“Mommy? Mommy? ” Bethie gives a sudden, shrill shout. “Sarah’s being sick!”
• • •
Hours later:
She’s burning up, sprawled in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets. She’s inched as far away as possible from her little sister, who shares with her in winter. Deeply asleep, Bethie lets out the occasional musical snore. From downstairs drifts the low mutter of the TV punctuated by the occasional, breathless OH WOW TIGHT GLUTES note. Infomercials mean Mom’s probably finished off that bottle of cheap red wine she snagged on the way home. You’d think that Sarah puking her guts out might prompt a mom to, oh, take her sick kid home or at least climb out and hold her kid’s forehead while she yorps, but nooo. (Instead, Ms. Avery did that, one skeletal hand, ooky with liquefying flesh, on her forehead and the other, equally as disgusting, holding back Sarah’s hair.) After Sarah emptied her stomach and was down to dry heaves, her mother swung by Jake’s Liquor, where her credit was still good.
It’s not right. Sweat dribbles down her temples to soak her hair. Raw eyed and furious, Sarah stares at shadows swarming and bunching in the well of her ceiling. Her busy, busy fingers caress what she’s stolen from Hank. Mom says we have no money, but she can buy smokes and booze.
Adults are such pricks. In a far corner Ms. Avery—or whatever the ghost’s becoming—perches ghoulishly like a gigantic, malevolent parrot atop the rail of a straight-backed chair. When the ghost moves, it rustles like dry corn husks. Yet her voice seeps from the tiny owl’s skull Sarah holds. But you’re just as bad, you liar.
I’m not a liar. She fingers the skull. She just didn’t volunteer. Don’t ask, don’t tell. He’s my dad.
Among other things.
“What does that mean?” And, oh, why isn’t she surprised when the skull chooses not to answer? Fine, keep secrets. Bitch. (Another word she never says but which feels good and right nonetheless.) She shifts her gaze back to the ceiling. Those shadows creep her out, and after what she’s seen today, that’s saying something. She thinks they are faces. In fact, they’re like those monster-angels from an Indiana Jones movie: first pretty and then raving skeletons. Heck, maybe that’s Ms. Avery. Maybe Sarah’s only getting the monster-angel she deserves.
A rustle from the corner: Perhaps I am the angel you need.
Sarah returns her gaze to the tiny skull’s wise, eyeless sockets. “For what?”
Big surprise: no answer. Bitch. She clenches the owl skull, hard and then harder. Be easy to crush, grind to dust. Her dad does that. Says bone’s good for the garden, so he dumps the skeletons of his kills into a fire barrel, gives it all a good, long squirt of lighter fluid, and whump! Then her dad stirs and stirs, like a witch at a cauldron, raising great black clouds that coat her nose and throat and turn her spit black.
He’s inside you, the owl skull says. You’re infected with him, his crime.
“No, I’m just a kid. Can I help it that you were so stupid you didn’t stop to think that maybe he was danger—”
All of a sudden, a knife of bright yellow light slices her room, going from left to right as someone turns into their drive.
Uh-oh, the skull says.
Car. Her heart crams up against her teeth. Whoever this is, she can tell from the way the gauzy curtain has lit up that he/she/it is simply waiting, coming no closer but not going away either. Pulse thumping, she holds her breath and listens above the still-muttering TV. After a second she catches the slight chug-chug-chug of an idling engine. Who would come by this late at night?
Take a guess. In the corner the Ms. Avery–thing swells and stretches with a rustle. A limb moves into and then out of the light. The moment is brief, but Sarah can see how thin Ms. Avery’s arm now is, the skin shiny and taut. Skeletal. Ms. Avery’s like an X-ray come to life.
Forget me, the skull says as the light firing Sarah’s curtains winks out. You’ve got bigger problems.
Slipping from bed, Sarah pads to the window, then carefully inserts a single finger into the slit between her curtains. High above the trees the moon is a thick, blue-white thumbnail. Lances of bright silver moonlight spear through trees and glimmer over a truck perched at the very mouth of the drive. Then, an orange flash from the truck’s dome light as the driver pops his door, and Sarah gets the general impression of a stocky man with big shoulders, a bull neck. Unfolding from his seat, he stands, muscled arms loose by his sides. She doesn’t need light to know that his hands are large, the knuckles sprouting black wiry corkscrews, the backs matted with so much hair his buddies tease that his mom musta married Bigfoot.
