The Unquiet (34 page)

He stares me down, speechless with fury. That’s how I know:
he’s hiding something.

He’s been hiding it since the last time we were here, when he came out of the locker room with frozen hair.

Nate shoves me. “Do it, then. You get
five
minutes this time.”

I stick out my tongue and test the door. Still unlocked. Nobody’s been here.

I step over the threshold into the pool room. At first I notice nothing different; it’s as dark and as cold as the last time I was here. Now, though, it’s perfectly silent. No clanking furnace. No whistling wind.

I inhale slowly, experimentally. The air reminds me of a muggy summer night. Much colder, of course.

A scent brushes my nostrils with my next deep breath.

Chlorine
.

I didn’t smell this at the séance. Everyone else did, though.

As I nervously aim the flashlight at the black pit—through the fence this time; I’m not going near Dino’s hole—the tickle of chlorine evolves to a bitter sting. I rub my nose and glance
back, searching for Nate’s shadow. I think I see it. At least I hope it’s him.

My tongue toys with my lips, all slick and greasy like—baby oil? I tilt my head, acutely aware of the foul, heavy air caressing my face.

Is this really happening? Is it?

When I first hear the sound, I automatically suspect Nate.

He’s messing with your head. He wants you out of here.

When I hear it a second time, I know I’m wrong.

A human sound, part sigh, part wail, drifts up from the dark hole. Soft and insistent, the haunting cry curls around my head, stirring the mysterious substance that, unbelievably, feels like it’s seeping into my ears. I swat wildly at the air, shooting circles with my flashlight.

The floor vibrates under my feet as the muted wail blossoms to a menacing howl.

Something’s happening, something bad
—but when I try to shout a warning to Nate, the oily substance chokes me off, slithering down my throat, cutting off my air.

A cloud of something dances nearby. Not smoke, not exactly. More like a fog.

A thin, pale fog rising from the edge of the pool.

My knees buckle and I sink by degrees, floating through a barrel of bitter molasses. Pressure flattens me. I can’t breathe.

I can’t breathe!

I’m going to die in this horrible room like Dino and Tasha.

“There’s no way out of here,” David Gilmour sings inside me.

Nowayoutnowayoutnowayoutnowayout …!

The unearthly howl peaks, and then cascades into a torrent of hysterical laughter.

I should’ve listened to Nate.

Why didn’t I?

Why …?

I open my eyes to the fluorescent lights of the locker room ceiling. Four rows of lights, when there should only be two.

“Are you awake? Can you hear me?” A bolt of pain stabs my head when Nate crushes me, kissing my face, my hair. “Oh God, oh God, I thought you were dead! You hit your head when you fell.” He offers me his bloody hand as proof.

“I—I think I’m okay,” I squeak.

“You passed
out
!”

My head hurts worse when I force myself up. I touch my wet hair, look at my hand, and whimper. For someone who slashed her neck in a Jacuzzi, I don’t do well with blood.

“How many fingers do you see?”

I push him away. “You didn’t go in, did you?” It all rushes back to me. “Please say you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. I dragged you out with the rope.”

Thank God!
“Did you hear it?”

As soon as I ask this, I’m sorry. What if he says no? What if those hideous sounds and that funny fog were nothing but the hallucinations of a crazy girl who ditched her meds for the past seven days?

Nate presses his cheek against mine. His face is wet, and not from my bloody hair.

“Yes, I heard her,” he says, all muffled against me.

Her
, he said. Not
it.

Now I know he believes me.

Mom falls for my idiotic story about slipping on some ice. “Idiotic” because it was in the forties today, a heat wave for Ohio in December. No ice left anywhere.

It bothers me that she believes this tale. The fact that she doesn’t insist on X-rays, or try to keep me awake so I don’t lapse into a coma, or ream Nate out like it’s all
his
fault, bothers me more.

I think of a book she used to read to me ages ago:
Are You My Mother?
Today that story rings all too true. A funny WTF sensation gnaws me as Mom parts my hair to examine my gash for, oh, maybe one second.

“You’ll be fine,” is her disinterested remark. Then she lights a cigarette—her old brand, not Millie’s, which means she’s buying them now—and turns to face the kitchen window.

Nate, after a dubious glance at Mom, pushes my jaw back in place. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

I stagger after him to the front door. “Don’t say anything to anyone. Promise me?”

“Ha. No chance of
that
.”

No chance of telling? Or no chance of promising? Without clarifying, he kisses my forehead, swears he’ll call me later, and then he’s out the door.

I notice the bare stove and no sign of dinner. Not that I’m hungry, but still. “Aren’t you cooking tonight?”

“No.” Mom stays glued to the window. “You can order a pizza if you like.”

“We
can’t
order a pizza.”

“Then make a sandwich,” she snaps. “You’re sixteen! Why is it
my
job to feed you?”

