by Micol Ostow
In the way of what? I didn’t ask, just nodded and slapped at my thigh. “Come on, Murray.”
The dog gave me a baleful look, slinking to me in slow motion. His ears remained flattened against his head, and his teeth were ever-so-slightly bared.
Luke didn’t appear to notice.
“Your mother says you’ve been digging up the boathouse floor,” Ro said. Her voice was broken glass, a rusty chain turning slowly on an ancient, twisted gear.
“It was all rotted out,” Luke said. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I’m rebuilding. People who lived here before, they kept a junker boat out here. We could fix it up, you never know.” His lips moved independent of the rest of his face, telling a different story from the rest of his body.
“You never know,” Ro agreed. “Found anything interesting in there?”
Interesting. The word filled my head with crashing waves.
Luke squinted. “Oh, sure. Lots of stuff.”
“Such as?”
Luke shrugged, those churning waves coming over me again, tossing me against the invisible pilings of an imaginary pier. He glanced at the boathouse, then turned back to me, heat rushing between us like a missile.
“Old things.”
LUKE WAS FINISHED TALKING TO US, so he turned and wandered away. Ro, Murray, and I made our way back up the hill, toward the house, with near-perfect synchronicity.
Ro paused and reached for my hand, giving it a squeeze.
“Gwen,” she said, her tone strained. “Maybe you should stay away from the boathouse. Stay away from Luke when he’s down there, I mean.”
My stomach clenched. Or else what? I thought wildly. What?
He keeps things in there, a voice whispered, light as the breeze against my cheek. He finds things. Deadly things.
I whipped my head around, but saw nothing.
“Are you all right?” Ro asked, her eyes tracking the direction the voice had come from.
“I thought …” I pulled away, withdrew my hand from her grip. “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s nothing. I’ll stay away from the boathouse. I promise.”
I didn’t ask why. I had an idea that I’d find out what Ro meant soon enough.
RO SAID SHE WAS GOING TO TAKE A NAP before dinner, and when she stretched her slender arms up, I felt exhaustion clutch me, skating the length of my body. I said I thought that sounded like a good idea, ignoring the inverted V that my words knit into Mom’s forehead.
The doctors had explained that excessive sleep and sluggishness were telltale signs of depression.
But there was certainly no harm in an innocent afternoon rest.
I wasn’t the one digging through the boathouse floor, after all. Yet Luke’s behavior was above reproach. Luke wasn’t the crazy one.
Only the one to be avoided, evidently.
“I left your bags in Luke’s bedroom,” Mom said to Ro, nodding in the general direction of the staircase. “The sheets are clean.”
“Luke’s bedroom? Oh no. I don’t want to put him out,” Ro protested.
“You won’t,” I said. “He sleeps in the basement now.”
“Ah.” She pursed her lips. “Siesta, then, shall we? Come get me when you wake up, Gwen, so we can gossip.”
“I don’t have anything to gossip about. No stories.” Nothing light or easy anyway.
“I doubt that.”
“Really,” I insisted.
It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was what my mother wanted to hear. Her worry lines relaxed a fraction.
Aunt Ro gave a halfhearted smile. “Okay, then,” she said. “You can do the listening.”
I’D THOUGHT I WAS BONE-TIRED, but once I was in bed, sleep was reluctant to come. The sunlit patterns on the walls seemed wrong. Uneasy, as though Amity were only meant to exist in the dark. Though my windows were open, the blinds were drawn, and a steady breeze flapped them against the window frames in rhythmic time, a watered-down, daylight version of the boathouse door.
When I closed my eyes, the heron appeared, gaping, bloodied eye sockets yawning open, threatening to swallow me, to surround the whole house and devour us, eat us alive.
When I closed my eyes, the girl from the mirror—from the woods, from my nightmares—revealed herself, purplish clots of blood trickling down her shoulders, shiny and freshly let.
Old things, she hissed as a beetle waved a spindly tentacle from the corner of one unfocused eye.
Behind my eyelids, the Concord River rushed red.
