Cauchemar (17 page)

Hannah looked pointedly at the bruises on Sarah Anne's thigh. “You need to tell someone about this.”

“No.” Her voice was low and urgent. “I thought you of all people would understand. It's like I'm communicating with another world through him.” Sarah Anne's eyes were wide, imploring. “You do understand, don't you?”

The shadows were coalescing again, their feathered tips brushing along the wall. “Sure.” Hannah squeezed the girl's hand.

In a quick movement, Sarah Anne straddled Hannah. Her eyes were wild. “When it comes in the night, it holds me down, just like this,” Sarah Anne leaned forward. “Do you want me to kiss you?” she asked. Hannah could see the line of her jaw, the edges of her white teeth, the inside of her nose. A complicated bouquet of peppermint, berries, and licorice rushed out with each breath.

“No,” Hannah said slowly, but she wasn't sure she meant it. There was something magnetic about the other girl's intensity. Curious, she touched a pulsing vein in Sarah Anne's throat.

Sarah Anne's eyes widened. The pulse quickened under her finger and Hannah could almost feel the girl's heart palpitating behind her thin ribbed cotton top. “Come on,” she goaded. “You can practice on me.”

Their lips touched, although it seemed like neither of them had moved.

In the dark, anything was possible. The bed seemed to fade beneath them, the dimensions of the bedroom changed. They could've been in a field, crushing strawberries and mites as they writhed. Red seeds braiding themselves into their hair. The tongue pressing for entry, then sending a live-wire charge through the tip of her own tongue, could have been a caterpillar.

Hands slipped under her back and began to roll up her shirt, and still she didn't open her eyes, didn't feel the smallest twinge of self-consciousness as her young nipples, flat and brown as moles, touched bare skin.

Thunder cracked to their right and Hannah had time to open her mouth wider, ready for the fall of rainwater, before an inhuman grunt sounded.

“Jacob,” Sarah Anne said calmly.

Hannah wiggled out from under the girl, pulling down her shirt. The dreamy high veered into nausea.

To Hannah, it looked as though rage was moving across Jacob's face like bruised clouds. The absinthe had set down barbs in her mind. Hannah noticed the door was splintered where he'd forced it open.

Jacob opened his mouth and let out an animalistic howl. Hannah covered her ears and turned away just as Sarah Anne dove off the bed and rushed toward him. He caught her in his vast arms, and turned her around like a rag doll by her right hand. He mashed her face against the door so quickly that her whimper of hurt was cut off.

Jacob held Hannah's gaze as Sarah Anne struggled under his grip. Her efforts barely registered in the muscles of his arm.

Hannah held out a plaintive hand. “Jacob, calm down,” she pleaded.

His head jerked back and forth as if he was being tugged. The light coming in through the hallway backlit him; Hannah had to squint to make out his features.

“Go,” Sarah Anne said to Hannah, and when Hannah hesitated, she screamed the word.

Hannah stumbled to her feet, unsure what to do. “You have to let her go,” she began, flinching as he pummeled his other fist against the door, barely missing Sarah Anne's ear.

“Leave now. Go.” Sarah Anne's voice was different, echoing, and Hannah realized that she spoke in time to the thunder that was growing closer. When the lightning struck, the blue light picked out tendrils emanating from Jacob's mouth, little sprigs of light sprouting from his head.

“Please,” Hannah tried again, and dropped to her knees, “I can't leave until you let her go.”

Risking a glance upward, she saw Jacob release the girl's head as if it were a sack of groceries. The effort she'd used to brace against his hand brought her backward against him. She slumped briefly, her face hidden by her curls. Hannah nudged forward to touch Sarah Anne's leg. Too late, she saw Jacob's foot lift. And move backward as if Hannah's hand were a canebrake rattlesnake. As if Jacob feared her touch.

A hiss filled the air and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from Sarah Anne.

“Are you alright?” Hannah whispered urgently.

