The Keeper (26 page)

I
t was one o’clock on Thursday morning. Liz heard humming, like dissonant music from far away. A collective sound, like a thousand voices. The buzzing made her think of a fly:
There was a little girl who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed that fly. I guess she’ll die.

She was curled up underneath her bed right now, a flashlight in her hand, shaking so hard that the arc of the light was unsteady and her teeth chattered. She held her other hand over her mouth to muffle the sound of her breath.

The walls were painted pink, like the clean inside of a lung, and right now they were breathing. With every drop of rain that fell and churned in the bucket near her bed and every groan coming from the floors, the walls moved. They expanded and constricted as if she were inside the stomach of an animal.

She had to pee, and so she let go of her mouth and held her crotch. Her shaking became jerking, silent sobs. Still, she did not let go of the flashlight.

A part of her was under the bed right now. Another part hovered in the corner, urging her not to give up. Another part giggled hysterically:
Oh, waiter, there’s a fly in my head!

After Bobby left she’d said good night to her mother. The power went out and she’d stood at the foot of the basement steps but had been unable to bring herself to go down those stairs.
Good night, Mom,
she’d called into the darkness below.
Sleep tight, Mom. Don’t let the bedbugs bite, Mom.
And her mother, after some time, called back.
Yes, Liz. Go to sleep, Liz. It will all be better in the morning.

For a second or two, she had puzzled before walking away. A slight narrowing of her eyes. Had she spoken, just then? Had her mother answered her? Yes, they had spoken, but not with words. In their thoughts, carried through this rotten house like a secret whispered by an old man. And then her frown was gone. Yes, it was all fine. Not to worry, fret not. It would all be better in the morning, right? And if not, who cared? How much worse could things get if she didn’t wake up tomorrow?

She found a flashlight, and took it to the room she and her sister had shared more than a decade before. Plink, plink, plink went the sound of the water dripping down from the ceiling and into the tin bucket near her bed. She climbed under her soft quilt but did not close her eyes. There might, just might, be things that hid in the dark. They slithered, moving slowly, until you fell asleep.

She kept watch in her room for a very long time. So long that she forgot what she was watching for. At some point, she could not remember when, she started to hear snippets of conversations, soft chattering from the walls. A game of hide and seek, a game of quicksand, jumping from bed to dresser to bed without ever touching the floor. Two sisters sitting before a mirror. The elder smearing two lines of red lipstick across the glass, the younger adding black circles of mascara in a figure eight above. Each taking turns looking into the mirror, and becoming this conjured woman trapped inside a vanity.

She held a pillow against her side like an old stuffed animal or a missing boyfriend.
(Bobby. How could he? How could he pretend to care and then leave her like this?)
She covered her ears. She burrowed beneath her blankets. She decided that if she was quiet maybe all of this would go away. If she was very quiet. The same as smearing lambs’ blood on her door; God’s murdering angel would pass her by.

She circled the flashlight, looking behind her, in front, above, under the bed. Shadows moved. Forms took shape and then collapsed like ice turned to water.

This haunted place,
she thought,
you carry it with you.

She tried to think happy thoughts. It reminded her of a time, years before, when she had done the same thing in this very room. She had closed her eyes and thought of nice things like swimming in the summertime and her mother reading bedtime stories and she and Susan playing parts from movies after covering their faces with baby powder because Susan had said:
That’s how they did it in the old movies, they had to be very pale,
and helping her father plant beans in the garden, be sure to leave the little plastic label so people know what you’ve buried, just like a headstone, and yes, she remembered this like yesterday, like it was happening right now, hiding in her in room and trying to conjure happy thoughts while unspeakable things took place in this very house. She remembered quite well.

When the walls started to move, puffing in and out like damp skin, she crawled under her bed. Drool trickled along her chin and she held her crotch. Her thoughts fell downward, like letting out every last bit of your breath and sinking into deep water.

You know why they all stare at you? You know why they hate you? Because his love came from blood.

Hadn’t her life always been like this? Hadn’t the last year with Bobby, when things seemed nice and wonderful with the possibility of a future, really been the nightmare? The tease that could never happen? Yes, this was her life. Right now. This was what she deserved.

You. It should have been you.

She let go of her crotch and pee trickled down her legs. She urinated all over the floor. The shameful warmth made her blush and her sobs became audible.

Oh, no. Please no. Please let this stop now,
she prayed, to whom she was no longer sure:
I’ll do anything.

Just then, a sound startled her. Shrill and violent, like broken china. It sounded again. And again. And again. She thought she might scream. And then she saw the phone, ringing. It was the phone. She picked it up without speaking into it, and listened for a voice.

“Hello?” she heard on the other line. “Hello? Mrs. Marley? It’s Bobby, Bobby Fullbright.”

“Bobby?”

“Liz, it’s you! I shouldn’t have left. I was being stupid. Are you okay?”

“Bobby?”

“Are you okay? You sound funny. You sound really far away.”

She took the phone away from her ear, and looked at it, trying to decide whether to hang up. She heard him speaking, asking her to please come back, please talk to him, don’t be mad. She put the phone back to her ear. “It’s bad, Bobby. It’s worse than I said.”

“What’s happening? Are you crying?”

“No. I’m not crying. It’s bad, Bobby. It doesn’t go away. You can try, but it never goes away.”

“I’m coming over, Liz. I don’t know how I’ll get there, I can’t drive in this rain, but I’m coming over.”

“You should stay home. It’s not safe here.”

“Is it Susan?”

Liz shone the flashlight against a wall, and instead of shadows, there were two very real little girls dressed in blue denim overalls, giggling. They laughed at her with hands over their mouths, or were they laughing at something behind her? Was it her father they were laughing at? “Yes. No. He did it to her. I watched, once.”

