Cauchemar (16 page)

Hannah patted her stomach. “I thought your business was death.” She was surprised to see a bead of sweat grow at the edge of her mother's nose. The woman's touch had always been arctic. The sight of sweat on Christobelle's skin, and the blush rising above her scarf, were unusual.

“Right now, my business is you. Who fathered the child?”

Mae had told her little about Christobelle, but she'd always implied that the woman had an omnipotent knowledge of Hannah's life. Hannah had grown up with the sense of being watched from a distance, which was infinitely worse than being watched from proximity. There were no corners to hide in.

“I would've thought you'd know all about him, being so well informed.”

Christobelle massaged the knuckles of her left hand. She ground her teeth in even, measured spurts. “He's hidden from me. Veiled.” The room filled with the aching sound of enamel flaking away.

“I appreciate the concern, but it's none of your business.”

“It is precisely my business!” The yell was masculine, enraged, and Hannah shrank back.

To calm herself, she pulled a few socks from the laundry basket beside the couch and began pairing them. “Callum. You might've seen him at Mae's funeral.”

“The blue-eyed man? The light-haired one?”

“That's him,” Hannah said, rolling her shoulders. “He's a good man. He's taken good care of me.”

“I see feathers,” Christobelle muttered under her breath as she rubbed her forehead. “Only feathers around you.” She squinted around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

“Anyways, there's been talk of marriage, but we're taking things as they come. We agree there's no need to rush into things. We're happy here.”

“You're going to keep it?”

Hannah tossed the balled up socks aside and stood up, her hands clasping around her elbows. Although in her darker moments, she still sometimes wondered if she'd made the right choice, the idea that she might not have kept the child, now that she'd grown used to the heaviness inside her, felt foul. “Of course.”

“That's a mistake.” Christobelle spoke slowly. “It will weaken you. It will come out wrong, child, if it comes out at all.”

“My baby is a mistake,” Hannah repeated in a flat voice.

“You cannot imagine the sacrifice it took to bear you or the effort to protect you all this time. At least I had Mae to bolster me. I fear it will be the same for you, and you need your strength for yourself. ”

Hannah plastered a smile onto her face. “Samuel,” she called into the kitchen, “time's up.”

Christobelle spoke over her, intoning each word carefully. “You are my child. You are my blood. You can ignore it, but you cannot avoid it. Things transfer.”

“I'm nothing like you,” Hannah said, her smile tightening.

“They are gathering around you, child. You're wide open, and lit up like a flame. If you cannot control it, they will consume you—” Her hand lashed out, palm straining for Hannah's belly, and her irises disappeared upwards. The whites of her eyes were tinged with yellow. She chanted in a low voice.

Hannah backed away. Hissing came from behind her and she turned to see Graydon, his old teeth gnashing. She rushed down the hallway on unsteady legs. “Out,” Hannah called. “Right now.” Christobelle's incantations still came in whispers from the living room. “I want you out.”

The men lined up in front of the door, expressionless. The youngest was in his teens, his unlined skin hanging loose from a skeletal face. Hannah couldn't assign an age to the oldest, whose back stooped like a grandfather's.

“Go and get her,” she said to the men, but they continued to stare straight ahead, frozen like wax statues.

Samuel and Christobelle materialized in the half-light, their arms wound together. Hannah looked away as they passed by her, but her mother's sharp-boned hand closed around Hannah's chin and swung her head around.

“I could stay, child,” Christobelle whispered, her breath musty as swamp water. “This is still my house. But I'll go, because I'll relish it more when you come to me. And you will.” Hannah wiggled in her mother's strong grip as her face came closer. Between words, her tongue wiped the front of her teeth. “Do you remember Jacob?”

