The Complete Collection (14 page)

And the dream comes
again,

Rips open my heart

To release a
thousand doves

In a flurry of
white wings

They carry me

To a world of black
sky

And weightlessness

And the dream lives
again,

Fills me with
darkness,

And takes away my
sorrow

I dance with the
spirits

And the music is
yours

And so I can live
again,

Though I wake

To a world that is
heavy

My heart is filled

With a thousand
false hopes

Waiting to carry me

To a world of dark
sky,

Weightlessness,

And you

And the music is
mine.

Sam leaves for work.

Claudia hates when he goes.

So do I.

She quietly empties the dishwasher and puts the dishes away.

She feels her baby move within her and smiles.

“Not long now, baby,” she whispers.

This house has seen many babies come.

And go.

Claudia pauses in between putting dishes away.

Faintly, coming from upstairs, she hears a noise.

She closes the dishwasher and dries her hands on a
dishtowel.

Still, the sound continues. Perhaps it’s a loose hinge
outside.

Or not
.

Placing a comforting hand on her belly, Claudia heads toward
the stairs.

“Hello?”

For a brief second, Claudia panics. The house is set high on
a hill.

Even if she screamed, no one would hear.

No one ever has.

She ascends the steps slowly. The sound grows louder.

It’s coming from the guest room, which Claudia and Sam have
decided will be perfect for the nursery.

Creak. Creak. Creak.

Claudia gets closer to the guest room.

The door is closed, but she is sure she left it open.

A song faintly echoes in her head.

What song is that?

Claudia has never heard it.

The baby stirs in her belly.

Her hand is on the doorknob.

She opens it slowly, holding her breath.

No one.

Nothing’s there besides the old rocking chair Claudia
discovered in the basement and refinished.

“Must have been the wind outside,” Claudia says to herself.

As she heads back down the stairs, the old chair resumes its
phantom rocking.

She can’t feel me here the way Sam can.

And that’s the way I like it.

Sam stirs in the bed, restless. He
is again fighting insomnia.

He starts to reach for Claudia, but she is halfway through
her seventh month now and uncomfortable.

If he is honest with himself, he is not comfortable with her,
either.

Claudia has grown distant from him—he can sense it.
Maybe the baby is distracting her. Maybe it’s physical discomfort.

She spends much of her time in the nursery, preparing. He
has heard this is normal—“nesting,” they call it.

But many times he walks by the room and simply hears her
rocking in the old chair, singing a song he has never heard before.

She spends a lot of time tending to her vegetable garden.
While he is glad she found an outlet, the dirt under her fingernails
is…unnerving.

It reminds him of me.

Stop, Sam,
he says to himself.

Sam.

He hears a voice calling him from outside.

Sam.

Sam.

Sam.

More voices.

“What the fuck?” he says quietly.

The sound does not wake Claudia.

Sam throws on his shoes and heads down the stairs. He grabs
a flashlight and goes outside to follow the noise.

Sam.

Sam.

It seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere.

“Who is that?” Sam calls.

The light on the grass trembles in his hand. Still, the
voices come.

He follows them up, farther, higher into the yard.

Sam’s heart stops in his chest.

The headstones are back.

All of them—each and every one—is back where it
belongs, back from where he hid them out of sight before moving in with
Claudia.

One by one, his flashlight darts between them, shining dully
on their aged surfaces.

He forces himself to look toward Ainsley’s grave and feels
his guilt for hiding her, denying her.

Sam.

Sam.

Sam.

“Who is that?!” Sam cries—his voice trembling in pain
and fear.

There’s another sound in the dark. A sound behind him. Trees
creak with movement.

He turns his back to the graves and nervously traces the
yard with his flashlight.

A cloud eclipses the moon.

It’s dark.

So dark.

Whispers and movement can be heard.

“Who is that?” Sam whispers in terror.

And then the ground opens.

But not just in one spot.

There. And there. And there.

His flashlight hops around in a panic.

And then they come out of the holes.

One by one.

Limb by limb.

In horror, Sam watches a hand scrabble in the dark and is
terrified to see that it’s attached only to an arm. The disembodied limb creeps
toward him.

A leg rises from another grave.

Another arm reveals itself, attached to a neck. Attached to
a head.

These are the pieces of men she left behind.

They are pulsing, whispering his name.

Sam.

Sam.

Sam.

Sam drops the flashlight and it falls on the panic button.

The light begins to strobe like a grotesque disco, and still
the body parts come.

Sam.

Help us.

Sam.

Help us.

Sam falls to his knees.

He sees the gruesome bodies and thinks of the monster who
created them.

The monster who created
him
.

The monster he still loves.

He is just like the arms and the legs and the hands and the
feet scrambling toward him, all left without hearts—he, too, was left
without a heart. He is one of them.

They are part of her.

He will never be free.

Tears pour down his face as his mouth opens in a long,
agonized scream—not from terror, but from heartbreak.

From love.

“AINSLEY!”

Sam feels hands pushing on him and slaps them off.

“Get the FUCK off me!” he says.

“Sam?” Claudia asks, her eyes filled with hurt.

Sam is in bed.

He was dreaming.

His eyes are wet with tears.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” He reaches for her, but she
flinches and pulls back.

“I was dreaming,” he whispers.

“I know you were,” Claudia says coldly. “You were dreaming
about
her
. Crying and screaming her name.”

“I’m sorry, I…” Sam begins, but he doesn’t know what to say.

Claudia gets up.

“I’m going to sleep in the nursery,” she says.

