The Good House Read online

  Myles’s eyes softened as he looked at her, pitying. But the memory of their lovemaking came to his eyes, too, and the pity vanished. He kissed her, cupping the back of her head with both hands. He kissed her hard and long, as if he needed her mouth to breathe. His kiss was ardent at the start, but resigned at the end. Like good-bye, she thought, unable to help it.

  When his mouth pulled back, Angela missed the taste of Myles instantly. Kissing him, her thoughts had politely let her be. Now, Angela had a bad feeling that someone she knew and liked had been killed in the rock-slide, another punishment meant for her. But the strongest feeling had been fifteen minutes ago, when she had been sure Tariq was standing on Myles’s bed, pressing the linens to his face, trying to smell her.

  “Let’s get the hell away from here,” Myles said. “This is the first place he’ll come.”

  “No it isn’t,” she said, reminding him. Art had said she would be strongest on her grandmother’s property, and maybe Tariq knew that, too. She packed the gun Rob had given her into her handbag, which fit her like a knapsack across her shoulder. She had Corey’s index cards there, too, safe and ready. “But there’s something I need before I go.”

  He gave her a look of naked confoundment.

  “Can you come upstairs with me, Myles? I think it’s upstairs. It’s high in the house.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something I need.” She didn’t know enough to explain it beyond that.

  Myles glanced toward the living room, the wine cellar, and then, more warily, at the staircase. She’d swept up all the downstairs leaves yesterday—as many as she could, an act of defiance—but the leaves on the stairs and upstairs were still in plain view. Since yesterday, there was a new incursion: clusters of dry leaves wrapped around the staircase by stringy brown vines entangling the handrail and bannister. The vines looked as if they had been growing for years. Myles didn’t comment on the dead vines. He probably wasn’t letting himself notice them, she thought.

  “Did Rob search this house before he left?” Myles asked.

  “Rob and three others. Tariq’s not here.”

  “Well, if he isn’t now, he was before. Tariq made this mess, Angie. He made a mess at my place, too. And you should assume he’s coming back.”

  “That’s why I need to find what I’m looking for.”

  Myles considered that, nodding. “All right, let’s do it. But quickly.”

  On the stairs, the leaves were worse than yesterday, in their second or third layer, thick, damp, and spongy beneath their feet. This time, blackened walnut casings—the fruit that covered the shell—were hidden among the leaves, rotting against the floor. Angela nearly slipped on a walnut when she mashed one with her foot on the second-floor landing. “Careful,” she warned Myles.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Myles said. She heard his breathing grow heavier behind her. He must be realizing by now that it wasn’t just the leaves that were wrong; the smell was wrong, too. The upstairs smelled dank, as if it hadn’t been visited in generations. The air was thin, like a cave.

  Upstairs, all the doors were wide open. The doors were open to the bathroom, Gramma Marie’s old room on the left, Corey’s on the right, Tariq’s room down the hall, Naomi’s room beyond it, the junk room. And the door was wide open to the attic at the far end of the hall, the last place Rob and the deputies had searched. Angela had closed them all, but she didn’t dwell on that.

  What bothered her most was Corey’s doorway, the first one facing them from the landing. Corey’s doorway was blocked by a mountain of leaves, like a giant pile Mr. Everly might have raked up in the yard for burning, as tall as her shoulders.

  This mound had not been here a few minutes ago, when Rob had walked straight through that doorway. Angela froze before the mound. As she gazed at it, a voice flew to her from somewhere beyond hearing:I came so you could kiss me. What are you waiting for?

  A girl’s voice. Not a child, not quite a woman.

  The memory of a stench—the smell of Art at his house—came in an instant so quick that Angela almost didn’t register it. But it was enough to make her throat gag, and she pressed her hand against her face. This time, the smell was from Corey’s room. She hadn’t always been able to smell it, but the stench had been here all along, under her nose.

  “What, doll-baby?” Myles said.

  Angela had forgotten Myles was standing beside her. She could think only of Corey.

  “It was here,”Angela said. As knowledge flooded her, Angela’s lips bobbed together before she could go on. “It wasin this room. My baby was…my baby wastalking to it and didn’t know.”

  Myles lowered his bow, hugging her with one arm. “Shhhh,” he said, his face pained. “Angela Marie, hon, let’s go back downstairs. We need to get you out of this house.”

  A sound came again; something she couldhear, but from beyond her ears. Angela heard a girlish laugh from Corey’s doorway. The sound was coming from the leaves.

  Angela’s thoughts scattered like billiard balls, hiding in any pockets they could find. Suddenly, she understood: Like Sean had told her, things weren’t always what they appeared to be. These leaves were not leaves, not the way she knew them to be. The leaves were another mask over something that didn’t want to show its face. Or couldn’t.

  “You bitch!”Angela spat suddenly at the four-foot mound, at someone her eyes couldn’t see. She almost lurched at it, except that Myles held her with such a firm hand.

  “Don’t,Angela. What are you doing?”

  Angela panted, not taking her eyes away from the pile of leaves. She didn’t blink.

  “Are you back here with me?” Myles said.