It still might be okay. Dread walks the knobs of her spine. He’s not coming any . . . That thought stutters as he pulls something long and heavy from the truck.
You know, the skull says, now would be a good time.
“Bethie!” Whirling, she dashes to the bed. “Get up, Bethie, get up!” Then she’s out the door, sprinting for the stairs. “Mom! MOM! ”
The only light downstairs is the soft blue pulse of the still-muttering TV. On the screen some guy’s spazzing about soap guaranteed to take away any stain, even blood. Sprawled on a lumpy couch, her mother’s asleep, head flung back, her neck arched as a swan’s. The air is fruity with cheap booze.
“Mom!” She gives her a violent shake. “Wake up!”
“Huh?” Her mother opens a single bleary eye. “Wuh?”
“Mom, get up!” Sarah throws a look toward the boarded-up bay window. She can’t see out, but that also means her dad can’t see in. So, if we’re quiet, move fast, we can get out of the house. She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Mom, Dad’s here.”
“Daddy?” Sarah can’t tell if her sister is scared or excited. Maybe she’s a bit of both. “He’s outside?” Bethie asks.
“Wuh?” Moaning, her mom struggles to a sit. “Honey, go back to bed.” Propping her forehead in one hand, she yawns. “Your dad’s not . . .”
“Mom, I saw him. His truck’s blocking the driveway.” When her mother doesn’t respond, she gives her another impatient poke. “Mom, please.”
“Sweetie,” her mother says, thickly, “I don’t think . . .”
And that’s when the lights go out.
• • •
Oh no. Sarah stares at the ceiling as if this might make the suddenly dark fixture wink back to life. In the corner the TV screen is only a muddy, gray, quickly fading glow. “It’s Dad,” she says, her voice hoarse with urgency. “Mom, he cut the lights.”
“But why?” Bethie asks. “Mommy, did you forget to pay the ’lectric bill?”
“No,” her mother says, her voice still gluey, although Sarah can now hear a note of worry.
You’re running out of time. The skull warms the hollow of her throat. Until this moment, Sarah hasn’t realized that she slipped the cord around her neck. Get out, now.
The skull’s right. “Mom.” Sarah pulls at her arm. “We have to go!”
“Go?” her mother echoes.
“Go where?” Bethie says. “You mean, out . . .”
BANG! The sound is sharp, hard, an explosion. Crying out, Sarah wheels around as, from just beyond the front door, there comes a harsh bellow: “Jean?” Another bang as either her dad’s fist—or the club end of that bat or axe—connects with the front door. “Jean?”
“Oh!” There is a glassy clink as either her mother’s knee or hand knocks a bottle or glass. Something topples, and then the stink of booze rises in a stinging cloud. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” her mother says, but she’s on her feet at least.
“Jean!”—and then there is a sound that is not a bang or bap but a hollow chock, and Sarah thinks, Axe. The cheap door bawls a high, grinding squeal that echoes Bethie’s shrill screech. “Open the damn door!” her dad shouts.
“Mom!” Sarah finds her mother’s wrist and hangs on. “What do we do?”
“I . . .” Her mother swallows. “Basement. Or your room. Lock the door and . . .”
“Against an axe?” Another hollow chock. The front doo
r rattles in its frame, and something—a chunk of wood—tocks to the floor. Splinters of light seep through sudden cracks in wood. “Mom, we can’t. He’ll break through every door if he has to, and there’s no way out of the basement!” Get trapped down there and they’ll be like muskrats that save her dad the trouble. “What do we . . .”
Here. Craning, Sarah looks down the hall toward the kitchen. There, two red sparks hover in midair. Back door. This way. Hurry.
“We’ll go out the kitchen.” Sarah tugs harder at her mother’s hand. “Mom, we have to leave!”
“Into the w-w-woods?” Hiccupping, Bethie’s voice hitches. “It’s d-d-dark!”
“No, not the woods.” Sarah’s thinking of the shed, her dad’s nasty Glock, the rifle. If she can get to a gun . . .
And do what? From its place around her neck, the skull thrums. The shotgun and pistol are too heavy. You might manage the rifle, but you’ve never shot a moving target, much less a person. No, Sarah, there’s another way.
“What other way?” Sarah shouts at the cinder-red eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“S-Sarah?” Bethie wails. And her mother: “Sarah, who are you talking to?”