Hannah flinched. Her legs began to shake, her own body's weight suddenly too much. Christobelle leaned close and licked the palm of her hand, her tongue flicking up over several fingertips. Before Hannah could stop her, she pushed up Hannah's shirt and ran saliva-wet fingers over her stomach. A long line down, and a shorter line across. “You are not alone,” she whispered as Hannah pushed her away and all the men exhaled in unison, a scent of sweet rot lingering briefly in the air then dispersing.

Hannah stood in the open doorway, wiping her stomach, long after the boat disappeared beneath the trees. She tried to understand Christobelle's words, but what made her heart pound was that somehow her mother had known about Jacob. Her greatest shame.

Sarah Anne's bedroom had been blindingly white, and a blown-glass vase on her nightstand held a bouquet of yellow roses. At home, Hannah's own dingy striped blanket was smeared with peach jam and cornbread crumbs.

“It looks impressive, doesn't it?” Sarah Anne asked wryly. She ran her hand over the top of her dresser and showed Hannah her clean fingers. “They have a maid clean it three times a week. My mom's a little bit obsessive compulsive when it comes to the house. She feels weird about being a stay-at-home, but really, what else could she do? Bag groceries in town?”

Sarah Anne pulled out a thick hardcover book of fairy tales. “My mom likes to pretend she doesn't drink, so she chose our maid very carefully.” She cracked the book's spine to reveal a cutout chamber with a large rectangular flask inside where the pages should have been. There were worn initials carved into it. “She doesn't snoop.”

Hannah shot her foot out behind her to close the door.

“It's absinthe.” Sarah Anne ran the open flask under Hannah's nose. The fumes made her head spin. “I met a boy in town who gives me a bottle every once in a while. When he doesn't come through, I fill it with rum from the cabinet downstairs.”

“What does he ask for in return?”

Sarah Anne raised her eyebrows and took a small sip. She wiped her mouth daintily and smacked her lips. “Nothing too scandalous.” She handed the flask over and Hannah tipped it into her mouth. It tasted a bit like anise and she felt a thrill in her pelvis.

“I've never really made out with a boy before.” Hannah sat on the bed, running her hand over the silky cotton. A year back, there'd been a pale boy with glossy hair who had offered her a crown woven from cattails, but they'd gone no further than a wet, uncoordinated kiss that had left her feeling anxious.

Sarah Anne hopped onto the bed, covering the opening of the flask with her thumb, and crossed her legs. “Why not?”

Hannah avoided the question. “Why do you do it?”

Sarah Anne took another long sip. “It's fun. It gets me things, but I wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun.” Hannah flinched as Sarah Anne's nails touched her cheek. “You really are pretty,” she mused. Ignoring the jerking muscles in Hannah's face, Sarah Anne pulled a tube of lipgloss from her pocket and ran it across Hannah's lips. “Smack for me,” she instructed, and Hannah tasted synthetic strawberries. “You have an unusual face.”

Hannah grabbed the flask. “Unusual. Exactly.”

Sarah Anne ran a finger down one of her pin curls, straightening it to its full length. She studied its crisp, slightly frayed end. “It must be nice, not trying so hard all the time.”

Hannah took a long gulp of the absinthe and her shoulders slumped. It made her giddy even as it sapped her body of strength, and the rain began to fall in a soothing rhythm, turning the world outside to watercolor.

Sarah Anne yawned as she rose to close the curtains. The darkness was immediate.

“The rain always makes me so sleepy.” She punched Hannah's leg. “Scoot over.” Hannah sat clutching the flask as Sarah Anne fidgeted out of her skirt and lay in bed. From the corner of her eye, Hannah saw long tanned legs crossing and the fading yellow splotches high up on the thigh. “Are you going to have a nap, too?”

Hannah looked around the room. Shadows swam across the walls. They looked like wingspans, extinguishing the light. “What about your brother?”

“He's fine. He can entertain himself.”

“Don't you ever worry, leaving him alone?”

The silence prompted her to turn around. Sarah Anne was staring at the ceiling, biting the inside of her cheek. “Jacob is much stronger than people think. Sometimes I think the rest is an act he puts on to be left alone, and I—I almost understand it.” The corner of her mouth was wedged between her teeth. “Look under the bed.”

