Just Like Home(53)
Wait. No, that couldn’t be right. The closet door wasn’t open—was it? It was too dark in the bedroom for her to be able to tell. She’d closed it before she got into bed, after her ridiculous inspection of the suitcases. But she couldn’t remember if she’d felt the click of the latch. Maybe she’d left it ajar.
Because now she was certain. It was ajar. It was definitely ajar. Only a little, just enough for her to see the contour of the edge of the door itself.
She didn’t want to approach that too-inviting slit of darkness. She didn’t feel like confronting the irrational, animal fear that told her not to let her feet touch the floor until daybreak. She decided to indulge herself. She would not get out of bed to close that closet door. Not until morning.
But that didn’t mean she could rest. Even if she didn’t acknowledge the hungry fear that was tugging her eyes back to that shadowy gap—even if she ignored the way it gnawed at her attention—there was the cold to consider. This wasn’t the usual dry, recycled chill of the air conditioner. The air in the bedroom hung fat and dense, as humid as an oncoming thunderstorm. Moisture beaded on Vera’s skin; she couldn’t tell if it was sweat or condensation.
She wanted to fall back asleep, to retreat to the plush velvet warmth that waited for her there. The freezing, wet air was probably just an air conditioner malfunction, she told herself. It could all wait until tomorrow. She would close the closet door in the morning, and she would deal with the air conditioner in the morning. After a good night’s sleep.
She sat up and reached to the foot of the bed to retrieve the blankets she must have kicked away in her sleep.
But they weren’t there.
Her eyes scanned the soft white landscape of the fitted sheet that hugged the mattress. The bed was bare.
The blankets were gone. The topsheet and the quilt had both been tugged free of the weight of the mattress, untucked and discarded. Vera shivered violently, and some helpful bit of memory whispered a reminder of the dream: the cold is inside you, and you can get it out if you try.
Her fingers crawled spiderlike over her thighs. She fought to still them but heedless, they crept up to her belly, leaving trails through the dew that was collecting there. She gave in to the need to check, laying her palms flat over her skin and pressing down hard. A sharp thread of adrenaline twisted in her chest, putting sparks into her blood. On a deep, visceral level, she wasn’t sure what her hands were going to find.
But her flesh was solid as ever. There was no hole waiting for her fingers, waiting for her to pull the cold out from inside. The cold was on the outside, in the room. It was something separate from the thing that Vera was.
She would have felt silly for having questioned that fact, if only the memory of her fingers slipping into her core hadn’t been so stark. It was only a dream, she reminded herself. It was only a dream, but the reminder didn’t stop her trembling fingers from testing the certainty of her own skin, prodding the flesh hard enough to leave bruises.
Vera flopped back onto the mattress, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes until bright lights flashed behind her eyelids. “Come on,” she whispered. “Grow up.” Her jaw was tight, almost chattering. It was so goddamn cold. She dragged her hands away from her eyes and through her hair, her fingers snagging on a damp tangle near the crown of her head. “Enough,” she hissed aloud, trying to speak to whatever part of her was so panicked by darkness, by cold, by humidity.
With immense effort, she swam upright again. She tucked her almost-numb feet beneath her to warm them. Bracing her hands on her knees, squinting into the darkness, she peered over the edge of the bed to find the covers.
The floor on the side of the bed that faced the door was bare. The bedskirt gently fluttered, wafting in some invisible current of air as the house breathed. Vera stared hard at that fluttering, but it remained even and steady, and she decided not to let it bother the part of her brain that knew to watch for movement in the tall grass.
The foot of the bed was the same.
The side of the bed that was farthest from the door looked bare too, at first—but then Vera leaned a little too far over the edge of the mattress.
Her wet palms slid off the shelf of her knees. She cried out, nearly toppled off the edge of the bed, caught herself on the edge of the frame. The metal dug painfully into the heels of her hands. Her damp skin squeaked against the brass and the bedframe gave an ominous creak. The only way she could catch herself was to rise up on all fours, try to back away from the edge of the bed before she fell, and that’s just what she was doing—but her hands were too wet and the brass of the bed was too slippery, and her hands shot off the metal.
She toppled, but she didn’t fall, not quite. She had already managed to get a leg out from underneath herself and somehow, instead of tumbling off the edge of the bed, she flailed out with that leg and she didn’t fall onto her face because her foot landed firmly on the floor.
She panted hard with the effort of catching herself.
The rippling bedskirt brushed her ankle.
Vera shrieked and scrambled back into the bed. As she did, her foot caught on something loose and damp on the floor, something that shifted beneath her big toe. She looked down in violent revulsion—and she saw the corner of her quilt.
She had been standing on it.
It was sticking out from beneath the bedskirt.
Vera did not breathe. Gently, slowly, she pulled her hand back away from the edge of the bed. She returned to the position she’d held before, with her feet tucked beneath her. That position had felt warm and secure before, a way to keep her toes from freezing off.