Sarah Anne righted herself and shook out her hair. She looked down at Hannah with an expression of contempt. “Of course,” she said, patting Jacob on the chest. A red ribbon of blood trailed from her nose, and she lapped it with her tongue. “Christ, can't anyone hold their liquor?”

Hannah tottered as she stood. Her eyes moved between the siblings and the door, which wore a small spatter of red.

“Come with me,” she said under her breath to Sarah Anne. The dizziness was overwhelming. She wanted to flick away a bit of clotting blood from the girl's nose, but Sarah Anne's expression was so imperious, that Hannah's hand dropped weakly to her side.

Sarah Anne flicked on the light switch. Jacob rolled his neck and staggered against the doorframe. He looked at Hannah with his usual sweet blankness, and his lips quivered just short of a smile.

“You should go,” the girl told Hannah, and snaked her arm around her brother's. “My parents asked me to make lunch for Jacob, and I guess I forgot. Are you hungry?” A charged, private look passed between them. Jacob nodded.

“Sarah Anne,” Hannah said slowly, and then looked around the room. Everything was unchanged. Porcelain figurines of ballerinas remained ordered on top of the dresser, fenced in by a rainbow of nail polish bottles. The bed was slightly mussed, two fuzzy white teddy bears toppled in the white waves of the duvet. Even the thunder was receding, taking with it the last hints of menace. When she turned around, she was met with twin expressions of flat, polite curiosity.

“What are you waiting for?” Sarah Anne asked. She seemed unaware that she stood on one foot, the other flexed against her shin. Her red toenails scratched insistently.

“Something happened,” Hannah said dumbly, and Sarah Anne shook her head.

“Let's not talk about it anymore. Sometimes girls are stupid. We got a bit drunk,” she explained, giving her brother a sheepish half-lidded look. His mouth committed to a smile, innocent as a baby's.

“I mean, what happened afterward—”

“Enough,” Sarah Anne said firmly, and then lowered her voice. “Let's not make a thing of it.” Her eyes crinkled sympathetically as Hannah opened her mouth and found only silence waiting in her throat. “I have to take care of my brother now. You know the way out.”

Almost in a trance, Hannah stood stiff-backed as Sarah Anne maneuvered around her and returned with a windbreaker from her closet.

“Here,” Sarah Anne said, hinging the jacket over Hannah's shoulders. The fabric didn't feel real against Hannah's stunned body. She waited for something else, some explanation or reassurance, but none came.

“Okay,” Hannah said. She felt her lower lip begin to tremble, the twitch moving up her cheek and into her quickly flooding eyes. “I'll see you around.”

Hannah ran from the landing, almost falling as her bare feet slipped on the carpeted stairs. At the door, she hurriedly put on her shoes. Faint conversation trickled from upstairs, Jacob speaking calmly. “It's not her time,” she heard him say.

She was halfway down the driveway when she remembered the windbreaker. As she slipped it on, the pelting rain a welcome wake-up call, she turned back to the house and squinted at the upstairs window. The blinds were drawn.

CHAPTER

SIX

Hannah woke at dawn to a sky swollen with storms. Gently, she unclasped her hands from Callum's. Her legs felt populated, and when she lifted the covers, every inch of bare skin was dotted with mosquitoes—swollen, sated, and dead. The sheets were stained with a constellation of blood.

Cringing, she rushed to the bathroom, where she lay her head on the lip of the bath as if she were guillotined and turned on the faucet. The mosquitoes drifted even from her hair, dozens of dark bodies. They clumped in the drain. She sat on the edge of the tub, her feet hovering over the thick river of mosquitoes parading down the ceramic, and ran warm water up and down her legs, then cleaned her arms with a washcloth. The fabric became a landscape of slight wings and slender legs.

