Deadly Little Voices

by Laurie Faria Stolarz

  “Wow, that’s totally cool,” Adam says.

  I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth, and so I merely gaze out the window as we pull into the parking lot of Pizza Rita’s.

  We order a large cheese pizza, then chat about the class. Kimmie is beyond excited, telling us how inspiring Dwayne is, and how he said she has an eye for balance and proportion.

  “Dwayne’s a great teacher,” Adam says in agreement. “I’ve learned a lot just from posing—just from listening to the way he instructs his students.”

  “Speaking of posing,” Kimmie says, practically sprouting a pitchfork, tail, and horns,

  “what does it feel like up there…hanging around on the platform? I mean, do you care that people are staring at your junk and stuff?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly hanging around.” He clears his throat. “And I’m not so sure they’re staring.”

  “Trust me,” she says, her eyes as big as fishbowls. “They are.”

  A moment later our food comes, but Kimmie still doesn’t let up: “What does a gig like that even pay?”

  “It’s not such a bad deal,” Adam says, trying to remain aloof. “I mean, aside from today’s incident, it’s relatively painless. Plus, I get to contribute to the world of art.”

  “By showing your schlong?” she asks, completely straight-faced.

  Instead of getting upset, Adam humors her for several more minutes, which reminds me just how generous he is.

  And how much I really like him.

  We continue to talk, eat, and laugh for another full hour, pausing only once while I call home to give my dad an update. Kimmie seems much happier than when she was in her previous

  “anti-D” state. And I have to admit I’m feeling pretty human again, too. She even jokes that the D on her hand should really stand for ditz.

  “Because, let’s face it,” she says, “this baby ain’t coming off for weeks.”

  “Yeah, but it looks pretty cool,” Adam says. “Plus, I’m sure you’ll be able to dress around it.”

  “So right,” Kimmie says. “I can also change what the D stands for according to my mood.”

  “One day, anti-Drama,” I suggest. “The next day, anti-Dad.”

  “The following day, anti-Dolls,” she says with a wink. “Especially creepy ones with eyes that open and close.”

  “We should probably get going,” I say, unwilling to get into my own drama in front of Adam.

  Adam agrees, and he drops Kimmie off first. She steps out of the car, but then pokes her head into the passenger-side window to give me a pleading look. “Call me if anything good happens, okay?”

  “Will do.” I smile, able to read her corrupt and suspicious mind.

  Adam drives me home, filling the silence with small talk about his midterm exams and a project he’s working on involving the redesign of an elementary-school playground. He asks me questions about my classes as well, but I’m feeling far too nervous for chitchat.

  Finally, we pull up in front of my house. Adam puts the car in park and turns to me. “I want to see you again,” he says, before I have a chance to say good night. “Can I call you?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  “Really?” he says, seemingly surprised by my response. “So I can take you out sometime?”

  “Sure,” I say, gazing at the scar on his lower lip. “But just as friends, okay?”

  “No sweat.” He smiles.

  I smile, too, reminded of how happy Adam always makes me and how easy it is to be with him compared to Ben. For a change, that feels really nice.

  LATER, IN MY ROOM, I do all my homework and then settle into bed, grateful for the routine and for the fact that things are starting to feel somewhat normal again.

  I grab a comb and make an attempt to work it through the kinks in my hair. But the truth is that I’ve been all kinks lately, because I haven’t been pursuing my pottery—not really, anyway.

  Part of me wonders if I should be pursuing it—if I should be using my pottery to figure out the story behind the voices. But another part of me is terrified of those voices, because hearing them—and getting so caught up in what’s going on inside my head that I feel completely confused about what’s really happening—brings me one step closer to being like Aunt Alexia.

  I look toward our shared wall, hearing scratching sounds again. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that she was trying to claw her way out through the wall, right into my room. I’m tempted to scratch back, wondering if she might be trying to get my attention. But instead I press my eyelids shut, cover my ears with a pillow, and try to force myself to sleep.

  After a good hour or so spent tossing and turning, I feel myself start to nod off. But unfortunately, it doesn’t take, and so finally I head down to the basement to work. My parents are asleep; their door is closed. It’s quiet in the house.

  I turn on the basement light. Standing about a foot tall, my sculpture of a skater is there on my work board, begging to be touched. And so I do.

  I remove the tarp and run my fingers over the figure’s leg, perfecting the knee and making the muscles in the calves more defined. I spend an hour or so working on the shoulders, forearms, and hands.

  Until I hear something behind me.

  A clicking sound.

  I turn to look just as the overhead light goes out, leaving me in the dark. I grip my carving knife and start to move toward the stairs. At the same moment, a burst of light flashes in front of my eyes, making them sting.

  “Who’s there?” I call out into the darkness, telling myself that the flash was from a lightbulb that blew, and that the clicking noise must have come from an electrical problem.

  No one answers, but then more light flashes into my eyes, making everything feel hot, loud, confining.

  I strain my eyes, trying to see who it is. But it’s too dark, and my vision is stained with blotches of bright red and green.

  Someone’s taking pictures.

  “Who’s there?” I repeat.

  Instead of answering, I hear someone humming a familiar tune that I can’t quite recall.