Sarah pays them no mind. “Tell me!”
Do what I say. The skull is relentless, as remorseless as the tide. This house is lost. Run, Sarah. Run NOW.
“BITCH!” Sarah rages as, outside, her father bellows again—and they are, for that second, one voice eerily in sync. “This way!” Sarah yanks her sister toward the kitchen. “Mom, come on!”
“Wait, wait!” Bethie balks. “Sarah, the woods are scary. . . .”
“Scarier than Dad?” She isn’t wild about the woods either. Where would they go? Her dad knows them. They’re his. No, best to get to the shed, a gun . . .
No, Sarah. The owl has grown so hot that it is flame. Do what I . . .
“Jean?” Through a jagged gap in the front door, Sarah sees her father. His face is thickly bearded as if his skin hasn’t seen a razor in months. His long hair is a ratty tangle. He looks like a mountain man who’s been hunkered in a cave. “Damn it, look what you made me do.”
“What do you want, John?” Her mother’s come to stand between them and her husband. Her tone is surprisingly steady. “You want to talk? Fine. But you have to stop this.”
“Mom!” Sarah pitches her voice into a harsh whisper. “What are you doing?”
Giving you a chance. The Avery-thing is just to her right, above her shoulder. Sarah can’t tell how large it is, but her hair riffles over her forehead from the force of its wings. Run, Sarah.
“Goddamn it, Jean, will you just open . . .” Another blast from the axe, and now there is blue light as moonbeams spill through wide splits.
Her mother doesn’t budge, and now Sarah understands why her mother stands where she does: so their father can’t see where they’ve gone. No, I can’t leave you, Mom. We can’t . . .
“Go.” Her mother doesn’t look, but her hand moves in a quick snap. “Get out, girls. Go now.”
“But, Muh-muh-muhmmeee!” Bethie wails. “We c-can’t . . .”
Yes, we can. We have to. And maybe it will be all right; maybe nothing bad will happen, and maybe pigs have wings, but at that moment, Sarah has never loved her mother more for giving them this one chance.
She’s right. Go, the skull urges. Don’t make this be for nothing.
“Come on, Bethie.” Dashing to the back door, Sarah wrenches it open at the same instant that her father finally breaks through. She doesn’t look around, but she hears her mother trying to soothe him. “John, take it easy. We can talk.” Then: “John, I don’t want to die.”
“Yeah?” The word is rough, guttural, a growl. “You shoulda thought of that before.”
Sarah doesn’t wait for any more. She pulls her sister out the back door, and they plunge into the night.
• • •
The cold slaps. Icy fingers jab through her thin pj’s to sting her arms, her legs. Stones and twigs bite her bare feet, and she stumbles as her toes fetch up on a rock. A bolt of pain shudders into her right ankle, and she gasps, her breath bluing in the moonlight.
“Ow, ow!” Beside her, Bethie staggers. “This hurts!”
“Too bad.” They are a good fifty yards from the house now, out by the burn barrel with its oily reek. “We have to keep going. We can’t—”
A scream, high and shrill and bloody, rips the night. Starting, Sarah whirls as another scream boils from the black maw of the open back door.
“Mom! She’s hurt!” Bethie cries out. “Sarah, Mommy’s . . .”
Mom’s dead. “Come on.” Turning away, she pulls her still-stumbling sister after. She is aware of a presence above and off her right shoulder, a rush of air. She risks a single glance, and it is so odd because, in the moonlight, there ought to be something: an outline, a form. Yet there are only those steady red eyes and a larger blackness looming in the dark surround. From far away, in the bog, comes the hoo-hoo-hoo of a horned owl, doleful as a foghorn.
“But wh-where?” Bethie is gasping. “Where are we going?”
The woods, the skull says. The bog.
No way. “Over here,” Sarah says, veering not left but right toward a wink of glass.
“The shed?” Bethie asks. “Are we going to hide?”
If they are lucky, they won’t have to. Grappling for the knob, Sarah heaves a relieved sigh as the cold metal turns, and the tongue snicks back. All right. But when she pushes, the door creaks only two inches before hitching up with a metallic clank. No, God, that’s not fair! Her fingers spider over the rectangle of a hasp and staple secured with a chunky padlock. No, when did he do that?
Go into the woods. The skull’s voice drills into the center of her brain. Head left, for the bog.
