Darling (20 page)

She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. The weak light struggling into the room barely lit up the constellations that her mother had painted over her bed. She stuck her arm up over her face and closed one eye. With her index finger she traced the lines of the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, Orion the Hunter. As she did she whispered into the dark of her room, “God, please send my Mommy the remission. I don’t want her to cry no more.”

The water stopped running at the other end of the apartment. Peggy rolled over and clicked “Sleep” on her computer. The screen went black and the white light in the lower corner pulsed slowly. It served as a nightlight, casting a small bit of light every few seconds while allowing enough darkness to take root in the room for Peggy to sleep.

The faint rhythm of her mother’s sobbing drifted down the hall. She tried to ignore it, but couldn’t. It made the muscles around her eyes quiver. She rolled over and stretched her hand toward the door. Her fingertips just barely touched the edge and she gave it a hard push. It swung closed with a soft click.

She shut her eyes again. The image of her on the scale in the doctor’s office came into her mind. She stood on the cold, black thing as Dr. Brady slid the metal block back and forth, frowning. Her white gown with pink dots was open in the back and the skin of her thighs and butt was covered in goose bumps.
Why is there a mirror here? That’s just mean,
making me look at myself
. Her skin was sallow and clung close to her bones. There were bruises here and there, purple splotches like spilled finger paint. She could easily see the bones of her elbows and knees jutting out, and pockets of loose skin flapped from her arms.

She shook the memory away. At least no one could call me Porky Peggy anymore. The thought almost made her smile. That was one torture she would never have to deal with again. Now she had others.

She stole a quick glance at her closet and shut her eyes again.

Her brother let out a short, sleepy cry from her mother’s bedroom. It was the prelude to a full-blown fit. The way that sound carried in the apartment, it was like Charlie was at the foot of her bed every time he cried.

Shut up
,
she thought, and then felt guilty. She loved her brother.

She heard the bathroom door open and close and her mother stomp down the hall. A few moments later and Charlie had quieted.

The silence was far from comforting. Peggy tried to sleep, tried to will it to come to her, but every tiny noise in her room was amplified. The wind whistled past her window, rustling the leaves of the magnolia trees that grew against the walls of the building. A horn honked somewhere. Kids yelled and laughed in the distance, their words little more than murmuring. The pulse of the white light from her sleeping computer shined against her lids and her brain manufactured a low rhythm to accompany it.

Drum-drum-drum.

Stop it. That computer don’t make no noise when it’s sleeping.

She envied it suddenly, its ability to sleep at the push of a button.

She rolled over again and winced at the loud crinkle of her sheets.

The closet door cracked open.

Her breath caught in her throat.

She had heard that, right? Of course she did. It was unmistakable.

She thought that maybe she should turn on the light, or open the door, or yell for Mommy, or even just hide under her covers. But she couldn’t move. She just lay there like a rock, her eyes clamped shut, her breath held inside her so long that her lungs ached.

There was a soft thump and Peggy opened one eye halfway to peek. A doll had rolled out of the closet and onto the floor. It lay there face down, its pink dress hiked up in the back like it was mooning her.

The door creaked open a little farther.

She yanked the covers over her head.

She listened, hoping she wouldn’t hear the rustle of feet through carpet. Her breath was warm underneath the blankets and she was already damp with sweat.

After a long silence, she slowly lowered the covers.

The room was empty.

She took a deep breath and exhaled. It turned to a soft, white mist as it left her mouth. She realized how cold the room had become. She looked over to the closet—

—and saw that the door was open completely.

She held her breath and dove back under the covers. She laid there, motionless, quiet, hoping that it thought she was still in the hospital.

A faint rustle. Tiny feet moving slowly through carpet.

A creak from her bedsprings as something pressed down on the edge. It had never come out this far before.

And then the mattress pressed down farther and she felt it above her. She could feel its steaming hot breath against the outside of the sheet as it leaned close to her.

“Peggy.”