Then, through the haze, I heard my name, sharp and shrill.
MY FIRST THOUGHT was that I’d imagined the sound of my name, that plaintive, earnest call. The air felt still as an underground grotto, still as the cellar of Amity could be.
Then it came again, louder, more urgent: “Gwen!”—and beyond it, my mother’s rapid-fire footsteps slammed against the stairs.
Luke’s room. It was where the voice had come from, where my mother was headed now. It was where Aunt Ro was staying.
I flew from my bed, through the bathroom, and toward my aunt.
“STOP SCREAMING!”
My mother’s voice rang out with anger. “What on earth, Ro?” She grabbed her sister by the shoulders and shook hard. Ro pushed at Mom’s arms wildly, pulling free, sitting up straight in bed.
“Are you insane?” Mom demanded, flinching when she realized her word choice. It sliced at me, making my shoulders hunch.
“You have to calm down. You know Gwen’s prone to …” She paused, groping for the word that was always, always, on the tip of my tongue, on the edge of my brain, dancing at the periphery of my existence. “… hysteria.”
Hysteria. The sounds, the syllables, they rushed inside my head. The rotted-fruit smell from outside, from before, filled my nostrils, making me want to swoon.
“What happened, Ro? What did you need?” Mom sat at the end of the bed, smoothing out the covers around her.
“I needed to talk to Gwen,” Ro said. “I apologize for yelling.” She bit her lip. “No, never mind. I take that back, Ell. Of course I yelled.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s this house,” she said. “Don’t you feel it?”
Dimly, the static-charge sensation began to gather inside me.
“You do. I know you do.” Ro was talking to me.
She sighed. “Ellen, this house is … poisoned. I don’t think it’s good for Luke. And it’s tearing Gwen apart.”
I closed my eyes. The heron. The mirror-girl. The bloody river.
The shotgun.
“What do you see, Gwen?” Ro asked softly, making me start.
“Ro, that’s enough—”
The static crackled, tunneling through me and exploding, firing underneath my skin.
“It’s not enough, Ellen, not remotely. There’s something wrong with this place. It’s been there since day one, and you can’t ignore it! Why do you think she called me? You have to stop pretending. You have to. Even if you’re scared, even if you don’t understand. Be honest: Gwen is different, and this place … it’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous to Gwen.” My mother sniffed, her face stony.
“Dangerous to all of you,” Ro corrected. “How much do you know about this house? The realtor must’ve given you some of the history, right? She must have told you why it was so underpriced?” She flushed. “I wanted to say something. I was going to tell you last time. I brought papers, things I’d found.”
The scrapbook. Ro’s handwriting. Pages stashed away in Luke’s secret cache. She had wanted to warn us.
Now her skin blazed fiery. “The papers I brought … disappeared. And then, well … I had to leave.”
Not disappeared, I thought. They were hidden. By Luke.
By Amity.
She wanted me to know the truth only on her own terms. And Amity got what she wanted.
Mom faltered. “The realtor mentioned … structural issues. She said there might be some costs later on.” Mom was lying, I thought. Or at least holding something
back.
Ro snorted. “Structural issues. Try an entire underground dugout. It housed accused refugees during the Salem witch trials. And later, this place was an asylum. One of the doctors on staff went crazy, began doing medical experiments, torturing some of the clinically insane patients in secret down there.”
The bones. The whispers. The messages, the scrawls on the mirror, the echoes of a long-ago shotgun. The forces, building around me.
Building inside me, boiling to a fever pitch.
“All houses have histories,” my mother said, her voice lower now, shaky. “It wasn’t a reason not to buy. The witch trials were hundreds of years ago! This house didn’t even exist then.”
“It’s not about the house, Ellen. It’s more than that. This site, it’s rotted. People think it’s cursed. People think it’s evil.”
