Chapter Twenty-One

TWENTY-ONE

Back in the present day, the marks from Elias’ teeth were on my arm, covered by a clumsy layer of bandages. My arm ached dully, a mosquito buzzing at my consciousness. I was too tired to care. My whole body ached these days—my arm would have to get in line. I sat in the hallway, my back against the basement door. There was something comforting about blocking it with my body.

Upstairs in her room, Katherine was having a loud, sobbing conversation over her phone.

“I know it’s not okay for me to call,” she was saying, her voice a shrill whine, “but things are fucked-up over here and I need to talk to you.”

There was a pause.

“I don’t care if it’s not a good time,” Katherine said. “I just really need to talk. Give me five minutes. Five minutes.”

Katherine had always been a reckless child, and I couldn’t count the number of times I bandaged up her injuries—scraped elbows and bloody knees and the like. I had gotten it down to a science, sitting Katherine’s crying frame on the toilet and cooing gently to her as I got out the bandages. While I cleaned her wounds, I would sing her a little song—some song I could no longer remember but was definitely not the one about the moon and the sun and everything coming around again that had been stuck in my head for days now. By the time the bandages were applied, Katherine would have a little smile poking through her wet face. I would kiss her forehead and tell her she could go get a cookie. I had made everything all better, a proper mother.

“The question I have isn’t even for you,” Katherine was saying. “It’s for your therapist girlfriend.”

Katherine was somewhat less skilled in caretaking. She hadn’t cooed softly or tried to sing me a little song. She had cried and sniffled as she muddled her way through the bandaging. I’d thought about correcting her, telling her that the caretaker didn’t cry; the caretaker wiped up the tears of others. Instead, I held my arm still as best I could and made suggestions about the tightness of bandages. I know what I’m doing, she’d said, although she hadn’t. When she was finished, I told her that it would be okay, but she said nothing in response, retreating into her room with her phone in hand, already mid-dial.

“Look, Claire,” she was saying, “I don’t really have time to?.?.?. I know because I still follow your fucking Instagram, remember? That doesn’t matter right now. Just?.?.?. Will you let me ask her a question?”

When I’d walked back downstairs from the bathroom, the basement door was wide open. I slammed it shut without looking into the basement. I didn’t need to see if anyone was on their way up the stairs. I just needed to keep them down there. Perhaps it was time to put the boards back on the door. Katherine already thought I was crazy. What was one more offense? Just put it on my tab.

“Fine. Block me. I don’t give a shit. Just let me ask her a question.”

So Katherine couldn’t see Elias. That was clear. She hadn’t been able to see Angelica and company either, it seemed, and she had made no mention of Fredricka in the bathroom. This wasn’t entirely unprecedented, I supposed. The pranksters certainly had their favorites—namely me. Edie didn’t have any trouble seeing the pranksters after a while, but Father Cyrus had never seen them, not in all the time he had spent in the house. Most of the pranksters always darted out of Hal’s way, but I’d assumed that he could see them. Couldn’t he? Or would he have walked right past them just like Katherine did? Still, Hal had never had any trouble seeing Elias, and he’d certainly had no trouble seeing Master Vale. The pranksters were fickle, it would seem, in who could see them and who couldn’t, and my muddled brain was having trouble making heads or tails of that at the moment.

“Thank you,”Katherine said, sniffing. “I’m just?.?.?. I’m just really worried, is all. Yeah, put me on speaker. I don’t care.”

Still, I thought, Katherine could see the knives in the bathroom sink. I hadn’t done that—Fredricka had put them there. She could see the other products of Fredricka’s restlessness too—the stacks of pillows, the rearranged dishes, the boiling kettle on the stove. Could she see the blood on the walls, unlike Father Cyrus? Could she hear the screaming, or did she think it was the wind, like Hal had at first? My head throbbed.

“I think there’s something wrong with her,” Katherine was saying. “Like, more wrong than usual.”

Angelica drifted into the hall, coming to rest directly in front of me. As I was sitting against the door like this, she was a few inches taller than me. Her remaining eye stared down into mine, not exactly menacing but not particularly comforting either.

“Katherine can’t see you,” I said to her, or perhaps to myself. Angelica didn’t seem to care either way.

“I’m worried she might’ve lost it,” Katherine was saying. “We’ve got that family history, you know. Her father. He spent a lot of his life in hospitals. I think he killed himself. I don’t know. Mom never talks about it.”

Julian appeared next to Angelica, his intestines making his shirt look lumpy.

“Katherine can’t see you,” I said to him.

“How would I be able to tell if she was?.?.?. you know?.?.?. ,” Katherine asked, “not all there?” She was trying to dip her voice lower but she had never been particularly skilled at that trick.

