Cauchemar (4 page)

Graydon slunk into the kitchen, his yellow flashlight eyes scanning her. The shed door slammed again and he let out a mewl. “Ignore it, little guy,” Hannah said, reaching for him. “It's just some baby gator mucking about.” Graydon's ears were pushed back on his head, nails peeking through the dirty gray fur of his paws. He shrank from her hand.

“Okay, okay,” Hannah muttered and stood up. She peeked out the window, half-expecting to see some staggering drunk looking for beer. But beyond the tall bushes, the shed door winked like an eye, swinging back and forth on its own.

Graydon leapt onto the counter beside her and sunk into his haunches.

“I'm going,” she groused, and pulled a long knife from the drawer. “Some guard cat you are.”

Outside, the grass was arid and crackled underfoot. “Anyone there?” she called out.

The chirps of birds answered, and she looked down at herself. Her black funeral dress was askew from sleep, the long knife shook in her fist, and she was glad to be the only witness to her insanity.

Then she saw it, hunched down in the grass. It took her a moment to place the terrible ribbed back of it, white as a maggot. She drew a shuddering breath and gripped the knife harder.

How many times had she seen it skulking out of the corner of her eye, or half-submerged in the grassy swamp? Its back was singular, fracture lines like a roadmap across the carapace-like surface. She'd always attributed it to the lasting fragments of some recurring nightmare, something meaningful but harmless, and as a child, she'd always been able to burrow into Mae's skirts and rely on the scent of turmeric to right her.

But the sweat that drained down her back didn't feel like a dream, and there were no more skirts to hide behind.

Down in the grass, it released a wet, phlegmatic sound, and she saw its eye roll toward her. It had seen her. “Oh,” she breathed, and backed away.

The phone began to ring inside the house and she focused on the sound, stepping backward. She clasped her hand around Mae's copper bracelet, the knots firm against her palm. “There's nothing there,” she told herself. “You're still half-asleep.” She willed herself to believe the words, and found that she was picturing Mae speaking them.

The shed door slammed shut with a splintering crash, and remained closed.

Her whole body trembled with the urge to run, but she forced herself to walk evenly until she was back in the kitchen, where she clutched the counter for balance. Graydon's eyes were still on the shed, his fur standing on end.

The phone began ringing again, and she fumbled with the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hi, Hannah? It's James Robichaud. How are you?” James's voice brought her back into herself.

She tried to swallow down the fear with each gulp of breath. “I'm alright, thanks. You?”

There was a pause. “Are you sure? You sound strange.”

Hannah cleared her throat. “Yeah, everything's fine. I'm still a bit shaken up, I think.”

“I'm sorry. How are you holding up?”

Hannah felt the silence like a presence, pressing against her, muffling her own urge to speak. She shook her head but answered, simply, “Fine.”

“Listen, that thing I wanted to talk to you about? It's Mae.”

“What about her?” Hannah glanced at the urn still squirreled away on a corner of the kitchen counter.

“We've received the results of the autopsy.”

Hannah's hand closed into a fist. She'd forgotten that in the confused haze of that afternoon, she'd given consent. Her Mae, cut open like a fish at market. “And?”

“There was arteriosclerosis, and her heart was weakened. It could've easily been that. There were some small clots in her leg, too.” James's voice changed. “But that mass wasn't a tumor. She might've choked, but she would've choked on feathers.”

Hannah thought of the cat catching the canary. James's words sounded like the punch line to a joke. “I don't understand.”

“Black feathers, looked to be hens', and quite a few of them. Dr. Kinney looked rightly spooked, and said it was like she'd swallowed them. They were far enough in her stomach that she would've either done it on purpose, or had it done to her.”

Hannah shook so hard she almost dropped the receiver. “Jesus. What are you saying? That someone might've hurt her?”

“No, it's absurd. I mean …” He hesitated. “I don't know what it means, but did Mae rub anyone the wrong way? Some people in town think black hens' eggs are pretty powerful. You run them over your body to cleanse it of evil, or you can crack them open at one end and sprinkle in sulfur to—”

“James, that's ridiculous.”

“Just covering my bases, that's all. There's no one you can think of? Or maybe Mae was working out a remedy? Some kind of tincture?”

Hannah traced the row of Xs carved deep along the lip of the urn. They looked as forbidding as barbed-wire fencing, and Hannah wondered who had ordered the design. She wanted to ask if the feathers had been removed, or if they were mingling with Mae's ashes. She stayed silent.

James's voice sounded wooden. “Right. I thought you should know. And while I have you on the line, I was wondering if you'd want to get out of the house for a bit? There's a band playing in town tonight, and, well, given Mae's death, I don't think it's the best idea for you to be by yourself right now.”

Hannah braced herself before she looked out the window, but the shed door was closed. The long grass around it billowed harmlessly, and she held a shaking hand to her head. “I haven't even showered,” she said, trailing off.

“Great. It'll take me a half hour at least to make it over.”

“How …” Hannah sighed, running a hand through her hair. “How should I dress?”

“However you'd like. I'm sure you'll look good.” James's voice was soft as cotton in her ear.

Hannah took a step back at the door of the bar.

“What's wrong?” James asked, leaning closer. He smelled like cedar wood, and she wasn't used to the scents of men.

“Are there always so many people? It's so loud.” She laughed suddenly. “God, I sound ancient. I don't really get out much, in case you couldn't tell.”

“We can always leave if you don't like it, but I think it might help for you to get out a bit. Be with other people.”

“Other people,” Hannah echoed. “Right. Because that's always gone over so well.”

