Amity (7 page)

The man behind the counter pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. He tossed it under the counter, where there might have been a trash can. He slapped one hand down on the Formica and leaned forward, the paunch of his midsection flopping over the edge of the counter.

“Yeah, I guess that wood’s pretty old,” he said, squinting until his eyes were mean, narrow little slits that were probably supposed to intimidate me. “Rotten. You’re not going to get a drill through that crap.”

I stepped a little bit closer. “You don’t even—”

“—’Course I do. Amity, right?”

My face got hot and my throat felt tight. I must’ve given myself away. That didn’t happen too often.

His friend, the one who’d been so determined not to look me in the eye, finally pivoted, swiveled on one scuffed-up work boot. “You can’t come to a place small as Concord and expect people aren’t going to notice.”

Well, that was bad news for my dad, who had been hoping just that—that we’d come here and lie low for a while. That he’d outrun or just plain wait out his debts. But it made sense. A place as small as Concord? It was anonymous, yeah. But also—

“—you can’t expect people aren’t going to notice newcomers, not around here,” the friend went on, rubbing a grease-stained thumb against his forefinger. “And you can’t expect nothing to go into the wood at Amity. That place is rotted to the bone.”

“To the bone,” the man behind the counter agreed in a nasty singsong, sniggering. Wet little flecks of snot and dust floated in the air in front of his face, catching in those sour yellow overhead lights.

I nodded, those wasps in my brain flapping their wings real insistent now. “Are you …?”
Are you trying to tell me something?

The shop worker waved a hand. “Couldn’t if we wanted to.” As if he could hear what I was thinking out loud.

“Amity’s different for everyone.” His friend hitched up his pants with a squeaking little groan. Finally, he faced me direct, and nodded, sharp, right at me. “You just let us know how it
goes for you.” His tone said he meant just the opposite, that neither of them thought I’d be back to tell tales.

That I probably wouldn’t get out, get away from the house again.

Are they right?

But more than that—did I care?

The wasps rushed forward, so determined it was all I could do to keep myself from moving forward with them, from grabbing both of these guys right around their pudgy necks and wringing until their faces were the same bright red that flashed in my eyes, on my tongue, under my fingertips.

I thought:
Never mind
.

I thought: Things would be just fine for me, with Amity. I wasn’t like most people.

I wasn’t the one who had anything to worry about.

“Thanks anyway,” I said, short.

I decided to go straight back to Amity. I didn’t bother checking out another hardware store, or any other place that might be nearby. Jules would just have to deal with the boathouse banging.

All those wings beating against my brain, they wanted me to get back home.

NOW

DAY 2

BY THE LIGHT OF THE MORNING
, things felt bright and airy again in a way that made me almost laugh to myself, sheepish, as I rubbed my eyes and propped myself up in bed. The sun streaming through my window was so vivid it nearly felt surreal, reluctant as I was to think about things in those terms.

The surreal was dangerous. Anything other than actual, real reality couldn’t be trusted.

I couldn’t trust my own mind.

But …

But what about my
eyes
?

I flexed my fingers gingerly beneath the covers. My left hand, the one that had been more doused, ached. The pain was dim, but solid enough, still present. The pain felt real.

But seeing was believing.

I drew in a nervous breath.

What are you afraid of, Gwen?

If the blisters that had formed last night were gone, then all was normal and safe again. Safe enough anyway. If my hands were intact, I could tell myself I’d been dreaming, seeing things last night, that I was hysterical, exhausted, out of sorts from the first night in a new house.

If my hands were unburned, unblemished, then all was
well. I’d only been having a moment of temporary …

Well, the expression is “temporary
insanity
,” isn’t it?

Yes. Insanity.

Everyone has those, Gwen
. Everybody.

Everyone goes a bit crazy now and again
.

If the blisters were still there—and they
felt
still there, oozing and prickling and protesting, angry and wet—

Well. If the blisters were still there, then this place, Amity—it wasn’t safe.

If the blisters were still there, I had issues to worry about other than the question of my own insanity.

Everyone goes a bit crazy
.

Now and again
.

I slid my hands up, out from the covers, splaying them open before my eyes.

I WAS HUMMING AS I MADE MY WAY DOWNSTAIRS
, memories of throbbing hands running off me like chalk lettering in the rain. I flexed the smooth, unmarred fingers of my left hand for good measure, cupping the cool, polished banister as I descended. It felt solid and reassuring.

The kitchen was thick with breakfast smells: coffee, bacon, anything swimming in a pool of butter. A pile of dishes in the sink confirmed that a meal had taken place sometime while I was still upstairs, cowering in bed. I tried to ignore the ripple of shame that rose at the thought.

I had just set a kettle of water on the stove when my mother wandered through the doorway, stretching her arms above her head.

“Good morning.” She quickly crossed the room and kissed me on the cheek. “Did you sleep well?”

“I—”

(she was shot in the head)

“—I slept fine.” I nodded.

“Me, too.” She didn’t seem to remember being woken. She inhaled again, deeper. “Must be the river air. I was out cold as soon as my head hit the pillow. I slept like the dead.”

It was a figure of speech, of course. Still, she offered a nervous glance my way. I did my best to avoid taking a peek at
the delicate blue road map of veins lacing my inner wrists. The blisters from last night were gone, but I had other scars.

Go away, go away
. The refrain echoed like a pulse.
Sleeping like the dead is not the same as
being
dead
.

I knew that, of course.

