The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (105 page)
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Authors: Jennifer McMahon
Tags: #Fiction, #Psychological, #Retail, #Suspense, #Thrillers
The Happy Family
If you believe, people will doubt you. Call you crazy. There will come a time when you must make a choice—when your true beliefs will be put to the test.
Us or them?
The world of magic or the mundane drudgery of going through life with blinders on.
You choose.
Phoebe
JUNE 13, PRESENT DAY
T
hey were coming up on Harmony when Phoebe got to the last few pages of the diary.
Spring, Age 15
Dear Diary,
The baby looks like his father. That’s what Sister says. She and David are married now, and we all live together in our house, just as Teilo promised. Grandfather’s gone, struck by lightning just after Sister and David got married. It’s funny though, sometimes I wake up in the night and can still feel his cold, bony fingers wrapped around my wrist. Mother’s gone to a home since the stroke messed up her brain. Folks in town say our family sure has had its run of bad luck. They bring casseroles and cakes but never set foot in the door. In fact, they seem to be holding their breath as they stand on the porch, nervously looking in, as if bad luck were a germ you could inhale.
Sometimes I see it like that too. This big old mushroom cloud hanging over our house. And if you followed it down to the source, you’d end up in Reliance. You’d find Teilo there, dancing in the shadows, laughing.
Sister and David coo over Gene. They play patty-cake and sing silly songs that make Gene giggle and blow bubbles.
I’ve tried, but I can’t make myself love him.
No matter how many baths I give him, he smells like the woods. Like Reliance.
It’s the Fairy in him, Sister says.
And the extra fingers, they’re supposed to be a sign of magic, but to me, they’re all wrong.
It breaks me into a million pieces to watch David with Gene. Sometimes I have to turn away because the tears are coming hard and fast.
Last week he caught me watching him, crying.
“What is it?” David asked. He’d just rocked Gene to sleep. Sister was out at the market. It’s worse when she’s away because then I can pretend it’s just me and David and Gene here.
“Sometimes I wish things had turned out differently,” I tell him. “I wish you and I—”
His eyes blazed and he looked away. “You made your choice.”
I laughed. “What choice?”
And then I told him. I told him everything. Even the things Sister had forbidden me to say. I told him about Teilo and the woods, the book we found, and how we each promised our firstborn. I told him that Teilo was watching us all the time, using us, playing us like instruments.
He shook his head. “You’re nuts,” he told me. “You don’t make any sense.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe I am the crazy one.
“I know that’s what my sister tells you, but please, David, please, if you ever cared for me at all, then do me one favor. Try to imagine for one minute what it would mean if I was right. I know you think that my sister is good as gold, but what if she’s not? What if the only reason you’re here is because they want something of you?”
“Who is they?” he asked.
“Teilo. The fairies. They’re using you, David. I’m not sure what for—appearances, probably. Or maybe it’s just to amuse them because they know how it tortures me.”
“Phyllis and I are married. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”
I laughed again. I couldn’t help it. “This house is nothing but a thick, tangled nest of secrets. You’ll see soon enough. ”
He said nothing.
“Do you love her?” I asked.
He winced a little.
I smiled. “You know I’m right, don’t you? I’m guessing you know something’s not right here. Maybe you’ve felt him. Or even seen him watching from the shadows.”
He looked panicked now, making me surer than ever that I was right.
“You have, haven’t you?”
“I should go,” he said, taking a step back.
“And I’m also guessing you don’t love her. Not like you loved me. Remember, Dave? How you were going to take me away from all of this? We were going to California?”
He stepped forward then and took me in his arms. He was trembling. His lips found mine and I knew it was wrong, I knew there would be repercussions, but in the moment, I just didn’t care.
Fall, 15 years old
Dear Diary,
I’m being sent away. Banished, Sister calls it. Me and little Gene and David’s little unborn son or daughter are moving to an old farmhouse owned by some elderly distant aunt. She has an apple orchard. I’ll pick apples, learn to run the cider press. When she passes on, the farm will be mine. It’s all arranged.
I’m never to live in Harmony again.
I’m to stay away from David. No contact. Not until I prove I can control myself.
“And what if I refuse?” I asked.
“You can’t,” Sister said.
“I don’t care what he does to me,” I said. “Teilo can’t hurt me any more than he already has.”
Sister shook her head. “You stupid little whore. He’ll go after David.”
So I packed up little Gene’s things, my clothes, a few books, and I got in the car without even saying good-bye.
Phoebe closed the diary. They were passing the Lord’s Prayer rock.
“Evie’s your sister,” she said.
Sam nodded. “I know,” Sam said, as if he was finally seeing something that had been in front of his face all along. “I mean, I didn’t know it for a fact, but part of me always kind of felt it. I think Lisa knew, though. It was one of those things that I think everyone knew but no one dared say out loud. Everyone was too busy inventing their own twisted versions of the truth. It was easier to blame every mistake, every bad thing that happened, on the goddamn fairies.”
Phoebe blew out a breath. “I don’t think we know what we’re up against,” she said.
“Stories,” Sam said. “Fables. Fairy tales.”
“But if people believe in them so strongly, doesn’t that give them power? More power maybe than even the truth?”
Gene
MAY 29, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
H
e’s a ghost. Here, but not here. Walking between the worlds. Moving in shadows. A shadow man himself, more phantom than living, breathing being. He’s been in the dark so long, he doesn’t remember the light.
