by Abe Moss
“Daily. We fought about everything. Stupid things. And unlike you, I can’t say my mom loved me deep down. Part of me hopes so, but probably not. I think she hated me.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s dead.” She considered telling the truth about her mom then, that she was dead as well, but that would take more explaining than she was ready to give. “He died a little over four years ago.”
“Yeah, you said so earlier at the fire. Did you both fight a lot too?”
“No, not at all. My dad loved me very much. I think that’s why my mom hated me, in fact.”
“If it’s not weird to ask—or to talk about—how did he die?”
“He, uh…” While she’d thought about her father a great deal the last few years, the cause of his death had rarely been a focus. Perhaps because he’d been such a beacon in her mind, it was difficult to consider. “He overdosed. Heroin, I think. I don’t remember.”
“Oh. I see.”
“It’s weird to say, because he was so good despite it.”
“Sure. Addiction doesn’t discriminate.”
He left his questions at that, and Addie was relieved.
They sat for several minutes, getting sleepier and sleepier the longer they did.
“You notice there aren’t any stars here?” Addie asked.
They watched the sky, and after a few seconds of passing his eyes along the night, Bud noticed something. He whispered, “There it is again. Do you see it?”
He pointed discreetly toward the main house, and Addie searched its base and along the porch, around the front door where they’d seen it the previous night. It wasn’t there.
“On the roof,” he said.
Addie’s heart started its percussion as usual when she finally saw. A crouched figure jutted from the darkness of the roof, where she swore there’d been nothing moments ago. Its eyes were lit, round and white as before. They swayed back and forth.
“I think it’s time to go back inside,” Addie said.
Bud agreed and they returned into the guesthouse. Shutting the door behind them, Addie waited in the dark.
“Bud.”
“Yeah?”
He faced her a couple feet away, just a form in the dark.
“Thanks.”
He didn’t ask what the thanks was for, or respond at all for that matter. She thought he might have nodded but couldn’t tell.
“We should get back to bed,” he said. “We may have to paint the doctor’s house tomorrow.”
Addie laughed and followed him into the hall, where they separated back to their rooms. When she lay in bed, her mind felt much more at peace than before. Less chaos. She closed her eyes and thought about nothing in particular. Before too long, she slept.
Chapter Twelve
They didn’t see Nuala for two days.
The morning after their unsuccessful meeting by the fire, they awoke to an empty kitchen and a quiet yard outside. No Nuala. No food. They waited until what must have been around noon before Joanna grew restless.
“I’m starving,” she said. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Maybe she’s left and she’s late coming back,” Bud suggested.
“The truck is still there.”
“Or maybe she’s punishing us for last night,” Lyle said. He always chimed in if he had some cynicism to offer. He hung around them, Addie felt, only to listen until such an occasion presented itself. “For not playing into her questions game.”
“That would be counterproductive,” Addie said. “If we go too long without food, we’ll obviously leave. It would only make everything harder for her.”
“It’s only been one meal,” Bud said. “It could be anything.”
But come midafternoon she still hadn’t appeared. They spent the hours waiting napping on the sofas or in their rooms. Bud and Addie joined each other at the water pump in the yard. Bud drank, and Addie studied the main house thoughtfully.
“Even if Nuala’s gone, the doctor should be home, right? He wouldn’t neglect us, you wouldn’t think. What would be the point?”
Bud wiped his wet mouth. “Maybe we should knock and ask.”
It was a joke, and they both exchanged grins, but after a moment they regarded each other with wondering eyes.
Addie was the first to approach. Bud followed. She climbed the porch, creaking and dusty, and halted. Bud, hands stuffed in his pockets, stood closely behind.
The door was plain and white as the house itself. No peephole. No doorknocker. Addie lifted a fist, hesitated, and then knocked three times. They waited about a minute.
“You didn’t knock very loudly. Try harder.”
