With the screwdriver, she dug into the doorframe beside the lock plate. Bits of wood broke off. Splinters tore loose. Finally, she worked back the lock tongue and opened the door.
She entered the house.
The stale air was warm and had a faint, sweetish odor that Gillian found a little sickening, but not so bad that she needed to gag.
She was in the kitchen. For a while, she stared straight ahead into the darkness and didn’t move. She heard the rush of her heartbeat, the sounds of her shaky, ragged breathing. She tried to hold her breath, but couldn’t. She still trembled. The current sizzling through her body seemed even stronger than before; it made her ache for release, to cry out in terror or quake in orgasm.
Get moving, she told herself.
She turned on the flashlight and swept its beam through the kitchen. There was no writing. Maybe John had it all wrong.
Then Gillian stepped into the hallway. The ancient wallpaper, yellow with age and peeling in places, looked like the canvas of a crazed graffiti artist. So did the ceiling. Amazed, she swung her light beam along the multi- colored words and drawings.
All the drawings seemed to feature an obese woman. They were as primitive as the artwork of a four-year- old: bloated bodies, pumpkin heads with scrawls of orange hair and faces composed of bright slashes and circles, oval legs and arms, stick fingers. There were pictures with colors scribbled onto represent clothes. In many of the pictures, the woman was naked, with mammoth, pendulous breasts and huge red nipples. Here and there were drawings of a rump that looked like a pair of clinging balloons.
Must be self-portraits, Gillian thought. She felt a little sorry for the woman, but her pity was mixed with astonishment.
As if she had discovered a hidden treasure.
She read some of the scrawled messages:
Gillian didn’t read anymore. She had brought her camera along, intending to take photographs of whatever she might find interesting in the house, but she wanted no reminder of this woman’s torment.
She didn’t explore the rest of the house.
She left.
Would’ve been fine, she thought as she walked home, if the woman hadn’t put such depressing shit on her walls and ceilings.
What d’you expect? The gal committed suicide. You’re lucky you didn’t find something a whole lot worse.
Depressing.
Interesting, though.
Sneaking in that way, spying into her life.
Next time, don’t pick a goddamn suicide.
Next time?
Gillian wanted to feel that way again, to feel as she did before the gloomy drawings and messages ruined it for her.
The next day, she called John on the telephone. “Guess what I did,” she said.
“Finished my history paper?”
“I had a look inside Mabel’s house.”
“Sure thing.”
“I wanted to see what she wrote all over the place.”
“Yeah. And what did you find out?”
“She was fat. A blimp. Apparently, that’s what drove her crazy enough to kill herself.”
“I
“That’s impossible.”
“Hey, she was always that way. I used to see her around. She’d turn sideways, she’d disappear.”
“No way.”
“Ask anyone.”
The revelation astonished Gillian. She couldn’t get over it. Though Mabel’s problem certainly seemed tragic, she felt as if she’d made an amazing discovery.
What if every house held strange secrets?
