Vassa in the Night (7 page)

Erg is stroking my hip through the layers of fabric. It's clear what the gesture means:
Calm down, Vassa. Just be cool and play along. We'll figure something out.
It almost makes me angrier, but since Erg did just save my life—at least for now—I throttle my impulse to tell this old ghoul to go drink bleach. “What do you have in mind, then?”

“Three nights. Three. Do what you're told, show yourself mature and responsible … Why did you come here tonight?”

Her voice rasps through my head. The same song is still playing, sprinkling mournful piano notes over the air. “I was just picking up lightbulbs.”

She starts nodding. “I'll throw those in. A commitment of three nights; your pay will be your survival. And a package of lightbulbs. Two packages, if you like.” She isn't even looking at me anymore; she could almost be dreaming on her feet, her words coming out half song and half wind. “Three nights. You can work the register. Then I can sleep. I never get to sleep.”

“You were sleeping when I came in,” I point out. I don't think it will do any good to mention that three nights could be an extremely long time.

“I was not. I was working. There is always the minor maintenance to be done, the repairs to the twiddly bits at the fringes. If I were only less fastidious.…” She's already turning away, shuffling back the way she came. “I don't think you deserve a name. I don't see how a callow little vixen like you could have
earned
a name. But I suppose your foolish parents disregarded that and gave you one anyway?”

It's wrong to slap old ladies sideways, and then this one commands a pair of evil hands that are just dying to lop my head off. The hand behind me drops down, still dangling in my hair like some gross prehensile starfish, and shoves me between my shoulder blades to make me follow her. It's hard to believe a hand could be so strong with no body attached, but I still stagger from the impact. “I'm Vassa.”

“Vassa,” she whispers lethargically. “Vassa, my imp. You may call me Babs. We have a deal, then? Three nights?”

“Fine,” I say. There's not much else I can do at the moment. The hands herd me up to the counter, thumping at my back and prodding my ankles. I swing my hair, trying to dislodge that hideous clinging paw, and it punches my ribs to retaliate. I'm dragged around to the back of the counter then jabbed by glitter-slicked nails until I sit down in the chair Babs vacated to come after me. Torn mustard stuffing shows through shredded upholstery. Unlike everything else in the store the chair is filthy, its cushions the color and consistency of soot-crusted oatmeal.

“You can start,” Babs wheezes, “tonight. Be careful you don't make mistakes when you're counting out change. I'll expect the balance in the register to be
exact
. Otherwise, we'll have to attend to you. A reliable numerical sense is the first foundation of the mind. It lets you count the seconds you have left. It adds rigor, little one. And you seem … shaky.”

At least the hands have finally stopped grappling at me. They're balancing on their wrist-stumps on the counter, palms facing inward and their fingertips curling. Those green-spangled nails seem to watch me like a row of quizzical eyes. Their postures are perfectly matched. “Got it,” I tell Babs absently. Once she's asleep and the hands are off patrolling I can wait for the next sucker to arrive and sing the jingle, coax the store down to the ground again. Then I'll just have the motorcyclist to deal with.

“That's nice to hear,” Babs says. “I'll be asleep in the back.” She turns to leave, her hand on a narrow door in the corner. Erg pokes me. A reminder.

“What if I get hungry?” I ask.

“Oh … You can eat what you like while you're here. Just don't take anything out of my store. You understand.” She glances lazily at the hands. “Dismissed, you two. Back to your duties.”

And then they're gone, and I'm in a chair that wobbles with each hop and twirl of the floor below me. The first thing I do is take out my phone; I need to tell Chelsea I'm okay. The phone is dead, though, and I feel like I should have known it would be. There's nothing I can do but sigh and stuff it back in my pocket.

Almost the entire wall to my right is made of glass and in it the city dances with manic enthusiasm, the houses and stores rushing up and down as if all those glowing windows were caught in a dark tide. The light projecting from BY's waves like a flag across the parking lot, sometimes catching one of those skewered heads and making it shine: dead women and men becoming moons in my personal night. When Babs told me I owe her more than I owe myself, I thought that more than nothing might not amount to much. Now Joel's head bounces by, gazing with blank rotten rapture through the glass, and I want to ask him:
What
do
I owe myself, Joel? What did I borrow from myself, and how on earth will I ever give it back?

 

CHAPTER 4

Erg crawls out of my pocket and up my arm, then perches on the counter with her tiny legs dangling over the edge. “Nice work!” she says. The blood on her chin has dried into a garnet smudge. “I mean, that's what
you
should say to
me,
now. And you could add something poetic about your inexpressible gratitude, and how super dumb it would have been to leave me outside.”

I look at the shelves; I think I might have just seen an emerald-tipped finger cresting behind some cans like a shark fin coming up in a horror movie. “You knew those things were after us, Erg?”

“Sure I did! The nasties. But I wasn't going to let them hurt you, Vassa. Oh, I taught
him
a lesson, didn't I? Chompers!” Her blue eyes are wide and, God, happy.

“And you still think
everything is fine
? Even now that we're stuck in here? Those hand things are probably not giving up that easily, right?”

I'm not fine, that's for sure, and I do like to think of myself as one minor component of
everything
. So doesn't that prove Erg is wrong? I guess there's a delayed effect from the almost-dying, because my hands have started vibrating crazily against the counter and I feel like my face is about to explode into shrapnel-sharp tears.

Erg studies me, uncharacteristically serious. “What do I keep telling you, Vassa? Just stick with me, kid. Sure, those hands will try to get you again, but I can take 'em!”

I can't help smiling at her. “They're like ten times bigger than you are.”

