The Spite House(17)



“Aunt Val had her hand on my shoulder, like I said, and she pulled me in close so fast and so hard that I was sure she meant to hurt me. For a second, I was sure she was going to throw me over the edge like she’d been doing those pebbles. And she was sure strong enough. She could have launched me clear with just the one arm and I’d have been falling, and then hitting those rocks, again and again, breaking apart a little more and more all the way to the bottom. I thought of that as she held on to me. I called her name over and over and told her mine too, quickly as I could, to remind her of who she was and that she knew me and loved me, in case all she needed was reminding. I asked her what was wrong. I looked at her, but she wouldn’t look at me. She was staring out at something in the woods. I tried to see what it was but there wasn’t anything there. Nothing but trees and the trail.

“Val grunted and staggered, and I could tell something was really wrong, and that frightened me. Her strength frightened me. Not knowing why she wouldn’t answer me or look at me frightened me. And the cold. That horrible, unnatural cold. But the worst came when Val shouted at whatever she was looking at, ‘You can’t have her! You can’t have her!’” Eunice shouted the words like she needed to be heard a block away. Her interviewees all flinched. Eunice saw that even Lafonda, who had to know this moment was coming, shuddered a little, although that might have been due to the shrillness of Eunice’s voice.

“I can’t do it justice,” Eunice said. “Think of a voice heavier and heartier than mine, and much angrier. I’ve had cause to be angry in my life, but I’ve never sounded like she did. Never that frantic, either. She was using her last breaths on those screams. It was an effort just to get the words out, I could tell, much less to have them come out so forcefully. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears, but at the same time like she could kill an army with her bare hands if she had to. Or she’d at least give it an honest try.

“Then the cold started to move. It closed in like it knew it had us trapped. I heard this raspy, growling sound. Low and threatening. I heard it all around us, heard it through my skin as much as in my ears. Val screamed one more time and pushed me down so hard my chin hit the ground, but I didn’t feel any pain at the time. I was too cold to feel pain, and I was distracted. Val’s voice was trailing off. Or falling off, more appropriately. Falling away, following her down the hillside. The cold followed her too, and the rasping voices that came with it. It all went over the edge, still lingering with me for a second, but soon everything was quiet again, and the sunlight was warming me, and the world seemed like it had gone back to normal.

“I didn’t want to look back, because I knew what I would see if I did, so I just stayed there on my hands and knees. I thought of my scraped chin and the sun being on me, and I tried to think of Aunt Val being right behind me, about to put a hand on my shoulder, but gentler this time. Back to being herself. She’d ask me if I was okay, check on my scrape, tell me not to cry, that I was tougher than a little ol’ scratch on the chin, and everything would be normal again. She wouldn’t have to explain herself to me. I wouldn’t care what had caused her to act that way, I’d only care that she was alive and herself again. All I wanted was for the truth to be a lie, because the truth was that she was at the bottom of that rocky hillside.

“She wasn’t shouting any instructions up at me, so how could I know what to do to help her? That’s if she was even alive, and if she was, how much longer could she hold on? I had to get someone to help her. I had to go fast. I ran as hard as I could and I was a lot less careful around some ledges and declines than I’d ever been before, and rolled my ankle pretty bad once, but I could be tougher than a little ol’ sprained ankle for my aunt’s sake. When I got home, I went to my mom and dad, who were with my uncle and a few older cousins, and I told them Aunt Val had fallen.

“They had to bring me along for the rescue so I could show them where Aunt Val went over, but when we got there, they didn’t let me look past the edge. My mother took me away even though I was shouting at her to let me see if Val was okay. I knew she wasn’t. Something had gone wrong with her before she’d gone over, and then she’d fallen, and now they weren’t telling me if she was okay or not. All of that let me know everything there was to know. But I still wanted to see her. She must have hit those rocks pretty bad because her funeral was closed-casket. Besides pictures, the last time I saw her face was when she was yelling at something only she could see.

“A few days after we buried Aunt Val, my mother came to my room. I was crying again, even though I knew Aunt Val would want me to be tougher than that, which just made me sadder. Anyway, my mother sat at the foot of my bed, patted my legs for a while, then told me she had an important question, and that it was very important for me to be honest with her. She asked me if I’d felt anything strange while Val was having her heart attack, before she’d fallen. I told her about the cold, which I hadn’t mentioned before because I thought everyone would think I was making it up, and because it didn’t seem all that important. But my mother nodded when I told her about it, and I knew she believed me. Then she took a big breath, straightened her posture, and told me that my beloved aunt was the latest victim of a family curse that stretched back to the nineteenth century. She’d hoped to spare me that news until I was older, but I was going to find out sooner rather than later, anyway. Val wasn’t my only relative to die when I was young, and I’ve been living with that over my head since I was a little girl. So you can probably imagine why I’m more compelled than just curious to uncover certain mysteries of the hereafter. I have quite a bit at stake. I’d rather pass more peacefully than Val, and I’d much rather find out ahead of time if dying is where the agony ends or just begins. Now, be honest, do you think yourselves up to the task of helping me make this discovery?”

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