Poe (6 page)

“You could just
give
me the Band-Aid and Neosporin.”

“Yeah, you could just give it to her,” I say, my voice definitely pitching to a fourth-grade decibel.

“But that wouldn’t be any fun, and my buddy Shakespeare likes fun. He was just bragging that he’d have you in the sack by the end of the night. That’s why he gave you some of his jacked-up java: so he could keep you up all night, have his way with you. We bet twenty bucks on it. I personally thought you weren’t that kind of girl, but Shakespeare, he’s
so
immature.”

I’m so shocked that I open my mouth, but the words won’t come.

Lisa turns to me and narrows her eyes. “I
thought
that didn’t taste like decaf.”

“Lisa,” I sputter, “I didn’t—”

“Almost like slipping a girl a roofie,” says Nate.

And then the unimaginable happens, the unthinkable. Staring me down coolly, Lisa reaches out her hand and actually places it in Nate’s meaty palm, as if she’s daring me to complain. Nate grins at me, dabs a bit of Neosporin on her scratch, and then rubs it lightly—no, pornographically—with his thumb.

Holy mother of God I need a miracle. “C’mon, spirits,
do
something,” I mutter.

And that’s when Maddy’s convulsions start.

CHAPTER THREE: LADYBIRD

I
t’s like watching someone being electrocuted, but there is no blue arc of light, no sizzle of an electrical wire. For a moment we all stare in shock as Maddy lies on the floor, her body convulsing furiously. But then Lisa suddenly jumps to her feet and I do too; together we race to Maddy’s side. With the professional touch of someone who’s worked, even as a receptionist, in a nursing facility, Lisa kneels and expertly cradles Maddy’s head, while I do my best to hold down her shaking body—not an easy task, since underneath the rolls of fat, Maddy is apparently built like a tank.

Nate, though, just keeps the camera rolling. “Man, this is some great shit.”

“Should we call an ambulance?” I ask quickly.

“It looks like some kind of epileptic seizure,” says Lisa. “Let’s get her on her side so if she throws up she doesn’t choke on her vomit.”

The idea that there might be vomit involved soon is disconcerting to say the least. I try to roll Maddy over, and I get an elbow in the chin for my pains. “You thinking about helping, Nate?”

“Kinda busy,” says Nate. “See if you can hold her head steady so I can get a close-up.”

“
God
, what an asshole,” mutters Lisa, and I feel a thrill of joy. Thank you spirits and convulsing Maddy, thank you.

“A minute ago you didn’t seem to think he was an asshole,” I say smugly.

“A minute ago I couldn’t decide which one of you was the
bigger
asshole.”

Ouch. “C’mon, that’s not even remotely fair—if this was an asshole contest, he’d win hands down.”

“Thanks, Shakespeare,” says Nate with a cheerful wave.

Lisa grips Maddy’s head firmly and gives me an equally firm look. “I’ll be the judge of that. And if you’re going to mess with me, then I’m going to mess with you. Got it?”

I swallow hard. “Duly noted.”

Just as suddenly as Maddy’s seizures began, they abruptly stop. The room falls into a deathly quiet. There’s a gentle creak as the wind brushes around the corners of the house. The glass that remains in the windowpanes shudders, then is still. For the first time I really think about how far out in the countryside we are—no living human within a ten-mile radius. And the sun is starting to set.
Fuck
.

“You think she’s dead?” whispers Nate. “’Cause if she is, we can put her obit on the front page. Dad would love that.”

I can feel Lisa invisibly seethe.

“We can kill him later,” I whisper.

“Promise?”

“I’ll hold him down and you can beat him in the head with his night-vision camera.”

We both look over at Nate and the annoying, owl-like lens that is recording us.

“Deal,” says Lisa with a hint of a smile. “But I guess I should… check.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Nate might actually be right, but now I notice that Maddy
is
uncomfortably still, and it’s impossible to tell under the stiff pleather jacket whether she’s breathing.

“
Okay
,” Lisa whispers. She takes a slight breath before she reaches a tentative hand out to Maddy’s neck to check for a pulse.

But as soon as her finger makes contact, Maddy jolts upright with an astonishing speed, like a marionette pulled roughly on a string.
She stares straight head, unblinking, unseeing. Her right shoulder twitches, as if she’s still processing the current from an electric shock, and her beehive slowly sags even farther to the left.

“Maddy?” asks Lisa hesitantly. “Are you okay?”

Nothing. Silence.

Lisa catches my eye—this is not a good sign.

“Maddy?” asks Lisa again, carefully.

Maddy inhales suddenly, fiercely, like there’s not enough air in the room to fill her lungs. She
is
breathing.

“Gotcha,” says Nate cheerfully. “Dad wasn’t kidding when he said she was good. Our web traffic’s gonna go through the roof.”

This is all just part of the act? Lisa glares at Nate, looking highly pissed, but something like relief starts to wash over me, a giddy “We made it” kind of vibe.

But apparently the show’s not over. Maddy opens her mouth—forming a small, almost perfectly round O—and begins to sing in a lilting, childlike voice:

On a mountain stands a lady
,

Who she is I do not know
,

Appropriately creepy—I’m impressed. One of her arms darts out madly, clutches Lisa’s shirt, and she jerks Lisa to her with a strength that seems unusual for someone courting emphysema.

“This is so cool I’m going to piss myself!” whispers Nate.

Lisa tries in vain to pry Maddy’s fingers off her shirt, but Maddy’s deep in character—too deep in my opinion.

“For fuck’s sake, Nate, we got enough footage, don’t you think?”

All I know is she wears golden slippers
,

And her skin’s as pale as snow
,

“We can string it out,” says Nate. “Make it into a series.”

