She led him to the tiny bedroom. She half-suspected that the beggar crawled from beneath the bed while she was gone, to sleep between cloth sheets and dream of being human. But the beggar belonged to dust, the dark, permanent shadow of underthere. The blankets were rumpled, just as she'd left them.
'You don't mess around, do you?' Army Jacket said.
'It's only dust,' she said.
'I didn't mean that kind of mess,' he said, looking at the dirty laundry scattered on the floor. He sat on the bed, Cynthia watching from across the room, waiting to see if the gray hand would clutch his ankle.
He patted the mattress beside him. 'Come on over. Don't be shy.'
She looked out the window. 'Looks like cigarette weather.'
Army Jacket took off his army jacket. Without the jacket, he was just a David. Not a protector. Not some big, brave hero who would slay the beggar.
'Come on,' he said. 'This isn't a spectator sport.'
She crossed the room, crawled onto the bed beside him, mindful of her feet. They undressed in silence. David kissed her, then clumsily leaned her back against the pillows. Through it all, she listened for the breathing, the soft knitting of dust into flesh, the strange animations of the beggar.
David finished, rolled away. 'Where are the cigarettes?'
'I don't smoke.'
'What's this about 'cigarette weather,' then?'
'The man with the anaconda face said that.'
'Huh?'
She put her arm across his chest, afraid he'd leave. She scolded herself for being so dumb. If David left, she'd be alone again when darkness fell. Alone with the beggar.
David kissed her on the forehead. 'Ocean eyes like ice cream,' he said.
She tensed beside him, sticky from the body contact. 'Did you hear that?'
'What?'
'Under the bed. A noise.'
'I don't hear anything.' David made a show of checking the clock on her dresser.
The soft choking sound came again, the painful drawing of an inhuman breath. The beggar stirred, fingers creeping like thick worms across the floor. He was angry, jealous. Cynthia should not have brought another man to this bed. Cynthia belonged to the beggar, and always had.
'He's coming,' she said.
David sat up and looked at the door. 'Damn. Why didn't you tell me you had a boyfriend?'
'Only crazy people talk to mirrors.'
David reached off the bed, grabbed his clothes, and began dressing. ' You're crazy, Alice.'
'Who's Alice?'
David ignored her, teeth clenched in his rush to pull up his pants. 'I hope to hell he doesn't carry a gun.'
'Shhh. He'll hear you.'
David slipped his arms into his jacket. Now he was Army Jacket again, just another one of them, a hollow man, a mound of dust surrounding a bag of air. None of them were real.
Except the man under the bed.
Army Jacket struggled into his shoes. Cynthia leaned forward and watched, wondering how far the beggar would let Army Jacket get before pulling him into the velvet.
'Green licorice. Frightened of storms?' Army Jacket asked, his breath shallow and rapid.
'No, only of him.'
'Razor in the closet since yesterday.' Army Jacket tiptoed out of the room, paused at the front door and listened.
'He doesn't use the door,' Cynthia called out, giggling. The beggar would slide out from under the bed any moment now, shake of the accumulated dust of his long sleep, and make Army Jacket go away.
The phone rang. It had to be Mom. Seven rings before Mom gave up.
Army Jacket swallowed, twisted the knob, and yanked the door open, falling into a defensive crouch. The hallway was empty.
'Allergies,' he yelled at her, then slipped out the doorway and disappeared.
Cynthia fell back on the pillows, sweat gathering on her brow. The beggar hadn't taken him. The beggar had not been jealous. The beggar was too confident, too patient, to be jealous.
She clutched the blankets as the afternoon sun sank and the shadows grew long on the bedroom wall. She should have fled while it was still light, but her limbs were limp as sacks of jelly. Fleeing was useless, anyway. He'd always had her.
Dusk came, dangling its gray rags, shaking lint over the world.
Under the bed, stirrings and scratches.
Under the bed, breathing.
Cynthia whimpered, curled into a fetal position, nude and burning and vulnerable. Waiting, like always.
The hand scrabbled along the side of the mattress. It clutched the blankets and began dragging the body that wore it from the vague ether. Cynthia closed her eyes, tight like she had as a small child, so tight the tears pressed out. She trembled, her sobs in rhythm with the horrible rasping of the beggar's breath.
She could feel it looming over her now, its legs formed, the transition from dust back to flesh complete. Cynthia held her breath, the last trick. Maybe if she could hold her breath forever…
The hand touched her gently. The skin was soft, soft as velvet.
Cynthia almost screamed. But she knew what would happen if she screamed. Because Mommy might hear and things like this are secret and it's okay to touch people who love you but some people wouldn't understand. Bad girls who scream have to be punished. They have to be sent into the dark place under the bed.
And they have to stay under the bed until Daddy says it's okay to come out.
So Cynthia didn't scream, even as the hand ran over her skin, leaving a trail of dust.
She didn't make a sound as the beggar climbed onto the bed. If she was a good little girl, then the beggar would go away after he finished, and wouldn't drag her into the underthere.
The dust settled over her, a smothering blanket of velvet.
If only she could hold her breath forever.
THE WHITE HOUSE
“There is no poetry in death,” Mrs. Tanser said. “Only loss and rot, stink and waste. I never could understand those gothic romantics who celebrate the dark and lust after the cycle of decay.”
The little girl in front of her didn’t say a thing, but nodded creamy, unblemished cheeks as if she understood.
“I suppose that doesn’t make much sense to you,” Mrs. Tanser continued, running a powder-coated finger up the girl’s cheek. “You came here hoping to sell cookies and to visit my nieces, and here I am talking to you about death! But I can’t deny death, mind you. Everything has its place. And every place, its thing.”
The older woman laughed, and stood up from the table. Her plate of thinly sliced apples remained untouched, uneaten, the brown creep of time already shadowing the fruit. The girl’s plate, however, glistened with the juice of apple long gone.
Mrs. Tanser ground a pestle into a tall bucket that squeaked and shifted on the counter as she worked.
“Well, I'm sorry my nieces Genna and Jillie aren’t here any longer. They only came for a visit, so I'm glad you got to meet them. Perhaps you’ll have the chance to be with them again soon. But I talk too much and time passes. Too fast, too fast. Eat my apples dear. Waste not, want not.”
The plate slid across the table. Mrs. Tanser raised a silver eyebrow as it did.
“You are afraid of this house, aren’t you?”
