The Last House on Needless Street Page 14

  Don’t be stupid. Walk, she commands her legs. They aren’t goddamn snakes. Still she is paralysed, still as marble. Something rustles in the leaf mould close by. She can almost feel the long body approaching. Walk, she thinks, with every inch of her will.

  Ahead, Ted’s dancing light flickers and then vanishes among the trees. Dee is alone with whatever is coming through the dark. Soft, constant sound of a muscular body sliding.

  Dee opens her mouth wider, wider, until her jaw strains and cracks. She screams in silence. She turns and runs for home. The whispering sound follows her, slithering fast, almost on her heels.

  She locks the doors and windows. She takes the claw-hammer in hand and sits at her post. Her breathing is hoarse in the empty room. She looks at the old food wrappers and empty yoghurt pots that litter the floor. Ants crawl in and out of them. I’m getting like him, she thinks, trembling, disgusted. And I am just as much of a coward.

  Ted comes home in the dawn. He unlocks his back door. As he goes in, she hears him calling, ‘Here, kitten.’ His voice is relaxed and friendly. Dee makes a list of things to get. It will be difficult, her mind will fight her, but next time Ted goes to the forest she won’t fail.

  Olivia

  Lauren hasn’t been around the last few weeks. I think she’s on holiday with her mama ted or something? I don’t know, I tend to tune out when he talks about her. No pink bike sprawled in the living room like a dead cow, no notes on the whiteboard, no screaming, no mess. The quiet, the peace – my stars! It’s been great.

  It’s good that Lauren’s not here because Ted has really been getting out there. Lauren hates it when he dates. She screams at him. My goodness, she is the most unpleasant little ted.

  There’s been no sign or scent of the TV ted with the eyes like dead blue coins. I think I let my imagination get the better of me, there. I do have such a rich and wonderful imagination, it’s not surprising that it went a little too far.

  Everything would be perfect if the whine would get out of my head. It’s like an object lodged there, like a tintack or a knife. EEEEoooeeee.

  I think I feel calm enough to consult with the Bible again. I am a little nervous, after last time – the house shook so hard. It was so scary I haven’t dared since. But I can’t leave it much longer. The LORD would not like that. I have to be brave! Wish me luck, tape machine!

  I push the book off with my eyes tightly closed, braced for impact. But the crash and the tremors, when they come, are far away and deep in the earth. When the page falls open I read:

  …if the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

  I can smell the salt and fat, now. I race upstairs to find Ted. Sure enough, he is in bed, eating French fries with one hand. I leap on him with high abandon, landing foursquare on his belly. The lord never lets me down.

  He gasps. ‘You startled me, kitten.’ He drops what he has been playing with in his other hand. A blue thing, too thin for a scarf, more like a silky necktie or something. I settle on his stomach for a purr. Ted and I are very happy together these days. Yes, I think everything is returning to normal.

  Ted

  The past is close tonight. The membrane of time bulges and strains. I hear Mommy in the kitchen, talking to the Chihuahua lady. Mommy’s telling her about the thing with the mouse. That was where all this started. I stop up my ears and turn the TV up, but I can still hear her voice. I remember everything about the thing with the mouse, which is unusual. My memory is Swiss cheese, in general.

  Each homeroom had a pet. It was like a mascot. One homeroom had a startled-looking corn snake, which was so cool, and obviously better than a white mouse with bloody little eyes.

  The kid with the moles was supposed to take the mouse home that weekend, but he hadn’t been in school on Friday. His mother said he had a cold but everyone knew that he was getting the moles on his face removed. Anyway he couldn’t take the mouse and I was next in the alphabet. Snowball, that was his name. The mouse, not the boy.

  I took Snowball home. I had to sneak him into the house. Mommy would never have permitted it. Domesticated animals were slavery. Then the thing happened, and I did not bring him back on Monday.

  I didn’t get in trouble. There was nothing anyone could do or say. It had been an accident, after all – the cage door had come loose. I was really upset about it, but there were other feelings, too, which were more pleasant. I had discovered a new part of myself. I remember the look in my teacher’s eye, that Monday. It had new reserve in it. He saw me for who I was. That I was dangerous.

