Amity (25 page)

Invisible hands, cold and lifeless, closed around my throat. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. The overhead light sizzled and cracked, bulbs blacking.

Don’t don’t DON’T
—

The door slammed shut behind her.

THE DOORKNOB RATTLED
, shaking the heavy, solid wood, but the closet door held firm. Then came a distinct
thud
, the solid, meaty sound of flesh being slapped, slammed up against unyielding substance that could only be Ro throwing herself against it. The door held fast.

“They’re not here!” she cried. “The closet is empty! Open the door!”

“We didn’t close it!” My mother sounded unsure now. “It’s not locked!”

The sour, metallic bite of copper flooded my mouth, thick and runny like I was choking on blood.

(the head the head the head)

“It won’t open,” Ro said, fingernails scrabbling against the doorknob.
“Unlock the door!”

The space beneath the closet door glowed scarlet, feral, and urgent, and a growl rose up—not quite human, not quite not—from beneath the floorboards, from deep within the bowels of the house. Inside the closet, Ro sobbed freely, babbling in incoherent mumbles that rose, gathering intensity by the second.

“Rosemary!” My mother’s voice had taken on a clipped bark that belied her own rare fright. She grabbed at the doorknob and gasped, pulling back, like she’d plunged her hand
directly into a furnace, or tried to clasp an open flame between her fingers.

“Try to relax, Ro,” my mother pleaded.

The buzzing, louder now, chattered and rose, beckoning from outside of me, from the direction of the closet.

I watched, transfixed, as a swarm of hornets poured from underneath the door.

I screamed.

The door flew open, revealing my aunt, staggering forward as though prodded by invisible hands.

Ro’s face was studded with stings.

She was so swollen with bumps and bruises that she was nearly unrecognizable, a melted wax image, the skin on one eyelid stretched red and puffy, tight as a straitjacket. Her good eye, impossibly round, stared out from the bloated, mottled bread loaf that her face had become.

“There’s nothing in there,” she croaked, opening her mouth wide. A torrent of blood gushed out.

My entire body clenched. Involuntarily, my limbs jerked straight and stiff, my head snapped back, and my teeth gnashed together hard enough to chip several.

The ceiling light twisted and rotated on its base.

With an explosive, violent roar, it came crashing to the ground.

THE LAMP MISSED US BY INCHES
.

That was what my mother told me when I came to again.

I’D ONLY BEEN OUT FOR A FEW MINUTES
, she said—not even enough time for her really to worry, given how distraught Ro was when she finally emerged from the closet.

Mom had fully regained her composure now, one hand resting against the sharp angle of her hip bone, the other nursing the cup of water Ro brought up to the bedroom with her when she first came upstairs.

I blinked at my mother’s blasé reaction to Ro’s stings. She no longer looked like a carnival sideshow freak, true—maybe some of the wasp bites died down after the initial sting—but there was still that one eye, fat and red as a tomato, slit shut clamshell tight. Ro pressed her index and middle fingers gingerly to the wound, offering me a wary look with her good, open eye.

“I … fainted?” I glanced around the room. “You were in the closet,” I said to Aunt Ro. “You were stuck.”

“I was stuck,” she confirmed through cracked, blistered lips. “Locked in.”

My mother frowned. “No one locked you in. The doors don’t even have locks here. It’s an old house, Ro. The wood warps. You just insist on overreacting. I wish I could say it was unlike you.”

Ro’s expression was sour. “You’d never say that, Ells. Just
admit it. You think overreacting is
exactly
like me. Remember? It’s why you didn’t want me coming, riling poor, fragile Gwen up.”

My mother’s features hardened. “Fine. If you want to be blunt, then. Yes. It’s ridiculous, you streaking out here like a lunatic, books and papers and whatever other horrible stories about this house.

“It doesn’t
matter
what happened here before, Ro. Houses don’t have energy, or memory, or whatever it is you’re worried about. There’s
nothing to be afraid of
here.
Amity is only a house
.” Her face shone sweaty and tight with emotion.

“But … Ro’s face,” I stammered. “The wasps.” Regardless of where they came from, either the natural world or the depths of Amity herself … Surely my mother could see that the wasps were dangerous. That was just a fact.

Ro flashed me a knowing look through her ruined, fun-house features.

My mother sighed, end-of-her-rope weary. She looked at me with free, unfettered anger.

She said, “
What
are you talking about, Gwen?”

“HER FACE,” I REPEATED
, my voice small. “Her
eye
.”

I stepped forward, toward the bed, and reached out to Ro’s face, tracing a tentative path across the swollen flesh, puffed and rising from the socket like a helium balloon. “We have to do something about the stings.”

My mother grabbed at my elbow.
“Gwen
. That’s
enough.”
To Ro, she snapped, “You see?”