  There was movement from atop the pile; not much, but enough for her to notice. A curled, dried flakejumped a half-inch and then fell still. Although her heart dove, Angela felt victorious. Whatever this was, it wanted to hide, but she was seeing it better all the time. Shewasn’t crazy.

  “I’m okay,” Angela said, smiling for Myles to prove it. Her eyes tried to go back to the leaves, but she made herself remain fixed on Myles’s worried face. He obviously hadn’t noticed anything strange about the leaves. He would never believe her.

  “You’re not behaving like someone who’s well.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Angie.” Myles ran his fingers beneath her chin, a brotherly flutter.

  “You’re not fine. Tell me you understand that. Otherwise, I’m going to have to carry you downstairs. Hear me?”

  “Will youopen your eyes?” she said. “It’s as if you don’twant to see it.”

  “You’re not making your case, sweetheart.” Myles’s tone was resolute. He would carry her out against her will, she realized. Myles could get them both killed.

  Angela backed up a step, in case she would need to run from him. She’d do anything to avoid it, but she might have to. “Myles,” she began softly, calming her voice. “Did you enjoy yourself last night, sweetness?”

  “Ofcourse,” Myles said, blinking.

  “Was I just a crazy woman to you last night? You thought you’d better hit it quick before I had a meltdown?”

  Two full seconds passed before Myles spoke, his expression rigid. “You know me better than that,” he said, but his pause told her he’d asked himself the same question.

  “I’m no crazier now than I was in your bed.”

  “Hon, I just think I might have…” Myles paused, maybe trying to soften his words, but the word he chose was not soft. “Misjudged.”

  “So I’m crazy, period, because you can’t decide what another answer might be?”

  “You sound more lucid now,” he conceded.

  “Tell me if I was crazy last night, Myles. Tell me if you misjudged.”

  “I hope not, Angie, because I love you.”

  Myles was the first boy who’d spoken the wordsI love you to her, when he was sixteen and the revelation had shocked her into laughter, but this time she craved the words’ music in a way she hadn’t dared
before. Angela kissed Myles’s lips, a light caress of her mouth. Their breath mingled, and she felt his breath seep down to her toes.

  “I love you, too, baby,” Angela said. “You didn’t misjudge. Now stand aside and let me do what needs to be done. If you try to stop me, we’re about to fight.” She had Rob’s .38 in her bag, and Myles knew it. Angela did not want to fight.

  With a sigh, Myles stepped away from her.

  The moment he did, the bathroom toilet flushed.

  Myles pinned Angela beneath him against the wall, gazing toward the bathroom, hardly six feet from them. He expected Tariq to fly out of the bathroom and swoop down on them, she thought. But Tariq hadn’t flushed that toilet. Angela knew that.

  From the bathroom, they heard water splashing down the toilet bowl, taking care of its own business. Myles silently held up a single finger to her:Stay here . Like hell. Angela shook her head. This wasn’t Myles’s burden, it was hers. As he readied his bow again, Angela’s hand wandered inside her bag, to touch her waiting gun.

  Myles took three steps toward the bathroom, ready to let loose an arrow if anything moved, and Angela followed him. Standing behind Myles in the bathroom doorway, Angela saw the toilet’s pull-chain swinging back and forth, its porcelain handle brushing against the wall. But there was no one in the room. The bathtub was empty, including the tub, the best place to hide. The shower curtain was wide open.

  “Tariq?” Myles said.

  No answer. Myles kicked the bathroom door back, and it slammed against the wall inside. There was no one hiding back there either. But Angela heard the floor squeak in the hall behind her, soft enough to be imagination.

  It wasn’t. She sensed motion in the corner of her eye and looked back toward Corey’s room.

  The pile of leaves was now a foot beyond the doorway.It had moved .

  “Myles,” she whispered, tugging his sleeve.

  Myles looked where she was pointing. When he did, his cheeks hollowed.

  The mound of leaves rustled. A dozen leaves suddenly flew from the pile in a looping dance. They flew as high as the ceiling, deformed butterflies, then floated apart, scattering. As one of the leaves drifted near her nose, Angela yanked her face back. The leaf reeked of decay.

  “Fuck,”she said. Her skin recoiled.

  Somewhere inside the remaining pile of leaves, which seemed bigger now, more cohesive, Angela heard a dry, rattling hiss. The mound hiked itself up, thencrawled forward, snail-like, before falling still. In that moment of stillness, Angela’s heart shook her chest. Her mind begged her to run, but she stared, dumbstruck, as the pile of leaves began to sway. Then, it shot itself two feet closer to her with a fluid, sudden motion Angela had never seen from a living thing.

  This time, Angela screamed.

  She heard a sound near her ear, Myles’s bow. An arrow cut the mound of leaves straight through the center, imbedding deep in Corey’s doorframe beyond it. Leaves scattered to the floor, individual pieces again, losing all sense of ever having been a single entity.

  But they had been. And Myles had seen it. He couldn’t deny it now.

  Myles’s eyes were riveted to the floor and its bed of half-broken, withered brown leaves. He didn’t move, hardly breathing. The lack of an answer had frozen him.

  “Am I crazy now?” she said.