Hannah leaned over the edge of the bed and glimpsed a dark pool of shadows, and a spider dangling from the bedframe. It seemed out of place amidst the perfect order of the bedroom. When she lifted the bedspread, it dropped onto the floor and scurried away. “Why?”

“Look.”

Hannah lowered her head to the plush carpet and saw small mounds laid out in a circle. “Are those stones?” she asked, and when she touched them, they were warm.

Sarah Anne's voice was gruff. “I had to ask around town for a while before someone told me about that.” To Hannah's bewildered face, she whispered, “They're for protection.”

Hannah swung back onto the bed. “What I saw the other day, Jacob grabbing you like that—” She hesitated. Sarah Anne's expression was pained, and she didn't know how to finish the sentence. “I don't think stones are going to solve it. You should tell someone.”

“It's not him,” Sarah Anne said quickly. “At least, not always. I wake up in the night and—” She fisted her hands against her sternum. “Something's sitting here, holding me down. I feel like I can't breathe. The woman in town called it a cauchemar, a spirit. She said they can't count, and stones in a circle will keep them busy all night.”

“Sarah Anne,” Hannah began, then stopped. She could hear her friend's conviction, and she watched as the girl scratched at her cuticles intently.

“I know it sounds silly.”

Hannah sighed. “Do they work?”

“Some nights, but then it comes back, and I think maybe it's just toying with me,” Sarah Anne said distantly, then shook her head. “I'm so tired. Let's close our eyes for a bit.”

Hannah sunk back against the pillow. The scent of vanilla and liquor was cloying. “Just for a bit,” she said cautiously. “It's like I'm in a bowl of potpourri.”

Sarah Anne nuzzled her curls, solid as a starched collar, against Hannah's face and Hannah forced herself to lie still as Sarah Anne inched closer. “The maid sprays everything. Some days it smells like a garden. Other days, it's muffins.”

Hannah listened to the rain pounding against the window. She could feel Sarah Anne's heartbeat against her arm. “Does he hurt you?”

Sarah Anne clutched Hannah's hand. “We're friends, aren't we?”

Hannah nodded.

“He's been different since we moved here. My parents don't like to talk about it, but I know.” Sarah Anne squeezed her hand. “It's not him anymore.” Hannah didn't know where to look. The whites of Sarah Anne's eyes were absolute. “He's someone else now.”

“Sarah, he's still your brother,” Hannah said gently, but the girl spoke over her.

“When we first moved here, our furniture was a week late. My brother and I slept on air mattresses downstairs.” Her eyes glazed over. “It started out so slow. He'd make these sounds in his throat, and they sounded so small. I went to touch him and he woke up, but he was crying. He asked me why I didn't hear him screaming.” Sarah Anne paused and sucked in breath. “Then he said he couldn't move, that someone was sitting on top of him, running blunt nails up and down his chest all night. It sounds like such a silly detail, those blunt nails, but he showed me what they can do, if they have hours to scratch. Then he stopped talking. The priest that we came here to see, the one that was taking care of him, has given up on him. He says it's too late. Jacob only speaks to me now.”

“What does he say?” Hannah asked in a choked whisper.

“He talks about what it feels like to die. He says you can feel it, when your heart stops.”

Hannah swallowed hard. “Did someone hurt him?”

Sarah Anne nodded, and then added casually, “He talks about you, too.”

“Me?” Hannah asked, bewildered in the trance of absinthe. “What about me?”

Sarah Anne sat up. Hannah could feel the girl's toes flexing against the mattress. “Something whispers your name to him at night. I've heard it, too. Sometimes I can't tell who's speaking, whether I'm awake or asleep. It feels like a fever. Like my body isn't my own anymore.” Sarah Anne pulled distractedly at her cuticles as she spoke.