The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (67 page)

H
E’S FINGERING THE THICK
shards of broken lightbulb on the walkway, looking up at the light mounted above the front door, when he sees it. There, up in Emma’s bedroom window, a figure with blond hair looks down at him. Smiles and waves.

His heart comes up into his throat, making his breath wet and whistley, his lungs desperate for air.

He looks down at his hand, sees he’s gripped the shards of glass so tightly that they’ve cut open his palm. Dropping the glass, he goes through the front door, past Tess, who has her bag slung over her shoulder.

“I have to go get Em,” she says. “The manager of the movie theater just called. He said she had some sort of…episode.”

“Episode?” Henry repeats, stopping. He’s at the foot of the stairs, hand on the railing.

“I don’t know much. He insists she’s fine now, but I’m going to go get her.”

“Okay,” he tells her, starting up the stairs.

“Henry, your hand is bleeding,” she calls after him.

He grunts a “Nothing serious” back to her and takes the stairs
two at a time. The front door closes behind him. He reaches the carpeted hallway. Hears Tess start the Volvo in the driveway. Taking a left into the bathroom, he unrolls a few feet of toilet paper and quickly wraps up his bleeding hand. Good enough for now.

Stepping back into the hallway, he sees that the door to Emma’s bedroom is closed. The
DO NOT DISTURB
sign is up again.

Maybe he should heed the warning.
DO NOT DISTURB
.

“Fuck that,” Henry mumbles, trying the doorknob. If it’s locked, he’ll break it down. But the knob turns easily in his toilet-paper-wrapped hand. He bites down on the inside of his left cheek and swings the door open, into the room.

He lets go of the doorknob, sees he’s left it sticky with blood. The toilet paper is soaked through, beginning to disintegrate.

“Hello?” he calls from the doorway, leaning in but not yet stepping across the threshold.

Nothing. The room is empty.

The computer at Emma’s desk is on, bright little creatures bounce and scamper across the glowing screen. Fragments of tinkly, happy music are playing in a loop. One of Emma’s damn games.

Henry holds his breath, steps into the room. Turning to the right, he glances into the open closet. Nothing but clothes on hooks and hangers, a pile of shoes, a milk crate of abandoned stuffed animals and toys. Everything in perfect order. A little too perfect.

The endless music on the computer game is torturous and Henry steps over to the desk and uses the mouse to close the game. She’s got another program open behind it. It’s an online health-information site—an article about hallucinations. He scans it, his eyes falling on the lines:
Patients suffering from psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia frequently experience hallucinations. Hallucinations can also occur in patients as the result of stress or exhaustion.

Does Emma think she’s seeing things? And more important, what is it she thinks she’s seeing?

Stepping away from the computer, Henry moves into the center of the room, studies the empty bed, neatly made. There, on the far side of it, as if she’d just tumbled off the bed, is the Danner doll, facedown on the floor, under the window.

“Jesus,” he gasps, frozen in place.

A drop of blood falls from his hand onto the carpet.

Just a doll. Only a doll.

Bullshit. It’s a doll that speaks. Can get up and wave.

He hears Tess’s voice in his head, her constant refrain:
You’re overreacting, Henry.

“Right,” he tells this imaginary Tess. “I’m sure it’s just stress and exhaustion.”

Every muscle in his body is flooded with the urge to run. Get the fuck out of there. Forget all about the wave from the window. Go back into the bathroom and clean up his hand, get some real bandages on, leaving the door to Emma’s room shut tightly behind him.
DO NOT DISTURB
.

But no. Henry forces himself to step forward. He nudges the doll’s torso with his foot. Solid. Unmoving.

Or almost unmoving.

He’s sure her right arm twitches a little. The hands are a pair of Tess’s old canvas gardening gloves stained green. He steps back, kicks the doll harder this time. No movement. But damn, the thing is solid.

Just a doll,
Henry tells himself.

He takes in a breath, drops down to his knees, and places a hand on its shoulder and feels the slightest quiver, a thrum, like electricity.

He snatches his fingers away.

“Fuck!”

He bends down again, forcing himself to touch the thing, to roll it over. It’s solid. Like an actual flesh-and-blood person. Only heavier somehow. Like dead weight. At last, the doll flips, its neck twisting, head following along so that the eyes are looking up at last. But the eyes do not seem to gaze blankly at the ceiling. The eyes are looking straight at Henry.

He jumps back, letting out a little yelp.

“Daddy?”

Emma has come into the room behind him.

Henry backs slowly away from the Danner doll thing, turns to face his daughter. Her face is red and puffy, the bandages on her hand are coming unraveled.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice sharp, accusatory. Emma takes a step back, frightened. He softens his voice. “Mom just left to pick you up.”

“I got a ride. From Winnie.”

“Winnie? What was she doing there?”

“I called her. From the movie theater. She was in town doing errands anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.”

“Well, your mom’s gonna freak when she realizes you’re not there. The manager from the movie theater called here.”