“
Maddy
!” I grab Maddy’s shoulders and give them a shake. “Let her go. Let Lisa go.” Instantly she does, and her hands hang in the air for a moment, suspended, as if she’s frozen. But then she closes her eyes and begins to giggle.

Lisa straightens her shirt and falls back on her heels, visibly annoyed.

Damn she looks cute when she’s annoyed.

But then Maddy’s on her feet in less than a second, and I swear to God I never saw her move. A new wave of panic—real panic—sets in, and my heart begins to thud loudly against my chest. Suddenly I’m thinking of that story by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, where the guy kills an old man and buries him underneath the floorboards, only to be haunted by the sound of the victim’s beating heart. For a few horrific seconds I can’t tell whether what I’m experiencing is real or some kind of literary déjà vu, but then I realize that it’s not
my
heart making that noise; it’s
actually
something pounding loudly against the sagging floor beneath us. And not only is there a thunderous pounding, but a slight push accompanies it, as if something is straining to get out, like a great white shark bumping against the bottom of a sadly inadequate dingy.

A frigid breeze rushes through the room, lifting Lisa’s hair—I see her breath form a small cloud of mist. It feels like the temperature just dropped below freezing, and a wave of nausea hits me.

Take her by the lily-white hand
,

Save her from the water
,

“Whoa, did you see that?” says Nate, face pressed to the viewfinder.

“See what?” asks Lisa, but her voice sounds far away, like I’m hearing her underwater. My ears buzz, and a sharp pain pushes against my temples.

“This white light just flashed on the camcorder. So fuckin’ cool,” says Nate.

Maddy stands in the middle of the room, swinging her arms in an absent, almost childlike kind of way. Does anyone else see how black her eyes have gone? She pulls at a tendril of hair that has come loose from her beehive and twirls it around her finger.

Leave her and you might just find
,

There’s no end to the slaughter
.

The pain in my head is turning into a roar, the floor seems to tilt, and vomit rises at the back of my throat. I think someone says “We should go”—Lisa maybe—but it’s hard to tell where sound is coming from, and as I fall to the floor, I don’t really care. I feel disassociated from my body, like it’s someone else watching Maddy rip the brooch from her jacket and toss it across the floor, where it skitters like a living thing. It’s someone else watching Maddy skip in an unearthly kind of hopscotch, like gravity doesn’t apply, like she’s an astronaut on a moonwalk. And the evening reaches a new level of surreal when her voice takes on a singsong cadence that fades into and out of my consciousness.

Ladybird, ladybird

Fly away home
.

Lisa’s voice is urgent, almost deafening. “
Nate
! Call 911!”

I cover my ears with my hands. There’s something I want to say, but it’s a struggle to remember the words or to think about forming them.

Your house is on fire

Your children are gone
.

She stops then, looks at me, or maybe through me would be a more accurate description. What the
fuck
happened to her eyes?

“
He’s coming for
you,” she hisses.

And then I find the words. “Leave her alone!” I shout.

Maddy gives one last, tremendously impossible leap.

I say last, because next I hear a splintering crash, and Maddy disappears through the floor entirely.

Relief. Silence. I tentatively blink. Dust rises from the gaping hole in the floor, but the pain is gone, as is the roar in my ears. I’m able to push myself up to a sitting position, and the floor only tilts slightly. Something soft is holding my arm.

I look to see that something is Lisa’s hand. She’s so close that I can feel her gentle breath, and her warm brown eyes are beautiful, amazing—there are small gold flecks that catch the fading light.

“Dimitri, are you okay?” she whispers.

And in that moment, I am.

“Can you please say something? Because you’re really freaking me out right now,” she says, her eyebrows furrowed.

“Something?”

Lisa sighs and then sits back, tucking her hair back behind her ears. “Well, I can see you’re only partially brain damaged now.”

“No more than usual.”

The shadows in the room are lengthening, but the hole in the floor is a completely dark abyss. There’s no sound from below.

“Do you have a flashlight?”

“Flashlight. No clue what I was thinking, but no, I didn’t bring one.”

We both turn to Nate, who, to even
my
amazement, is still rolling tape. The large, battery-operated lamp still sits by his feet.

“Do you mind if I borrow that?” asks Lisa.

“Knock yourself out, babe.”

He pushes the light over with his foot, obviously not wanting to lose his shot. Lisa inhales deeply, like she’s considering whether she
wants to preemptively knock him over the head with it, and flips it on. Immediately it’s like a supernova exploded—I think I can actually feel my retinas burning.

“Pretty monstrous, right?” snickers Nate. “Four thousand one hundred lumens. Should be illegal.”

“Christ, Nate,” I say irritably. “Couldn’t you have given us a heads up?”

He chuckles. “You should have
seen
the look on your faces—like two deer in the headlights.”

Lisa turns to me. “How have you
not
killed him before this?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I have an aversion to penitentiaries. Weak coffee. No donuts.”

“Right,” she says. “I could always smuggle some in.”

We turn to Nate, who is slurping a beer.

“I’ll give it some serious consideration,” I say.

Lisa starts toward the gaping hole, but I put a hand on her arm to stop her. “It’s not safe.”

“We need to know if she’s…”

Dead. An uneasy shudder runs down my spine.

“I’m light,” she continues. “And I know where the bad floorboards are.”

“Lisa, you’re not—”

“I’ll be
fine
.” And there’s something final about the way she says it that makes me realize it’s pointless to argue.

“Be careful.”

“I’m not an idiot,” she says with a half smile. Bravely she approaches the gaping hole where Maddy disappeared, testing the floor as she goes. When she finally gets to the edge, she holds the blinding light over it and calls, “Maddy, can you hear me?”

Nothing.