  Our homeroom got a hamster to replace Snowball. My teacher changed the system for taking the hamster home for weekends – it was random, now, pulled from a baseball cap. Somehow my name never came out of the hat. He became the principal, in the end, that homeroom teacher. It was years later, when I punched someone in the hall by my locker, that he found his chance. I can’t even remember who it was that I punched. Was it a punch, or a kick? But it was my third strike, that’s the point, and the school expelled me. I knew that teacher had been waiting for his chance to get me out, ever since the thing with the mouse.

  I look at the cassette tapes. They sit in a neat row on the bookshelf. I think of the tape I hid in the hall closet. Maybe if I were braver I would listen. Her last words.

  Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through. I feel her now, cold fingers walking up my neck. Mommy, please leave me alone.

  I have to focus. I shake my hands loose and turn my palms upwards. I look at my hand – each finger, the pillowy base of the thumb, the palm as dry as leather. I take a deep breath for each part. This is something the bug man suggested I try, and surprisingly, it works.

  I unlock the laptop cupboard and start the computer. The photograph of the man behind a desk comes up, grinning. It doesn’t look like a real picture at all. But if people are lonely enough, they don’t care about what’s real and what isn’t. Once again I feel bad for using a fake picture but no one would meet me if I used my own.

  I look at the rows and rows of women. There are so many. The search hasn’t been going well but it’s important not to give up.

  Maybe I’ve been doing this wrong. I’ve been focusing on butter-blonde hair and blue eyes and so on, whereas what I really need is someone with whom I have more in common. A single parent. I change my search and the faces disappear, replaced by new ones. These are older, mostly. I try a couple, but they seem more wary than women without children, less responsive.

  Finally I find one. She’s willing to meet tonight. She answers quickly, within three seconds, which even I can tell is a mistake. It’s too eager. She will meet me at a coffee shop after work. She does look nice, actually. She has a soft face and her jawline is doughy. Her dye job is old, grey shows at the roots, interrupting the dull black. It’s late, but she’ll try to get her sister to babysit. She has a twelve-year-old daughter.

  I have a daughter myself, I tell her. Lauren. What’s yours called?

  She tells me and I type, That’s a pretty name. It’s so great to talk to another single parent. It can be lonely at times.

  I know! she replies. Some days I could just cry.

  If your sister can’t sit, you could bring your daughter along, I tell the woman. I’d love to meet her. I could bring Lauren, too. (I can’t bring Lauren, of course. But I can always say she is feeling sick.)

  Wow, that is so understanding, she says. I can tell you’re a good person.

  I’ll wear a blue shirt, I type. Maybe you could wear blue too, so I can recognise you.

  Sure, that sounds fun.

  Maybe not blue jeans, because everyone will be wearing those.

  OK …

  Do you have a blue dress?

  I haven’t showered in a while so I do that, harmonising along with the beautiful melody the woman sings. I take a couple more pills, too. I don’t want to mess this one up.

  I h
ave a quick beer before I go. I drink it in one, standing in front of the open refrigerator. There are trails of black droppings on the kitchen counters. The mouse problem is getting worse. I don’t mind mice if the cats can deal with them, but not here. Sometimes, with problems you do nothing and they go away. Other times it is the opposite. I should get the diary out and note it. But there’s no time!

  The street is dark and quiet as I leave the house, triple-locking the door behind me. The Chihuahua lady’s house is still empty. It pulls at me as I pass, that strange tug, like the house wants me to go in, like a god sending out tendrils of power.

  Olivia

  Ted is gone again. It has been a day and a night. I long for my nice dark crate but he has piled the weights on top of it. So thoughtless. I have licked my bowl so much my tongue tastes like metal. Oh, and of course, of course, that whining sound is here, filling my brain. It rises and falls but never goes away, these days. I can almost imagine I hear words in it, sometimes. Just now it’s bearable. The hunger is worse. It gnaws at my stomach.