She turned around, fully expecting her father to be standing over her, but instead there were just more shadows. When she looked back, the girls were gone.

“He raped her?”

“I guess that’s what it’s called,” she said. “I think she murdered him, though. So maybe they’re even. Now she’s just after us.”

There was a droning in her ear. Persistent, and annoying.
Shoo,
she wanted to say. But the droning continued, and she recognized the sounds as one word, repeated over and over again. “Liz,” he was saying, “Liz,” he was crying, “get out of there. “I’m going now, I’ll start running. I’ll meet you halfway. Whatever it is, get out of there.”

She knew he was right. Still, she was not sure she could leave. If she wanted to leave. “I’m going now,” he said. “Meet me.”

“I’ll try,” she said, hanging up.

She might have stayed in the room, had she not shone her light from corner to corner, and seen, really seen, what she had not allowed herself to see before. The house was alive. The pink painted walls expanded and contracted in slow, deep breaths. The water, black water, dripped into the churning bucket. And what was that sound, that beating? The boiler in the basement going thump-thump, thump-thump. The heart, its beating heart. How could this be happening in her home, her room, how could anyone let this happen?

Just then, the back door opened. She heard shuffling footsteps. One foot was heavier than the other. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. It moved slowly, like something dead. Mary met the thing at the foot of the basement steps. “Baby? Is that you?” she called. The footsteps moved with intention toward Mary’s voice. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. In her mind, Liz saw her sister’s lumbering corpse winking at her.

Liz got up and ran.

S
he did not make it out of the house. While trying to reach the back door, she slipped on a sugar-laden floor. She sat there for a while, thinking that even if she didn’t get out, Bobby would come, Bobby would save her, and then she heard movement coming from the basement. Two sets of footsteps. She stood again, and pushed with all her might against the back door, but it did not budge. Locked.

She did not have the presence of mind to think of keys, if keys existed, what keys were. She smashed out a window with her fist. She pulled her hand back against the shards without scraping her skin. Hadn’t she always been the lucky one? When she looked at the opening she realized that she would never be able to climb out. How could she have been so stupid as to smash such a tiny window?

Two sets of footsteps started toward her.

She scrambled about the house but they were coming closer, no time, she would have to hide, make them think she was dead. But it was dark; was this her house? Where were the stairs? No, no place to hide. They would find her. She said a quick and pleading prayer:
Please, anyone dead, anyone at all, help me, get me out of this alive. Dad, if you’re listening, I don’t care what you have to do, what you have to do to her, but get me out of this alive.

Susan’s voice answered her in her mind.
Come,
she whispered,
Come here. There’s nowhere else. You belong in this dark place. Do you think Bobby’s coming? You know he’s not coming. He doesn’t love you. He never did.

She tried the front door just as they got to the landing. It opened. She sobbed in relief. She stepped onto the front porch and the rain hit her. The sky was not just dark but black. It stank of chemical burnt rubber. Her nose itched. There was an emptiness out here, a loneliness worse than anything in this house. She hesitated. Which direction, which place was worse?

When she turned, she saw the two of them. The woman and her elder child. Susan beckoned with her eyes. Blue eyes. Her funeral dress was torn, exposing her anemic thighs. Her head was shaved bald, and her skin was beginning to separate from her bones. It bagged in places like an ill-fitted suit. There was no blood on her face. Instead there was black embalming fluid that oozed from her orifices and tricked down her legs like urine.
You wet your pants, too,
Liz thought hysterically, and Susan smiled, as if she heard.

Liz thought she felt herself split into two. Thought she saw the part of her she liked best, the happy part, run away, off into the rain, not bothering to stop at Bobby’s, just away, to somewhere good. And she was left with the other part. The tired part. The frightened part. The angry part. She stood, indecisive, between the mouth of the house and the vast, cold night.

She entered the house only after her mother spoke. “My girl,” Mary said, “come here.” Liz took one step. Two. Three. Out of the rain, and into her mother’s arms.

The three women sat at the kitchen table. Mary lit the birthday candle on the cake. The flame threw shadows against the breathing walls. Shadows that formed long, curled fingers, and bodies watching, like a crowd.

Don’t be frightened,
Liz thought, even while she cried.
Let go. It will be so much better once you forget who you are. It will be so much easier once you accept that nothing matters because you are nothing.
Susan lowered her hand over the cake and divided it in half. She handed one piece to Mary, and the other to Liz.

Mary chewed slowly, with no enjoyment. Liz watched. Chocolate frosting lined her lips. She ate mechanically, working on each bite until it was gone. Then both of them turned to Liz.

Liz lifted the slice to her mouth. In her hand the cake pulsed. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Something warm dribbled between her fingers and onto the table. She looked up at her mother, and saw that Mary’s mouth was caked, not in chocolate, but in the color black. Susan smiled. There was an emptiness on the left side of her chest, a grisly hole where her heart belonged. Liz whimpered. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. The sound was in rhythm with the boiler in the basement, with the ticking of the paper mill, with the soul of this house, with the soul of this town that someone had woken up.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Liz felt her own heart beating in the same rhythm.

“Eat,” Susan said. Her voice, oh, God, Liz had forgotten this, was indistinguishable from Liz’s. They may never have looked alike, but they had always sounded exactly the same.

“Eat,” Susan said again.

Liz looked down at the thing in her hands. It throbbed. She lifted it to her mouth. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. She put it between her teeth. She bit down, into meaty grease. She gagged. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. She took another bite. Another. Another. And it tasted so good. It tasted so goddamn good because with every bite, she devoured the part of herself she had worked so hard this last year to create.