Erg twists her head like she's shaking back her curls but the squiggles of black paint don't go anywhere. I've always wondered how her eyes and mouth can be so mobile.

“And I am ten times meaner, Vassa.
Eleven
times, perhaps, quite. As I will joyfully demonstrate if they think they can mess with us. Okay? As you can now demonstrate your appreciation for my extraordinary heroism by getting me one of those hot dogs, please.
Lots
of mustard. As in lotsandlots. And extra relish.”

“Oh,” I tell her. I'm suddenly so exhausted that I can barely face walking over to the case where the dogs gleam under lamplight like bright orange sweat, but she does deserve some kind of thank-you. “Sure, doll.” I start to get up and the floor rears and throws me back into the chair, sending it sailing against the wall so that a few small bottles rain down on my head. Even Erg looks startled. “Oof. Okay, trying
that
again.”

The store is rotating faster, grinding against the night, but I pull myself up by grabbing at the shelves behind the counter. There's some kind of clamor out in the parking lot. The building swings around like someone with a bee stinging their hindquarters and I almost pitch over again. Erg jumps up and runs toward me with her arms out, and I manage to lean close enough to grab her before we go stumbling sideways. I'm trying to get to the window to see what's going on. Erg's hot dog will have to wait.

We leap again, spin a full one-eighty in midair, and land with an infuriated jiggling. I've given up on walking and crawl toward the glass while Erg squirms her way inside my sleeve. It's a ratty old jacket with a convenient hole for her to peer through. I kneel on the slippery linoleum, careful to keep my distance from the clapping door, and gaze into the night. Thirty feet below me in the parking lot a boy is belting out the BY's jingle in a parody of an opera singer, throat arching out and arms flung wide. He sees me looking and drops to one knee. “Turn around. Turn around and stand like Momma placed you! Face me! Face—” Then he cuts off. One syllable shy of a song.

The store is just starting to kneel when the jingle starts up again, screamed more than sung, from somewhere off to the right. The melody is bansheed and hacked but still recognizable. BY's jerks to its full height as if electrocuted and reels around to confront the new singer. The light pours over the girl's face: I don't know her real name, but she goes by Lottery and we have three classes together. She's an acrid personality, always out to out-cynic and out-bitch everyone, but I wouldn't say I hate her. Not until now, anyway. She's making me seasick. The store is sinking down until her face is only two yards from mine.

Like the boy did she stops right before the last note, and someone else starts yowling on the far side of the dark. The motorcyclist zips by but he doesn't do anything to stop the latest singer, who's going for sort of a calypso effect. Now I understand what they're up to, baiting the store and driving it as crazy as they can. If I could stand up, I might get some cans to throw at them, but I'm pretty close to vomiting and besides, Babs might think that pelting these jerks counted as thieving. There are at least six or seven kids arranged in a circle, picking up the jingle and winging it around, and for a few more minutes we keep up this lunatic alteration of waltz and jolt and curtsy. I can't even kneel anymore, just lie there with my head pressed to the floor hoping my brain will stay inside it.

If you don't bother it, it won't bother you.
That's what Iliana told me after I moved in with her and my sisters. There'd been nothing remotely like BY's in my old neighborhood and the heads freaked me out to an unspeakable degree. I'd imagine them floating just behind me, gibbering softly together, or those huge clawed chicken feet scraping in pursuit. Through my whole first year living here BY's scared me so much that I wouldn't walk within three blocks of the place. My evasive maneuvers were making me late for school—so Iliana marched me into the parking lot, yanked my hair back, and made me stand right between the clacking toes and stare up at BY's neon belly.
You see? Is it doing anything to you? Is it biting you? Or are you just being a baby? We all live with it, so now you better start living with it, too.

Ah, but if you
do
bother it, then anything that happens is your own damn fault, of course. That was strongly implied. And as for the part about how sick she was of being stuck with a spoiled Williamsburg princess, that carried just fine through the walls whenever she was on the phone with her friends.

I'm mulling that over when the spinning stops dead. BY's is crouching low and a cold night wind scrolls through the gaping door. I'm trying to sit up just as the whole pack of kids comes stomping in. I know almost all of them. They're all the type who seems compelled to run in packs, like they'll get vertigo if they ever have to spend ten minutes alone with the cavernous abyss where their minds should be.

“Vassa!” Lottery says, spitting with laughter. “Hey, girl, I wondered if that was you. Hope you enjoyed the ride!”

“Want me to show you how much I enjoyed it?” I offer. “I could puke on your shoes.” I make it to my feet just as the store starts rising again; I'm still dizzy enough that the movement sets me tottering. The opera-singer boy—the only one of them I don't think I've seen before—catches my elbow. I shrug him off. He should have expressed his chivalrous impulses by shutting the hell up earlier.

Lottery's looking around. “Are you here alone, Vassa? Because it's mad risky that way. Shopping at BY's is one of those
team
sports. Want us to show you how it's done?”

“Oh, I can't possibly go shopping now,” I snarl. “I'm working.”

That gets their attention. They snap straight and line up to stare at me. “
Working,
” Lottery drawls skeptically. “As in here?”

“That would be the case,” I say. I admit an impulse to elaborate on my snarkery, but the fact is that they're all in distinctly mortal peril and that makes mouthing off seem just a smidge irresponsible. “I would
really
appreciate it if you would all leave. Okay? It's a terrible idea to come in here.”

Lottery mimes hacking her own head off with a sideways hand and then rolls her eyes back. Her brown hair ends in wormy bleached-out braids and she's wearing these eerie golden contact lenses. I keep looking past her, scanning the shelves for anything whitish and hopping, but the hands are keeping out of sight.