Grim (6 page)

Jeremiah took to the city as if he were strolling through Central Park. Erika wondered whether all of Limbo was this destitute, or whether Jeremiah was trying to make a point — an appeal, as it were, for her gratitude.
This is how much worse off you could be, Erika Stripling.
But Erika didn't feel humbled, only terrified, and she didn't relax until they stopped at the gate of an old manor.

“A prince?” she asked quietly.

He nodded. “Of sorts.”

Only in comparison with the rest of the city could you call Jeremiah's home a palace. White and double storied in the Palladian style with large windows and clean, classical lines — no amount of architectural beauty could hide the fact that it had long ago fallen into disrepair. A shell of ivy, still dead with winter, cocooned the walls and roof while the front gardens choked on weeds and stiff brown grass. The paint itself was chipping from its brick, and lines spiderwebbed the walk. Two candelabra edged out the night through the windows on either side of the front door.

“Are all the princes so Victorian?” Erika asked.

Jeremiah chuckled. “Victorian would be too peaceful,” he said. “But we've been settled in the long eighteenth century since before I was born. Disease, famine, revolution everywhere. A very productive era for death.” He closed the ironwork gate as they passed through. “I understand,” he went on, leading Erika up the crumbling walk, “that we were quite taken with Damascus for a while. Many regret ever leaving the Crusades behind.” The door creaked open before he even knocked.

“About time, then.” The plump, pear-shaped housekeeper was an English maid, all powder-pale skin and tightly wrapped silver hair. A white lace cap, a straight dress cut at the ankles, and a heavily starched apron made up a uniform so hackneyed that it bordered on parody.

“Martha,” Jeremiah said. “This is Erika.”

“Oh?” A long silence followed, and Erika felt herself being appraised by a mother's eye. “Your mum had her hair.”

Jeremiah cleared his throat. “Would you mind dressing her?”

In answer, Martha stepped back from the entryway with a half curtsey. Erika and Jeremiah stepped over the threshold together, his hand on the back of her upper arm.

The hall was papered with a curling print of gold vines and flowers. At the center of the room stood a large, round cage, as tall as Jeremiah and at least four feet across. The bird inside didn't live up to the dimensions of its home, its body white and no larger than a pigeon's, its head tucked against its breast. Erika poked a finger through the fine silver wire, but the bird just inched to one side without raising its head, plumed tail shivering as it moved.

“That's Kala,” Jeremiah said.

“She doesn't like me much.”

“She doesn't like anyone around here much.” He nodded to the housekeeper.

“Come, miss.” Martha took Erika by the hand and led her to the staircase.

“Where are we going?”

“I'll have dinner made,” Jeremiah called after her. “I'm afraid that I have to work on your behalf until then. You can entertain yourself, I expect.”

As she rounded the left branch of the staircase, Erika looked over her shoulder, but Jeremiah had already disappeared.

 

Martha led Erika down a dark hallway and through a door that sighed with age. The room Jeremiah had chosen for her had obviously been neglected for some time. The bottom third of the walls were plush raspberry velvet, the rest a buttercream paint that had begun to peel. Dust blanketed the tall four-poster bed and settled along the lines of the curtains, giving a fur coat to the burgundy silk. An old bureau, a wardrobe, and a mint-colored wing chair, faded and threadbare, made up the rest of the room's furniture. The door on the back wall stood open to a small bath with a tub, toilet, and single-tap sink.

“You've had a bad crack on the head, miss,” Martha said. “I'll bring some bandages for that. And clean clothes for you.”

“Is there warm water?”

“I could have some boiled.”

“If it's no trouble.”

Martha nodded.

“And a towel,” said Erika.

“A towel, of course.”

“And soap, please.”

Martha looked her up and down. “Hm,” she said, and then turned on her heel and left the bedroom.

Erika watched her leave before scanning her new haunts. She felt small and out of place in the middle of so much old-world opulence. Too much history mingled with the dust of the house, and too much pain dripped beneath the paint and the flocked wall. History and pain that she had no business seeing.

To block out these problems that didn't belong to her, she focused on her own. Now that she had some privacy, she allowed herself to begin to lay out the pieces. She didn't know how to put them together just yet, but she needed to see what her options were. Shawn, Rebecca, and Megan. She took a deep breath.

 

Shawn looked at his hands and saw that they were small, and tanned from summer, but, for some reason, this didn't surprise him. He was crouched beneath the hickory tree in the backyard, an old tennis ball by his knee. He picked it up and felt the summer dust rub against his palms. He remembered this afternoon. It was late July, and he was nine years old.

The screen door crashed shut as John Stripling walked down the back steps.

“She's asleep now,” he told Shawn. He sounded proud.

“Why'd you hit her?”

His father's eyes clouded. “I did not
hit
her, Shawn. I never hit her. I only put her to bed. Why would I hurt your mother? I love her.”

“Are you going to hurt me too?”

“Have I ever hurt you before?” He answered himself before Shawn had a chance to open his mouth: “Of course not. Your mother's so tired she doesn't know what she's saying. I only put her to bed, Shawn. Can't you see that?”

“I can see her bruises.”

John Stripling jerked Shawn up by the collar of his T-shirt. “Now you listen to me,” he said. A sour taste of whiskey caught far back in Shawn's mouth as the smell seeped from his father's pores. “Don't talk like that. You walk around lying like that and some cop is going to believe you. Cops like to believe little kids when they say lies like that. I don't want your mother to have any more trouble out of you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Shawn struggled to look innocent as his father tried to fish out the lie.

