Maggie paces the floor and looks at the ceiling. Strange noises come from above: banging and talking, footsteps back and forth, and things sliding and shifting. The sounds are making her nervous. Usually the only noise from upstairs is the drone of the television-daytime dreaming with eyes wide open. But this is different. She does not like different. She does not want different. It is worrying her.
What’s going on up there? Maybe they know her plans and are building some terrible torture device with which to punish her. Maybe they’re-
One two three four five six seven eight.
They don’t know anything. It is true that they’re making strange noises, and it is true that they’re talking about something, something that’s causing Henry to raise his voice at Beatrice, but she doesn’t think it has anything to do with her. When Henry is mad at her she knows it right away. Stilclass="underline" it makes her nervous.
Today is her day for escape and, except for that escape, she wants today to be like every other day. She wants today to be more like every other day than any day has been yet. She wants it to be perfectly normal. Normal is predictable and predictable is what she needs if she’s to escape, and she needs to escape: fresh air in her lungs and sunshine on her skin and Daddy’s arms wrapped around her.
If strange things are happening upstairs, and they are, that might ruin her plan.
No. It will work out. It has to work out, so it will. That’s all there is to it. There’s no point in thinking about it not working out.
She walks to the back of the stairs and pulls the weapon from the shadows for the third or fourth time today. She does not hesitate. The thought of staying here even one more day is much worse than anything she can imagine lurking in darkness.
It makes her sick when she thinks of what she plans to do with this weapon in her hand, it makes her stomach feel like rotten milk, but she also wants it done. She wants to be through it and up the stairs and through the front door and standing outside beneath the yellow sun.
She closes her eyes and imagines the sharp edge of the weapon hacking into the flesh of Beatrice’s ankle. She imagines seeing beneath the skin, seeing the opening in the skin like a slit in a piece of thick leather, seeing all the organic levers and pulleys that make up the moving parts of a human being, seeing blood pour from within and splash in great red drops on the dirty wooden step before the woman tilts like a great tree felled.
She can do this. She just has to be patient. In another two hours Beatrice will come down here and she will-
A metal thwack as, from the other side of the door, the lock is turned and the deadbolt retracts.
She looks out the window. It is too early for this to be happening. Donald’s El Camino has not yet even rolled down the driveway. It is far too early for this to be happening.
Should she do it now, anyway? Should she make her move now or should she wait? Something is happening, something she doesn’t understand, and if she waits she might never have another chance. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. This is all wrong. Everything about this is wrong and wrong and wrong.
Borden told. He is real after all and he told. He wants her stuck here in the Nightmare World forever and ever. He wants her to suffer and-
Borden is imaginary. He’s not real. He’s never been real.
The door at the top of the stairs creaks open and a bulging silhouette fills the doorway. Beatrice. It’s Beatrice and she’s coming down. She’s not carrying a plate. She’s not bringing dinner down. Maggie knew she wouldn’t be. It’s too early for dinner. Henry is still home and the shadows are not yet long, so it’s too early for dinner. She can hear his deep voice vibrating through the wood floor and into the basement. There are other voices up there, too. She can feel them but she cannot hear them. But they’re there and they vibrate differently than Henry’s voice. Something is wrong.
She ducks once more behind the stairs, hiding in the shadows there with the weapon gripped in her now sweating hands. She can’t decide what to do. She can’t decide whether to put the weapon away or use it. If she doesn’t do this now she might not have another chance. There are strange voices upstairs, there was banging earlier, and Henry yelling.
But the plan was to wait for Henry to leave. Another couple hours, no more.
Except Henry may not leave. She has no idea what’s going on and she cannot count on things happening like they normally do.
This might be her only chance.
She’s not going to wait. When she attacks Beatrice the woman will scream. She’ll scream and that will draw Henry. When Henry comes running down to see what happened she’ll slice his ankles too. He probably won’t be down for good, but that doesn’t matter. As long as she has time enough to get upstairs and out the front door that doesn’t matter at all.
She can do this.
It can all still be okay.
The stairs creak as Beatrice makes her way down. Her breathing is heavy and somehow thick. Her feet drag across the wooden steps, and the steps sag beneath her weight.
‘Sarah?’ she says.
Maggie does not answer. She stands in the shadows beneath the stairs gripping the weapon. Her breath is still in her throat: dead air: waiting for what happens next.
Another step down from Beatrice and her right ankle is now in front of Maggie’s eyes, visible between two planks of wood. White and soft and easy to reach-easy to cut.
She can do this.
Her heart pounds in her chest.
Her face feels numb.
She can do this. She knows she can. She has to do it, so she can do it. That’s how it works. She is not too weak for what must be done. She is strong. She is strong and brave. Her daddy said so. Her daddy once told her she was the bravest person he ever met.
Beatrice lifts her left leg to bring it down next to the right.
Maggie lifts the weapon with both hands and hacks at the flesh between the boards, drawing a red line where before was unblemished white skin.
Blood splashes on Maggie’s hands and arms. It is hot. Much hotter than she expected it would be.
Beatrice screams.
Back up. Watch the sun rise from the western horizon. See clouds in the bleached denim sky once blown apart by the wind pull themselves together again. Cars reverse down streets. A shattered drinking glass reconstructs itself and flies up from a tile floor and into Roberta Block’s right hand and she sets it into a sink full of soapy water and unwashes it. A turkey vulture flies backwards through the sky. Genevieve Paulson sits in bed in her parents’ guest bedroom and tears roll up her cheeks and vanish into the corners of her eyes. Her daughter Thalia unsays something that unbreaks her heart and walks backwards out of the bedroom door and down the hallway to where her grandma is unbaking cookies. The hour hands on all the time pieces spin counter-clockwise, pulling their ticks and their tocks back out of the time stream to be spent once more. Now stop.
The same turkey vulture hangs motionless in the sky above the Deans’ house just south of Crouch Avenue like it was nailed into the blue.
For a moment everything is very still. Then-after a beat: exhale-time moves forward once more. The turkey vulture flies over the house and toward the woods, trying to catch a scent of death in its nostrils.
And Henry Dean steps through the front door of his house, keys dangling from his index finger. He’s out of beer and wants a couple-three more before heading to work. And for work. A good buzz helps the night pass. He walks down the steps and across the gravel driveway to his truck. He yanks open the door and slides the seat of his Levis across the seat of the truck, stopping behind the wheel. He starts the engine and shoves the transmission into first, releases the clutch, and gasses the thing with a booted foot. The tires spit gravel and the truck gets moving.
When he hits the street he makes a left, and then cracks the window to get a breeze in the cab of this Ford-brand oven. But he doesn’t turn on the air conditioner. Henry refuses to use an air conditioner. People managed for thousands of years without them and he’ll be damned if he’s gonna prove frail and womanish by using one hisself.