The Women in the Walls (5 page)

“What are you doing?” I say, disturbed. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”

“You say you want to understand?” Margaret responds over her shoulder, meeting my eyes. “Then come with me.”

“We have to go in
there
?” I stop walking. When she notices, she sighs loudly and puts her hands on her hips. What type of understanding could she possibly show me in the woods?

“Yes, Lucy,” she answers, her impatience evident. “We have to go in there. Look, do you trust me or not?”

Do
I trust Margaret anymore? It's hard to say after the past few days. Still, she looks at me now with hope, her eyes pleading with me that she doesn't want to do this alone. I realize as I look into her face,
just because she might know what happened to Penelope doesn't mean that she did it herself
.

“Of course I do,” I say, deciding eventually that I mean it. Even through all the pain and all the acting out, it's still my best friend in there.
Even if she's not acting like much of a best friend anymore.
My confirmation of trust is all she needs to take her hands off her hips and continue on toward the trees.

“I feel really weird doing this,” I call after her, but I'm not sure if she hears me or not. Before I know it, we're in the forest, stepping over dead branches and pinecones and brush. Margaret and I never really played around here as children because it was too far of a walk despite being part of the estate, and also the house itself was more than large enough to provide us with plenty of adventures in exploring. Still, Margaret walks as though she knows right where she's headed.

“Where exactly are we going?” I ask as I rush to follow my cousin. I can't believe we're here right now, the place I've been watching from afar for days, the place I've been fearing, the place that swallowed my aunt. What sorts of things could await us in here? My imagination is running wild.

“Lucy.” Irritation laces her voice. “Stop acting like I'm leading you into a slaughterhouse.”

“Don't you understand what we could find in here?” I demand, stepping gingerly over a pile of dead pine needles. “Why aren't you even a little bit unsettled right now?”

“Don't be such a baby,” Margaret says with a tired half grin that pushes me too far. Screw this; it's going to turn into an attic situation all over again, ending with an argument way too far from home.

“I'm turning around,” I say, just before I see something ahead, poking up through the dirt behind an especially dense cluster of trees.

“What is that?” Margaret asks, suddenly terrified, a complete turnaround from the moments leading up to this. “What the hell
is
that?” She's stopped walking midstride, staring at the thing, a strange-looking rock, perhaps? I don't understand why she's reacting so strongly to it.

“Calm down,” I say, and this time it's my turn to feel smug. I make my way toward the stony thing, wondering why Margaret isn't leading the way or even following me.

The edges of the big rock ahead look too smooth, too shapely, to be made naturally. It seems to get larger with every step, an ever-expanding vessel of stone. I keep walking through the trees until I'm standing over it, my eyes wide, my brain struggling to understand what I'm seeing.

It's a tomb.

And, behind it, multiple scattered gravestones, each of them filthy and streaked with moss.

In all my time living here, I have never heard of there being a cemetery on the property. The estate has been in my family for generations, too, so I'm wondering if these are people I was related to in some way. I know my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother were all buried in one of the cemeteries in town, and these graves look
old
, so I doubt it.

There aren't words on any of the markers, or if there are, they are far too worn to distinguish. I step around the tomb and count twelve graves, all clustered together among the trees. There is no clearing, no gate, nothing at all to mark off the area of sporadically placed headstones of various sizes and shapes.

Margaret finally catches up to me after her hesitant start, stepping out from behind an especially wide pine with caution.

“Weird, huh?” I say, watching her eyes take in the sight.

When my cousin sees the tomb and gravestones, she begins to scream.

SHE DOESN'T STOP
screaming until I physically pull her away from the tomb. “What is wrong with you?” I yell over her cries as I lead her away.

Margaret quiets down after a step or two. I try to talk her into transitioning her quick, jagged gasps into slow, thoughtful breaths. I forcibly lead her through the trees, her panic fading as we get farther away from the graves. Her hands shake as she tightens her arm around mine, holding on and looking over her shoulder as if to make sure we aren't being followed.

“Margaret,” I say, tears welling in my eyes. I don't care if she sees me cry; I can't handle it all anymore, the stress, the fear. Acosta or not, I am heading for a mental breakdown. “
Please
tell me what's going on. Please stop pushing me away because you're afraid, or angry, or whatever the hell it is. Let me be here for you!”

My cousin takes little gulps of air as she walks quickly with me in the direction that we came from. Once we've cleared the trees and the house is in sight, she lets go of my arm, shrugging away from me, walking toward the house as defiantly as she walked away from it less than an hour ago.
Something has to be done
, I realize right away.
I can't take this anymore.

I have to tell my father about Margaret.