A hollow pounding blared from the other side of the wall. “What’s going on in the dining room?” I asked, deliberately (if not subtly) changing the subject.
Better not to talk about the sleep of the dead. Better not to think about it at all
.

“Home improvement.” Luke appeared in the doorway, brandishing a hammer. “Mom wants shelves, Mom gets shelves.”

“Mom wanted shelves before Ro gets here,” Mom clarified. She looked at her watch. “Mom isn’t convinced that’s going to happen.”

Luke’s mouth twisted apologetically. “Mom has a healthy grasp of reality,” he agreed. “Lunchtime feels really, really soon.”

He winked at me, a tacit reminder that by daylight, all was swept clean. “Are you impressed by my manly-man skills?”

“Um,” I said. “You were saying something about a healthy grasp of …”
Reality?
I tripped on the word.

“Correct,” he replied, cheerfully spanning the broad space between the archway and the kitchen table with two smooth strides and placing the hammer down. “The walls here are kooky. I haven’t been able to get a single nail in.”

He pulled three bright orange mugs from an overhead cabinet as the teakettle began its pre-whistling hiccup of steam. Those mugs were a cheery, hopeful color, and it warmed me just to see them set there on the counter. A kettle on the
burner, easy banter, and the still, calm air settling, feather-light, over our new house.

It was a cloudless morning, and I was a regular girl.

“There
is
something strange about the walls.” Mom wrinkled her forehead. “Thick plaster? Heavy support beams? I wish I knew more about these things.”

A shadow crossed the four-paned window overlooking the backyard, shading the room gray for a beat.

“I’ll show you,” Mom said.

Casting a questioning look back at Luke, I moved closer to the wall, hugging the curve that outlined where the dining room began. It was like running my hands across Braille. The plaster was speckled with pinpricks of varying sizes, a constellation of crumbly pockmarks.

I glanced to the floor. Nails were scattered, crooked and bent like beckoning fingers. “
None
of those would go into the wall?”

Mom shrugged. “Must be a stud there, or something.” She knocked on the wall to demonstrate, but instead of the flat, expected reverberation, an echo called back.

It didn’t
sound
like a stud.

It sounded like a chasm.

A cavern tucked away inside the walls of Amity. Those grottoes, that dank network of underground warrens from the basement came back to me, ringing an internal alarm. It didn’t
sound
like a stud.

It sounded like a hideout.

But a hideout for
what?

(she was shot)

My hands throbbed, sharp and insistent, the sudden, pulsing
pain mimicking the flat echoes of Mom’s raps against wall.

I tilted my chin down, trembling, and reluctantly I uncurled my right palm.

Hot yellow pus oozed from the raw, gaping mouth of a blister, a bloodless stigmata.

Gasping, I thrust my hands behind my back. Droplets of pus had pooled on the floor beneath me, and I willed my eyes away, willed my mother not to follow my gaze, not to see—or
not
see—my flesh, my fears, spilling forward.

(i slept like the dead)

(like the dead)

(the DEAD)

She knocked on the walls again, and again my hands twitched, prodded with imaginary pokers. “Who knows?” she said, sounding puzzled, not really concerned.

She reached for me, and though I shrank back, she grabbed my hand firmly in her own. I bit my tongue to avoid crying out, watching in horror as viscous fluid seeped between our interlaced fingers.

My mother, oblivious, squeezed my hand.

“Maybe we’ll get that contractor back here. The one who did the inspection,” she mused. “I’d love to get my hands on the original plans for the house.”

Would you? Really?

She dropped my hand and stretched again, shaking out her shoulders like she’d suddenly gone completely boneless. Like she was made of rubber.

I waited a moment, then chanced another quick look at my hands. They were smooth again.

I decided it was just as well.

BETTER, FOR SO MANY REASONS, TO FOCUS ON AUNT RO’S VISIT
. She was coming for an overnight stay, our first visitor at Amity. I would have been thrilled to see her under any circumstances, never mind the grounding presence she had on me, on my … unreliable nerves.

She was due to arrive around lunchtime. By eleven, I was peering out the living room picture window every five minutes, sipping rose hip tea from that deceptively cheerful orange mug, hoping to see her key lime green convertible speed up our drive. At 12:15 on the nose, I heard the welcome grind of her engine shutting down out front, and dashed outside to greet her.

I was a few seconds behind Mom, and when I arrived outside, the two were embracing, Hollywood-style, Ro’s arms firmly clasped around Mom’s waist and twirling her a few inches off the ground, despite her seemingly slight frame. Ro was easy to underestimate, stronger than she looked. Her silver-streaked hair was gathered in a braid that whipped back and forth like a lightning bolt as she and Mom hugged and giggled like little girls.

But when they broke apart, and Ro smoothed out the puckers in her short, boxy sundress, I saw that her face looked pinched, her color not its usual peachy flush. She was beautiful as always, but maybe not at her best.

I tried not to wonder why that might be. I was too excited to see her.

I threw my arms around her and squeezed, breathing in the musky lavender oil she always dabbed behind her ears. She grasped my shoulders, then slid her hands down my arms until her fingers covered my own. My palms prickled with sweat at the contact. She looked me in the eye.

The sage
. Without words, she was asking me about the sage, and I dipped my chin in a quick nod. Her look of relief was imperceptible to anyone but me, I thought, which was probably as she intended.

My mother waved us toward the house. “You must be tired,” Mom said, even though Ro’s trip shouldn’t have been too long. “Come inside and have something to drink.”