“No, are you crazy?” she hisses. “Help us!”
“Sarah?” Bethie sounds even more frightened. “Who . . .”
I am. I will. This comes not from the skull but her far left and high up. Sarah lifts her gaze to find the Avery-thing’s eyes burning bright as beacons. Bethie. Up here.
“A tree?” Sarah says, and then realizes: Wait . . .
“What tree?” Bethie asks.
“My old tree house.” She looks down at her sister. “You climb and hide . . .”
“Girls?” Jumping, they both wheel. The house is far enough distant now that their father is only a lumpish bear of a man on the back stoop. “Girls?” From the question and then the pause, it’s clear he can’t see them. “Kids?”
“Listen,” Sarah murmurs to her sister. “When I say go, you head for the tree house. Stay there until it’s safe, okay?”
Bethie’s stricken. “You’re leaving?”
“Just for a little while.” She grabs her sister in a rough hug. “As soon as I move, you run, okay?”
Bethie presses her face into Sarah’s middle. “Please, don’t die.”
“I won’t,” she says, not knowing if this is a lie. Then, before she can change her mind, she pivots and sprints for an open patch of ground splashed with moonlight.
“Hey!” her father shouts, and she knows she’s been spotted. “Sarah, wait!”
“No!” The trees suddenly loom, and then she’s in the woods. The air hooshes in a gush, or maybe those are wings beating at her back, speeding her on. The forest is alive, all greedy arms and whippy fingers and sharp talons snatching her hair. Something juts for an eye, and she gasps, jerking aside, feeling a branch draw a line of fire on her cheek. Over the thunder of her pulse she can hear him thrashing after, bullish and wild, hot on her trail.
He missed Bethie. Her breath tears in and out of her throat. She’s safe. But maybe not for long. If I can get to the bog . . . Yet how will that help? She doesn’t know, and neither the Avery-thing nor the skull will say.
“Sarah!” Her father bellows something formless, the bawl of a dragon, a gargoyle. A devil. Maybe, in these woods and at this moment, he is no more human than the Avery-thing. Maybe the
animal in him is so immense he can’t contain it any longer. “SARAHHHH!”
Ahead, the fork appears. Go right, and she can circle out of the woods and to the road. Instead, she veers left. Her lungs burn. Her heart thrashes the cage of her ribs. Come on, come on. Her feet are one bright blister of agony, and she is vaguely aware that the sudden slippery feeling on her soles must be blood. How much farther . . .
And then there it is, flashing to brilliance. Studded with tamaracks, as straight and true as ships’ masts, the bog gleams like a vast mirror-ocean. Along the deepest channels to her left, muskrat houses rise in messy jackstraw islands.
Now what? What do I . . . Suddenly, the ground under her feet turns cold. Startled, she comes to a dead stop. Ice. No wonder the bog is so bright. It’s iced over. Is it thick enough? At the thought her toes curl like frightened snails. I can’t walk on thin ice.
You don’t have a choice, the skull hisses. Go.
“Sarah!” It’s her dad, coming on strong, blowing hard as a bull. “Sarah, don’t make me have to punish you!”
Go! Turning, she sprints onto the ice, something she shouldn’t be able to do but does. She is moving fast, nearly flying, racing over paths of glare ice. Yet, with every step, the bog shudders and groans and cracks. It ought to break apart but doesn’t. What am I doing, what’s happening? This bog and these channels go on for miles. It hits her then that she hasn’t seen the Avery-thing’s eyes in what seems like forever. There is no sense of anything at her shoulder. It’s gone? The thought makes her stop. At a glance she can see that she’s somehow made it to the middle of a broad expanse of ice, a span that is easily an acre, studded with only a few muskrats’ houses poking up like dark anthills.
“Where are you? Ms. Avery?” No answer. Hauling out the tiny screech owl skull on its leather cord, she gives it a ferocious squeeze. “Don’t leave me!”
“Believe me, sugar”—and at that, her heart fails because she knows, even before she turns: she’s done for.
“I won’t,” her dad says.
• • •
“Come on now.” His voice sounds like he hasn’t used it in a century. Her father holds out a hand, and she can see a thick, oily stain slicking his palm that stinks of wet iron and which she knows is her mother’s blood. Moonlight breaks over his head and shoulders, and if it is possible, he is hairier than ever, as shaggy as a beast.