The house was hushed and expectant, waiting for the thunderstorm. Hannah moved down the stairs, stroking her fingers through spiderwebs and dust. When the swamp held its breath, all the birds and crickets watchful under their temporary truce, Hannah felt like a ghost, moving through some unpopulated middle plane. It was a beautiful privacy.

Standing at the kitchen window, she opened her robe and looked down at her nipples, inflamed as the rest of her. Her hands moved down to her stomach, and she held her breath, wondering when she'd feel the next kick. The child's birth had once seemed so far away, something she wouldn't need to worry about for much longer, but the day was rushing closer.

Would she be ready?

Hannah looked up as a bolt of lightning veined the sky. Birds began to scream in the swamp, and she ran her hands over the urn that held Mae's ashes, unmoved for all these months. All she could hope for was that she'd be a fraction of the mother Mae had been, no matter how unprepared she felt for that level of selflessness.

She spun the spice rack like a roulette wheel and chose three spices at random. She turned on the oven element and poured herself a cup of coffee, then tapped out ground chicory root into the steaming black. A halved peach sizzled against the element for several seconds, then she spread a thin layer of fresh-churned butter into the hole left by the pit. She colored the melting smear with cinnamon and nutmeg. The peach released a stream of butter, spice, and its own sweet flesh into her mouth.

“It feels strange, waking up in an empty bed. Every­thing okay?” Callum asked from the doorway, yawning loudly. Hannah noticed his shirtless body had shrunk. The storm light cast shadows under his ribs.

Hannah closed her terrycloth robe and walked to him. She pushed a piece of peach into his mouth and he moaned his approval.

“It's going to storm soon,” she said, ignoring his question.

He squinted out the kitchen window. “Looks like it's going to be a bad one. Should I go shutter us up?” His hands moved absently over her belly.

“I don't think it'll do much good,” she said, surprising herself.

The petal touch of his lips against her cheek made her shiver. “Come now, doom and gloom. It's just a thunderstorm.” He sniffed, and made a face. “Chicory coffee, huh? I never took a liking to it. Back to bed with you and I'll take care of things. What would you like for breakfast?”

“I'm not sleepy.” She was thrumming at a low frequency, all her hairs on end. If someone leaned in close enough, they'd sense a buzz, like telephone wires in the high of summer heat. A gale wind struck the house, rattling the windows in their frames, and Hannah moved instinctively against the wall as a knock sounded from the back of the house.

“What's wrong?” Callum asked, smoothing the worry lines along her forehead.

She cringed. “Nothing.” There was a known sound of glass and wood struck together, a friction that signaled weather. But what she heard now was unknown, some entity stirring in the shed. She wondered if something blanched and hairless was crawling through the waving grass. “Come back to bed with me. It's Saturday. Let's go under the covers and sleep through this together.”

He laughed. “I will, but do you really want a house full of broken glass?”

She worked her plush body against his sparse one, trying to coax him.

“Don't worry,” he breathed into her ear, and unclasped himself. “I'll be right back.”

Hannah stood with hands gathered nervously at the nape of her neck. The kitchen door slammed shut, and she saw Callum move shirtless through the wind toward the shed.

She moved on tiptoe toward the stairs, interlaced fingers moving to guard her belly. Each step made the whole house groan, and no matter where she looked, she couldn't find her own shadow against the white wall.

As her feet touched the bottom step, the stairs began to shake. She turned to the window just in time to see a crow's dark mass speeding toward it. The bird disappeared below the sill with a muted thud.

Hannah grunted as she lowered herself onto the bottom stair, a quiet ache blooming in her right side. At the back of the house, Callum began to hammer wooden boards over the windows. The sound seemed to come from a great distance.

As clouds filled the sky, darkness spread along the house. Hannah leaned her heavy head against the banister and watched the darkness seep through the curtains then constrict around the petals of her white orchid. It grazed picture frames, splayed itself across the armrest of Mae's favorite chair.

Just as she closed her eyes, her breathing unnaturally slow, a sharp hammering began at the door.

