She remembered a place she could go, though. She quickened her pace, her nightgown—the one she had worn that night, when the man had left her in the water, now clean and white—almost ephemeral in the chilly air and trailing behind her like a ghostly film. The narrow suburban road crested a hill a few hundred feet ahead, and beyond it breached a low dome of light. The city, burning light against the darkness.
Something lay on the sidewalk in front of her, and she slowed as she approached. It was a robin, its middle torn open, its guts eaten away. A curtain of ants flowed inside it, and lead away from it in a meandering trail into the grass. She picked it up and cradled it close to her face. The ants seethed, spreading through its feathers, over her hand, down her arm. She ignored them.
The bird’s eyes were glassy and black, like tiny onyx stones. Its beak was open and in it she could see the soft red muscle of its tongue. Something moved and glistened in the back of its throat.
She continued on, holding the robin at her side. She didn’t feel the ants crawling up her arm, onto her neck, into her hair. The bird was a miracle of beauty.
The suburbs stopped at the highway, like an island against the sea. She turned east, the city lights brighter now at her right, and continued walking. The sidewalk roughened as she continued along, broken in places, seasoned with stones and broken glass. She was oblivious to it all. Traffic was light but not incidental, and the rush of cars blowing by lifted her hair and flattened the nightgown against her body. Someone leaned on the horn as he drove past, whooping through an open window.
The clamor of the highway, the stink of oil and gasoline, the buffeting rush of traffic, all served to deepen her sense of displacement. The world was a bewildering, foreign place, the light a low-grade burn and a stain on the air, the rushing cars on the highway a row of gnashing teeth.
But ahead, finally, opening in long, silent acres to her left, was the cemetery.
It was gated and locked, but finding a tree to get over the wall was no difficulty. She scraped her skin on the bark and then on the stone, and she tore her nightgown, but that was of no consequence. She tumbled gracelessly to the ground, like a dropped sack, and felt a sharp snap in her right ankle. When she tried to walk, the ankle rolled beneath her and she fell.
Meat, getting in the way.
Disgusted by this, she used the wall to pull herself to a standing position. She found that if she let the foot just roll to the side and walked on the ankle itself, she could make a clumsy progress.
Clouds obscured the sky, and the cemetery stretched over a rolling landscape, bristling with headstones and plaques, monuments and crypts, like a scattering of teeth. It was old; many generations were buried here. The sound of the highway, muffled by the wall, faded entirely from her awareness. She stood amidst the graves and let their silence fill her.
The flutter of unease that she’d felt since waking after the suicide abated. The sense of disconnection was gone. Her heart was a still lake. Nothing in her moved. She wanted to cry from relief.
Still holding the dead robin in her hand, she lurched more deeply into the cemetery.
She found a hollow between the stones, a trough between the stilled waves of earth, where no burial was marked. She eased herself to the ground and curled up in the grass. The clouds were heavy and thick, the air was cold. She closed her eyes and felt the cooling of her brain.
Sounds rose from the earth. New sounds: cobwebs of exhalations, pauses of the heart, the monastic work of the worms translating flesh to soil, the slow crawl of rock. There was another kind of industry, somewhere beneath her. Another kind of machine.
It was new knowledge, and she felt the root of a purpose. She set the robin aside and tore grass away, dug her nails into the dark soil, pushed through. She scooped aside handfuls of dirt.
At some point in her labors she became aware of something awaiting her beneath the earth.
Moving silences, the cloudy breaths of the moon, magnificent shapes unrecognizable to her novice intelligence, like strange old galleons of the sea.
And then, something awful.
A rough bark, a perverse intrusion into this quiet celebration, a rape of the silence.
Her husband’s voice.
She was alone again, and she felt his rough hands upon her.
It had been nothing more than instinct which guided him to her, finally. He panicked when he awoke to her missing, careened through the house, shouted like a fool in his front yard until lights began to pop on in the neighbors’ houses. Afraid that they would offer to help, or call the police for him, he got into the car and started driving. He crisscrossed the neighborhood to no avail, until finally it occurred to him that she might go to the cemetery. That she might, in some fit of delirium, decide that she belonged there.
The thought tore at him. The guilt over leaving her to die in the bathtub threatened to crack his ribs. It was too big to contain.
He scaled the cemetery wall and called until he found her, a small white form in a sea of graves and dark grass, huddled and scared, clawing desperately in the dirt. Her ankle was broken and hung at a sickening angle.
He pulled her up by her shoulders and wrapped his arms around her, hugged her tightly against him.
“Oh Katie, oh baby,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you. You scared me so bad. You’re going to be okay.”
An ant emerged from her hairline and idled on her forehead. Another crawled out of her nose. He brushed them furiously away.
She returned to the cellar. He spent a few days getting it into some kind of order, moving precarious stacks into smaller and sturdier piles, and giving her some room to move around in.
