Songs of Love and Death

had gone. She found her pants in a heap on the floor, sat down at the dressing table and lit a cigarette. The taste of the smoke helped her to think. When she spoke, her voice was lower.

“I’ve had a rough ride this life, you know? I used to be ashamed of that. I used to think that after Nash I was… broken. Damaged goods. Like that. And feeling like that has…”

She stopped, shook herself, laughed at something, and took another drag.

“Feeling like that has haunted me,” she said, with an odd smile.

“And this house is part of not feeling that way?”

“It is.”

“Then I already like it,” he said. “Sight unseen. If it helps you see yourself the way I see you, then it’s on my side.”

Corrie chuckled and shook her head.

“That might be going a little far,” she said. “But anyway. I want you to come over. I want you to see it. You should bring a sweater. It gets kind of cold sometimes.”

“I’m there.”

“And I want you to think about whether you’d like to move in.”

“Corrie?”

“There’s enough room. The neighborhood’s a little sketchy, and the jet noise sucks, but not worse than the jukebox hero practicing all the time.”

“Corrie, are you saying you still want to live with me?”

Her smile was tight and nervous.

“Not asking for a decision,” she said. “But I’m opening negotiations.”

He slipped to the side of the bed, slid to the floor at her feet, and laid his head in her lap. For a long moment, neither of them moved or spoke; then Corrie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Come on, silly,” she said. “You’ve got to get ready for Gemma. Go get that scanner back.”

“I do,” he said with a sigh. “Come shower with me?”

“Not today,” she said. And when he raised his eyebrows, “I want to smell like you when I get home.”

1532 LACHMONT DRIVE seethed around her. Every noise—the hum of the refrigerator, the distant roar of the furnace, the ticking of the wooden floors as the push-pull of heat and cold adjusted the boards—had voices behind them, screaming. The faintest smell of hair and skin burning touched the air. She knew they were meant to be hers.

Corrie hung her coat in the closet. A shape flickered in the basement doorway, dark eyes and inhuman teeth. She set a kettle on the stovetop and smoked a cigarette while it heated. When the clouds outside broke, the doubled light of sky and snow pressed in at the blinds. The kettle whistled. She took a mug out of the cupboard, put in a bag of chamomile tea, and poured the steaming water in. When she sat down, there was blood on the floor. A bright puddle, almost too red to be real, and then a trail as wide as a man’s hips where the still-living man had been dragged across to the basement door. When she looked up, the air had a layer of smoke haze a foot below the ceiling. It might have been her cigarette. It might have been gun smoke. She sipped her tea, savoring the heat and the faint sweetness.

“Fine,” she said.

She stood up slowly, stretching. The stairs down to the basement were planks of wood painted a dark, chipping green. The years had softened the edges. The basement had none of the brightness of the day above it. Even with the single bare bulb glowing, the shadows were thick. The furnace roar was louder here, and the voice behind it spat rage and hatred. She followed the trail of blood to the corner of the basement, where washer and dryer sat sullen in the gloom. She leaned down, put her shoulder to the corner of the dryer, and shifted it.

The metal feet shrieked against the concrete. The scar under it was almost three feet wide, a lighter place where the floor had been broken, taken up, and then filled in with a patch of almost-matching cement. She sat down on the dusty floor. There was blood on her hands now, black and sticky and copper-smelling. A spot of white appeared on the odd concrete and began to spread: frost. She put her hand on it like she was caressing a pet.

“We should probably talk,” she said. “And when I say that, I mean that I should talk, and you, for once, should listen.”

Something growled from the corner by the furnace. A shadow detached from the gloom and began pacing like a tiger in its cage. She sipped her tea and looked around the darkness, her gaze calm and proprietary.

“It’s funny the things they get wrong, you know? They remember that you threatened Joe Arrison, but instead of his cock, you were going to cut off his nose. They know I went to the Laughing Academy, but they don’t remember that I got out. Apparently, I was going on about Satan or something. ‘Mind gone to putty.’”

She stroked the concrete. The frost was spreading. A dot of red smeared it at the center, blood welling up from the artificial stone.

“And you really screwed me up, you know?” she said. “Shooting you really was worse than I thought it would be. I was so scared that someone would find you. I had nightmares all the time. I’d see someone who looked a little like you or I’d smell that cheap-ass cologne you liked, and I’d start panicking. I even tried to kill myself once. Didn’t do a very good job of it.

“I was one messed up chica. Every couple weeks, I’d do a search online. I just knew that there was going to be something. Bones found at 1532 Lachmont Drive. So what do I find instead? Ghost stories. There was one that even had a drawing of you. And so I knew, right?”

The shadow shrieked at her, its mouth glowing like there was something burning inside it. The blood at the center of the frost became a trickle. Corrie let the icy flow stain her fingers.

“I was so freaked out,” she said, laughing. “I spent years putting myself back together, and here you still were. I don’t think I slept right for a month. And then one day, something just clicked, you know? I’ve got a job. I can buy a house if I want.”

She sipped at her tea, but it had gone cold. She was sitting in a spreading pool of gore now, the blood spilling out to the corners of the room. More blood than a real body could contain. It soaked her pants and wicked up her shirt, chilling her, but not badly. The shadow hunched forward, ready to leap.

“David’s coming over tonight,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let him until I was sure it was safe. But tonight I’m going to make him dinner, and we’re probably going to get a little high, watch a DVD, something like that. And then I’m going to fuck him in your bedroom. And you? You’re going to watch.”

The blood rushed up. It was almost ankle-deep now, tiny waves of red rising up through the basement. Corrie smiled.

“You’ll really hate him,” she said. “He is everything you could never be, and he really, really loves me. And you know what? I love him too. And we’re going to be here, maybe for years. Maybe forever. And we’re going to do everything you couldn’t. And we’re going to do it right. So, seriously. How’s that for revenge?”

The shadow screamed, rising up above her, blotting out the light. She could almost feel its teeth at her neck. She scratched.

“You’re dead, fucker,” she whispered to the darkness. “You can’t hurt me.”

Blood-soaked, she picked up her teacup and walked to the stairs. The ghost whipped at her with cold, insubstantial fingers. It screamed in her ears, battering her with anger and hatred. Corrie grinned, a sense of peace and calm radiating from her. The voice grew thinner, more distant, richer with despair. With each step she took, the visions of blood faded a little more, and by the time she stepped into the winter light, she was clean.

Cecelia Holland

There’s a cost for everything, but here we learn that sometimes the cost can be much too high, no matter how glittering and wonderful the prize is—or seems to be.