Cackle(36)

“The boy is fine,” she says. “He won’t bother you anymore. Maybe it was a bit theatrical. But he was rotten.”

The disconnect returns, the weightlessness. Like I’m on the steep drop of a roller coaster.

“I’m sorry,” I say, a nervous laughter escaping from somewhere inside me. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I cursed him,” she says. “For you. I cursed them all. They won’t bother you anymore. They’ll be good students.”

“What do you mean, you cursed them?”

She takes a deep breath and smooths her hair. Then she says, “If you keep asking these questions, I will answer them. But before you do, search yourself to see if you already know. Or if you even really want to.”

All I want is to be out of this moment, out of this deeply unsettling conversation. I want fun Sophie to come back. I want to eat chicken and drink rum and forget about my problems. The last thing I want is any new ones. I have more than enough already.

I’ll concede there is something dark going on here. I wasn’t wrong to entertain the idea of the supernatural.

I hear the echo of Sam’s voice in my head, his response when I told him about the spider. He said, That’s not possible.

But it happened. It wasn’t just possible; it happened. I saw it. I witnessed it.

Things are possible. All kinds of things.

The spider is in Sophie’s lap, and she’s stroking its head with her pinkie.

All kinds of strange, crazy, fucked-up, incredible things.

“Now,” she says, “are you hungry? Should I put the chicken in?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“I just need to warm him. He’s already cooked,” she says, turning the oven on. “Don’t worry. Won’t be dry.”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s not really worrying me right now. With what just happened. Not worried about dry chicken.”

She laughs. A head-back, hearty laugh. It stops abruptly. “You still want to be my friend?”

I don’t have to think about it. The answer is already there waiting patiently on my tongue.

“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”

She hides her face from me, lifting her hands to form a shield. I hear a single loud sniffle. She releases her hands, wipes her cheeks and smiles at me.

“I’m not going to cry,” she says. “I haven’t cried once in—I don’t know—a hundred years?”

A hundred years?!

I know, with what we literally just talked about, with everything I’ve observed and experienced, that things I’ve previously known as fantasy, as pure fiction, can exist within my reality. Still, hearing Sophie casually mention that she’s been alive for over a hundred years is jarring.

Jarring and distressing and . . . oddly thrilling? I don’t know what I’m feeling. At this exact moment, I’m watching a large, seemingly sentient spider offer Sophie a handkerchief for her to dry her eyes with.

Maybe I should be questioning my sanity, but how can I doubt what’s right in front of me?

I start to laugh again, my new default reaction to any information I don’t quite know how to process. Because how the hell else am I supposed to process this?

I can’t stop laughing. It’s cathartic. A strange, exhilarating release.

Sophie glances over at me and joins me in my laughter, though I don’t think she understands what we’re laughing at. I guess I don’t, either.

This makes it all the funnier.

Soon I’m hunched over the table, holding on to it to steady myself so I don’t fall to the ground in hysterics.

Sophie clutches her sides, her cheeks turning red.

Finally, she catches her breath for long enough to ask me, “What are we laughing at?”

I shrug.

This is also, apparently, hilarious.

We laugh until we’re both on the floor. Sophie’s spider and a few other spider friends who’ve emerged from under furniture and who knows where else congregate by her feet. They vibrate, their bodies bouncing, legs shaking. It’s like they’re mimicking her movement. Or they’re also laughing.

“You know,” she says, “I don’t really think I’m hungry at all. Are you?”

“No, actually,” I say, “I’m not.”

She pulls herself to stand. “I’m going to put this all away. You can have it another time.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“I’m not hungry,” she says. “But I do want a slice of cake. Is that all right?”

She shows me a small iced loaf.

“Yes,” I say. “What is it?”

“Lemon cake,” she says. “I have some pomegranate seeds we can put on top. Would you like some?”

Ten minutes later we’re on the couch eating the lemon loaf with two forks. She has the tray on her lap, and I’ve got the bottle of rum between my knees.

“So, guessing you’re not actually in real estate?” I ask.

“Well, it is my land,” she says.

“The town knows?” Their reactions are starting to make a whole lot of sense now.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Everyone in Rowan. No one outside. Well, there are rumors, I’m sure. Were rumors. Long time ago. Occasionally outsiders would show up at my hut. Throw stones.”