Cackle(81)

It’s pitch-dark with the exception of the thin sliver of light where the doors meet. I crouch on the steps, attempting to silently catch my breath, my hand clapped over my mouth.

I hear the clean click of her heels against the kitchen tiles. They’re unhurried.

“Why do you fear me?” she asks. “I’m asking in all sincerity, pet. I’ve never understood people’s fear. What about me is so terrifying? I’m kind. I’m giving. It keeps me up at night, darling. Truly.”

I hear the faucet running, the tick of the stove igniting. Is she making tea?

“I don’t smile when I don’t feel like smiling. I don’t pretend. I’m entirely honest about who I am. Is that my great offense? Or maybe it’s that I live alone in the woods. And what’s more damning: that I live in the seclusion of the trees or that I live alone? Or that I’m happy about it all? That I’ve made these choices, that I have these gifts, and I embrace them? I’m not ashamed of who I am. Of what I am. What is it about a woman in full control of herself that is so utterly frightening? Can you tell me, Annie?”

I begin to sidle down the steps, hoping to further conceal myself inside the dark of the cellar. But the deeper I submerge, the louder it gets.

The strange moaning.

Sophie is still talking, but it’s hard to pay attention with the moaning. It sounds vaguely like a draft, like wind funneling through a small space. That’s what it must be, because it’s cold down here. It’s freezing. Almost as bad as outside. I have to release my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to last down here. I’m a sitting duck.

I realize I’m oddly calm, considering. Either this is such a surreal situation that I haven’t yet processed it or I’ve switched into some extraordinary survival mode I didn’t know I had.

I remember my phone in my jacket pocket. My lifeline. I reach carefully, quietly into my pocket and slowly lift it up close to my face.

It illuminates with a text from Sam.

Halfway there !

My brief moment of joy at the thought of him, at being able to feel his arms around me again, smell his familiar smell, talk with him, joke with him, touch him, is dragged away when I see the face floating before me lit by the glow of my phone.

It’s a pale creature with bloated eyeballs protruding from receding sockets. I’ve never been this close to it before. Not when I saw it in the mirror. Not when it tried to drown me. It’s wearing a dusty, tattered pin-striped suit. It’s a man.

And when he opens his mouth, revealing rotten teeth and the prolific stench of decay, he says one word.

“Help.”

The scream comes from some unknown part of me, some deep cavity of my being. It gives me away. The cellar doors fly open. The ghost wails and hobbles backward where the light can’t reach him. I look down and see symbols on the ground. Red paint. White powder.

I see the others. There are more of them, all in various states of deterioration. Some look like people; they possess solid physical bodies. Others are less formed. One is just a floating orb.

“Annie,” Sophie says, her tone like that of an annoyed parent, “I told you not to go in the cellar.”

At the moment, she’s the lesser evil. I stumble up the stairs, where she waits for me with her hands on her hips.

“Are you ready to have a civilized discussion?”

My mind is a white blizzard of fear.

“I made tea,” she says, gesturing to the table set with two steaming cups.

Whatever emergency composure I thought I had dissolved the second I came face-to-face with the ghost that tried to drown me. This is too much. It’s too fucking much!

“Come,” she says, gently guiding me to my chair.

“I see you’ve met Theodore,” she says, rolling her eyes. “He built this house, you know.”

“He asked me for help. Why?”

“He wants to be released. He wants to leave, to move on, to rest,” she says, “or, at the very least, to be able to roam about the house like he used to before you came around.”

“Wait. What?”

“The ghosts are bound to me, Annie. It’s a very long story involving several failed attempts against my life and several successful curses. They’re a part of my history, part of me. I can never forget, and they can never rest. I wouldn’t want them to after what they did to me.”

I’m exhausted. I don’t have any fight left.

“Whatever you’re going to do to me, just do it,” I say. “Just get it over with, please.”

For the first time since I’ve known her, she seems genuinely shocked.

“Annie?”

“You can grind my bones for tonics or whatever.”

“Ah,” she says, and sips her tea. “Seems I’m still the subject of town gossip. I always think that maybe things are different now, that maybe this will be the generation to grant me some compassion and understanding. But it’s never different. Their fear, it gets passed down. I should have known.”

She drops a sugar cube into her tea and stirs.

“Is it true? Have you hurt people?”

“I have only ever defended myself. I’m otherwise perfectly pleasant. You know this,” she says. “Those headstones, those graves in the woods, those were my sisters, my friends. They were burned at the stake. Hanged by their necks. Drowned. I couldn’t save them, and I have to live with that. All I can do, all any of us can do, really, is embrace our power. Not restrain it for the benefit of those trying to do us harm. I’ve protected myself when necessary. I’ve saved myself. And, yes, on occasion I’ve taken some revenge. I think it not unreasonable, considering the circumstances.”