Annie's Room (7 page)

She lets out a yipped cry and recoils, scurrying back into the shadows.

A broad smile crosses my face, and when I look at my finger I see a hint of blood under the nail. I know it's wrong of me to take on one of Father's tasks, but I truly can't deny that it feels good to experience a sliver of his power. It's almost as if I'm an extension of him.

Half an hour later, once I've gone back to the kitchen and washed the dishes, I'm finally ready to go to bed. I notice some drips on the kitchen floor, but when I look at the ceiling I'm unable to see any kind of hole. Getting onto my hands and knees, I wipe the drips up, keen to ensure that the house is tidy and clean. This, after all, is honest work. Finally, a little before midnight, I'm done, and I feel a sense of great satisfaction before heading upstairs.

When I get to the landing, I open the door to my room and see Father sleeping in the bed. I feel as if he has doubts still, and I have to find a way to ease those doubts so that Mother isn't rehabilitated and brought back up. I suppose it will just take time. Besides, Mother is such a mess now, it's clear she can never resume her old position. Smiling, I step into the room and push the door shut.

Eleven

Today

“You look stupid,” Scott says, sitting on a chair in the corner of my room and watching as I get ready to stand. “You know that, right? You look really, really -”

“Thanks for the pep talk,” I reply, wedging the crutches in my armpits. “You're a real confidence-booster, you know that? You should think about a career in motivational -”

Feeling a pinch of pain in my right knee, I let out a gasp.

“Loser,” Scott mutters.

I've spent all day psyching myself up to try the crutches, but now that the moment is here I can't help feeling a little worried. What if I can't do this? I've been in bed for three days now and I swear I'm going to go stir crazy if I don't manage to get out of this goddamn room, but at the same time my plaster-encased legs are already starting to hurt just from the effort of swinging them over the bed's side, and now even the thought of lifting myself up with the crutches and trying to reach the door... Well, let's just say that in my current state, even a simple task feels like way too much.

“Are you going to do this or not?” Scott asks. “And why do
I
have to be here?”

“I'm going to do it,” I mutter, adjusting the crutches, “and you don't
have
to be here, I just don't want Mom and Dad to know I'm trying this and I figured you could help.”

I take another moment to compose myself, before counting down from three in my head and finally starting to haul myself up. The effort is way, way more than I expected, and I feel as if I'm about to collapse as I slowly raise myself on the tottering crutches. Holding my breath, I eventually let out a gasp as I set just a little weight on my less-damaged-of-the-two right leg, hoping against hope that I might be able to at the very least hobble about. Damn it, I knew this would be hard, but I never expected it to be
this
bad.

“I think people with crutches need to have one good leg,” Scott points out. “I don't think this is going to work.”

“Quiet!” I hiss, steadying myself. The pain in my legs – both of them – is way more than I'm willing to let on right now. “I'm going to try to make it to the door.”

“If you fall over and hurt yourself, it's not my fault.”

Ignoring him, I try to turn toward the door, before realizing that even this simple movement feels like a Herculean task. I stop and try to consider alternatives for a moment, but finally I figure that I have to somehow scooch the crutches an inch or two at a time. To be honest, I'm already realizing that this whole experiment is a mistake, and if Scott wasn't watching and commenting on the whole thing, I'd be giving up right about now. Then again, I figure I just need to have a little more confidence.

“Mom and Dad are being weird,” he says after a moment.

“Sounds about right.”

“I mean
weird
,” he continues with a frown. “I don't like it.”

Seeing the sense of concern in his eyes, I realize my brother is doing something he's never done before: he's actually opening up to me about his feelings. Glad of the chance to just rest on the crutches and delay the attempt to turn, I wait for him to continue, but he seems almost nervous. First Mom started acting out of character, and now apparently it's Scott's turn.

“Go on,” I say finally. “Details.”

He shrugs.

“Give me an example,” I add.

“Mom was in the basement after lunch,” he continues, “and when I went down to see what she was doing, she shooed me out like a dog. She was acting like she had something down there she didn't want me to see.”