She knocked again, three times, but with a force that hurt her knuckles. When there still wasn’t an answer, Bud stepped forward and pounded the door with the bottom of his fist. Addie called through the hard, solid wood, “Nuala, are you in there!?”
Still no answer.
The afternoon gave way to evening. They sat scattered through the guesthouse in boredom and hunger, complaining as their eyes drooped and their bellies growled.
“This is bullshit,” Joanna said. “Do they think we’re so helpless that we’ll stay here waiting around on them forever to come feed us?”
“If you’re so hungry,” Lyle said, sitting at the kitchen table, “why don’t you go find yourself something in the woods? Like some berries, or maybe catch a fish out of a river with your mouth.”
“Are you making a joke?” Joanna asked, reclined on one of the sofas with her hands rested on her round stomach. “Huh, twig?”
“Guys, stop.” Addie sat on the opposite sofa next to Bud, whose chin rested on his chest, dozing. “This could be a test. Seeing how we handle being left on our own. Fighting only gives them something to make note of. We should wait for now. If she’s not here by tomorrow… well…”
“Then you’ll show her what a little rebel you really are?” Lyle said.
Addie turned to him, pierced him with her gaze, opened her mouth to say something, when Joanna spoke first.
“You know, I liked you better when I thought you were dead.”
Addie expected him to be amused, satisfied with getting a rise from someone, but his expression spoiled. In fact, he stood from the table and made his way toward the hall.
“I’m sure there are many people who like me better now.”
He left them.
Joanna looked at Addie, smiling, and said “Do you think that was harsh?”
✽✽✽
The following day was much the same. They awoke to an empty kitchen. Nuala was absent as ever, and the yard outside left no trace of anyone being there but themselves. The truck was unmoved.
Lyle decided to take up his self-isolation again, keeping to his room with the door closed.
Addie and Bud spent the morning listening as Joanna made idle threats of escape, or worse, burning the place to the ground. She said these things while plopped on the sofa wiping sweat off her brow.
“How much longer should we wait?” Bud asked. “If they’re really gone, it would be a while before they noticed we left if we decided to—”
“We can’t leave,” Addie said. “We don’t know what’s out there. We could be a hundred miles from anything.”
“So… you’d rather starve here…” Joanna spoke softly, as though putting more effort into her words would exhaust her. “That’s what’ll happen either way.”
Addie fidgeted. “Well… how about this: we wait one more night. If Nuala isn’t here tomorrow morning and there’s no word from the doctor, we break into his house and take what food we can if there is any. We find the keys to that truck and leave that way.”
“You know…” Bud said, “that truck’s the only vehicle I’ve seen since we arrived. If they’re gone, what’d they leave with?”
Joanna nodded, brows raised in thought. “Good point.”
“We should try again.”
“Try what?”
“Knocking.”
And so they did, the three of them this time. They marched single file across the hot dirt and up the rickety porch. Addie and Bud took to pounding from the start, calling through the door as they’d done before. Joanna stood behind them, watching with her arms folded, eyeing the tall narrow window next to the door. She left the porch and stood in the yard, watching the upstairs windows for movement, to try and catch eyes peeking between the curtains. She saw nothing, and neither Addie nor Bud heard movement inside.
“We could break in right now,” Joanna suggested.
“No,” Addie said. “Remember, this could be a test of some kind.”
“So what? I’m starving. They could hardly blame us for taking matters into our own hands. How do you know sitting around waiting is what passes this test anyway? Maybe they want us to react.”
“What could that prove to them?”
“Well…” Bud thought a moment. “Maybe they want to witness our desire to survive. Maybe—”
“Or maybe Lyle is right,” Addie said. “Maybe Nuala really is just punishing us for last night. Maybe she doesn’t like us thinking for ourselves at the expense of her plans.”
“All I know is I’m hungry and I might die waiting much longer,” Joanna said.
“Nobody’s dying two days without food.”
“So you just want to wait forever?”
“Not forever. Just one more night. Tomorrow, I said. Tomorrow we’ll do it your way.”
