Cackle(40)

“Hey!” I say. “I’m human.”

She retracts her tongue and sits up. “Are you?”

“Last I checked.”

“Mm. Would you like to swim?”

“Yes! Yeah, that’ll be fun.”

“You can change upstairs in your room. I’ll meet you down here.”

“Are you going to swim?”

She shakes her head no.

“Why not?”

“I don’t care for it,” she says, sighing. “Not at all.”

“Okay. You know, we could always get you a blow-up raft. They make fun ones now. Shaped like swans. And unicorns!”

She cringes. “I hate unicorns.”

“What do you mean, you hate unicorns?”

“Another time,” she says. “You go change. I’ll make us lemonade and meet you on the steps.”

“All right, all right,” I say, heading off to “my room.”

Being with Sophie in the house is a very different experience from being alone in the house. Without her presence, the house becomes cold and unnerving. I walk through the mirror hallway haunted by the memory of the face I saw in the bathroom upstairs. I clench my fists, my palms slick with nervous sweat. With each mirror I pass, I have to fight off momentary panic and reassure myself that the only reflection I see in my peripheral vision is my own.

This, of course, isn’t true. There’s a pale disembodied face hovering somewhere over my shoulder, behind my back. It appears for a second, but as soon as I turn to verify its presence, it slips out of view.

Sophie said this place isn’t haunted, and she’s been nothing but honest with me so far. So I shake it off. Must be my imagination.

Upstairs in my room, there are several bouquets of fresh flowers. There are clean sheets on the bed, which is made so neatly I’m hesitant to ever disturb it. There are even mints on the pillows.

It’s so nice to be somewhere you’re wanted.

I drop my bag on the floor and start to undress. I have my pants off when the bathroom door begins to move. It was wide open, but now it’s closing. All by itself.

And here I am, standing defenseless in the middle of the room, stark naked below the waist like Donald fucking Duck.

“I’m naked!” I shout for some reason. If it’s a murderer, that’s more of an advertisement than a warning, and if it’s a ghost, not really sure it would care?

I’ve gone from lifelong steady-handed skeptic to half-naked and shouting at unseen beings within a span of two weeks. The logic I’ve always relied on has become so slippery, impossible to grip.

The door closes. Shuts completely. I hear the click of the latch.

Maybe I’m being given some privacy?

Or maybe it’s a draft. It’s probably a draft.

I change quickly, put my pajama pants and sweater on over my swimsuit, then run down the stairs.

Sophie sits at the bottom with a tray of lemonade.

“What is it?” she asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say. Suppression is a useful tool. Honestly, it’s underrated.

“Follow me,” she says. “To the swimming pool!”

She leads me down what she calls the gallery, the long hallway with all of her paintings.

“If you go right here, you’ll find the conservatory. It’s my little lair. Smells divine with all of the flowers. Now, through here . . . I don’t really know what this space is meant to be used for.”

We enter a hexagonal room. The ceiling is a skylight, glass angling up to an intense point in the center. There’s no furniture in this room, no accents on the walls. We walk across it and the echoes of our footsteps seem to run circles around us before fading away.

Sophie opens a door that leads to a rickety spiral staircase. It’s steep and narrow, and by the time we get to the bottom, I’m so dizzy I can almost feel my eyeballs knocking together inside my skull.

The pool room is not what I was expecting. An indoor pool is a luxury, but nothing about this room is luxurious. It’s like a tiled cave.

The tiles were likely white at some point, but they’ve yellowed with age. They line the pool, the walls, the ceiling, though there’s not really any distinction between the surfaces, since every one is curved. I imagine this is what it feels like inside a submarine. Acutely claustrophobic.

Sophie sets the lemonade tray down on a small glass table. She sits along the ledge, her dress fanning around her.

“Are you comfortable?” I ask. “You’re really just going to watch me swim?”

“Is that strange?”

“A little.”

She pulls a small leather-bound book out from behind her. No idea where it came from.

“I’ll read,” she says. “Or write. Or draw you.”

“Very funny,” I say.

I hope she was kidding. Most of the time, I can tell when Sophie’s kidding. Most of the time.

I shimmy out of my pants and sweater, dip a toe in to check the temperature of the water. It’s warm.

I step into the shallow end, which isn’t actually that shallow. I dunk myself under and begin to do the backstroke. When I get to the other side of the pool, I let myself float there.

“How is it?” Sophie asks.

“It’s great,” I say. “What are you reading?”