That seemed to snap my mother back to the concrete, to reason and rationale. “I can’t, Ro.” She waved a hand and gathered a hank of hair from her face, raising her chin defiantly, eyes flashing. “You have to stop. That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not.” Ro stood. “I wish it were. Are you deliberately avoiding the truth? Do you know how many people have died in this place? It wasn’t just the witches, or the mental patients. Do you know what happened to the last family who lived here?”
The buzz gathered, pressing against my skull like a vise. Above us, Luke’s light fixture flickered, rattling like a pot lid under steam pressure.
“I’ll show you.” Hands on her hips, Ro’s eyes darted across the room. “I brought more books about it. The Concord Library lost their records in a flood—what a surprise—but the information’s still out there. When Gwen called, I dug it up again. Where did you put my bags?”
Confused, my mother glanced at the bed. “I left everything there. On the floor by the nightstand.”
The space was empty now. Fear licked at me, scratched at my ankles, trailing jagged claw marks along the tops of my bare feet.
“You must have moved them,” my mother said.
“Of course I didn’t,” Ro replied. “Why would I?” She folded her arms. “I was going to show you. Well, first, I was going to show Gwen. I knew she’d believe me. Though I have a feeling she knows enough about things as it is.”
The room shrunk in, grew dimmer, and Ro’s voice unraveled at half tempo. I unraveled, a fiber-optic spiderweb draping me in a shimmering net. Overhead, the light blacked out, then switched back on more weakly, soaking us in an eerie, alien glow.
“Maybe Luke moved them. Maybe he put them in the closet,” my mother offered.
Ro shot her a look. “When was the last time Luke came up here?”
My mother said nothing. Her skin was sallow but for two bright splotches of pink high in her cheeks.
“Fine,” Ro conceded, doubtful. “I’m telling you, I didn’t move them. But if it will satisfy you, I’ll check the closet right now.”
The room washed red. Pain twitched, then exploded at the base of my skull.
(she was shot in the HEAD THE HEAD THE HEAD)
Don’t go in there—I tried to form words but they clung to my tongue.
Ro stepped into the closet.
Invisible hands, cold and lifeless, closed around my throat. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. The overhead light sizzled and cracked, bulbs blacking.
Don’t don’t DON’T—
The door slammed shut behind her.
THE DOORKNOB RATTLED, shaking the heavy, solid wood, but the closet door held firm. Then came a distinct thud, the solid, meaty sound of flesh being slapped, slammed up against unyielding substance that could only be Ro throwing herself against it. The door held fast.
“They’re not here!” she cried. “The closet is empty! Open the door!”
“We didn’t close it!” My mother sounded unsure now. “It’s not locked!”
The sour, metallic bite of copper flooded my mouth, thick and runny like I was choking on blood.
(the head the head the head)
“It won’t open,” Ro said, fingernails scrabbling against the doorknob. “Unlock the door!”
The space beneath the closet door glowed scarlet, feral, and urgent, and a growl rose up—not quite human, not quite not—from beneath the floorboards, from deep within the bowels of the house. Inside the closet, Ro sobbed freely, babbling in incoherent mumbles that rose, gathering intensity by the second.
“Rosemary!” My mother’s voice had taken on a clipped bark that belied her own rare fright. She grabbed at the doorknob and gasped, pulling back, like she’d plunged her hand directly into a furnace, or tried to clasp an open flame between her fingers.
“Try to relax, Ro,” my mother pleaded.
The buzzing, louder now, chattered and rose, beckoning from outside of me, from the direction of the closet.
I watched, transfixed, as a swarm of hornets poured from underneath the door.
I screamed.
The door flew open, revealing my aunt, staggering forward as though prodded by invisible hands.
Ro’s face was studded with stings.
She was so swollen with bumps and bruises that she was nearly unrecognizable, a melted wax image, the skin on one eyelid stretched red and puffy, tight as a straitjacket. Her good eye, impossibly round, stared out from the bloated, mottled bread loaf that her face had become.
“There’s nothing in there,” she croaked, opening her mouth wide. A torrent of blood gushed out.
My entire body clenched. Involuntarily, my limbs jerked straight and stiff, my head snapped back, and my teeth gnashed together hard enough to chip several.