He’s the Hoochie-Coochie Man. The Hurdy-Gurdy Man. The Bogeyman.
Boo.
Mister Slinky slinking around. Peeping Tom. He’s Tom, Dick, and Harry. See Dick run. See Dick find Jane, smile at her. Think unmentionables.
He doesn’t know movies, just the ones described to him by Evie. No TV where he lives, deep underground. No satellite or cable or movie of the week.
He knows books, though. The silly, predictable romances with their pink covers and ape-chested men. He knows
Frankenstein
, “Cinderella,” and “Rumpelstiltskin” where the horrid little man spins straw into gold for the miller’s daughter, who promises him her firstborn.
That is not my name
, he taunts, trying to make her guess.
Hurdy-Gurdy. Hurdy-Gurdy.
“You are a prince among men,” his mother used to say. As if that made up for things. As if that would be enough.
Enough.
For a long time, loving Lisa was enough. Just the feeling sitting inside his chest banging away like a gorilla in a cage. It was the strongest feeling he’d ever known. This need, this ache to meet her, to be near her. He’d heard stories of her his whole life. Stories from Evie, who crept down to the basement after each trip to the Nazzaros, full of stories of adventures. Things Lisa did. Stories Lisa told. Lisa. Lisa. Lisa. Lisa became the sun the world orbited around.
Round and round. All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. The monkey thought ’twas all in fun. Pop! goes the weasel.
They played a game, he and Evie. A game where she pretended to be Lisa. She acted like Lisa, spoke like Lisa, wrapped a towel around her head and said, “Don’t I have the most beautiful hair you’ve ever seen?”
Yes, Gene nodded. Yes. Yes. Yes. He let himself touch it, his fingers lost in the soft terry cloth.
And when it would end, when Evie would get called back upstairs for chores or homework or dinner, she’d drop the towel and say, “Oh Gene, I wish you could meet her for real!”
He wished too. He ached with the wish.
Evie snuck snapshots to him. Lisa on the beach. Lisa biting into a candy apple at the fair, her lips crimson and sticky. He’d touch her lips in the picture, then taste his own dirty fingertip, teeth buzzing from the sweetness he imagined. Evie gave him a tape of Lisa telling stories. He listened to it over and over, until the tape got fuzzy and her voice filled his brain and stayed there, talking to him in his dreams, keeping him company when he was alone every day for hours.
The worst was when Evie was at school. His mother would bring him lunch sometimes, when she remembered. Cheap greasy peanut butter on stale bread. Watery soup. She didn’t speak, didn’t look at him, just dropped off the food and latched the door from the outside. She used to talk to him, used to read him stories, but as he got older, she just quit seeing him. It was like he was turning invisible. Like his skin and flesh, even the organs inside him, got so pale they were translucent.
Translucent
. That was a word Evie taught him. “Like mica,” she told him. “And window glass. Plastic bags you put apples and broccoli in at the store. They’re all translucent.”
“You’re the smartest person on earth,” he told Evie and she smiled wide, her teeth like a shark’s.
She snuck down after school, bringing treats: half an apple, new pencils, books from the school library. She was the one who’d taught him to read and write. To do math. He’d learned right along with her after school each day; together they’d struggled over vocabulary lists, science reports, fractions. She brought him newspapers. Books of fairy tales. Books on magic and natural history. Boy Scout manuals.
“There’s nothing you can’t learn from a book,” she told him.
He taught himself to sew. He built elaborate mousetraps out of rubber bands, wire, and old coffee cans. Sometimes, at night, when their mother was out cold, Evie would unlock the door and they’d go outside together. They’d take long walks through the woods and old orchards.
He asked Evie a million questions. What was Lisa’s middle name? Maude. Favorite color? Green. Favorite season? Fall. What did Lisa love best in the world, more than anything? Fairy tales.
A plan began to form. He would go to the woods behind her house. He would pretend to be someone else—someone brave and powerful and full of magic. And he would give her the most wonderful gift of her life—a magic book. He snuck into his mother’s room one night when she was out cold and found the book hidden under her bed.
The Book of Fairies
. She’d shown it to him before, told him it was written by his father and that she and Phyllis had found it down in Reliance when they were girls.
“Y
ou can only watch,” Evie warned. “You mustn’t ever let her see you. You mustn’t speak to her or make contact in any way. If Mom and Phyllis find out you’re there and that I helped you, we’re both dead.”
He nodded. Nod. Nod.
He knew the rules. He was supposed to stay in the basement. Live underground. No one could see him. He was that special. A walking secret. But when you spend your whole life being a secret, your biggest wish is that you had someone to tell it to.
Evie took their mother’s keys the night before, let him out of his room, opened the trunk of the car, and hid him there among their bags. She gave him a knapsack with matches, their great-grandfather’s binoculars, peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and an old plain-faced white Halloween mask to put on “just in case.” He snuck in
The Book of Fairies
and two trinkets he’d found in his mother’s bedside table drawer: an old penny and a medal that said
SAINT CHRISTOPHER PROTECT US
. He didn’t have much to give, but Lisa would like these. He knew she would. Evie drew a map of the house, yard, and woods, showing where Reliance was, and put it in his shirt pocket.
“We’ll be in Cape Cod for three days, so you’re on your own then. When I get back, I’ll bring you food as often as I can. God, I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. Promise me you’ll be good, Gene. Promise you’ll stay hidden.”
“Promise,” he said. And she closed the lid of the trunk gently over him.