  Myles shook his head, dazed. He stepped gingerly to the leaves and nudged them with his foot before quickly drawing back. “Whatwas that? Where’d it go?”

  Good question, she thought. Where was the invisible thing that had been in the leaves?

  Angela heard gurgling from the bathtub, and then she knew. “The bathroom,” she said.

  The whole bathroom was clean, the only room upstairs that could make that claim. The tub sparkled, and no leaves or mud remained. If Angela didn’t know better, she’d think Mrs. Everly had come to straighten up today. This was the way she had hoped the bathroom would look when she first brought Naomi here. Well-preserved. Attractive.

  But the appearance was a lie. Like Sean had said, things aren’t always what they seem.

  Don’t you like my face?

  Angela heard the same chilling, disembodied female voice she’d thought she heard in Corey’s doorway. This time, the voice seemed to have come from the bathroom mirror. Angela stood in front of the sink to face the beautiful mirror that was this bathroom’s prize possession.

  The mirror’s reflection showed no trace of her.

  Instead of her face, the mirror’s glass showed the bathroom behind her; the spanking clean tub, the toilet with its lid open, the washboard on the wall. Seeing her removal from the place she knew she was standing, Angela’s mind shriveled. She closed her eyes tightly, like a toddler trying to make something ugly go away.

  When Angela opened her eyes, a girl with golden pigtails stared back at her from the mirror, her face caked with mud. Grinning in blackface. The girl’s gray eyes laughed at her.

  Angela screamed, more in rage than terror, although the terror made her hands shake and rendered her thoughts silent. Spittle flying from her lips, Angela spun in the bathroom for the first heavy thing she could find. She jiggled the porcelain toilet seat to loosen it, yanking with all her strength, then wrenched it free. Regaining her balance, she heaved the seat against the glass.

  The grinning girl cracked down the center; the middle of her face, and her eyes, fell away. With another shout, Angela hit the mirror with the toilet seat again, breaking her thumbnail with a sharp ripple that made her yell again, this time in pain. The seat clattered to the floor.

  “Sweetheart,stop,” Myles said from behind her. He grabbed her hand, leading her out of the bathroom as broken glass cracked beneath her feet. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I saw her,”Angela said.“In the mirror.”

  “Who? Who did you see?”

  Angela realized who, and she couldn’t bring herself to tell him. Maddie. Ma Fisher. Her face as a girl. She’d recognized Ma Fisher’s eyes, gray as the sky outside. Angela clasped their fingers together, and she felt Myles’s pulse clambering. Poor guy, she thought. It was selfish to keep him here. But would he leave if she asked him to?

  “What did you see in the bathroom?” Myles said.

  Angela shivered despite her newfound calm. “The girl who took Corey from me.”

  “What do you mean?How?” He sounded desperate to understand.

  Angela shook her head. The girl in the mirror was the ghost of a woman who had yet to die. An echo. She hadn’t been like Tariq, not exactly. She’d been something else.

  Angela didn’t have time to try to explain.

  A metallic clang tolled from the bathroom, shaking the walls like the night the tree fell. Myles readied his bow again, and they backed away from the bathroom doorway, farther down the hall. The clang came again, followed by a loud groaning—wood or metal, she couldn’t tell—and this time the floor trembled, too. The hallway lights flickered once, then died.

  “Whatnow?” Myles said, exasperated, not asking her. Asking God, maybe.

  The third clang was thunderous, and mud sprayed from the bathroom doorway, as if from a hose. The foul-smelling mud spat across the hall, drenching the floor and walls near Gramma Marie’s open doorway. Mud ran down the wall like a soupy human stool. Another spout of mud arced out of the bathroom door—from thebathtub? —and this time, the sickly splatter reached as far as the staircase and Corey’s room. Watching mud land within an inch of her foot, Angela cried out. She leaped backward, bumping against Myles.

  Staring down at the mud, Angela noticed a clump of something drenched inside it, and it took her long seconds to recognize what it was: bird feathers. A lot of them. Chicken feathers.

  Rejected offerings,she thought, not sure where the thought came from, or how she was able to think at all. The smell in the hall was overwhelming, dizzying. Angela wanted to vomit, but her throat was paralyzed. All of her was paralyzed.

  Almost as if to wash her, water came next.

  Gr
imy water sheeted down the walls of the hallway. Water dripped in droplets from the ceiling, puddling at her feet. Angela couldn’t remember when the water had started—from one breath to the next, the water was justthere . Another clang sounded, and water poured from the ceiling, nearly too heavy to see through. Myles yelled out, trying to shield the top of his head from the dingy, muddy water, as if he expected it to burn him. “We have togo!”

  Those simple words were a revelation.

  The attic,Angela thought, another displaced whim that didn’t feel as if it were from her own mind.We have to go to the attic. Angela took Myles’s hand to lead him, semi-blind in the sudden onslaught. Myles followed, cursing words she’d never heard him say aloud. The leaves beneath their feet were slippery from mud and water, and both of them skidded trying to run toward the attic at the end of the hall. Myles’s bow caught in the doorway, nearly knocking him off-balance, but they pulled the bow inside and slammed the door closed behind them.