I’m not here. If I don’t move and don’t make no noise it won’t know I’m here. It will think I’m still at the hospital or—

“I can hear you thinking,” it said. Its voice was playful and gravelly. It was always like that, the voice of a child who wanted to play and an adult who wanted nothing more than to hurt you all rolled into one melodious sound. It made Peggy’s bones tingle.

“Leave me alone,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to make your brother cry,” it whispered. “Not this time, anyway.”

Please, God and Jesus who are in Heaven, hollow be thy name, thy Kingdom come—

It laughed, a sound like brittle twigs snapping. “Their names
are
hollow, aren’t they? Hollow, meaningless things.”

She shook her head furiously beneath the sheet as it leaned closer. She could feel its cheek press against hers through the sheet and her bladder let go.

It whispered to her the way her father used to when tucking her in for the night. Its hot breath pressed the sheet tight against her face and she could feel little flicks of spittle splatter against it.

“Come with me, Peggy. Step into the closet with me. There are wonders in there, dark and bloody, that will stay with you for years.”

She screamed louder than she ever had in her entire life. It made her temples ache and flashed stars in front of her eyes she screamed so hard. Her throat felt raw and bloody and her stomach lurched forward with the first stirrings of vomit, but she kept screaming. She heard its feet rustle through the carpet and back to the closet.

The closet door slammed shut.

Her bedroom door swung open, her light came on, and she pulled the covers from over head. Her stomach jerked hard to the right, then the left, and she leaned over and vomited into the trashcan that her mother had placed next to her bed.

Her mother was at her side, pulling her hair out of the way and rubbing her back.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Shhh…it’s okay.”

Peggy collapsed into her, let those great, comforting

arms envelope her, and tried to cry. She shook and moaned and snot poured from her nose, but no tears came from her eyes. After a few moments, she pulled away.

“I think I need some water,” she said.

Her mother nodded and left the room. Peggy stared at the closet door.

It was closed. For now, anyway.

Was that thing still behind it?

She was more afraid of it now than ever. It had never ventured more than a foot or two from the closet. It never seemed like it was able to before, like something kept it tied to the darkness in there. But if it could get to her bed now, what was next?

She placed one foot onto the floor, then the other. She had to hold the bedpost to get a sense of her balance but, once she did, she was moving to the door.

Her heart pounded in her chest so loud that it sounded like drums, like the ones they played at the football games she used to go to before she was sick, when Mommy and Daddy still loved each other. The carpet was moist and clammy against her bare feet. She knew she was in its trail, its wet, cold feet leaving a little something in between the threads of carpeting.

She reached a hand for the doorknob. Gripped it. It, too, was cold. She turned it and opened the door.

It was dark, darker than it should have been with her bedroom lights on. It was like the closet refused to let the light into it. She could see the vague outline of her clothes hanging on the rod, her toys and shoes piled up in the base, boxes on the top shelf. And somewhere behind everything, between it all, lying in the spaces between spaces, was a shifting, white shape. It moved around slowly in the cracks between those boxes, in the crevices of her toys, in the creases of her shirts. It watched her, studied her, but refused to come out into the light.

“Honey?” Her mother was behind her with a glass.

She took it and sipped it slowly. It was cool and refreshing, trickling over her chapped lips, across her dry tongue, and down her cracked throat.

“Thank you.”

Her mother patted her head. “You’re welcome, sweetheart. Did you have a bad dream?”

She glanced back over her shoulder into the closet and nodded.

“Wanna sleep in my room?”

Peggy shook her head. It didn’t matter where she was. It had already been in her mother’s room, anyway. Had already made Charlie cry.

“Okay. Do you want me to leave a light on for you, then?”

She nodded.

“Okay.” Her mother clicked on a small lamp in the corner. “Let me know if you need anything else.” She gave Peggy another hug and left.

Peggy stared into the black, watching the pale shape move away from the light, and wondered if things wouldn’t be better if she just gave in, if she just stepped inside.