Joanna turned back to the guesthouse grumbling. She looked over her shoulder as she went, Bud and Addie standing tired under the sun at the edge of the house’s shadow, and she said, “Better pray the doctor’s got a stockpile of food in there, then. We’ll need it.”
Another day was spent. They retired to their bedrooms, tried to rest as best they could on their empty bellies. While not as vocal as Joanna, Addie was beginning to understand her frustration. As she tossed and turned, arms held around her sunken middle, the same thoughts grated along her skull again and again, like messages on a faulty record.
The doctor brought them here, she thought. He brought them here, held them here, tried to instill fear in them to stay. He told them it was to save them, to protect them from themselves. Some of these might have been Nuala’s words, but it was all the same. And Addie wondered now—burning up under her covers in the dull, hot night—what protecting them from themselves was really worth if they were only to fall victim to the doctor’s negligence anyway? Did he really only save them to abandon them? Surely not. And it was this idea which kept her from following Joanna’s line of thought.
Except… where were they, then?
Maybe Bud was right. Maybe they wanted to witness their will to survive. They were somewhere close, watching, waiting for them to have had enough, to come marching with their fists balled, their tempers cut short… and here Addie was, fine with settling on patient obedience. And yet… if an outburst was what the doctor wanted, she almost felt inclined not to give it to him just for that sake. She’d tired already of Nuala’s manipulation—did she want to risk playing into it further? The probing and analyzing was beginning to carry an awful edge itself.
Was there anything the doctor wouldn’t see coming?
A ruckus brought Addie upright in bed. A door flung open and footsteps stomped through the house. She cast her covers aside and hurried from her room after them.
In the foyer, the front door flew open, a wedge of moonlight crawled over the floor and walls. It was Joanna. Addie followed after her fuming form, nearly tripped over the folds her tantrum-footsteps had put in the runner. She started across the yard, the dirt hard and numb under her feet, and was about to whisper for Joanna when Joanna bent and lifted a stone from the ground on her way to the doctor’s house.
“Joanna!” she called. “No!”
She ran to her just as she cocked the stone back in a heavy fist. Addie seized her by the wrist.
“Joanna, don’t!”
“Get the fuck off me…”
Joanna shook Addie off, threw an elbow into her gut, and Addie fell back on the dirt. She gripped her stomach where the air escaped her and climbed to her knees. Filled with dry aching, she tried to catch her breath. Her eyes wandered over the dirt, expecting to hear glass shatter under stone any second… when she saw something standing in the grass at the yard’s edge.
“Joanna…” she wheezed, and she pulled at Joanna’s pajamas. “Joanna, stop… she’s here…”
The sound of breaking glass never came. In fact, after a moment of quiet dread, the stone fell to the dirt next to Addie, rolled against her ankle.
The figure was there again, dark and misshapen, sprouting from the wild grass under the night sky. Its glowing eyes vibrated. It didn’t move. Just watched.
There was a strange noise then that Addie couldn’t put her finger on, but when she pulled her eyes away from the feathered giant in the field and observed Joanna, her shaking body, legs buckled, she saw a dark puddle spreading around her feet, turning the dirt dark and moist.
Joanna, you’re nothing but bark…
It was the thing in the field, though. Addie had to admit she was frozen herself, unsure of what might happen next. It stood watching, brazen in its observation.
It’s her, Addie thought, remembering what Joanna had said before. I can tell now. Something about it. Its patience. The way it studies us. Like it’s waiting for something. For us to do something worth studying. Provoking us. Playing with us. Entertained by us. She thinks she knows us.
“I’ll give you a breakthrough,” Addie muttered.