The ceiling light twisted and rotated on its base.
With an explosive, violent roar, it came crashing to the ground.
THE LAMP MISSED US BY INCHES.
That was what my mother told me when I came to again.
I’D ONLY BEEN OUT FOR A FEW MINUTES, she said—not even enough time for her really to worry, given how distraught Ro was when she finally emerged from the closet.
Mom had fully regained her composure now, one hand resting against the sharp angle of her hip bone, the other nursing the cup of water Ro brought up to the bedroom with her when she first came upstairs.
I blinked at my mother’s blasé reaction to Ro’s stings. She no longer looked like a carnival sideshow freak, true—maybe some of the wasp bites died down after the initial sting—but there was still that one eye, fat and red as a tomato, slit shut clamshell tight. Ro pressed her index and middle fingers gingerly to the wound, offering me a wary look with her good, open eye.
“I … fainted?” I glanced around the room. “You were in the closet,” I said to Aunt Ro. “You were stuck.”
“I was stuck,” she confirmed through cracked, blistered lips. “Locked in.”
My mother frowned. “No one locked you in. The doors don’t even have locks here. It’s an old house, Ro. The wood warps. You just insist on overreacting. I wish I could say it was unlike you.”
Ro’s expression was sour. “You’d never say that, Ells. Just admit it. You think overreacting is exactly like me. Remember? It’s why you didn’t want me coming, riling poor, fragile Gwen up.”
My mother’s features hardened. “Fine. If you want to be blunt, then. Yes. It’s ridiculous, you streaking out here like a lunatic, books and papers and whatever other horrible stories about this house.
“It doesn’t matter what happened here before, Ro. Houses don’t have energy, or memory, or whatever it is you’re worried about. There’s nothing to be afraid of here. Amity is only a house.” Her face shone sweaty and tight with emotion.
“But … Ro’s face,” I stammered. “The wasps.” Regardless of where they came from, either the natural world or the depths of Amity herself … Surely my mother could see that the wasps were dangerous. That was just a fact.
Ro flashed me a knowing look through her ruined, fun-house features.
My mother sighed, end-of-her-rope weary. She looked at me with free,
unfettered anger.
She said, “What are you talking about, Gwen?”
“HER FACE,” I REPEATED, my voice small. “Her eye.”
I stepped forward, toward the bed, and reached out to Ro’s face, tracing a tentative path across the swollen flesh, puffed and rising from the socket like a helium balloon. “We have to do something about the stings.”
My mother grabbed at my elbow. “Gwen. That’s enough.” To Ro, she snapped, “You see?”
She meant, You see how fragile she is? How easy it would be to break her?
You see how she is, in fact, already broken?
Panic bubbled in my throat. The wasps, the cloud, the hum … the bites, scarring Ro’s face.
My mother couldn’t see them. My mother couldn’t see what Amity had done.
“No,” I gasped, and raised a hand to my mouth as my gorge rose yet again.
“GWEN ISN’T THE PROBLEM HERE,” Ro said, resigned. She flicked her eyes toward the lamp, smashed to crystal smithereens in the middle of the bedroom floor. “Actually, she might be the only one with the power to resist the house in any real way.”
My mother’s face paled, and her lips parted. “Stop. Talking. Crazy,” she whispered, cold. “Just stop. I don’t want to hear any more.” She swallowed, eyes flashing. “Get up. And get out.”
Ro’s eyes widened. “Look, I’m sorry. I am. But I can’t—I shouldn’t. Not now. Gwen—”
“Gwen is already about fifteen times worse off than she was before you came back here,” Mom said. “She doesn’t need your magical voodoo talk! The lamp fell, the door stuck, and there is nothing wrong with the house. The only thing wrong is with Gwen’s mind, which you know well enough, and having you here is obviously more dangerous for her than anything else.” She pushed me aside, grabbing Ro and dragging her to her feet. “So just find your bags—or don’t, I don’t care, if it’s only going to lead to another scene—and go.”
