I duck back inside, slam the door shut, lock it, and turn out the hall light. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this man in my life, and I don’t know why he scares me, but lookin’ at him is like lookin’ at the dead that won’t stay dead. They always want more than the living can possibly give. They want to devour. He has that look, but to see it in the face of a living person is far more chilling. The dead rarely hurt you. The living do it every day.
After a few breaths, I peek through the window drape.
He’s gone. I feel relief for the moment. But somehow I know that feeling won’t last.
4
Beautiful
EW. I FEEL DAMP GRASS under my feet. I look down and there it is. How’d I get outside? I don’t remember leavin’ the house. And why in the world am I barefoot?
I figure it out pretty quick. This is a dream, maybe a dream-vision. Too soon to tell yet.
I look around. Walls. I’m inside a building, but there’s no floor—just grass. It’s dingy in here. Ceiling’s leaking in one spot, and the walls are made of ugly wood paneling that’s stained. Scorched, actually.
I hear steps. I turn, and a tall shape whirls past me and into a wall. Through the wall. I hear something like a giggle or a cry or a hum. Haints. What do they want? They never show up for no reason.
“I saw you,” I call out into the emptiness.
No response. My heart beats faster. I don’t know if a haint could seriously hurt me or not, but my fight-or-flight instinct kicks into high gear when they poke at me like this.
Another one’s here. I can’t see or hear it. Until she laughs low into my ear canal, and my skin’s finna crawl off my bones. I cry out, and now I’m flying fast. She must be pushing me—something is—but my feet hover above the ground. I have no control of my body. We’re heading right for the wall.
“No,” I whimper. Doesn’t she know I can’t move through walls?
We are a breath away from smashing into the cheap wood paneling. I cover my face with my arms, and at the moment of impact, I spill out into a carpeted room, walls painted a sickly pink. The first room has vanished. Another faint giggle. If they weren’t so scary and… dead, the haints might remind me of the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz movie.
I don’t see ’em anywhere. No odd shapes or blurs creepin’ into my view. But I do see somebody, a regular person. She’s sittin’ in a rickety rockin’ chair with her back to me. She’s just rockin’ back and forth. Then she starts to whistle Perry Como’s “Till the End of Time.” I hate that song. She stands up, and I stay where I am, afraid to move. She turns to me, and… she is me. Another me. Comin’ toward me, whistlin’ a tune I can’t stand. She cradles a box in both arms, takin’ her time to get to me. Obviously in no hurry.
As she gets close, I realize I do not want whatever’s in that box, and I try to run, but I can’t move.
She stops just in front of me, her whistlin’ now loud, piercing my precious eardrums. She holds the box out to me. I know I don’t have a choice, so I pull open the box’s flaps. Inside is a black-and-white rabbit with a pacifier in its mouth. Its throat has been slashed, and blood trickles from the wound. Where its eyes should be are dark mirrors. I scream as hard as I can, and I can feel it. But the only sound I hear is her—me?—whistling.
I sit up so fast in bed, I come to standing. Goddamn haints, givin’ me nightmares. I lean against the wall, waitin’ for my pulse to get back to normal. Every now and then, I might learn somethin’ useful when the haints enter my dreamworld. Sometimes I think they just show up to remind me that they can. They can be sadistic.
Mama fries potatas and onions and a green tomato on the stove and shakes her head, cuz she sure didn’t raise me to be a tramp, she says. I don’t say too much a nothin’, but I listen to her criticize my every choice while I comb and plait the twins’ heads.
“What kinda decent girl stays out to all hours with a buncha ragamuffins up to who knows what?”
She knows damn well that that buncha “ragamuffins” includes honor students, churchgoers, and at least one Boy Scout. But what I say is:
“I did get in before eleven.”
“I told you be home by ten. Last time I checked, eleven and ten was two completely different times. Have they changed that? Is that the new math I keep hearin’ about?” She angrily places the food all on one plate and practically throws it on the table.
“This is how girls be actin’ right before they turn up pregnant,” she informs me.
“Ow,” Coralene whines when I yank her hair harder than I mean to. Doralene snickers.
“Almost done,” I mumble.
“So? Donchu got nothin’ to say for yourself?” Mama challenges.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say.”
She stares at me with her arms crossed. “How many a y’all stayed so late?”
“Just a couple.”
Mama watches me suspiciously, eating a forkful of potatas. Even though she’s chewing, I can see her face relax. She’s already less mad. This feels like the perfect time to remind her of how brave and selfless she thought I was not so long ago, but that’s the