  From a nursery rhyme, maybe? An old preschool song? It’s a male voice, and it has a whimsical quality, as if whoever’s singing it is enjoying himself.

  The camera flashes continue, making my head spin. Hot tears burn my cheeks.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, taking a pause from humming.

  I shake my head and plug my ears with my clay-covered fingers, driving them all the way in, wondering if his voice is coming from inside my head. I take a deep breath, trying to be brave. The knife pressed firmly in my grip, I start toward the stairs again. But after just a couple of steps, I trip on something. There’s a loud clunking sound. I try to keep going, but it feels like there’s something wound around my ankles now. I bend down to find out what it is.

  A canvas strap of some sort. With something attached. A camera. I can tell from the size, shape, and weight.

  I peer into the viewfinder, somehow suddenly able to see, as if there’s a nightlight hidden inside the lens.

  To my complete and utter shock, my own reflection stares back at me. My wide green eyes: full of fear, burning with questions, tears brimming at the corners.

  “There are two,” a new voice whispers—a female one this time.

  The eyes blink at me a couple of times, while my eyes remain fixed, making me finally realize that the reflection isn’t mine after all.

  “There are two,” the female voice repeats. And then someone shakes me by the shoulders, which rouses me awake. For real this time.

  I’m startled to find myself in bed, in my room, with a pair of wide green eyes still staring back at me. Only now it’s clear: they belong to my aunt.

  MOONLIGHT COMES IN through my windows, illuminating Aunt Alexia’s face. “Are you okay?” she asks me.

  I shake my head, feeling physically sick. I don’t even question what she’s doing here.

  Instead, I bury my face i
n my hands, wishing I were still asleep, knowing I must’ve nodded off during all of that tossing and turning and merely dreamt about going downstairs.

  “I could hear you from my bedroom,” she says, tucking Miss Dream Baby in beside me and then stroking my arms. The chill of her hands makes me shiver all over.

  “You could hear me?” I ask, sitting up in bed. I wipe the tears that run down my face, then click on the bedside lamp.

  She starts humming the familiar tune from my dream—the same tune she hummed after finding me in the hallway closet.

  “Is that ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’?” I ask her.

  “That depends. Do you like nursery rhymes?”

  “Excuse me?” I ask, completely confused, thinking how “Yankee Doodle Dandy” isn’t a nursery rhyme at all. And then I suddenly remember the phrase she kept repeating—the one that played in my head when I was in Ms. Beady’s office. “There are two,” I say, looking at her for her reaction. “Two what?”

  “I was hoping that you could tell me,” she says; her voice is as fragile as snowflakes.

  “Those words have been on my mind all night.”

  The comb I’ve been using to work the kinks out of my hair is still clenched in my grip. I turn it over in my hand, almost able to picture it as the sculpting knife from my dream.

  “You were having a nightmare, weren’t you?” she asks. “You were dreaming about your art?”

  “How did you know?”

  “It won’t work,” she says, ignoring the question. “Silencing your artistic impulses only makes the voices louder. This sickness always finds its way in…even if it has to invade your dreams.” She’s wearing a paint-spattered dress, and her pale blond hair hangs in a braid down her back.

  I take a deep breath, thinking about what she wrote in her journal as a teenager: how she tried giving up her art in hopes that her premonitions would stop. But it only made everything worse.

  “Don’t be like me.” Her eyes widen and fill with tears.

  I tear up again, too, even though I want to be strong. I reach out to take her hand, but she pushes me away and grabs the doll from beneath my covers. She cradles it against her belly and starts rocking back and forth, her eyes focused on the ceiling.

  I look toward my closed bedroom door, wondering if I should call out to my parents. But after a few moments she’s able to meet my eyes again.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, clearly embarrassed. A faint blush spreads across her cheeks. She starts to tuck the doll back in beside me.

  “Keep it,” I tell her.

  “Are you sure?” she asks, straightening the front of Miss Dream Baby’s dress. “I shouldn’t have borrowed her for so long, but she was a great comfort to me over the years—mostly because she reminded me of you.”

  “Really?” I ask, curious as to what she means. Aunt Alexia’s rare and short-lived visits when I was younger pretty much consisted of my always begging her to show me her art, and her forever shutting me down.

  “We have a lot in common, don’t you think?” she asks.

  I look at her wrists, covered in scars.

  “This is where we’re different,” she says, catching me looking. She takes my hand and guides my fingers over the scars.

  It takes me a moment to notice that one of the scars has a starlike shape—just like the star I drew on Miss Dream Baby’s back when I was six.

  “It’s the same,” she says, as if reading my mind. “I thought the star might help protect me, might help make everything right.”

  “Not if you’re dead.”

  Alexia traces her finger over the X’s on Miss Dream Baby’s ears. “I spent so many years trying to protect myself, but I soon learned that there was no protection. There’s only pain.

  Hopefully you won’t succumb to it.” She glides her fingers along my wrists, smiling at my unharmed skin. “You’re so much stronger than I ever was.”

  I resist the urge to pull away, feeling weaker than ever before. “How can you be so sure?”

