Amity

by Micol Ostow

  I was perfectly safe in here, tucked up in the shadowed eaves, nestled in the belly of this

  (beast)

  house, Amity.

  (and the sage, you burned the sage)

  I’d burned the sage; did that make my current dread more reasonable, or less? I didn’t know. I was confused, and also, half crazed from exhaustion.

  I was being insane.

  The window was open a crack, I realized, so I moved to nudge it closed. It jammed momentarily, then yielded with a groan, cracking down quickly enough to make me start at the unexpected clap, sharp as the snap of a wild animal’s jaw. Through the window, I thought I saw the flip of a tail—bushy and streaked a rusty, coppery shade—gliding smoothly around the corner of the boathouse.

  I didn’t know of any animals with a tail like that.

  You’re being crazy, Gwen. The laugh I tried to force caught in my throat. You are going crazy.

  Again.

  This house is perfectly safe.

  It was utterly absurd to think otherwise, I knew. Utterly ridiculous.

  Utterly insane.

  I PADDED TO THE BATHROOM, cautious not to wake the rest of the family, still insisting to myself how ridiculous it was to be so violently disturbed, so unsettled by Amity.

  By a house.

  Never mind the electric charge snaking down my spine, an insistent, greedy sensation I hadn’t felt since …

  (go away, crazy)

  … well, it was better not to dwell on such things.

  I slipped through the bathroom door, turned the light on, squinting against the sour, yellow-green glow it gave off. The pedestal sink stood solid and sturdy. I grasped either side of the basin in my trembling hands.

  It was crazy to be so thrown, so unnerved by the house. It was.

  But, despite that knowledge, I couldn’t shake the sensation that somehow I wasn’t alone in Amity.

  Yes, my parents were sleeping just down the hall. And Luke’s bedroom was right through the bathroom door. Murray was undoubtedly curled at the foot of Luke’s bed, though what that dog would do in the face of an intruder, I couldn’t imagine. He wasn’t exactly trained in home security. That was never the point of a family pet, not for our family. I was the only Hall with a habit of feeling … insecure.

  (She was shot in the head.)

  The thought flickered again. I swallowed, and pushed it out of my mind.

  My parents. Luke. Murray. They were here with me. I wasn’t alone.

  Of course, I wasn’t alone in Amity.

  But that knowledge offered little comfort. Whatever that feeling was, that foreboding … slithering over me like a high-voltage second skin …

  Wherever it came from, it had nothing to do with an actual, physical presence in the house. It was more like a thundercloud, or the thick, static charge that the air takes on just before a summer storm. I couldn’t explain it, not rationally. But I couldn’t deny it, either. It was a voice, a whisper. But from the inside, from within my bones.

  The mirror over the sink was ornate, but scratched in some places—it had been here when we arrived, and looked to be as old as the house—and it was covered in a fine layer of dust. I cleared a patch of the glass with the cuff of my pajama top, peering into the streaked surface at my reflection. Bruise-colored shadows tinged the hollows underneath my eyes.

  The person in the mirror did not look particularly well.

  The overhead light wavered, flickering gray for a moment,

  (old house, faulty wiring, go AWAY, crazy)

  and when it glowed yellow-green again, a wave of nausea overtook me, nearly knocking me off my feet.

  In the reflection of the mirror, I wasn’t alone.

  THE GHOSTED GIRL PERCHED BEHIND ME IN THE MIRROR was young, about my age.

  Her stare was blank, but forceful just the same. Her hair, reddish, was pulled back from her forehead severely, but even in the dusty mirror, I could see that it was dark and wet, stained and matted at her temples. A trickle of something—blood? Yes, I thought that it was blood—curved around the back of her neck, over one shoulder.

  She reached up a hand to the mirror’s edge. To me. When she drew her arm back to her side, five small rust-brown smudges appeared in the mirror, like a handprint. A handprint nearly the size of my own.

  I screamed.

  “GWEN.”

  I flinched, and opened my mouth to shriek again.