“It's your birthday in two months,” I reply. “Maybe she's just really organized this year.”

“And then Dad got back from the store and when he realized she was down there, he got, like, really mad. Really,
really
mad.”

“That doesn't sound like Dad,” I point out. “I didn't hear anything from up here.”

“I heard them from the kitchen,” he replies. “Dad was telling her off down there, and then it sounded like...” He pauses. “It sounded like he was pushing her up the stairs really hard. Now she's got this bruise on her arm.”

I stare at him for a moment.

“Dad wouldn't
hurt
Mom, would he?” he asks finally, and it's clear that he's worried. Either that, or he's gotten a lot better at trolling me since his last pathetic attempt.

“Dad would
never
hurt Mom,” I reply, trying not to dwell too much on such a crazy idea. “I think you must've got the wrong end of the stick somehow. I'm sure Dad wasn't mad at her, and there are a million ways someone could get a bruise on their arm.” I wait for him to say something, but he seems to have sunk into his own thoughts. One thing's certain: he's not making any of this up, he's genuinely worried. “What's in the basement, anyway?”

He shrugs again.

“You haven't been down there?” I ask. “Seriously? I thought you were, like, exploring the whole house?”

“Dad keeps it locked.”

“So where's the key?”

“There's a key to the lock, and there's also a padlock, and that needs a key too. I don't know where either of them are, and he told me not to go down there.”

“He did?” Pausing, I can't help thinking that there have to be a few elements missing in this story. After all, the behavior Scott's describing sounds nothing like Dad at all. The last thing I need is for all three of my closest family members to starting acting out of character. “I really don't think I'm up to getting all the way to the basement on these crutches,” I tell him, “but why don't you just find the keys when Mom and Dad are out, and then you can look?”

“Dad told Mom he's keeping the keys on him,” he replies. “He told her he doesn't trust her anymore.”

“He said those exact words?”

He nods.

“Well...” Although I want to dismiss everything he's saying, I can see the genuine fear in his eyes, and even though I don't want to admit it, I really don't think my little brother is capable of pulling off such a convincing lie. He
is
, however, capable of putting two and two together and coming up with completely the wrong answer.

“I heard scratches, too,” he continues.

“Scratches?”

“Like something scratching under the kitchen floor last night. Mom and Dad were in the front room, so I know it wasn't them.”

“It must have been a mouse or something.”

He stares at me, and I can tell he isn't convinced.

“Don't worry about it,” I tell him, hoping to ease his concerns. “I'm sure everything's fine, Dad hasn't suddenly turned into this monster and even if he did, there's no way Mom would stand for any of it. Two people can't just change their whole personalities overnight. And a house like this is
bound
to have mice.”

He continues to stare at me.

“Wanna watch me struggle to get to the door?” I ask, hoping to cheer him up.

He shrugs.

Adjusting myself on the crutches, I get ready to traverse the couple of meters to the doorway. “This might not be pretty,” I point out, and then I wait for him to say something. “Then again,” I add, “when is
anything
I do pretty, right?” I wait for him to laugh, but he's just staring down at the floor. For my brother to miss an opportunity to make fun of me is unusual. Figuring I just have to get on with things, I take a deep breath, focus for a moment, and then put just the slightest amount of weight on my right leg, just enough to send a shudder of pain up through all the cracked bones.

I let out a gasp of pain.

Scott doesn't laugh this time.

And then I shuffle forward, scratching the leg of my left crutch against the wooden floorboards and, in the process, producing a sound not unlike fingernails being drawn down a chalkboard.

Scott winces and puts his hands over his ears.

Glancing at the floor, I see with a hint of satisfaction that I've carved a faint line in the wood.

“Well,” I mutter, feeling the sting of under-used muscles in my shoulders, “I guess I won't be able to sneak up on anyone with these.”

After taking another deep breath, I shuffle forward again, and this time the scratching sound is even louder. Finally, almost unbelievably, I reach the doorway and lean against the frame for a moment, before peering around the edge and looking along the bare corridor. To my surprise, I find that nothing has changed since I was carried up to my room three days ago.

