural noises for unnatural finger-sounds.
Nothing came to her as out of the ordinary. So then they probably were moving across the carpet, dammit, with slow and silent inchworm drags beyond her lines of sight.
She made a careful, circular inspection of the floor, starting with the baseboards and spiraling in toward the center of the room. She lifted the couch cushions. She nudged at the papers and magazines on the coffee table with the knife, then lifted them to check underneath. She shook out the window curtains, eyeing them from top valance to bottom hem. She checked the potted plant in the corner of the room, giving the branches a little shake. When it came time to check beneath the furniture, an involuntary shudder coursed through her. Setting the jug of wasp killer down on the coffee table, she got down on her hands and knees in front of the couch and lifted the flap of fabric to (wait for the fingers to spring out and claw her face with their ragged nails) look beneath. playing them as a means to a piece of packing tape there, but otherwise, nothing. She turned her head, her hand tightening around the knife, and peered under the coffee table. It, too, was clear. She crawled over to the love seat and then the big chair, and came up with nothing both times. She stood, brushed her hands off on her pants, and looked around. Where could they be?
The sound of scratching made her jump, a flash of revulsion making her flesh hot all over, and she turned in the direction of the noise. A moment later, the scratching came again—from inside the walls. She had a strong but transient desire to bury the knife in the wall up to the hilt, to spear those little fuckers to a support beam. She walked over to the wall and gave it a good thump instead with the palm of her hand.
“Go away,” she growled at the spot. “Whatever you are, just go away.”
In answer, the scraping of fingernails from the other side dragged down the length of the wall.
She slammed the wall with the palm of her hand again, and then again and again until it hurt.
When a knock at the door followed a few minutes later, she jumped, convinced for a moment that it had come from the wall, something big and angry, the fist those little bastard fingers belonged to.... The knock came again—from the front door, thank God—and she exhaled in relief, setting the knife down next to the wasp killer on the coffee table.
As she crossed to the door, it occurred to her that she must have made quite a noise, and supposed one of the neighbors had come over to complain. She opened the door and was relieved a second time to see that it was Aggie, and that rather than looking annoyed, she looked concerned.
“You okay, dear? I—I heard the banging, and—”
Myrinda’s hand fluttered up to her heart, still pounding so loud she thought the old woman had to hear it. “I’m so sorry, Aggie. Really, I’m fine. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
Aggie waved the notion away. “No, no dear. No trouble there. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. You’re not hurt, are you?”
Myrinda shook her head. “I’m fine, really. Just—” she looked back toward the living room, “—hanging up some pictures.”
“Well, okay, then. So long as you’re okay....” The old woman lingered uncertainly, eyes crinkled in worry despite the grandmotherly smile.
After a moment, Myrinda shook her head and said, “Forgive my rudeness. Would you like to come in? Maybe have a cup of tea?”
“That sounds lovely, dear, but if all’s well, I must be getting on back.” Aggie smiled apologetically. “Wheel of Fortune in—” she checked her delicate little lady’s silver watch “—nine minutes. I never miss Pat Sajak. He’s quite a looker, in my opinion.” Her accompanying laugh was light, almost girlish.
Myrinda laughed with her. “Well, far be it from me to hold a woman back from viewing a good-looking man. Good night.”
“Good night, dear. Ring if you need anything.” With a wave, she turned and headed for her door.
“Will do. Thanks, Aggie.” Myrinda watched
to make sure Aggie got in okay, and then closed her own door behind her. She turned to the stillness of her apartment and listened for several seconds, but could not make out even the faintest scratching along the carpet or knocking inside the walls. She crossed to the vent under the window, vaguely aware of how the carpet shushed the sound of her footsteps, and peered down. Nothing out of the ordinary. She shook her head slowly. Lack of sleep was catching up to her. Tonight, she’d make sure to take it easy and get some rest. The rest of the unpacking and decorating could wait until the morning.
She turned to the coffee table to clean up the evidence of (the hunt for little dead child-sized fingers) what had to be stress or an overtired imagination and started a little when she realized the kitchen knife, which she’d placed—well, had thought she’d placed—next to the wasp killer was gone.
Myrinda frowned, checking under the table, on the window ledge, around the baseboards, retracing her steps. A back part of her mind registered a panic not yet fully-realized. She forced herself to inhale and exhale slow, even breaths. She was simply hunting for a misplaced kitchen knife. And she had to have misplaced it; there was no other acceptable explanation. There had been no near-silent scratching across the carpet, no thud of the knife falling, no clanging of metal against the vent. There was no oily residue like there had been on the wall. Further, there was no smell of unclean cages and animal neglect, or of lake grasses left to rot in the sun. Nothing in the apartment suggested the faintest traces of those things. She nodded grimly while she inspected everything and then reinspected it, so as to set her conclusion in stone in her mind. The possibility that those grotesque, dead-flesh fingers from inside the vent had crept out to take the knife or sent some tendril of slimy vine out to grab it could only be rejected.
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