  But before I could make a sound, a hand clapped over my mouth. I could smell the woodsy, spicy half-life of the soap that Luke always used. But even as I recognized my brother, a bright, blazing flash burst, scattering white confetti before my eyes.

  I heard a shattering, snapping noise. When my vision cleared, the girl from the mirror was gone. It was just Luke and me, peering out. But now a jagged crack ran through the glass, a diagonal slash that rushed from the top of my brother’s reflection’s jugular to the bottom of my own.

  I read his face easily. He wore the look that begged me not to fall apart, not to unravel, to just-please-God not shatter like the mirror had.

  “It’s a little creepy here,” he admitted, putting a hand on my shoulder. “But come on, Gwen. You’re stronger now. You have to be.

  “If you lose it,

  (again)

  “… If you lose it, I mean. You know how Mom and Dad will be.”

  I nodded. I knew. He took his hand from my mouth.

  Now the only faces reflected in the mirror were mine and Luke’s, which should have been comforting. But the angry fault line fractured our images so they sat ever-so-slightly askew in a way that was still unnerving. I tasted panic in my mouth like warm syrup, powerful and sweet.

  “I saw an animal outside. It startled me.” It was the only version of the truth I could use.

  “We’re in the country, Gwen,” he said. “Get used to it.” When his lips met in the mirror, they didn’t line up.

  “You two.” Our mother’s voice floated toward us, muffled and drowsy. “Did something break out there?”

  Luke’s eyes met mine in the mirror, high enough above the crack that his gaze was steady.

  “I startled Gwen in the bathroom,” he called. “And she dropped …” He fumbled. “The mirror broke. Sorry.”

  “As long as you’re both okay.” Mom’s voice was low; she wouldn’t remember this conversation come morning. Luckily.

  “It’s fine, we’re fine.” My voice warbled only slightly. “Good night.”

  “ ’Night.” Her voice unwound, she slid backward into sleep again.

  I turned to face Luke so I wouldn’t have to look at, to think about the broken mirror. “It’s fine,” I said again, hoping I sounded more convincing. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  Luke tugged at the hem of his T-shirt. “It’s …” He sighed. “Whatever, Gwen. I’m glad it’s nothing.” He cast his eyes toward the crack in the mirror, then away again, lightning quick. “Just … I don’t know, just splash some cold water on your face and get back to bed.”

  I told him I would. It was a fine idea.

  Certainly better than any I had of my own.

  ALONE AGAIN IN THE BATHROOM, I blinked and looked down at my fingertips, now as dusty as the mirror had been.

  Cold water, Gwen. Splash some cold water on your face.

  I reached out, twisted the sink’s tap.

  Water trickled out in a slow, stuttering sputter. I ran my hands palms up under the stream, rubbing them together until the grime and muck were rinsed away.

  I shut my eyes.

  The tap whistled and whispered, spouting a thin river into my cupped palms. I breathed in, out.

  The faucet hiccupped.

  My eyes flew open.

  The faucet issued a quick, shallow belch, and the stream of cool water was staunched.

  (what …?)

  That half-formed thought was all I had time for. The pipes leading into the wall clanged and trembled, sending another cough through the mouth of the faucet.

&nb
sp; The tap began to run again.

  This time, it was hot. Scalding. Searing.

  And it was red.

  I gasped and pulled my hands back to my chest, cupping them against my body. I was so horrified by the grotesque torrents spurting out that my brain barely registered the pain.

  The water. The water.

  The water rushing from the tap was red.

  Red, thick, and rusty.

  The water spurting from the tap was red and rusty as an infected wound, and my hands, which had been submerged in it, had erupted in angry, swollen

  (gunshots?)

  blisters.

  (what when how?)

  I couldn’t know. I couldn’t say.

  But I did know—again, still:

  I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t. No matter what halfhearted reassurances I’d made to Luke, or to anyone else, I knew the truth.

  I wasn’t alone in Amity. Someone—some thing—was here with me. Lurking in the fault line of the mirror, maybe. Or maybe stirring now, eager to escape.