“Yes,
Dad
,” John Stripling said, finally satisfied. “We're not an army family.”

“We're not a family at all.”

“Shawn.”
He yanked his son's shirt harder this time, so that the front collar made Shawn's throat flush red.

Erika came running out of the house.

“Get your hands off him!”

“Back inside, Erika,” John said. “Go to bed.”

“Go to bed?”
she screamed. “Is that all you can ever say to me?”

“I won't speak to you like this.”

“Damn you, John!” She gave him a hard slap across the face.

There was a long, dead pause. Shawn held his breath.

John dropped his son's T-shirt and grabbed his wife instead, taking both of her arms in his hands and pressing them together, so that her whole body curved in. “Get inside,” he said under his breath, and pushed her up the steps.

Shawn sat down on the grass again and twirled the tennis ball on the dirt in front of him. He heard a familiar voice ask, “Was it like this every day?”

“No,” he said, and then looked up.

The man named Jeremiah stood above him, with his hands in his jacket pockets.

“She stayed with him for so long,” Jeremiah said. “And she hoped so much that things would change. It's a wonder she ever managed to leave.”

Shawn stayed quiet.

“Do you think that he loved her?” Jeremiah asked.

“No. Yes.” Shawn shrugged. “I don't know.” He glanced back up. “You haven't killed me this time.”

“I haven't killed you at all,” Jeremiah said. “You only ever do that once.”

“Who are you?”

“At this point, I'm honestly not sure how to answer that.”

Shawn nodded slowly. “Tell me,” he said, “am I dreaming?”

A crack, like gunfire, echoed through the house. Jeremiah patted the pockets of his slacks.

“Damn,” he spat. “Your mother's a born thief, isn't she?”

“What?”

Erika ran out of the house, splattered with blood. Her right hand gripped a pearl-handled pocketknife; her chest fluttered as she tried to catch her breath. Shawn leaped to his feet and watched his mother turn her eyes on him and smile. A soft, thankful noise escaped her throat. Then her eyes skimmed past her son and her smile disappeared.

“Jeremiah.”

“You don't listen, Erika. I told you not to come back.” Jeremiah crossed the yard in two strides and wrestled the blade from her hands before tossing a look back at Shawn. “I'm sorry you have to see this,” he said, and then plunged the knife into Erika's heart.

A scream burst from the house and Rebecca crashed through the back door. She ran out, young and scared, with a toddling Megan on her bony hip, but when she looked at her brother, an odd flash of recognition made her eyes go wide. Somewhere deep in his gut, Shawn realized that she could
see
him. She knew that he was there, beyond sleep and beyond dream. Their mother vanished with Jeremiah, leaving behind a pool of warm blood. Shawn opened his eyes and saw the speckled shadows of his bedroom's ceiling.

 

Jeremiah stood with his arms folded across his chest and his back to Erika. She crouched on the floor, doubled over and wheezing into the dusty carpet.

“I told you not to do that,” Jeremiah said.

“You showed me how!”

“I showed you how to get in. That's not the same as getting out.”

“I'm —”

“Keep your apologies, Erika. I'll see you at dinner.”

Martha came in after Jeremiah left.

She carried a roll of linen bandages and a ceramic bowl, which she filled with water from the bathroom. Then she knelt on the floor, saying nothing, and cleaned the gash on Erika's left temple.

“I just wanted to check on them,” Erika told her.

Martha undid the roll of linen and began to wind it around Erika's head, her movements careful and even. She knew that it ought to look like a ribbon rather than a bandage.

“I know you did, dear,” she said quietly, because Erika expected it, and then turned her attention to the task at hand.

 

Rebecca jumped when her brother rounded the corner into the kitchen. “Shawn!” she said. “It's two o'clock, why are you up?”

Shawn sank down onto one of the wooden stools and slumped over the tiled counter.

“I had a bad dream,” he said. He gave her a long, slow look from under his mop of hair.

“Oh?” She turned away to open the refrigerator.

“Becca.”

“What?”

“Becca, when I sleep …”

“No, Shawn,” she whispered.

“When I dream —”

“Don't. Please, don't.” The fluorescent refrigerator light made her highlights glow amber.

“I can see things.”

“Just because you
do
see things doesn't mean you
can
, Shawn. Just because you have nightmares doesn't mean any of them are real.”

“You do too. You saw him.”

“No.”
Rebecca whirled on him, slamming shut the heavy plastic door. “If you want to be crazy, then go ahead, but don't make me crazy with you. You had a nightmare and I had a nightmare and that's all natural. Our mom is
dead
.
Our mom is dead
.”

Shawn got up from his seat. “Calm down, Becca.”

Her shoulders slumped, as if on command, and she put her hands over her mouth. “It's just … I saw her,” she said. “I saw her on that table. She was dead. We buried her. She has to be dead. It was just a dream, Shawn. Please say it was a dream?”

Shawn put his arms around her. “You're right,” he said. “She's dead and we buried her. But maybe she's —” He took a deep breath. “Maybe she's still around. Somewhere else.”

“Don't,” Rebecca whispered. “Please don't. It's a nightmare and I just want it to be over.”

“Okay,” Shawn said, rocking her a little. “Okay. We won't talk about it again.”