Charles and Constance, holding hands as usual, appeared on the other side of Angelica.

“Can’t see you,” I said, pointing at Charles with a tired finger. “Can’t see you.” I pointed at Constance.

“Or maybe she has dementia?” Katherine asked. “She seems really out of it. She’s not remembering things. But isn’t she too young for that?”

Thomas or Tobias or whoever sidled up next to Julian.

“I regret to inform you,” I said to what’s-his-face, “that she cannot see you either.”

Katherine was silent, listening. “Today was the first time,” she said. “But there have been signs. Things haven’t been right with her since I got here. She keeps calling me by different names, people I’ve never heard of. She is always glancing away, like she’s seeing something in the corner of the room that isn’t really there. I think it’s been going on for a while and she’s kept it from me. She does that—keeps things from me.”

Another boy appeared next to the twins, the final one I could expect to arrive this year. His hair was a dark mess and his clothes were bloodied and torn, just like the others’. I remembered him from previous Septembers but I couldn’t think of his name for the life of me. It might have started with a J, or possibly a W. Anyway, he didn’t have legs anymore and he pulled himself around on his forearms.

“I can’t say with certainty,” I said to him, “but I feel like Katherine can’t see you either.”

“It might have to do with my dad leaving,” she was saying. “I can’t— I don’t have time to get into their fucked-up relationship. Claire can tell you, I’m sure. But she kind of needed him in this way that didn’t make any sense. She says it got better but I don’t think it actually did. You should see her fucking arms. And now he’s gone and she’s?.?.?. she’s not okay.”

I surveyed the scene in front of me—Angelica and her head, Julian and his intestines, Charles and Constance and their lacerations, Thomas or Tobias or whoever and his arm (or lack thereof), the boy with no legs and the trail of blood he was leaving behind him. They circled me, all clear exits covered. They stared down at me, their empty eyes making it unclear if they were seeing me at all. Slowly, deliberately, they each raised an arm in unison, pointing directly at me. I considered whether I ought to be worried.

“I don’t know,” Katherine said. “I thought he might have done it to her but now I’m worried that she did it to herself. Is that a symptom of anything? She’s never done that before—I don’t think, anyway—and I’m just?.?.?.” Her voice dropped off. “I’m just really freaking out over here.”

I chose not to be worried. Worrying takes effort, and one must be selective about where one expends effort these days.

The pranksters went on staring and pointing, staring and pointing.

I gestured behind me with my thumb. “He’s down there,” I said.

Katherine had gone silent again. “Okay?.?.?. okay?.?.?. ,” she said periodically, as if taking notes.

Fredricka appeared behind the pranksters. “Shoo,” she said, waving at them with her hands. They drifted away, disappearing back inside themselves after a moment. Fredricka motioned for me to slide over, and sat down next to me, her thick smock draped around her on the floor. She pressed her back into the half of the basement door I was no longer covering. “Sometimes one must be direct with the little ones,” she said.

“If she is crazy,” Katherine was asking, “what do I do?”

“Did you ever have children, Fredricka?” I asked. Fredricka never spoke about her past. Most of her comments to me were limited to the state of the house, her thoughts on my actions, and the occasional proverb. I was usually the one who talked, telling her about my life and my thoughts and my plans for the day, even if she did little else but listen and offer me tea. Sometimes that’s all you need.

“I can’t remember,” Fredricka said. “That was a long time ago.”

“You would have made a good mother,” I said.

“Children are certain cares, but uncertain comforts,” said Fredricka.

“Okay,” Katherine was saying, “but how will I know that it’s come down to that?”

“Well,” I said, “my child thinks that I’m crazy.”

“You’re not,” Fredricka said.

I chuckled. There was something ironic about the dead woman—the one with the terrible split that ran down the front of her skull and through her eye, the one who had just shooed away a handful of bloody and dismembered children who insisted upon telling me about the monster in the basement—assuring me that I, in fact, was not crazy. “Thanks,” I said.

“And what if she doesn’t want to go?” Katherine was asking. “Can I make her?”

I leaned my head back against the doorframe. I was so, so tired. “Do you think anybody deserves to live like this, Fredricka?” I asked.

“We all deserve more than what we are given,” Fredricka said. “So much more.” Judging by the state of her skull, I’d say she was right.

I put my hand in hers and saw the whole scene from the night she died—the candles and the dining room and the laughing man and the axe and the watermelon sound. I felt blood trickle out of my nose and my head throbbed, but it was worth it because sometimes you just need somebody to hold your hand, somebody who might have been a mother once but couldn’t quite remember.