First I was back in Target picking out wedding dresses. Yards of white lace and froth, while invisible people stood around and commented. “No, too small . . . too big . . . will never fit you . . . too classic, too tight . . .”
Until I felt like screaming because all I wanted was a dress that worked. Then I was trying to try them on and there was no dressing room because if I went in there I might disappear, so at the end of a row between clearance racks I was struggling into one dress after another, and they all had holes. Big, wide, moth-eaten holes, my bra and skin peeking through, and someone said, “You’ll have to pay for that.”
The walls of the store receded, smears of red paint streaking them and turning into long screaming faces. I felt the prickling buzz in my fingers and toes, like when your limbs go so numb you can’t even walk.
I know that feeling. It comes with dreams that show me things. “True-seeins,” Gran called them.
“Real nightmares” might be a better term.
For a moment I thought hazily that it might be the most horrible dream, the one where my mother picks me up out of my bed and takes me downstairs, tells me I’m her good girl, and tucks me in the hidey-hole in the closet. I struggled toward waking, but the dream had other ideas. It was in the driver’s seat, not me. I couldn’t fight it.
* * * I lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was a regular popcorn ceiling, the kind with gold sparkles. Fluid shadows from the tree outside danced between the sparkles.
The dream-me was a little girl. She was sleepy, drifting in and out of that quiet space where kids suck their thumbs and their eyes stare without seeing from under heavy lids.
Mom had been anxious that day, cleaning everything. Tense, nervous. I was fractious, too, but she had read me stories and rocked me for a long time, then laid me in bed and covered me up. I heard her moving around the house downstairs, the regular noises of her fixing Dad’s late-night lunch—because he was working long shifts at the base and sometimes came home for forty-five minutes or so in the middle of the night on his break— somehow missing. I heard a jingle as she dropped one of my toys. She was hurrying, putting them away. I heard her curse softly as she hid my high chair in the pantry.
But I didn’t think about it. Instead I sucked my thumb and watched the ceiling.
Tap tap tap. A pause. Tap tap.
Someone at the front door. Not ringing the bell. That was strange.
Silence. The air itself seemed to be listening before I heard Mommy’s footsteps, quick and light. She jerked the front door open, and voices drifted up the stairs.
Women’s voices.
“What are you doing here?” Mom sounded . . . angry. And a little surprised, like she hadn’t expected whoever it was. I could almost see her cocking her head a little, blue eyes turned cool and considering. She sometimes looked at people that way, especially when they wanted something out of her. Grocery store checkers or salesmen paled under that look, especially if they were trying what Dad called “funny business.”
Your mom, he sometimes said, when he’d had some Jim Beam and could be coaxed to talk about the past. She didn’t stand for no funny business.
“I came to visit. Such a charming little house.” Tinkling laughter, and the rustle of silk skirts.
“You’re not welcome here.” Mommy’s voice was sharp and angry, a warning all its own. “I left the Schola Prima, the entire Order, to you. What more do you want?”
The pretense of laughter left the other woman’s voice. It dropped away like the mask it was, and when she spoke again her words crawled with nastiness and hurt.“Where is he?”
My mother’s tone turned cold and businesslike. “What, my husband? He’s human, what is he to you? You even come near him, and I’ll—”
“Human? A human husband? You’re kidding. Even you wouldn’t sink so low.”
A charged, crackling silence. I could tell just from the sound that Mom was furious. She was never angry; Dad called her sweet-tempered. He said he’d eat his goddamn hat if she ever said a mean word about anyone.
This was new and strange. I didn’t like it. I closed my eyes and turned over, burrowed into my pillow. It was warm and safe up here in my bed, even if the wind fingered the sides of the house with a hungry whispering sound.
“Oh.” Sudden comprehension. I heard my mother move, a drawer opening. “He’s left, then. He always said he would.”
“You know where he is.” Sharp and accusing. “You know. He’d run to you.”
“He’s not here.”
“Maybe I should look around and make sure.”
The drawer closed with a bang. There was a heavy metallic click. “Anna.” The tone of warning was new, too. It prickled through me just like the buzzing static did. Child-me moved restlessly again, kicking at my covers. “Get. Out. Of. My. House. Or I will kill you.”
“You’re not a good hostess.” But was that fear in the other woman’s tone? Camouflaged, but still quivering and raw. Of course, if Mommy talked to me like that I’d cry. I was glad she never had. “Swear to me he’s not here!”
“I’m not swearing a single goddamn thing to you. Get out of my house. Or I will shoot you and the Order will need a new head bitch.”
“If you see him . . .” But the woman stopped, her whine trailing off. I didn’t like her voice. It hurt me. My head was full of bad images, mud and blood and sharp teeth, and the only thing that kept me from whimpering was a sudden thickening in the air around me. I was so tired, and if I made a noise, Mommy might come upstairs and talk to me in that cold, angry voice.
And I didn’t want that. I would never want that.
“If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. I can’t imagine it will make much difference. He does what he wants.”
“Oh, I know that.” Bitterness now, and I could hear the front door creaking as it ghosted wide open. They hadn’t even shut it during this entire conversation. “If I find out you’re hiding him here, Elizabeth —”
“I have a life. One that doesn’t include him or you and your petty little games. Don’t darken my doorstep again.”
“Sleep well, then.” A smirk even I could hear, upstairs in my room. “Don’t let the nosferatu bite.” A cruel, chilling little laugh, and the front door slammed.
I heard my mother let out a shaky breath. And the buzzing was back, rattling in my head, running through my bones. I knew what came next.
Next I would fall asleep. And when I woke up in the dark, I knew what would happen. It will be that dream again, the worst of all dreams.
Then the buzzing pours through me, and the prickling like steel needles in my flesh. I struggle against the dream. I don’t want to remember this. I never want to remember this, and each time is more painful because I know—
She is leaning over my crib, her face bigger than the moon and more beautiful than sunlight, or
