The Hiding Place(17)

I don’t dream.

I have nightmares.

Normally, the alcohol helps with that.

Not tonight.

I’m walking up the stairs in my childhood house, except—in the way that dreams are—it isn’t my childhood house, not quite. The stairs are much narrower and steeper and they wind around in a spiral. I can hear a noise below me in the darkness: a skittering, chittering noise. Shadows swarm around the bottom. Above me, I can hear another noise. A terrible high-pitched keening sound, like an animal in pain, interspersed with cries: “Abbie-Eyes. Abbie-Eyes. Kiss the boys and make them cry.”

I don’t want to climb the staircase but I have no choice. Every time I glance back I see a few more of the stairs have disappeared into darkness. The shadows are creeping, just like the cold, and they’re gaining on me.

I keep climbing, the stairs winding endlessly up ahead of me and then, suddenly, I’m on the landing. I look back. The stairs aren’t there anymore. The shadows have crept up and swallowed them. Now they mill and scuttle restlessly, inches from my feet.

There are three doors, all closed. I push open the first door. My dad is inside. He sits on the bed. Well, “sits” isn’t quite the word. He lolls, like a puppet with its strings cut. His head lies on his shoulder, as though it’s having a rest from the business of being on top of things. Glistening tendons and stringy red strips of muscle barely hold it to his body. When the car hit the tree a jagged sliver of windshield pretty much decapitated him.

He opens his mouth and a strange wheezing noise hisses out. I realize it’s my name: “Joe-eeeeee.” He tries to stand. I pull the door shut again, heart thumping, legs trembling. I move on to the next door. This one will be worse, I know. But just like a character in a bad horror movie, I know I’m going to open it.

I push at the door then step back. The room is filled with flies. Bluebottles rise in a dark, buzzing cloud. Somewhere among them I can see two figures. Julia and Ben. At least, I think it must be Julia and Ben. It’s hard to tell as Julia is missing most of her head and Ben has no face. Just a red-and-white mass of blood, bone and gristle.

They stand, shadowy figures amid the flies…and then I realize they’re made of flies themselves. As I stare at them, they dissolve and pour toward me. I throw myself through the door and slam it shut. I can hear the flies batting themselves against the wood in a furious swarm.

Wake up, I think. Wake up, wake up, wake up. But my subconscious is not about to let me off so easily. I turn toward the last door. My hand reaches out and twists the handle. It swings slowly open. This room is empty. Except for a bed and Abbie-Eyes. She lies in the center, eyelids closed. I walk forward and pick her up. Her eyes snap open. Pink plastic lips twist into a smile: She’s behind you.

I turn. Annie stands in the doorway. She’s wearing her pajamas. Pale pink, decorated with small white sheep. The clothes she was wearing the night of the crash. Except that’s wrong. That wasn’t what my sister was wearing when she died.

“Go away,” I say.

She shuffles toward me and stretches out her arms.

“Go away.”

Then she opens her mouth and a swarm of beetles pours out of it. I try to run but my bad leg gets tangled and I crash to the floor. Behind me I can hear the chittering, skittering of hard shells and busy little legs. I can feel them crawling up my ankles, burrowing into my skin. I try to swat and brush them off. They scuttle up my arms and neck, into my mouth and down my throat. I can’t breathe. I’m choking on stinking, black bodies…

I wake, sweating and shaking, batting at my bedclothes, which are tangled and knotted around my naked body.

Shards of daylight poke through the semi-drawn curtains and jab at my eyeballs. I squint at my alarm clock, just as it starts to ring, sending peals of agony through my pounding head.

I roll over and groan. Time for school.





8





“Sir?”

“Yes, Lucas?” I point wearily at the arm waving in the air, and then, before he can say anything, I raise my own hand.

“If this is another question about Tinder, I think we’ve already covered the fact that dating apps weren’t exactly a thing in Romeo and Juliet’s time.”

Another hand shoots up.

“Josh?”

“What about Snapchat?”

The class ripples with laughter. I smother a smile.

“Okay. You’ve given me an idea.”

“I have, sir?”

“Yep. Take one of the chapters we’ve read and rewrite it as if it were set in the modern day. Pay particular attention to parallels and the themes of tragedy and calamity.”

More hands shoot into the air. I pick one.

“Aleysha?”

“What’s a parallel?”

“Something similar or corresponding to.”

“What’s a calamity?”

“This class.”

The bell rings for lunch. I try not to wince at the noise.

“Okay. Get out of here. I look forward to reading those essays tomorrow.”

Chairs scrape and clatter as the children hastily make their escape. Doesn’t matter how interesting you make your lessons or how enthusiastic the students, the ringing of the bell always sends them scattering from the classroom like inmates released from prison.