Emma’s chin starts to quiver. “I was hoping he wouldn’t get through. I didn’t want to bug you guys. It was nothing, really. And Winnie…she’d told me to call her anytime, if I ever needed anything.”

Henry nods. “I’ll handle your mother,” he promises, trying to make his voice as level as he can. “So what happened at the movies?” he asks.

“I guess I kind of fainted or something,” she says. “Um, Dad?”

“Yeah?” his eyes shift nervously toward the doll.

“You’re kind of bleeding all over my room.”

“Sorry,” he says, looking down at his hand, scraps of bloody toilet paper hanging from it. “I had a little accident outside.”

“Twins,” she says, holding up her own bandaged hand, giving him a weak smile.

“Your doll,” Henry says, “why is it so heavy?” His mouth is sticky, making it hard to talk.

“Sand,” Emma tells him. “I filled her with Ziploc bags of sand. From my old sandbox.”

Everything in Emma’s room gets dark and wavy. Henry hears himself speak in some other dimension:
We’ve got to weight her down. So she won’t float.

“Dad, are you all right?”

He can’t answer. He’s underwater again. And this time, the Danner doll is down there with him.

E
MMA IS ON HER
hands and knees, dabbing a Q-tip soaked in hydrogen peroxide onto the spots of blood her dad left on her carpet. What had he even been doing in her room anyway? And how did Danner get on the floor?

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” she asks Danner, who’s back up on the bed now.

The doll is silent.

Emma goes back to cleaning the rug. When the hydrogen peroxide hits the blood, it bubbles and takes the stain away. Then she scrubs the spot with a clean, damp cloth.

Her head is pounding. Even now that she’s showered and changed her clothes, she still feels dirty. Her parents’ voices in the kitchen come up through the floor, muffled, but clear enough for her to get the gist of what they’re arguing about. She hears her name again and again.

Leaving Danner, the Q-tips, peroxide, and drops of blood, she sneaks out into the hall and makes her way to the top of the stairs where she crouches, listening.

“I’m not talking about shock treatments or anything, Henry,”
her mom says. “I’m just saying she needs to be evaluated. We can’t ignore her behaviors any longer. Especially not now that they’ve become…dangerous.”

“Emma’s not dangerous,” her dad says.

“She attacked Mel, Henry. They said she was hysterical. Screaming. Rolling around on the floor. She wet her pants, for God’s sake. Think how humiliated she must have been! Maybe it’s not psychiatric. Maybe there’s something neurological going on, seizures or something. You’re the one who’s been fixated for years on her obsession with Danner—what if Danner is some kind of, I don’t know,
symptom
?”

“It’s not a doctor she needs,” her dad says.

“Well, what do you propose? A shaman? An exorcist maybe? Jesus, Henry. Our little girl is sick! If she had a broken arm, you’d be rushing her to the ER. This is no different. You need to start taking this seriously.”

“I
am
taking it seriously,” her dad says.

“We’re not just talking about an imaginary friend anymore. We’re talking violent behavior, the possibility that she set the fire…”

“Emma didn’t start the fire.”

“I know you want to protect her, Henry. I know you do, God knows I do too. But if she needs help, it’s just going to make things worse.”

“That’s not it.” Her dad sighs.

“Mel told me what really happened out at the cabin. How could you lie to me like that? Is there anything else you’re not telling me?”

“There’s nothing else.”

“Doesn’t the fact that Emma put her fist through a window and claimed to have no memory of doing it concern you? Jesus! How could you not share that with me? I’m her mother, for Christ sakes!”

Emma hears the sound of a chair scraping on the tiled floor.

“It was an accident,” her dad says.

“Mel told me Emma was watching you through the window. You and Winnie. What did Em see, Henry? What did Emma see that would make her so angry she’d punch through a window?”

“Nothing,” her father says, his voice high and tight, like a little boy’s.

“And why the hell would Emma call Winnie, not us, from the theater? Worse than that—why would Winnie pick her up without checking in with us?”

“I don’t know any more about it than you do, Tess. I’m sorry.”

There’s silence, then more sounds of chairs being moved, cups being put in the sink. Sometimes, when her mom gets mad, she starts cleaning and doing dishes. When her mom puts on her rubber gloves and gets out the Comet, Emma knows it’s time to duck and run.

Emma retreats back down the hall to her room. Behind her, she hears her mom say she’s going out. The front door slams. The Volvo starts in the driveway.

“My mom thinks I’m going crazy,” she tells Danner. “She thinks I set the fire in her studio.”

“Did you?” Danner asks.

Emma shakes her head. “Of course not.”

“Are you sure?” Danner asks.

Emma bites her lip and thinks. If her hand hadn’t been cut, she would have been sure that she couldn’t have really put her hand through the window. And until seeing Mel’s face and arm all scratched up today, she would never have believed that she would ever do anything to hurt her best friend.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” Emma confesses.

