‘I’ll let you in,’ Dee whispers. She pulls the bookcase aside. It shifts with a groaning shriek. She sees what crouches outside the window, gazing in. The hammer falls to the floor. She kneels and comes face to face with it, the child, its silver-white flesh dappled in the moonlight, its mouth a black cherry, eyes gleaming like lamps, filled with the light of death, scalp stripped and wounded, where the birds have plucked the hair from her skull.
‘Come in,’ Dee whispers and puts out her hand.
The child hisses at her, an unearthly sound, and Dee gasps. Fear washes over her, so cold she thinks her heart will stop. The child’s mouth opens, her hand whips out to grasp Dee’s arm, to pull her out of this world and into whatever other awaits. Dee sees white teeth set like pearls in powerful jaws. She sees the blunt, crippled fingers. The small pale face seems to ripple in the uncertain light, as if through water.
She screams and the sound breaks the dream, or whatever it is. Dee sees that it is not a dead girl at the window. It’s a cat, jaws hissing and wide, tabby coat bleached by moonlight. The cat swipes at Dee, and she sees that it has no claws in its maimed paws. She backs away, making a soothing noise. The cat turns to flee, but looks back at Dee for a moment, pointed face eerie in the dim. Then it is gone, melted nimble into the black garden.
Dee sits back on her heels, shaking. ‘Just a stray cat,’ she says. ‘Don’t read scary books before bed, huh, Dee Dee? No big deal. Nothing to worry about.’ This is an old habit of hers – saying aloud what her dad would want to hear, while keeping her real feelings inside. There is no time to fall apart. She thinks of Lulu again andthis works. Purpose calms her. Dee’s heart slows its splashy beat.
Dee looks out over the tangled growth that swarms over her back yard. It’s wild, impenetrable, scented in the night. Anything could be out there, hiding. It could creep close to the house, to the windows. And then, reaching out with a long finger … Some of the neighbours have razed their yards to the ground, she notices. Presumably to deter snakes and vermin from nesting there. Dee shivers. Ted’s yard is chaos like hers. She stares at the undergrowth that riots all over his garden. In the moonlight it seems to be moving, writhing gently. She shakes her head, nauseous. That day at the lake took almost everything from Dee but it left something in her, too.Ophidiophobia, they call it; an overwhelming fear of snakes. Dee sees them everywhere, their shadowed coils. The terror slows her mind and heart to a glacial pace.
Slowly she cups her hands and then raises them to her lips, covering her mouth like a mask. She whispers into her palms, a name and a question, over and over. Clouds scud across the moon, throwing light and shadow on her face, gleaming on the wet sheen of tears.
The next morning she resumes her post by the living-room window. She keeps the curtains drawn at all times and does not turn on lights after dark. She knows how a lit window shines like a beacon in the night. Ted does too, it seems. The plywood-covered windows make it look as if his house has turned deliberately away from her, to face the forest.
She begins to learn his habits. Sometimes he goes to the woods, and he does not return for a night, or several. Other times he goes into town, and those visits are in general shorter, sometimes lasting only hours, or an evening. Sometimes he returns very drunk. One morning he just stands in the front yard and eats what looks like a pickle spread with peanut butter. He stares ahead, blank,and his jaws move, mechanical. There are bird tables and hanging feeders in the yard, but no birds ever come. What do the birds know?
She finds out everything she can online. Ted sometimes sends in his sightings to the rare bird column in the local paper. His mother is a nurse. She is very beautiful, in an old-fashioned way that seems divorced from such things as flesh or food. In the grainy photograph she holds her certificate in delicate fingers. County Nurse of the Year. Dee wonders what it must do to you, to have a child like Ted. Does she still love him? Where is she?
The first time Dee tries to follow Ted into the forest, he stops at the trail head and waits in the dark. She hears him breathing there. She freezes. She is sure he can hear her heart. After a time he makes a sound like a slow beast and moves away into the forest. She knows she can’t follow, not this time. He felt her there.
She is relieved despite herself. The dark forest seems full of the sliding passage of snakes. She goes home and throws up.
Dee watches the house, instead, after that. After all, it is not him she has come for. She waits, patient.Wuthering Heightslies open on her lap, but she does not look at it. She stares at the house without pause, memorises each flake of paint that peels away from the old clapboard, each rusty nail, each frond of horsetail and dandelion that bobs against its walls.
Two days later, she has almost given up. Then, beneath the cicadas and the bees and flies and the chirping of sparrows and the hum of distant lawnmowers, she hears something that sounds like the tinkle of breaking glass. Every fibre of her strains towards the sound. Did it come from Ted’s house? She is almost certain that it did. So very nearly completely certain.
Dee rises from the floor, stiff from her long vigil. She decides that she will go over there. She thought she heard a windowbreaking, thought of burglars, she is just being neighbourly … It is a natural action.
As she does, Ted comes along the street. His walk is deliberately careful, like someone who is drunk or hurt. He carries a plastic bag by its handles.
Dee sits down again, quickly. At the sight of him, her vision goes dim at the edges, her palms are oily-slick. The body’s reactions to fear are so similar to that of love.
Ted opens the door, moving with that eerie care. Moments later there is the sound of laughter. The TV, maybe. Through it, Dee hears a high, clear voice saying, ‘I don’t want to do algebra.’
There is the low rumble of a male voice. It could be Ted. Dee strains. Her head aches with effort. The stretch of summer air that lies between the houses now seems thick and impenetrable as dough. A young girl begins to sing a song about woodlice. In all her days of watching, Dee has seen no one but Ted come and go.
Relief and horror flood her, so strong she can taste them in her mouth like mud and water. Her worst fear and her best hope are confirmed. There is a child in that house who does not leave.That’s all you know right now, she tells herself sternly.Step by step, Dee Dee.But she cannot help it.Lauren, she thinks.Lulu.Her given name, which is Laura.Lulu, Laura, Lauren.Such close sounds, lying almost atop one another.
To Dee, in that moment, the singing girl sounds exactly like her sister. The timbre, the little catch in her voice.
Ted
‘I don’t want to do algebra.’ Lauren is pouting with that little jut of the lip that drives me crazy.
‘No dice,’ I say. ‘And no whining, you hear? It’s algebra and geography day, so no more singing, that’s what we’re doing. Kitchen table, books – now please.’ It comes out sharper than I meant it to. I’m tired and I can’t stand it when her voice gets that tone. She really picked a day. I’m a lot lower on the pills than I thought.
‘My head hurts,’ she says.
‘Well, you got to stop pulling your hair like that.’ She takes a thin strand of brown and gnaws on the end of it. Then she tugs it, hard. There are thin patches all over her skull, now. Her favourite thing is to tear hair out. Mine, hers. Makes no difference. ‘You want me to send you back early? Behave, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Sorry, Dad.’ She puts her head down over the page. She is probably not doing algebra, but at least she has the sense to pretend. We are quiet for a time, and then she says, ‘Dad?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ll make dinner tonight. You look tired.’
‘Thank you, Lauren.’ I have to wipe a tear away before she sees it. I feel bad for being so grouchy. And I can’t help hoping that she is beginning to take an interest in food.