  (she was shot in the head)

  (the head the head the HEAD)

  I clasped my blistered fists together and swallowed down a scream.

  TEN YEARS EARLIER

  DAY 2

  THE HANDPRINT WAS GONE IN THE MORNING.

  It was the first thing I did when I woke up—jumped out of bed and over to the window to check, I mean. But the window was wiped clean, or anyway: it was the same exact dirty that Jules had bitched about. It was streaky and dusty and strung up with cobwebs, yeah, but it was definitely not marked up with any handprint. Not anymore, if it ever was in the first place.

  That made me pretty angry, if you want to know the truth. It felt a little like being lied to, which I don’t like. That reflection—that dead-like, rotting thing in the window—That didn’t get to me. I thought it wanted to talk to me, wanted to really get to know me, have a heart-to-heart or something, and I was okay with that. What bugged me was the not knowing for sure, the wondering. And the handprint being gone was confusing, mixed-up, and slippery the way things sometimes get in my head.

  I threw on some clothes and wandered out into the hallway, wondering if it was safe to head downstairs and scrounge up something to eat. Without the dealership, Dad wasn’t working regular hours, but I didn’t think he’d be hanging around the house too much. He didn’t really like spending time with any of us and the feeling was mutual. Except for Abel, maybe, who was still a little too young to know better, poor kid.

  When I passed by Jules’s room, her door was open. Quiet guitar-band music was playing: that airy, depressing girl stuff. I ducked inside. She was still in last night’s pajama pants and that hoodie, all stretched out at the neck, sitting on her mattress with her knees pulled up to her chest, staring off at the door to our bathroom. Her room was a mirror image of mine; there weren’t any special girlie touches up yet or anything. Just a lamp on her dresser. Its ruffled shade made the space look even sadder than if she’d left it completely bare.

  “New places are hard,” I said, parroting what she’d told Mom the night before. I was hoping for a laugh.

  Jules shot me a dirty look, her eyes flashing. “You’re funny.”

  She stood up and tightened the drawstring on her pajama pants, then reached to the scratched-up radio on the windowsill, turning it off. “Enough.” The room felt extra-quiet, empty, without that pity-me strum playing in the background.

  “What’s your problem?” I asked, sounding more annoyed than I meant to. I was thinking of that face, bone-white with the oozing, gaping sockets where eyes should have been.

  “I slept badly,” she admitted. She tightened her hair elastic so her curls sprang up an inch higher at the back of her head. “I think … Well, I was cold. But also, the boathouse door. It kept banging and waking me up. It sounded like—”

  “—like a shotgun,” I said, jumping in, maybe a little too eager.

  She looked at me, her mouth a tight line. “Yeah, exactly. But it didn’t bother you.” She said that last part angry.

  “Well, you know.” I shrugged. “Nothing ever bothers me, really. Nothing creeps me out.” Another of her little sayings from yesterday back to haunt her.

  She didn’t think that was funny, either. And I knew why she was all annoyed. I could see why other people—why Jules—wouldn’t make jokes about shotguns blasting in the dead of night. That wasn’t normal, it wasn’t the way regular people were supposed to think.

  But the thing about it was, even if she didn’t think it was funny …

  I did.

  IT WAS TRICKY WITH ME.

  Whether I was feeling angry, whether I was having—or not having—normal-person reactions to things, I still reacted to Jules, you know. I didn’t like to see her upset. So I told her I’d look at the door to the boathouse, see if there was something I could do to fix it. She seemed relieved, her ponytail relaxing, bobbing a few inches lower down her neck. That was good.

  And if I maybe had some other secret kind of reason for wanting to get closer to the space? Like something maybe calling me from down there? Well … I kept that to myself right then.

  And that was good, too.

  MOM WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED ME TO TAKE THE CAR. Wherever Dad was that morning, he didn’t go there in our crappy four-door. But Mom wouldn’t have been too keen on me taking it into town, on the off chance that Dad came home earlier than she expected and got it into his head to be bothered by the car being gone. Dad got bothered by things pretty easy.