  The TV is on, some creepy thing about a murderer stalking a girl in a parking lot. It’s dark, raining. The actress playing the girl is pretty good. She looks scared. I don’t like stuff like that so I leave the room. But I can still hear it: the running, the screams. I hope she gets away. Honestly, who watches this trash? There are sick people in the world, let me tell you. I thank the LORD that my Ted is nothing like that.

  So hungry.

  I stalk around the house. The cord floats behind me. It is sagging and grey today, which seems appropriate. You can’t eat it. I’ve tried. I have eaten everything there is to eat in this place. I even knocked the lid off the trash can, but there were only dirty tissues in there. Since the Bad Dinner, Ted takes out the trash twice a day. Anyway, I ate the tissues.

  I patrol the house, scenting for blood. I even go to the basement workshop, which I don’t like too much because it has no windows. The engine sits like a shining sea creature on the workbench, under the spotlight. Boxes line the walls. I climb over them and into them. They are mostly empty, or filled with old parts. Even in my anxious state, the cardboard makes me purr a little. I have to make a big effort not to settle down for a comfortable doze.

  I creep under the couch and peer behind radiators. I go under Ted’s bed where beer cans roll about among the dust bunnies. I pull open his drawers and dig through his socks and boxers and undershirts. I scrabble about in the back of the closet. I don’t find anything. No blood, and not even the scent of Lauren.

  I stop before the attic door, my tail straight and scared. There is no sound. I force myself to come closer. I put my delicate velvet nose to the crack under the door and I breathe. Dust, dust and nothing. I listen, but all is quiet. I picture the still air, the thick beams sighing, abandoned objects spilling out of boxes. I shiver. There’s something horrible about the thought of an empty room, in the dark. OOoooeeeeeee, goes the singing in my brain. If the lord has a purpose for this almost constant noise, I wish he would reveal it pretty darn quick.

  I realise I haven’t looked under the refrigerator. Sure enough after a couple of tries I hook out a stale cracker with a claw. Ugh. Soft.

  I am chewing when I glimpse something else in the dusty dark. I gently slide my paw, delicately extend my claws to their full length and reach in among the bottle caps and soft grey fluff. I sink a claw into the thing. It is a yielding surface, the claw goes right through. A little body, is my first thought. A mouse? Ooh … But it’s not flesh, something thinner and more porous. I pull the thing into the light. It’s a child’s white flip-flop. It must be one of Lauren’s. Lauren can’t walk but she likes to wear shoes sometimes anyway.

  Well, no big deal, I say to myself, it’s just a flip-flop. The iron-rich scent that fills my nostrils tells another story. Reluctantly I nose it over, and there it is on the other side. The sole is stiff, caked with dried, dark-brown matter. So I think, Maybe it’s jelly or ketchup or something, maybe it’s not blood. But my mouth is filling up with the scent. I want to eat it. The whining rises in pitch and volume.

  I drop the flip-flop between my front paws and stare at it, as if there’s an answer written there. It’s probably nothing to do with me. Lauren must have hurt herself. She doesn’t have any feeling in her feet, she’s rough with them. But I can’t help thinking about tiny bones, and the taste Night-time leaves at the back of my throat. About how often he has taken over, recently – how often I have let him. My tail blows up into a bottlebrush of unease. Normally this is exactly the kind of situation in which I would look to the lord for guidance. But I don’t. Somehow I don’t want His attention on me, right now.

  There is no blood anywhere else in the kitchen. I am sure of that. In fact, it is unusually clean. I can smell bleach. Now, that is really weird, because Ted never cleans.

  Are you there? I ask.

  His eyes glow green in the darkness. Is it my time?

  No.

  Maybe it is. He comes forward, a little playful, trying to take control. I fight him back – but honestly, it is more difficult than I remember. Is he getting stronger?

  Did you … I pause and lick my chops. My tongue feels kind of dry and woody. Did we hurt Lauren?

  No, he says, and there comes that dark ripple through my body that happens when Night-time laughs. Of course not.