She crawled to her knees, scooped the dropped stone into her palm, and before she could imagine an outcome or a consequence, legs swishing like busy scissors, she was advancing on the tall, gaunt being at the yard’s edge. Her fingers thrummed nervously over the stone in her fist, not knowing what they were about to use it for. It couldn’t be known. Her mind was blank and cold and static with fury-frost. Her body felt gummy and weightless. The creature didn’t budge, didn’t brace itself. For a moment she thought she might throw the stone, pitch it at the creature the way Joanna had meant to pitch it at the doctor’s window. But her footfalls were quicker than her shaky arms, so that when she raised the stone above her head, poised her shoulders to let it fly, she was already close enough for them to touch.
She swung the stone upon the creature’s face and it crumbled into a heap in the grass. Like nothing.
“Again!” Joanna cried from behind, blubbering between her words. “Hit her again!”
The creature was on its back and its eyes weren’t glowing anymore. Addie gazed at the bottom of the stone in her hand, like a crystal ball with an omen inside, and wasn’t sure why she’d done it. She stood looking at it until Joanna appeared and stole it from her hand.
“I’ll finish her off,” she said, and her words were thick with fear.
Just then a door burst open behind them. Addie and Joanna startled.
It was the doctor’s house. A figure emerged, moving down the porch steps. They came to the middle of the yard and stopped. Involuntarily, Addie and Joanna found themselves huddled next to each other.
The figure was tall and narrow, dressed in a long, heavy coat that ended at its knees. Its head, like the feathered creature but also different, was misshapen somehow. It looked as though a large sack of potatoes sat between its shoulders.
Joanna screamed and fled back to the guesthouse, dropped the stone somewhere in the grass along the way. Addie remained rooted in place. The figure focused on her, didn’t even turn to see Joanna go. Addie struggled to find her voice. When it finally came rising, creeping up, it croaked.
“Dr. Lull… is… is that you?”
The figure said nothing. Addie wondered why she didn’t run too. She also wondered why Joanna would consider the guesthouse a safe place. Nothing was safe here…
The figure came toward her, rustling and scuffing. As it got closer, Addie realized her guess had been right�
�there was a sack between its shoulders. A cloth sack over its head.
She shook violently as it approached, squeezed her eyes shut against it when it stood directly before her, let out a squeaky gasp as it brushed her aside.
“Please—“
When she opened her eyes, the figure had moved past and was making its way to the creature in the field. Only… it wasn’t a creature anymore. A naked woman lay in the grass, bare and exposed to the warm night. Addie took a curious step toward them, mouth drawn. It was her, all right. The figure knelt next to Nuala’s naked body. Her breasts heaved tiredly. Her forehead just above her brow was dark with blood. The figure scooped her into its arms. Having come closer behind them in her curiousness, Addie stepped back as the figure stood, Nuala bent and cradled against its chest.
“I’m sorry…”
The figure moved back toward the house, across the dirt. Addie watched them go, filled with both terror and shame. The figure stopped at the bottom of the porch and turned to her. Facing her, without a word, it nodded its head in the direction of the front door, gesturing for Addie to help.
Without hesitation, she hurried after them, slid past them with fearful wonder in the corners of her eyes, and climbed the porch to the front door where she turned the knob and pushed it open into darkness. The figure, laden with Nuala’s weight in its arms, lumbered up the creaky porch steps and entered the dark house while Addie held the door. She stood there a minute longer, listening to them bump around in the dark, until finally a light was lit, a small but bright lantern on the corner of a large wooden table in the center of the room. There was a couch against the wall, on which Nuala’s body now lay sprawled. The figure, which Addie assumed must be the doctor, hovered over her, listening to her labored breath.
The doctor crossed the room, bathed in a yellow-orange glow, and fetched an empty bucket from the corner. He thrust it into Addie’s arms. She looked into it, finding that it was indeed empty, and peered dumbfounded at the doctor’s covered head. He pointed out the door, down into the yard. Thinking she understood, she nodded. She quickly filled the bucket with water and returned inside where she found the doctor kneeling on the floor next to the couch with a washrag in his hand. She set the bucket down next to him. He dipped the washrag into the bucket, wrung it out, and used the damp washrag against Nuala’s forehead, a purple bruise of torn and bloody skin. He did this several times.