James rubbed the nape of his neck. “Look, I remember how it was for you, and how maybe I … contributed. But I was just a kid then, we both were. I'd like to make up for that. Truce?”

Hannah studied the serious set of his face and how he shifted his weight from foot to foot. She took his outstretched hand.

Hannah found a seat on a barstool along the back and tried to make herself small. The walls were dark wood and peppered with mounted fish. A middle-aged woman, her auburn hair cut in a choppy bob, raised a glass to her from a nearby table. Hannah smiled tentatively, and looked down at herself. She'd found an old red dress of Mae's, slightly too big for her, and donned it like some exotic skin.

She'd tried on her own dresses, turning from side to side until she was dizzy, but they seemed childish, designed for a body she'd outgrown without noticing. Sweet Peter Pan collars and flower-printed cotton didn't go with whiskey and cigar smoke.

“What're you drinking?” James asked.

“Water. Last I checked I only just turned twenty.”

James shook his head. “No, ma'am. With the week you've had, you've earned something harder. I insist.”

“Are you always so footloose with the letter of the law?” James only smiled, so Hannah thought about it. “How about rye and ginger beer?”

“Coming right up.”

Hannah pasted herself to the wall, studying the crowd. She was on the outskirts, as always, and watchful for the hate-filled glances she'd grown accustomed to in childhood. But there were none, and she felt herself relax a bit.

The dance floor was a living organism, animated hands like antennae. The women were sipping from short glasses, glancing around at whoever might be watching. Hannah could recognize the married men, their paunches and mugs of foamy beer, gathered together in huddles. She found herself wondering what they'd go home to later that night. Soft wives that smelled of lavender detergent, maybe, or avoiding their woes with some young girl like her.

Hannah coughed to clear her throat of the bar's perfumes just as the house lights went down, and four tall shapes took the stage. “This first one's called ‘Been Tearing Me Open,'” the singer breathed into the microphone. He smiled and Hannah's heart somersaulted when she realized it was Callum. “It's for all the sad men out there tonight.” Scattered claps rang out.

He closed his eyes and Hannah studied him as she moved up toward the stage. Some new feeling squeezed her. He was tall and bearded, with cracked sneakers on his feet. Skinny in his checkered shirt, but strong and sure-footed before the microphone. His face was expressionless, and there was only a slight wrinkle in his brow to betray that anything was stirring underneath. Then his guitar let loose an aching twang. His fingers alighted across frets as a vein began to pulse in his neck. As he played, his chin drew figure eights, outlining melodies.

The blues he played was dirty as week-old rainwater, streaming from his fingers, pooling in the whorls of her ears. In the small of her back. Sluggish bodies came alive around her, nodding at every chord he struck.

Behind Callum, the drummer's grin was ecstatic. When the drummer's eyes met Hannah, he lowered them humbly toward the silver of his set, consumed by the joy of rhythm.

Hannah felt herself moving forward through the crowd, taken by some new confidence. She wanted to be closer to Callum. She felt like someone new, someone unburdened by her mother's reputation.

“He's good, isn't he?” James handed her a glass.

Callum was backlit, but even so, when he opened his eyes, Hannah felt that they were resting on her. She was sure she'd never been studied quite so intently before. He had her pinioned.

The songs melted into each other, and Hannah drank quickly, grateful for the pleasant haziness that was taking over. James took each empty glass from her and replaced it with a fresh one. Soon, her head was spinning, and what she'd seen that afternoon was blurred.

She let herself entertain possibilities in the safety of a sweaty crowd. It was natural, she thought, to feel fragile after a death. Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that the creature in the grass had somehow been more
present
than it ever had before. More real.

But there were ways to explain it. An albino gator, maybe. She'd read somewhere that they existed, and it didn't seem such a stretch that years of crossbreeding had carried the mutation into the Louisianan swamp.

“God's garden is wide and varied,” Mae used to say during Hannah's teenaged years, usually in response to the reports of violence and prostitution that trickled in from town. While she fished deep-fried oysters from her browned, bubbling pot of oil, Mae would tell Hannah about young doe-eyed boys whose hearts burst in the throes of ecstasy tablets. “And that's why I want you here, where you're safe.”

Hannah was just beginning to bite at the bit, to yearn for the nightlife that frightened Mae. “So I'm not allowed in God's garden?”

Something had flitted across Mae's face and she'd turned away. “Making your own decisions might seem wonderful now, but when you're in the thick of it, you might feel differently. There'll be time enough for you to go wherever you want after I'm gone.”

Callum's last note faded smoothly into silence, overtaken quickly by claps and cries for an encore, but he raised a slick hand toward the audience and hopped offstage. “Band needs a beer, folks,” the drummer whispered into the microphone. “Y'all stick around, though.”

Hannah shrank back as Callum headed straight for her.

“You came. I asked James to bring you,” he added, nodding at James. Callum accepted a beer and a chaste kiss from a lipsticked waitress. She ran her thumb across his cheek to wipe off the red mark.

“That was great, man,” a heavily bearded man said, elbowing his way between them.

A delicate-featured woman with thick black curls clasped her arms around Callum's neck. “Totally great,” she echoed.

“Hannah, these two are Tom and Leah. They're my whole fan club.” A passing group of twenty-somethings raised their glasses toward him and Callum lowered his eyes.

“He's too humble, don't you think?” Tom said, bowing to Hannah with a flourish. “Nice to meet you.”

Callum shared a private glance with Leah, so intimate that Hannah looked away. He undid Leah's hands and brushed his lips across her knuckles as she smiled.

“Nobody likes a show-off,” Callum said, as the crowd lost interest in him and began to talk amongst themselves.