  Phew. But my relief can only be short-lived. Then why, I ask Night-time, is there a bloody flip-flop under the refrigerator?

  He shrugs, and the whole inside of my mind moves up and down like the swell of the ocean. Hurt herself? he suggests. Kids.

  Maybe, I say. But why hasn’t she been around lately?

  Not my job to explain things to you, he says. Ask someone else. He turns to go back into the dark.

  Well, what a gd help you are! I shout after him. Who the hell else am I supposed to ask?

  I don’t feel reassured. The opposite, actually. Night-time was so strong. The hair stands up on the ruff of my neck.

  Ted sways into the kitchen. The light blazes up. I hadn’t realised it had gotten dark.

  ‘What have you found?’ He takes the bloody little flip-flop from me, and goes still, looking at it. ‘I thought I threw that away,’ he says. ‘Why won’t it stay gone? I don’t want it down here, I don’t want you to see it.’ He puts the flip-flop in his pocket and picks me up. His breath is a warm blast through my fur. I writhe and scream but it’s no good.

  He puts me in the crate. The lid comes down. I hear him piling things on top. He NEVER does that while I am in here. I row politely, because clearly there has been some kind of mistake. I won’t be able to get out. But he carries on. Ted is trapping me! Why would he do that?

  I row and row, but I am answered by silence. Ted is gone. He has locked me here in the dark. I try not to panic. He’ll get over it and let me out. Besides, I love my crate, don’t I?

  I can’t sleep. Every so often I twitch awake, convinced there is someone in here with me. I feel them along my side, stirring in the dark.

  Ted

  I cannot remember exactly how old I was when I realised that my Mommy was beautiful. No more than five, I think. I understood it not by looking at her but from the other kids’ and parents’ expressions. When she picked me up from school the parking lot was always full, and they all looked.

  It gave me complicated feelings. It was obvious that the other mommies weren’t like her. My mommy had smooth skin and big eyes that seemed to see only you when they looked. She didn’t wear big jeans or sweaters. She wore a blue dress with a skirt that swished about her calves like the sea, or sometimes sheer blouses, which showed glimpses of the warm shadowed caverns of her. She spoke really softly and gently, she never yelled like other moms. Her pointed consonants and flat vowels were exotic. I was proud that they looked at her. But the glances also made a little hot place in my belly fire up. I both wanted them to look and didn’t. It was better after I started taking the bus.

  I was protective of her at schoo
l. But I was always most jealous when Mommy came home from her shift. I was scared that all the other kids she looked after at the hospital would use her up and there would be nothing left for me.

  In a way, that was what happened. She was heartbroken when they let her go. There were cutbacks everywhere, everyone knew that. Money was tight. Daddy told me to keep out of Mommy’s hair. She needed some space, he said. And she did seem diminished, somehow. Her easy glow was dimmed. I was fourteen or so then, maybe.

  The Chihuahua lady and Mommy were tight. Every morning, if they weren’t on shift, Mommy would walk over to her house. They would drink black coffee and smoke Virginia Slims and talk. If it was nice they sat on the screen porch. If it was dull or cold, which it usually was, they sat at the dinner table until the air grew so thick with smoke and secrets that you could have sliced it with a knife. I knew all this because sometimes on the weekends they lost track of time and I had to go fetch Mommy to make lunch. Maybe it was only opening jars of baby food, but it was still women’s work, Daddy said. He was drinking a lot by then.

  After Mommy was fired the Chihuahua lady was outraged, way more upset than Mommy. Chihuahua lady tried to get her to fight it. ‘You’re the best,’ she said. ‘You have such a way with the kids. They’re crazy to lose you. It’s a crime.’ Her wide brown eyes were pools of belief. The Chihuahua lady always hummed with energy. ‘You can write to the hospital board,’ she said to Mommy. ‘Come on. You can’t take it lying down. You are an asset.’

  Daddy and I both echoed her. ‘You’re the best, Mommy,’ I said. ‘They don’t know how good they have it with you.’

  ‘It’s just the way of things,’ Mommy said in her gentle way. ‘You accept misfortune with grace.’