  I didn’t care about Dad getting bothered—just another one of those things that was a problem for other people that just didn’t get to me, right? And I didn’t much care what Mom did or didn’t want, either. So I didn’t ask about the car. I just took it.

  I knew where to find the keys. Dad was predictable. Back downstate, he kept them stuffed into his underwear drawer, tucked into his holey old shorts like a secret porn stash. I waited until after lunchtime when Mom, Abel, and Jules headed down to the river in their old, stretched-out bathing suits, Mom with a huge, billowing T-shirt over hers to cover everything up. Even with that circus tent brushing back and forth between her knees, you could still make out the yellow edges of a fading bruise peeking out like a frown. She tried, I guess, but there’s only so much covering up you can really do.

  Now, some people would disagree with my thinking here. (I do know a little bit about how other people think, what normal people usually say and do.) But if you ask me, in some ways Mom kind of deserved what she got. I mean, if she was going to go around trying to cover things up, how could she expect them to ever change, right? It was weak, that behavior, and if there’s one thing I’m not, it’s weak.

  Still, that bruise—all the bruises—they made the edges of my vision go red, made my fingers clench around the firm metal of the car key. Maybe Mom was weak, but Dad was still evil, and even with my own … well, my own special way of seeing things … the way real life sometimes looked to me as flat as cardboard …

  Well, I fucking hated Dad.

  So when the ignition of the car turned over and the dashboard sparked to life, I gritted my teeth, hunkered down, and just barreled out of there.

  Nobody could hear me down by the river anyway. I was pretty sure about that. That Concord River, she rushed.

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE ROAD TO AMITY.

  The house lay at the end of a long, twisting dead end. The only way past was by river, so in order to get to anything close to civilization, I drove back in the direction we came the day before, the dirt road already looking more uneven, more forgotten and overgrown than it did yesterday. This was real and true backcountry, but it felt almost jungle-like, with branches and bramble unwinding from gnarled tree trunks and clawing at the edge of the road, reaching for me. The air was humid and wet, stinking, all ripe like moss and overgrowth. And the way the leaves jittered on their branches, well … it sounded like they were whispering little messages to me.

  As I squinted through the
windshield, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles were bone-white, I had a flash of that face again, that gaping, empty gaze from the night before, and I nodded, like I was answering those whispers myself. That shuddery feeling I kept getting around Amity swelled up in my stomach, light as air. Then it was gone, a soap bubble popped, and I nodded again, like I was reassuring the house and her … well, her tentacles, that’s how those snarled, ragged branches felt right then—reassuring everything that was connected to Amity … that I’d be back.

  And when the leaves rustled again, they told me they knew that I would be.

  I thought then that Amity was already all mine. I didn’t realize it was actually the other way around.

  I FOLLOWED THE MAIN ROAD TOWARD TOWN, the roadside trees thinning out some, and the voices and the whispers quieting, too, the closer I got. But that soft hum, which felt so right, so welcoming, it was slowly getting replaced, like drowned out, I mean, with a popping loop of static. No matter how hard I listened, I couldn’t make out whether the static was inside my head, or outside of it.

  That happens to me sometimes. I don’t worry too much about it.

  The dirt road gave way to blacktop, although the pavement was patchy and maybe even tougher on the car’s suspension than the dirt was. After a few more miles, a dotted yellow line, fading at some spots, appeared, telling me that people were here, that Real Life was up ahead. The static was suffocating now, like the knob on my mental radio had been turned all the way up.

  There was a small convenience store kind of grocery up ahead, with a neon sign burned out black in three places. Two battered-looking cats padded around the parking lot, suspicious, hovering a couple paces away as I pulled in. As I made my way to the front door, they glared at me, wary. I kicked a leg out in their direction and they broke away.

  I thought: Weak. All of them.

  The door stuck when I pushed on it, and then the rubber tread on the floor gave a little coughing hiss when I leaned further. I watched the man behind the counter watching me, looking a little doubtful—challenging, even—while I shoved up against it. He gave a tiny jut of his chin when I stumbled in.