“Claudia…” he says.

But she is gone.

Sam hears the rocking chair begin its rhythmic watch.

And then he hears the haunting lullaby.

I smile.

Sam gets home from work and can tell
there is a problem.

Claudia has still not thawed from the nightmare incident the
other night, and now she is slamming things all around the kitchen.

“Not feeling well today, babe?” he tries, hoping for an easy
resolution.

“No, I’m not. I’m eight months pregnant. It’s one hundred
degrees out. And today I went to the library and met the former boss of your
girlfriend—or should I say ‘childhood friend,’ as you like to call her?”
she snaps.

Sam’s stomach sinks.

Portia: the local library’s busybody. She had always snooped
in Ainsley’s business when she worked there.

And she gave frequent comments to the media after
the…incident.

“Claudia,” Sam tries.

“No, I’m talking. You listen. You could have talked before,”
Claudia says. “She told me this evil woman was in love with you—no, obsessed
is more like it.”

Sam flinches at the word “evil.”

I smile.

“So maybe she was. I never knew. I used to talk to her about
girls I dated and things. It wasn’t like we dated,” Sam lies.

The dishonesty swirls within him like an acidic tornado,
eating away at his insides.

The tales of his love life ate my insides, too.

“So you guys never dated. You were never a ‘thing’?” Claudia
says.

“No!” Sam says.

Liar.

“You better be telling me the truth, Sam. Seriously. If you
moved me into this house and this woman was your ex-girlfriend and
also
happened to be a mass murderer, then that is fucked up. It’s bad enough that I
agreed to move into this monster’s house,” Claudia said.

Sam winces again.

“I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m through with tiptoeing around the
truth. Maybe you’re just blind. Did you ever think of that?” Claudia says
bitterly. “She killed dozens of men and
ate
parts of them. Ate them!”

Sam covers his eyes in exhaustion.

“She was a
monster
!” Claudia says.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Sam yells angrily.

Claudia steps backward involuntarily.

Sam doesn’t get angry.

I smile.

“Do you really think you’re telling me anything I don’t
already know?” he says loudly. “I
know
she did these things. I was front
and center in the end. I’m the one who didn’t see the signs.

“I’m the one the police questioned over and over because
they couldn’t believe that someone who claimed to be a close friend had no idea
what she was capable of, or that she did those things,” he continues.

“And I agree with them. I’m an
idiot
. I was
insensitive. I was self-centered. And maybe, just maybe, if I had seen…if I had
asked, if I had pushed, if I had helped… Maybe then none of it would have ever happened.”
Sam’s voice breaks.

Claudia begins to break down herself. She comes to him.

“Instead,” he goes on, “I have to live with the loss of all
these lives, the loss of her life, and the shattered memory that everyone will
have of her. Of a woman I always knew as quiet, kind, and compassionate.

“For me, Ainsley died twice,” he says.

Claudia hugs him.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’ve been cruel and insensitive. I’ll try
to be more understanding,” Claudia says.

Sam sobs in his wife’s arms
.

But I haven’t died twice.

I haven’t died at all.

Claudia tends to her garden.

She has begun talking to her growing vegetables.

Despite the recent emotional explosion with Sam, she still
feels distant from him.

In some ways, Claudia feels like the third wheel in the
house.

To Claudia, it’s still
her
house.

Ainsley’s presence, even in the afterlife, is simply too big
to compete with.

It doesn’t help that she is hugely pregnant and feels
unattractive. Though Sam has continuously told her she looks gorgeous, he has not
shown any physical attraction to her in weeks.

Claudia has always been a head turner. Long, blond hair, athletically
toned body, slim with striking legs… She is fond of tennis—something she
has not been able to enjoy in a while.

This cumbersome, full body has made her feel even more
withdrawn in this house.

So, instead, Claudia talks to tomatoes and cucumbers. She
talks to those planted in the earth.

Like me.

Claudia is lonely.

She sits in the dirt like a lunatic—like so many
lunatics who have gone before her—and talks to that which grows within.

She thinks that, perhaps, Ainsley was lonely, too.

She imagines her Sam, so vibrant and full of life, and imagines
the lonely girl, hiding so many secrets, aching for Sam. Day in and day out,
hiding and lonely.

Lonely, and evil.

She knows Sam understands Ainsley. But Claudia knows she
never will.

Her hands drift to her belly.

She will never be like Ainsley.

Moon cradle….

Within the house, the rocking chair rocks.

She heads back there, to her place of comfort.

The nursery.

Inside, the rocking chair waits.

Claudia feels light-headed. Still, she walks inside and
heads up the stairs.

The door to the nursery is open, beckoning.

Claudia
sings a song to herself in her head—one she’s never heard.

She eases
herself into the rocking chair.

And
listens.

I
understand….

I was lonely once, too.

And Claudia rocks.

You are right to feel angry.

You have been ignored.

I was ignored, too.

But then my baby came along.

And I knew I’d never be alone
again.

Claudia rocks, holding her
precious belly, smiling.

At least, not for a while…

Suddenly, Claudia feels an
overwhelming sense of loss and pain.

Her eyes fill with tears.

She sees the rocking chair now as
if from a distance.

She watches a woman rocking a
baby.

The baby is quiet. Too quiet.

Claudia moves closer, and the
woman turns to her.

The baby is dead.

It’s okay now, Claudia. We will
be together soon.

All of us.

“NO! Nooo!” she screams, holding her belly tightly. The baby
writhes within.

Her words echo back to her over the hill.

But now, they sound like laughter.