Danner smiles. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

T
ESS ISN’T SURE THE
Volvo will make it up the logging road, so she parks at the bottom and hikes up. It’s steeper and farther than she remembers, but she takes pleasure in her aching legs and labored breathing.

When she gets back home, she’ll call the pediatrician and make an appointment to take Emma in. He’ll know what sort of tests to do; what evaluations might be needed. They’ve got to get a handle on this thing before it gets any worse.

And maybe Henry’s right—maybe Emma didn’t have anything to do with the fire.

She remembers what Bill said about the broken lights:
someone with excellent aim.
In her mind, she sees Winnie leaning out of the window of Henry’s old van with her gun, taking aim, firing at some impossibly far-off target, which she hit every time.
The world’s only poet sniper!
Suz would say.

When Tess crests the hill and catches sight of the old cabin, sees the moose standing guard, she thinks maybe the journey was not just upward, but backward, through time. She’s twenty-two all over again. In love with her life, with the possibilities it holds.

She’ll swing open the door to the cabin and find Henry with shaggy hair and beard, Winnie with her rifle, and Suz throttling a bottle of tequila, laughing but sincere, promising them that the only way to really love a thing is to undo it, unwind it, break it down, tear it the fuck up.

The cats encircle her as she gets to the door; a living, mewing, purring moat she must cross. She bends down to touch them: little Tasha, Carrot, so many others whose names she doesn’t know. It was a miracle they had survived, and if this miracle had occurred, why not another?

She stands. Keeps moving while the cats rub against her ankles, the low drone of their purrs reminding her of the sound Suz used to make when she was painting or sculpting: the static noise.

Tess jogs up the steps and doesn’t knock, just pushes the door open and walks inside, half thinking she might catch up with the past if she hurries.

What she sees makes her gasp, believe in the impossible. Suz is sitting at the table, writing in a journal. Blond hair, silk tunic, combat boots. She looks up, startled. Then she gives a wink.

“I’ve been wondering when you were going to show up, Tess,” she says.

And Tess wants to run, screaming, but she’s held to the spot by the idea that it’s somehow more frightening to leave. Like the cats are guarding the door, vicious beasts with foaming mouths and fangs.

Everything in the cabin is eerily the same. The four chairs are set up around the table, the white ceramic dishes stolen from the Sexton cafeteria are stacked on the shelves. There’s even a pack of Drum tobacco on the table, next to an ashtray.

Tess’s eyes search the back corner of the kitchen for the dreaded aquarium, but it’s gone. Thank god.

She hears the static noise again, this time in her own head: a radio tuned to a place between stations.

Neither here nor there.

Not present. Not past.

Tess steps forward, closer to Suz, thinking that if she moves, the sound in her head will go away.

Up close, she sees that this is not Suz at all. Just the idea of Suz.

Winnie in disguise.

“I want you to leave my family alone,” Tess tells Winnie, remembering at last why she came. Her voice sounds strong and even, which surprises her. “If I catch you trespassing on my land, going anywhere near my little girl, I’ll shoot you myself. Do you understand?”

Winnie nods. The blond wig slips a little.

“You’re pathetic,” Tess tells her. “I don’t know what you could have been thinking, sending those postcards, coming back here to the cabin. What did you possibly have to gain?”

Winnie shakes her head. “You’ve got it wrong.”

“If I find out you had anything to do with the fire in my studio, or that you snuck into my daughter’s room that night—”

“No! I wasn’t anywhere near your house, Tess. I would never do anything like that to you or Emma. I adore Emma!”

Tess takes in a breath, tries to see through the bright white glare of rage. Her hands are clenched into aching fists, her fingernails clawing her palms.

“You come near Emma again and I will kill you.”

“Tess, if you’ll just sit down a minute and listen. Something’s going on. I think…I think maybe Suz has found a way back. Henry thinks so too. And I’m starting to wonder if Emma’s relationship with Danner has something to do with Suz.”

The buzzing sound intensifies.

Tess gives a disgusted laugh. “Right, Winnie. You know what? You and Henry can play whatever sick little game of make-believe you want, but leave me and my daughter out of it. I’m not playing anymore. Understand?”

“But, Tess, I’m telling you, she’s back! You’ve got to listen. If not for your sake, then for Emma’s.”

Tess moves without thinking. She lunges forward, rotates her hips, puts all of her power into a right hook that hits Winnie square on the jaw, sends her toppling off the chair.

Tess stands, clutching her aching fist, shocked by what she’s done. The buzzing sound in her ears turns to laughter.

Tear it up, babycakes.

Winnie is lying crumpled on the floor, hands covering her face. The wig has come off and lays beside her like a stunned animal.

Tess stands, frozen, muscles quivering.

You can tear it up, knock it down, bury it deep in the lake, but it comes back. You can’t fight the past.

Winnie moans at Tess’s feet.

Tess hurries out the cabin door, through the cats who seem to be calling to her as she runs back down the hill.
How could you forget us,
they screech. She covers her ears with her hands and runs harder, faster, until at last, she reaches the safety of her car.