The thing in her closet laughed.

* * *

The shower’s cool spray massaged the back of Eileen’s neck. It rinsed the sweat away and relaxed her, as it always did after she exerted herself.

Things had always been sweet with Dennis. Tender.

But the last two nights he had been an animal. They hadn’t made love or even had sex; they had
fucked
. She had sweat more than usual, and her calves, thighs, and upper back were sore. The shower helped that some, but she knew she’d need to make Dennis give her a massage before she could sleep.

He opened the curtain and peeked inside. “Hey. I was heating up some of that casserole. Thought you might have worked up an appetite.” He grinned. “You want some?”

“Good timing. I’m starving.”

He reached in and tweaked her nipple.

She smacked his hand away. “Don’t even think about it. I’m too sore.”

“Fine.” He mock pouted. “I’ll go heat the food.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

After she toweled off and put on her robe, she joined him on the couch. He had some History Channel documentary on and a bowl of casserole sat on the coffee table. He scooted a glass over to her.

“Diet Coke,” he said. “We finished off the last bottle of wine.”

“Damn. I’ll have to pick up some more.” She grabbed the bowl and stirred its contents. “Someday I’ll have a wine rack. Or a cellar.”

“Mmm-hmm.” He chewed a giant bite, his eyes glued to the screen.

She glanced at the television. It was some Civil War documentary. It didn’t really interest her. Dennis was the history buff. She grabbed the remote and flicked a button, bringing up the onscreen programming guide. It covered a small portion of the screen and Dennis continued watching the documentary as she looked for something else.

She sighed. “500 channels and nothing on. Look at this: Food Network, Golf Channel, Home Shopping, Telemundo. Why am I paying for this? I don’t want these things. Just let me choose what I want to watch.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

She pulled her feet up onto the couch and kicked his thigh. “You’re really quite the conversationalist tonight.”

“Sorry. This thing just sucked me in.”

“What’s it about?”

“Civil War prisons.”

“Yeah. Real exciting.”

“Haha.”

The screen showed grainy black and white photos of Confederate prisoners being marched around a muddy campsite by Union guards on horseback with rifles. This was followed by a photograph of a gallows with scores of men lined up in front of it.

“Do we have to watch this?”

He wiped his mouth. “No. But you said yourself: there’s nothing else on.”

“Can’t we just, I don’t know,
talk
or something?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Anything.”

A photo came on to the screen of a large hill with a crude wooden fort atop it and a series of gnarled trees lining the dirt road that weaved up to it. The narrator’s monotone voice droned on over a bed of somber music. “Another tragedy occurred at Camp Opey, Tennessee.”

Eileen leaned forward. “That looks like the hill where Raynham Place is.”

Dennis shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe.”

The photograph switched to one of a group of Union soldiers standing over a giant ditch. The ditch was filled with corpses. The Narrator continued: “Built over an old school house, Camp Opey became a prison in the last year of the war. Though its existence was short, its infamy lived on for many years. The atrocities at Camp Opey were only overshadowed by the tragedies committed in the notorious Andersonville prison.”

The photograph switched again, this time to Andersonville.

Eileen pulled her knees to her chest and scratched her cheek. “I think that was where your apartment building is.”

“I don’t know,” Dennis said. “Kind of hard to tell.”

“Have you ever heard of Camp Opey?”

He shook his head.

“It could have been there before the sanatorium. Right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

She tapped his thigh with her foot. “Doesn’t this interest you at all?”

“I don’t know. It’s a bit of a jump, isn’t it? To see that photograph and think it’s Raynham.”

“I’m sure it is. The slope of the hill, the trees, the road running up to the prison. It’s Raynham. I’d swear it is.”

He sat his bowl down and turned toward her. “And what if it is?”

She shrugged. “I just think it’s interesting. It might…” She trailed off.

Dennis smiled. “Might what?”

“Nothing.”