While she slept in the daytime he brought down the television set and its stand, a lamp, and a small box where he kept the books she had once liked to read. He left the mattress on the floor but changed the sheets regularly. When he was not at work he spent all his time down there with her, though he had taken to sleeping upstairs so that he could lock her in when she was most likely to try to wander.
“I can’t risk you getting lost again,” he told her. “It would kill me.” Then he closed the door and turned the lock. She heard his steps tread the floor above her. She had taken the dead robin and nailed it to one of the support beams beside the mattress. It was the only beautiful thing in the room, and it calmed her to look at it. Her foot was more trouble than it was worth so she wrenched it off and tossed it into the corner.
“That was Heather,” Sean said, closing the cellar door and tromping down the stairs. He sat beside her on the mattress and put his arm around her shoulders. She did not lean into him the way she used to do, so he gave her a little pull until it seemed like she was.
When he’d noticed her missing foot the other night he’d quietly gone back upstairs and dry heaved over the sink. Then he came back down, searched until he located it in a corner, and took it outside to bury it. The crucified bird had not bothered him initially, but over the days it had gathered company: two mice, three cockroaches, a wasp, some moths. Their dry little bodies were arrayed like art. She had even pulled the bones from one of the mice, fixing them with wood glue onto the post in some arcane hieroglyph.
He was frightened by its alienness. He was frightened because it meant something to her and it was indecipherable to him.
She was watching something on TV with the sound off: men in suits talking to each other across a table. They seemed very earnest.
“She wants to come home for the weekend,” he said. “I said it would be okay.”
She pulled her gaze from the screen and looked at him. The light from the television made small blue squares in her eyes, which had begun to film over in a creamy haze. It was getting hard to tell that one eye was askew, which made him feel better when he talked to her.
“Heather,” she said. “I like Heather.”
He put his fingers in her hair, hooked a dark lock behind her ear. “Of course you do, baby. You remember her, don’t you.”<
br />
She stared for a moment, then her brow furrowed. “She used to live here.”
“That’s right. She went to college, and she lives there now. She’s our daughter. We love her.”
“I forgot.”
“And you love me, too.”
“Okay.”
She looked back at the television. One of the men was standing now, and laughing so hard his face was red. His mouth was wide open. He was going to swallow the world. “Can you say it?”
“Say what?”
“That you love me. Can you say that to me? Please?”
“I love you.”
“Oh baby,” he said, and leaned his head against hers, his arm still around her. “Thank you. Thank you. I love you too.” They sat there and watched the silent images. His mind crept ahead to Heather’s visit. He wondered what the hell he was going to tell her. She was going to have a hard time with this.
What is the story of our marriage?
He went back to that night again and again. He remembered standing over her, watching her body struggle against the pull of a death she had called upon herself. It is the nature of the body to want to live, and once her mind had shut down her muscles spasmed in the water, splashing blood onto the floor as it fought to save itself.
But her mind, apparently, had not completely shut down after all. She remembered him standing over her. She looked up as the water lapped over her face and saw him staring down at her. She saw him turn and close the door.
What did she see behind his face? Did she believe it was impassive? Did she believe it was unmoved by love? How could he explain that he had done it because he could not bear to watch her suffer anymore?
On the rare occasions that he remembered the other thoughts—the weariness, the dread of the medical routine, and especially the flaring anger he’d felt earlier that same night, when the depression took her and he knew he’d have to steer her through it yet again—he buried them.
That is not the story of our marriage, he thought. The story is that I love her, and that’s what guided my actions. As it always has.
He was losing her, though. The change which kindled his interest also pulled her farther and farther away, and he feared that his love for her, and hers for him, would not be enough to tether her to this world.
So he called Heather and told her to come home for spring break. Not for the whole week, he knew that she was an adult now, she had friends, that was fine. But she had family obligations and her mother was lonely for her, and she should come home for at least the weekend.
Is she sick? Heather asked.
No. She just misses her girl.
Dad, you told me it was okay if I stayed here spring break. You told me you would talk to Mom about it.
I did talk, Heather. She won. Come on home, just for the weekend. Please.
Heather agreed, finally. Her reluctance was palpable, but she would come.
That was step one.
Step two would be coaxing Katie out of the cellar for her arrival. He’d thought that being locked down there at night, and whenever he was out, would have made coming upstairs something to look forward to. He’d been wrong; she showed no signs of wanting to leave the cellar at all, possibly ever again. She had regressed even further, not getting up to walk at all since losing her foot, and forsaking clothing altogether; she crawled palely naked across the floor when she wanted to move anywhere—a want which rarely troubled her mind anymore. She allowed him to wash her when he approached her with soap and warm water, but only because she was passive in this as she had become in all things.
Unless he wanted to touch her with another purpose.
Then she would turn on him with an anger that terrified him. Her eyes were pale as moon rocks. Her breath was cold. And when she turned on him with that fury he would imagine her breathing that chill into his lungs, stuffing it down into his heart. It terrified him. He would not approach her for sex anymore, though the rejection hurt him more than he would have dreamed.