  Aunt Alexia continues to pat my arm, lingering over my veins as if sensing something significant. “I feel things,” she whispers, glancing toward the drawer of my night table, inside which her journal is tucked. “And, like what happens with you, my art brings that feeling closer.”

  “So, then you know you aren’t crazy,” I say, more as a question than a statement, and wishing that I had tried to rephrase it.

  Alexia stops patting my arm and looks at me—a cold, dead stare that could shatter glass.

  “My art makes me crazy. It controls me, and I don’t know how to handle it. The voices capture me and bring me someplace else.”

  I swallow hard. My stomach churns. Acid fills the back of my throat. We’re so much alike.

  “I want to help you,” she says. Tears well up in her eyes again. “But I don’t know how.”

  I clench my teeth, trying not to be sick. “You already are helping me,” I manage to say.

  Alexia presses Miss Dream Baby against her chest, as if this has all been a little too much.

  “Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow,” I suggest.

  “We need to talk right now,” she says, reaching behind her to the foot of the bed; she’s brought along some of her canvases. “Would you like to see my latest work?” She turns the first one over before I can answer.

  It’s a picture of something blue and diamond-shaped.

  “Sea glass,” she explains. “I was going to paint it washed up on a beach, but something told me that it didn’t belong there. Does it look at all familiar to you?”

  I shake my head, trying to jog my memory.

  “It will,” she says, completely confident.

  “Does it make sense to you?” I ask her.

  “I did this during my first week here,” she says, still ignoring my questions, “after having spent some time in your surroundings.”

  “My surroundings?” I ask, curious to know what she means, exactly—if she’s been sneaking into my bedroom while I’ve been at school, or if she’s talking about the few times she took my seat at the kitchen island while my mom whipped up something semi-edible.

  “And this one is from last week,” she says, flipping the next one over. It’s a painting of a camera, just like the one in my dream.

  “Do you recognize it?” she asks. A knowing grin rests upon her lips.

  “Yes,” I whisper, suddenly feeling dizzy. The blood rushes from my head, making the room seem darker and more confining.

  “Maybe I should wait to show you this other one,” she says. Her face appears slightly blurry now.

  “No,” I insist, drawing the covers up over me, hoping to stifle this chill.

  Aunt Alexia hesitates.

  “I want to see it,” I assure her.

  She places Miss Dream Baby on my lap, then turns the final canvas over.

  I recognize the picture right away. It’s the glass shard. In the background is a broken mirror, just like the one in the girls’ locker room in my hallucination. The words DIE ALREADY, WILL YOU?! are scribbled in red across the remaining mirror surface, while a heap of broken glass has collected in the sink.

  “How did you know?” I tremble all over. “How do you know these things about me?”

  “She’s so ugly that the mirror broke,” she snaps.

  “Who is?” I ask, completely confused.

  Aunt Alexia lets out a schoolgirl giggle and starts rocking back and forth again, refusing to answer any more questions or even look me in the eye.

  Dear Jill,

  At exactly 8:55 pm your screen name popped up: COFFEESHOPGIRL. I waited a few minutes to see if you’d initiate the conversation. I had a feeling that you would-that you’d be so anxious about keeping me waiting, you’d eventually type some small but telling message. I used to like to test myself like that, trying to predict your actions to see how well I really knew you.

  You’ll be flattered to learn that I’d been sitting outside your house that night. That I’
d watched you walk home at three o’clock. That around six, you’d had a pizza delivered. And that I knew no one else was at home.

  They’d left you alone once again.

  Aside from your shifts at the coffee shop, you were almost always by yourself. Your father worked all hours of the day and night, and your sister pretty much followed his lead, barely at home, using work and the public library as her paths to escape.

  Are you curious as to how I learned all this? Are you impressed with the detective work I did-all for your sake?

  I wondered if you’d be honest with me about being alone. I doubted that you would. I knew you needed to trust me more, which was precisely what that whole chat session was about.

  …

  9:00 p.m.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: I don’t know how to start, so I guess I’ll keep things simple…hi.

  JACKFORJILL: It’s good to talk 2 u finally.

  JACKFORJILL: It’s too hard @ the shop. I feel like Im getting u in trouble.

  JACKFORJILL: Yr boss seems a little intense.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: Me too.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: Glad to talk to you, I mean.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: And, yes, my boss can be a PAIN!!!

  JACKFORJILL: LOL. I think he hates me. Which is why I don’t think I’ll be hanging out at yr shop much anymore.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL:

  JACKFORJILL: Don’t worry.

  JACKFORJILL: What are you doing, btw?

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: I just got home.

  JACKFORJILL: Not out with a bf, I hope.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: No!

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: I had dinner at a friend’s house.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: No big deal.

  JACKFORJILL: Phew!

  JACKFORJILL: So, what are u doing now?

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: Homework.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: And you?

  JACKFORJILL: Same.

  JACKFORJILL: I’m putting together a portfolio for an art show.

  COFFEESHOPGIRL: You’re an artist?

  JACKFORJILL: I’m obsessed with photography.

  JACKFORJILL: That’s what I’d like 2 do 4 a career.

  JACKFORJILL: I have a couple galleries interested in showing my stuff.