Malorie(65)

She stands up. Because she has to. Because she’ll die if she remains folded in the corner of this grave.

“You’ve got to leave,” Malorie says. “You’ve got to find a way out. I can’t die with you near. You’ve already taken so much.”

She thinks of the housemates. Cynical Don, who she can still see in the cellar as Tom the man put his hand on Don’s shoulder and asked him to come upstairs for one last round of rum. Cheryl’s voice down the hall after she got scared feeding the birds. The birds that hung like an alarm system. Jules, who loved his dog, Victor, so much. Felix, who got paler and paler the longer Tom was out of the house. Tom.

Tom.

She’s tried to close the door on these thoughts. She tries now. She makes to shove the housemates into the attic. But they keep showing up around the table again, glasses of rum before them.

That’s the way she likes them best. Happy as they were allowed to be.

Tom’s wearing a makeshift helmet. Maybe he’s at the piano. Maybe they don’t have a phone book yet and so haven’t begun the process of getting out, because once that began it was like the wheels were set in motion, from point A to point B, phone book to now, Yellow Pages to Safer Room, like Tom had called Fate and said, We’re ready. Do with us what you will.

And Fate has.

Done with her.

She tries to close her already closed eyes to the memory of the bodies in the halls, upstairs and down, the living room, by the cellar door. But it’s hard. How far is she from a creature right now? The same wretched thing Olympia the woman saw as Olympia the baby was born?

And is it the very same one?

Malorie shudders. The idea. Each a private demon. To each a creature comes. Waiting for you to slip, to get lazy, to look…

DON’T GET LAZY.

Don’t look.

She tries to close her eyes a third time, a fourth. A creaking door on each layer, each chain of thought that rises from the hole she’s in. How many times can a person close their eyes? How dark can one’s personal darkness get?

“You…” she says. She thinks of the voice at the back of the train. Two men, right? One spoke to another? One spoke, one pushed? She shudders. No stopping that. Not right now. And never again. Not when she thinks of Rick at the school for the blind and the people there who, before Malorie arrived, gouged their eyes out to guarantee a lifetime of safety.

A lifetime of darkness, too, she thinks. Where memories overlap. Where one begins to forget where the old world ended and the new one began.

She presses against the wall. No space for these thoughts right now. Not in this room, not in her head. How high is the ledge?

“I’m not going to look,” she says, her voice betraying every ounce of fear she feels. “I’m never going to look.”

Then, an insane thought: the temptation to look.

She steps from the wall. She holds her arms out, as if telling the thing to take her. Tear off her sleeves. Touch her. Try to make her look.

She stands this way long enough to lose her nerve. She lowers her arms. She backs up to the dirt.

Did it take a step forward as well?

Malorie breathes in. She holds it. She breathes out.

She feels like she’s losing her mind. The old way.

She opens her eyes. Not her actual eyes, but the eyes she’s closed behind those eyes, and the eyes behind those, and those, and more. She feels a fluttering, a fanning of doors opening, in rhythm with her heart.

This, she knows, is how Tom thinks, always. Because she can’t hide down here. Because there’s no other choice but to do something.

She needs to push back.

“You’re caught,” she says. “No better off than I am. But you don’t deserve to watch me fail. You showed up uninvited and you took everything from us. You stole our sisters, our parents, our kids. You took the sky, the view, you took day and night. A look across a street. A glance out a window. You’ve taken a view, every view, and with that, perspective. Who do you think you are, coming here, taking, then sitting silent, watching me go mad? I hope you’re hurt. I hope you’re stuck in here. I hope you get taken from you what you’ve taken from us. How can I be a mother in this world, your world? How am I supposed to feel, ever, in a world where my kids aren’t allowed to look? They don’t know me. My kids. They know a weathered, paranoid woman who cringes at every suggestion they make. They know a woman who says no so many more times than she says yes. A thousand times no. A hundred thousand times no. They know a woman who tells them what they’re doing is wrong, every day, all night. I was different before you. My kids will never know that person. I’ll never know that person again. Because even if you left now, even if you vanished as suddenly as you came…I’ve been through it. You dragged me through it. You dragged us all so that we don’t resemble who we used to be and, Goddammit, who we were supposed to be. What’s worse? Robbing someone of their childhood or taking away the person they were on their way to becoming? Because I can’t tell! I can’t tell who has it worse between me and my kids.” Her voice grows hoarse. Half defeat. But half not, too. “There is no ignorance anymore and there is no bliss. We’ve all been scarred. This woman before you? This isn’t me! This woman who lives in darkness, who cries behind closed eyes, who hasn’t had fun in seventeen years. This isn’t…me. This woman who can hardly call herself a woman at all because she feels more like a living blindfold. A machine that says no no no no no no no no. You wanna go outside, Tom? No. You wanna make a joke, Tom? No. Because what’s there to laugh about? What’s there to smile about? What’s there to turn on its head, other than…you? You. I caught them playing ‘creature’ once. Running between cabins, saying, Don’t look at me! I should’ve let them do it. I should’ve let them have fun. But I couldn’t. And I can’t be sure that, given the chance, I’d let them do it now. I’m a machine. Because you took the human. You took the glances, the winks, the eye-to-eye knowledge, the seeing somebody in a park, on a walk, on a drive. You took every relationship we were ever supposed to have and now you sit in this fucking hole with me and watch me go mad. Well, fuck you! Fuck you all! Get out! Go on and let me die alone. You don’t deserve to watch the end of me just like I didn’t deserve to be there at the beginning of you. Leave! Get out of here! Stop watching us go mad! Stop standing in plain sight so we have to close our fucking eyes, stop! Go back where you came from! You’ve seen what you do to us! It’s been seventeen years, seventeen years. What more do you need? Can’t you see that you hurt us? That you take from us? That you’ve ruined this place you’ve come to? I’m a mother! But I can’t do anything except keep them away from you. You. You’re terrible. You’re greedy. How much can you take? When is it enough? You want and you want and you take and you take and now my son is left with no choice but to want to beat you, my daughter with no choice but to accept you, and me…”