“Huh,” I mutter, “I thought Mom and Dad were gonna start decorating this place.” I look back at Scott. “Are they starting downstairs instead?”

He shakes his head.

“Haven't they started
at all
?” I ask.

He shakes his head again.

“So what
have
they been doing?”

“I don't know,” he replies, “just... Dad seems to be watching Mom a lot, like he wants to see what she's doing all the time. It's like he doesn't want her to be alone.”

“Dad's way too laid-back to be like that,” I point out.

He shrugs.

“None of this sounds quite right,” I continue. “I haven't seen Dad today, but yesterday he seemed his usual, happy-go-lucky self. I mean, he was a little snappy when it got late, but that's understandable.”

“Then Mom had that nightmare,” Scott points out.

“Has she told you anything about it?”

He shakes his head.

“Has she told
Dad
anything about it?”

“I think they were talking about it earlier. When I walked into the hallway, they stopped but... Dad looked angry.”

Figuring that what he's saying doesn't make much sense, I glance down at the side of the door-frame and spot the words 'Annie's room' carved crudely into the wood. The lettering is basic and almost infantile.

“So did you do this or not?” I ask.

He cranes his neck to see what I mean. “No,” he says after a moment. “That wasn't me. Was it you?”

“How would
I
do have managed to do it?” I ask. “No, it must have been the other -” I stop myself just in time, before I can mention the
other
Annie, the one who disappeared seventy-one years ago. Staring at the carving now, it's more than a little creepy to think of my namesake standing in this exact doorway one day and scratching her name into the wood. For a moment, I try to imagine what she was like, and I can't shake the feeling that since Mom and Dad haven't started decorating yet, the house is probably more or less in the same state it was in all those years ago. Looking out to the landing, I try to imagine the other Annie running from her murderous parents, but the image falls apart when I realize I can't possibly imagine what could have driven two people to murder their own daughter.

“I don't like this house,” Scott says suddenly.

I turn to him. “I've barely seen beyond the end of my own -”

Before I can finish, my left crutch shifts, slipping across the floorboards too fast for me to correct my position. I try to grab hold of the door-frame but it's far too late and, instead, I tumble forward, crashing into the end of my bed and letting out a yelp of pain as I over-extend my right leg. I immediately slip off the side of the bed and hit the floor, banging my leg again and gasping as I feel a jolting pain in the bone, racing up through all the cracks. Seconds later, before I even have a chance to get to my feet, I can already hear frantic steps racing up the stairs and finally my father appears in the doorway.

“What the hell is going on in here?” he asks, his eyes filled with shock.

“I didn't do anything!” Scott shouts, drawing his knees up as if to make himself as small as possible. He's scared.

“I'm fine,” I splutter, even though – as I try and fail to haul myself up onto the bed – it's clear that I'm not fine at all. Even though I don't want to ask, I'm relieved when my father grabs hold of me and pulls me forward, and then he rolls me over and drags me all the way onto the bed before taking a look at the casts on my legs. To be honest, he seems much rougher than before, as if he's annoyed.

“Are you completely crazy?” he hisses, examining the plaster before stopping when he gets to the lower part of my right leg. “There's a crack here.”

“I'm sorry,” I reply, leaning back with tears of frustration in my eyes, “I just wanted to get out of this goddamn room! I'm going crazy in here!”

“Well,” he continues, “you've probably slowed your recovery down now. Does it hurt?”

“No,” I lie.

“Annie, be honest.”

“No more than usual.”

He touches my bare toes. “Can you feel that?”

“Yes!” I reply, starting to feel increasingly impatient with my own body.

“I should call the doctor,” he mutters, “but... We'll see how it goes.”

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I prop myself up on my elbows and watch as he continues to examine my casts. Dad has always been quick to call a doctor whenever anything happens, so it seems odd that this time he's not going to bother. It's not that I
want
a doctor to come, but at the same time, I want my father to be his usual self, especially after everything Scott was saying earlier.