She meant,
You see how fragile she is? How easy it would be to break her?

You see how she is, in fact, already broken?

Panic bubbled in my throat. The wasps, the cloud, the hum … the
bites
, scarring Ro’s face.

My mother couldn’t see them. My mother couldn’t see what Amity had done.

“No
,
”
I gasped, and raised a hand to my mouth as my gorge rose yet again.

“GWEN ISN’T THE PROBLEM HERE,”
Ro said, resigned. She flicked her eyes toward the lamp, smashed to crystal smithereens in the middle of the bedroom floor. “Actually, she might be the only one with the power to resist the house in any real way.”

My mother’s face paled, and her lips parted. “Stop. Talking.
Crazy
,” she whispered, cold. “Just stop. I don’t want to hear any more.” She swallowed, eyes flashing. “Get up. And
get out
.”

Ro’s eyes widened. “Look, I’m sorry. I am. But I can’t—I shouldn’t. Not now. Gwen—”

“
Gwen
is already about fifteen times worse off than she was before you came back here,” Mom said. “She doesn’t need your magical voodoo talk! The lamp
fell
, the door
stuck
, and there is
nothing wrong with the house
. The only thing wrong is with Gwen’s mind, which you know well enough, and having you here is obviously more dangerous for her than anything else.” She pushed me aside, grabbing Ro and dragging her to her feet. “So just find your bags—or
don’t
, I don’t care, if it’s only going to lead to another scene—and go.”

I WATCHED FROM THE WINDOW OF THE SEWING ROOM
as Ro’s car sputtered back down our driveway. We didn’t have a chance to say any kind of private good-bye.

I DREAMED OF LUKE THAT NIGHT
.

The hands on my bedside clock turn over, pointing, accusing, to 3:14. Luke stands over me, cheekbones streaked with war paint, eyes glowing, body bathed in moonlight. He holds a mirror to my face
.

In the dream, my reflection plays back to me: red-rimmed eyes, slit pupils, lips curled in a menacing snarl
.

In the dream, I see myself as Luke sees me:

(insane)

(crazy)

Monstrous
.

In the dream
,
I
am
monstrous
.

But Luke?

Luke is a demon
.

And he means to destroy me
.

From the corner of the bedroom, Aunt Ro whispers
.

Remember,
she says
, what it is that you can do.

Remember.

Soon.

Or run.

In the dream she disappears, dissolves into thin air. I am left alone, wrapped only in a bedsheet, as in her wake, Luke looms
.

He raises the shotgun to eye level
.

He is tall
,

taller
,

tallest
.

He says:

“Sorry, sis.”

TEN YEARS EARLIER

DAY 24

JULES COMES TO ME
every night. At 3:14, she’s there.

She says:
It’s time
.

The shotgun rests, cold and still against my leg.

I tap at it, eager.

Yeah
, I think.
It’s time
.

DAY 28

(ALWAYS)

12:08

Jules sees the light on in my bedroom, peeks her head in. “Sleeping up here tonight?”

Her tone reminds me that this is unusual these days. My behavior’s been unusual, I mean.

More
unusual these days.

I smile at her. “Lots to do tonight.” Under the covers, I wrap a hand around the butt of the shotgun.

She screws her face up. She looks puzzled, like she doesn’t remember about our plans, all the stuff we talked about. But that doesn’t bother me.

12:43

After tossing and turning for over an hour, I pad downstairs, ignoring the creeping sensation of being watched that permeates the air. I pour myself a glass of lukewarm water from the kitchen tap, avoiding reflective surfaces for fear of what they may reveal.

As I move back toward the hallway, the cellar door opens, and Luke bursts through.

His hair is askew, his eyes are bloodshot.

He looks at me, but doesn’t seem to register. He pushes past me, determined.

I ask, “Where are you going?”

I wonder,
Now?

He doesn’t reply as he storms toward the door, down to the boathouse.

1:23

No chance of sleep. Not with Dad’s snoring echoing down the hall, his breathing thick and muddy.

Not with knowing this’ll be the last night that I ever hear that sound.

2:36

I realize tonight is the first night I can’t hear the banging of the boathouse door, despite Luke’s silhouette casting long, mutant shadows through the knots in the weathered wood.

It isn’t a comforting thought.

2:42

Mom, Abel, and Dad are sleeping the sleep of the dead, thanks to some pills mixed into the water pitcher at dinner.

Mom really should keep her meds locked up.

With her and Abel out of the way, there’s no reason that this—that
tonight
—shouldn’t work.

2:58

Luke is planning something out in the boathouse. Plotting. With Amity.

Luke is not in his right mind tonight. And I may never have been, may never have had a right mind.

He keeps things in the boathouse. That was what Ro thought. And the ax has been missing from the woodpile for quite some time now.