“Callum, use the key,” she called out, but there was no reply. With a moan, she stood up and swayed toward the door. The doorknob was warm and clammy to the touch.
I'm inside a wound.
The thought seemed to come from outside her mind, and sounded almost like
womb.

She opened the door.

On the doormat was the crow. Its neck was stretched and it peered at her from beneath one wing. One leg was strained toward the sky, talons pulsing open and shut like a fist.

Hannah backed away. She sighed deeply, knowing suddenly it was a dream, and recognizing the viscous quality of sleep. Her spine seemed soft, as if she might bend back like a weary stamen, her head rubbing gently against the ground.

Behind her, the thudding of Callum's hammer continued. It, too, had slowed.

The crow followed her, balancing on one leg and its beak, black and gleaming like a crab's pincer. The wings made a terrible rustling sound against the wood.

“What do you want?”

The crow paused, and one immense yellow eye blinked at her. It reminded her of the feathered bodies that had once made their nests in Sarah Anne's backyard.

“Jacob, is that you?” Hannah asked in a low voice.

The crow began speeding toward her, and the pounding of its beak hurried her steps. She tripped over a stair and fell backward. The pain was real, a deep bruising in the small of her back. The crow stopped at her feet, then fastened its talon onto her leg. Blood beaded around the edges of its bite.

“What are you?” she whimpered, and before she could finish, the crow began to expand. Hannah shrunk back. Bald patches marked its swollen body, and they were speckled with crusted rot. Beneath the cover of feathers, its wings were tipped in pincers.

Still watching her, it planted its beak into her distended belly button through her robe. “This,” it croaked, long and deep, and Hannah had a moment to wonder what it meant, before the beak punctured the puckered skin. Hannah began to scream.

Her cry seemed to go on for a long time before she opened her eyes to Callum's startled face. He was calling her name.

“Where were you?” she asked, trying to regain her breath.

“Outside, putting shutters on the windows.” Callum studied her face. “Jesus, woman. What's wrong? You can't just scream like a bloody banshee for no reason. Not after what happened at the apartment.”

Rain spattered the floorboards through the open front door as she stared at the empty floor in front of her. She'd just conversed with a disfigured crow that wasn't there. A shudder wracked her body. “I fell down, but I'm alright.”

“You scared me shitless. I thought that old crony was back.” Callum frowned at the door. “Was someone here?”

Hannah shook her head. “No, I just thought I heard something out there. Probably a branch.” Then she felt under her robe, where a wet bead sat in the basin of her belly button. Her finger came away red.

“What's that?” Callum asked, pawing at her robe. “Is it the baby?”

“The baby's fine,” Hannah said with a certainty she didn't feel. “I must've scratched myself in my sleep.” With a last glance outside at the sheets of rain that sprayed a fresh, green smell through the house, she stood and headed upstairs. “I think I'll take you up on that nap.”

Callum looked up at her, exasperated. “Is it just me or are you a bit crazy these days?”

Hannah feigned a smile. “Might be,” she said. She looked beyond him toward the door, and felt a sneaking suspicion that though it was open, she couldn't leave. It'd been years and years since her nightmares had felt so vivid, but this was the first time they'd actually left a mark.

“Well, stop it.” He massaged his temples. “Okay. Let me finish boarding up the house, and I'll be up with some tea. Are you hungry?”

“You don't need to do that anymore,” she said evenly, pausing at the top of the stairs. She looked down at Callum, her frightened penitent, and sighed. “It won't do any good.”

In the bathroom, Hannah studied her belly button under the fluorescent bulbs. The cut was very small, but it leaked a slow, steady flow of blood. She pasted a Band-Aid over the tiny wound and sat down on the edge of the bathtub, caressing her belly.

At least the cut was proof that something had happened. There'd always been the real world that others saw and dwelled in, and then another, filled with pale shades. But something improbable had stepped through and made its malice known.