We go back inside through the double glass doors leading to the kitchen. Miranda and Vanessa are sitting at the wooden table in the corner, going over sheets of paper that look like they might be seating arrangement charts. Margaret goes through to the dining room exit without acknowledging their presence, and I tag along behind, returning Miranda's hesitant greeting with an empty smile and a hello. Vanessa looks flustered and miserable and pretends to be too engaged with whatever she's working on to look up. I wonder if she told her mom about what Margaret said.

I follow Margaret all the way to the main staircase in the parlor before I stop.

“Tell me what's going on with you,” I say, giving it one last try. “Now. Because I'm about to go tell my father that you need serious help.”

The grandfather clock in the entryway goes off, a whimsical melody followed by twelve long strikes that echo throughout all the open space of the room. When we were young, we'd always use this time to do something silly, like run screaming through the hallway or howl like a pack of wolves. If only life had a chance of resembling anything like that again, us giggling like lunatics while Penelope or my father bellowed up the stairs for us to settle down.

“Fine,” Margaret says once the echo of the clock fades out. “But we need to wait until we're in your room. I don't want the stupid new girl to eavesdrop if we sit in here.”

Yes.
I nod gratefully and we go to the second floor. Once inside my bedroom, Margaret kicks off her shoes and sits on my bed, her arms wrapped around her middle.

“Sit down,” she says softly, looking at the floor. “I need to say this stuff quickly or I'm not gonna end up saying it at all.”

I sit on the floor at her feet so I can look up at her. “Tell me, Marg,” I urge.

“Lucy...” she whispers, leaning down so that her mouth is closer to my ear. “I think I'm being haunted by my mom.”

The warmth rushes from my hands, leaving them tingling. “What?”

“I've heard her say things...horrible things...” Margaret shivers and pulls a pillow onto her lap, hugs it tight. “It didn't start out bad. I went into the attic to hide from you and Uncle Felix after my mother was gone, and there was this knocking. It would mimic whatever I did.”

She continues in a rush, using her remaining breath to say the rest in one long exhale. “It was almost like a
fun
thing, a friendly presence, and it was so nice not to feel alone, but then I started hearing her voice at night in my bedroom, telling me that I was going to end up in the same place she was...”

Her eyes well up with tears, a shockingly unfamiliar sight. All I can see in her face is suffering.

“Margaret.” I wrap my arms around my knees, pull them close to my chest from where I sit on the floor. I speak purposefully slow, forcing calm. “You're not being haunted. You're grieving and sleep-deprived. You're not yourself.”

“No,” Margaret pleads, still whispering as if there's someone listening at the door. “It's not that, I swear it isn't. She's in the walls, Lucy. My mother's spirit is inside the walls and she's probably listening to us right now...”

“In the walls?” My heart skips a beat. “Think about what you're saying, Margaret. You need help, please let me help you...”

Margaret leans away from me when she sees my face. She looks down to her lap, wringing her hands around each other, curling her fingers into hooks. “I'm going to die,” she says, not so much to me as herself. “My mom told me there was something waiting for me in the forest. A gift. She told me where to go, said that I'd know it when I saw it. She said I'd find my
future
there.”

I remember the tomb and shudder. How did Margaret know where to find that graveyard, anyway? She must have known about it for a while and never mentioned it to me. Either way, what a breakdown she's plunging into. The question now: What happened to convince her that she's hearing things? I have to ask her if there's any hope of finding out.

“And my future is to be under the fucking ground,” Margaret continues, nodding, her eyes moving slowly over my bedroom walls. “The only thing left to know is, who's gonna kill me?”

“Stop it,” I say, crossing my arms over myself while I struggle not to yell. “You can't let yourself fall this deep. Whatever happened, you have to tell me about it, or the police if necessary, but either way you definitely need to see a doctor.”

My cousin looks at me, her mouth slightly open in disbelief, as if she's been betrayed. “You really don't believe me. I told you what was happening and you don't believe me!”

“Do you know what happened to Penelope?” I ask bluntly, realizing that the window to do so is closing, and quick. Margaret's own words after we ran into Vanessa in the kitchen echo inside my head:
like ripping off a bandage.

“Excuse me?” She stands quickly, and I instinctively flinch. “Oh, please,” she snarls in reaction, walking past me to the door. “You really think I'm gonna snap and hurt you, Lucy? Do me a favor and try to do something that you've never been able to do in your entire life—get a grip.”

And then she's gone.

The gravity of the situation settles over me, increasing my heart rate, making it hard to move, but I
must
move, and quickly at that. Margaret could be a danger to herself...or others.

She needs our help.

I peek out into the hallway to make sure the door to her bedroom is closed before heading downstairs. My father will almost certainly be in his study on the first floor, where he hides away for the length of most days, smoking cigar after cigar in his pressed suits and gel-slicked hair that's combed to the side while he goes over the books of the estate, as well as the schedules and lists for all the upcoming club activity.