Flabbergasted—
what’s wrong with her, what’s wrong with her?
—I leave her hunched into herself. Upstairs, I throw a bath towel over my pillow and carefully rest my head.

I know exactly what I need to do: get back on my meds and do it NOW! But that would involve walking all the way back downstairs. Between my head and my iffy stomach, I doubt I’d make it.

Besides, I’m afraid of that woman in the kitchen.

I’m afraid of my own mother, who’s never been afraid of me—not even when I hit her, cussed her out, called her horrible names—though I gave her every reason.

My wall creaks. Not like the usual settling of this old house, but a prolonged, rasping creak, like it’s deliberately trying to draw my attention.
Do ghosts travel?
Immobilized by the idea, I stare at my Precious Pewter wall, hypnotized by the big raggedy hole.

The hole stares back.

Then it speaks.

“I once was lost but now I’m found,” we recite in unison.

Both voices, mine and the hole’s, aggravate my headache, making me retch. My ears feel plugged, like I’ve spent hours underwater. A stinging sensation lingers in my nostril.

I address the deadly beam above the foot of my mattress. Somehow I know without being told that this is the beam Mrs. Gibbons hung herself from.

The Hanging Beam.

“She laughed at me,” I tell Annaliese’s dead grandmother. “I heard her. And I saw her friggin’
ghost.
”

We found her.

It’s true.

Annaliese exists.

Tuesday, December 9

I do sleep, finally, but wake up during the night with the same raging headache, exacerbated by Mom’s butchering of “Liebesträum.” Once again, she can’t play for shit.

Every—single—night she does this! I’m sick of it.
Sick!

“Will you stop banging that thing?” I shrill from the landing. “If you’re gonna play it, then play it! Quit fucking up every song!”

Mom’s hands fall. She whips her face in my direction.

“I’m the crazy one, Mom. Not you.
Not you!
”

“What’s the matter with you?” she whispers.

I shout, “Can’t you
guess
what’s the matter? Do you even give a shit anymore?”

I stumble back upstairs, grab my iPod to block everything out, dive onto my mattress, and glare at the Hanging Beam till I fall back asleep.

My alarm doesn’t go off, Mom doesn’t wake me, and I don’t regain consciousness till noon. Sore, vaguely confused, I slink downstairs in time to hear Mom say my name on the kitchen phone.

Talking about me. Why is she always talking about me?

I edge into the kitchen, fingering my matted hair. “Was that Frank?”

“Yes, it was Frank. And no, he didn’t ask to speak to you.”

“He hates you. You murdered his mother.”

“You are no longer his daughter.”

“He wishes you were dead. You SHOULD be dead.”

“You should’ve died in that fire. Not Frank’s mother.”

“Not Nana.”

My frozen gaze sticks to Mom’s face. Her lips never moved.

Is it still a hallucination if you
know
you’re hallucinating?

If you cut your throat when no one’s around to see it, do you still bleed red?

Do you bleed at all?

Keeping a wide berth, I sidle around her to grab my meds. She says nothing. Neither do I. I rarely understood what the Voices said to me before. I never recognized them as belonging to anyone, either. But this time I did.

It was my mother’s voice.

I sleep straight through till 9:00 p.m., then I wash down my nighttime meds with a Pepsi I open myself. I return to bed without stopping to pee. My head lump feels like a mushy kiwi.

Wasn’t Nate supposed to call me? Or was that yesterday?

Wednesday, December 10

Next time I open my eyes, it’s morning again. Immediately I realize I desperately need to pee, not to mention take a shower. The bump pokes out of my greasy hair, crusted with old blood.

Should I go to school? Is it Wednesday or Thursday? I squint at my wall calendar. Each month features a different rock album cover—Frank gives me these for Christmas—and December is Aerosmith’s
South of Sanity
. Ha, very funny.

I hug my knees and try to focus. At least I don’t feel like screaming at Mom again, and I don’t hear any voices whispering in the wall.

Yet something’s not right.

In the shower, Steven Tyler screeches “
Dream on! Dream on! Dream on!
” in my head as I gently rinse shampoo from my hair. Did Mom really say I’m not Frank’s daughter? That I, not Nana, should’ve died in that fire?

No no no!

Dripping wet, wrapped in a towel, I run up to my room and halt in front of the hole. I stare at the random Bible verses, written in Mrs. Gibbons’s squinchy handwriting.

At the endless columns of lyrics to “Amazing Grace.”

At Annaliese’s name written over and over by the lady who killed herself here.

I drop the towel, snatch up my book bag, and heave it at the hole as hard as I can. Then my hairbrush. Then a dictionary. Then my smooshed-up pillow and the bloodstained towel. Dust splatters. Loose chips of drywall fly. I snatch up my CD player, too, but luckily think twice. “You won’t win, you bitch. I’m onto you now. I’m gonna figure you out if it kills me!”

“Where are your
clothes
? And who are you talking to?”