He decided to woo her. He searched the roads at night, crawling at under twenty miles an hour, looking for roadkill. The first time he found some, a gut-crushed possum, he brought the carcass into the house and dropped it onto the floor in front of the cellar door, hoping the smell would lure her out. It did not; but he did not sulk, nor did he deprive her of her gift. He opened the door and rolled the animal wreckage down the stairs.
On the night he told her about Heather, he was propelled by romantic impulse to greater heights. He poisoned the cat that lived across the street, the one she watched over when its owner left town, and brought it to her on a pillow; he’d curled it into a semblance of sleep, and laid it at the foot of her mattress. She fixed her flat, pale eyes on it, not acknowledging his presence at all. Slowly she scooped it into her arms, and she held it close to her body. Satisfied, he sat beside her on the bed. He smiled as she got to work.
The floor was packed dirt. It seemed as hard as concrete, but ultimately it was just earth. It could be opened. She bent herself to this task. She found a corner behind some boxes of old china, where her work would not be obvious to the man when he came down to visit, and picked at the ground with a garden spade. It took a long time, but finally she began to make serious progress, upturning the packed ground until she got to the dark soil beneath it, bringing pale earthworms and slick, black insects to their first, shocked exposure to the upside world. When she got deep enough she abandoned the small spade and used her hands. Her fingernails snapped off like little plastic tabs, and she examined her fingers with a mild curiosity.
Staring at the ruined flesh reminded her of how the man’s face would sometimes leak fluid when he came down here, and of his occasional wet cough. It was all so disgusting.
She took one of the cat’s bones from its place on the wall and snapped it in half. The end was sharp and she scraped the flesh from her fingers until hard bone gleamed. Then she went to work again, and was pleased with the difference.
“Hey, Dad.” Heather stood in the doorway, her overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Considering how little she wanted to be here, Sean thought she was doing a good job of putting up a positive front.
“Hey, kiddo.” He looked over her shoulder and saw that she had parked directly behind his car again, like she always used to do, and like he had asked her not to do a million times. He actually felt a happy nostalgia at the sight of it. He kissed her cheek and took the bag from her shoulder. “Come on in.”
She followed him in, rubbing her arms and shuddering. “Jeez, Dad, crank up the AC why don’t you.”
“Heh, sorry. Your mother likes it cold.”
“Mom? Since when?”
“Since recently I guess. Listen, why don’t you go on up to your room and get changed or whatever. I’ll get dinner started.”
“Sentimental as always, Dad. I’ve been in the car all day and I really need a shower. Just call me when you’re ready.” She brushed past him on her way to the stairs.
“Hey,” he said.
She stopped.
He held an arm out. “I’m sorry. Come here.” She did, and he folded his arm around her, drawing her close. He kissed her forehead. “It means a lot that you came.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious. It matters. Thank you.”
“Okay. You’re welcome.” She returned his hug and he soaked it in. “So where is she?”
“Downstairs. She’ll be up.”
She pulled back. “In the cellar? Okay, weird.”
“She’ll be up. Go on now. Get yourself ready.”
She shook her head with the muted exasperation of a child long-accustomed to her parents’ eccentricities, and mounted the stairs. Sean turned his attention to the kitchen. He’d made some pot roast in the crockpot, and he tilted the lid to give it a look. The warm, heavy smell of it washed over his face and he took it into his lungs with gratitude. He hadn’t prepared anything real to eat in a month, it seemed, living instead off of frozen pizzas and TV
dinners. The thought of real food made him lightheaded.
He walked over to the basement door and slid open the lock. He paused briefly, resting his head against the doorjamb. He breathed deeply. Then he cracked it open and poked his head in. A thick, loamy odor rode over him on cool air. There was no light downstairs at all.
“Katie?”
Silence.
“Katie, Heather’s here. You remember, we talked about Heather.”
His voice did not seem to carry at all on the heavy air. It was like speaking into a cloth.
“She’s our daughter.” His voice grew small. “You love her, remember?” He thought he heard something shift down there, a sliding of something. Good, he thought. She remembers.
Heather came downstairs a little later. He waited for her, ladling the pot roast into two bowls. The little breakfast nook was set up for them both. Seeing her, he was struck, as he was so often, by how much like a younger version of Katie she looked. The same roundness in her face, the same way she tended to angle her shoulders when she stood still, even the same bob to her hair. It was as though a young Katie had slipped sideways through a hole in the world and come here to see him again, to see what kind of man he had become. What manner of man she had married.
He lowered his eyes.
I’m a good man, he thought.
“Dad?”
He looked up, blinking his eyes rapidly. “Hey you.”
“Why isn’t there a mattress on your bed? And why is there a sleeping bag on the floor?”
He shook his head. “What were you doing in our bedroom?”
“The door was wide open. It’s kind of hard to miss.”
He wasn’t expecting this. “It’s . . . I’ve been sleeping on the floor.” She just stared at him. He could see the pain in her face, the old familiar fear. “What’s been going on here, Dad? What’s she done this time?”
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition Page 9