I find him just like that, sitting at his desk, hunched over an open binder. When he sees me enter, he sits up straight, sets his pen down over the scatter of papers and takes a long draw of the cigar that's positioned on the edge of his nearly full glass ashtray.

“I need to talk to you,” I say, watching the cigar smoke rise in swirling puffs above his head. “About Margaret.”

“I'm listening.” He turns his chair around to face the window so I can't see his face, which strikes me as especially rude.

“She's freaking out.” I look nervously to the taxidermied owl perched on the top of the bookcase. “Beyond what's reasonable, I'd say.”

“You're talking about the photos in Penelope's room?” Another puff of smoke billows from behind the back of the leather office chair.

“No, not exactly,” I say, taking a few steps farther into the room. “She thinks she's hearing a voice from inside the walls.” Whose voice, I leave out—don't want to push any hot buttons too soon and miss out on any valuable information. “Did you know there's a cemetery on the property?”

He turns the chair now, relieving his cigar into the ashtray on the desk. “Yes, I did. Why?”

How did everyone know about this place but me?

“Why has nobody ever mentioned it?” I think back again to the tomb in the forest, and the gravestones that were green with moss. “And who's buried there? It really freaked Margaret out, and then she told me about the voice in the walls. She seemed really sure, and she was acting like someone was going to kill her—”

“That's enough,” my father says, frowning. “I don't have the energy for this.”

“Welcome to my world!” I burst, no longer caring about being evasive. “Why haven't there been police over here since Penelope disappeared? Tell me the truth.”

He's silent for a moment, then puts the cigar out and turns the chair back toward the window. “Lucy, I know that you miss your aunt very much. Please trust me when I say that I do, too.” He doesn't sound choked up exactly, but there's something in his tone that indicates truth, longing even. “And trust me when I say that any and all appropriate measures were taken, including what was necessary regarding the police.”

Before my aunt disappeared, the idea of her and my father being together was so strange. But at this point, I yearn so much for a reality where she is here, and okay, and they are happy together. Maybe cousins could have been sisters, after all. There's no way it could have possibly ended up being worse than what really happened.

“The way you've gone about things, your ‘measures,' are pushing Margaret completely over the edge,” I say. “Something needs to be done for her. She needs to see a therapist, somebody that'll help make sure she doesn't hurt herself...”

“She'll be fine,” my father says, without emotion. “The little girl just needs to suck it up and get a hold of herself.”

The cruelness of his words takes my breath away.

“No, you don't get it.” I'm angry now, more than I am scared. How could he say that? Does he not care about Margaret's well-being at all?

“I get it as much as I need to.” My father pushes the ashtray aside, then picks up the pen he set down previously. “We're hosting a dinner for the club here in a few days, and organizing everything for it is killing me. Things are bad enough without Penny here to help—” He stops short when he realizes what he's done, revealed his nickname for my aunt without even meaning to. How can he hold her in such loving memory but dismiss Margaret without a second thought?

“Margaret has always been an especially dramatic child,” my father continues. “Give her time, and she'll stop the destructive behavior.”

So he's not going to do shit to help; he's just going to continue putting plans for a
dinner party
ahead of everything else? My thought circles back around to Margaret, of course. I wonder where she is right now, and what she's doing.

“Please close the door on your way out,” my father says, which stings despite my will for it not to. He can never seem to get rid of me fast enough. “I've got a meeting with Miranda and a lot of paperwork to get through before the weekend is over.”

“Whatever.”

I slam the heavy door into its frame, creating a loud crash that echoes through the hall and all the way out to the entryway. In the massive silence of the parlor, I sit on a emerald velvet sofa that is positioned between a marble statue of an angel and an extra-tall houseplant. The chandelier that hangs from the vaulted ceiling glitters over my head.

I don't know whether to seek my cousin out or if doing so will only make things worse, push them further. She's probably in that attic right now, knocking on the walls and believing she can hear God knows what.
She's in the walls.
My cousin's words echo in my head, and I turn to look at the swirling gold-and-green Victorian wallpaper behind me.

I think about Margaret screaming when she saw the cemetery in the woods, and the desperation in her eyes when she first told me that she was being haunted. I think about how easily my father dismissed my concerns, how eager he was to get back to his work with his hobbies at the estate, his escape.

Or is it something else? I chew on my bottom lip as I remember Margaret's question about the police, how my father skirted around answering when I asked him just now, how my cousin remarked that we didn't know the real Penelope. Paranoia thickens the air around me, immobilizing me, and all I can do is sit on the emerald velvet couch and bite the skin on my lips as the grand chandelier of the entry room twinkles overhead.

When the clock strikes the next hour, I go into my bedroom to cut three neat little slashes into the flesh on my hip. As I wait for them to stop bleeding, I count all of my cuts, over and over and over again, until my heart stops beating in my ears and I can sit fully upright without wanting to sink the razor into my wrists and draw downward as hard as I possibly can.