Between Screams and Silence

Chapter 4: Feed

I don't know how long I've sat in this chair, staring blankly at the television.

I feel like I should get up, I know I should get up. There's the laundry to do, a pile of dirty dishes in the basin and goodness knows what else to be done, but I just don't have the energy. I've hardly eaten in days, and every time I've tried, the bile has bubbled up in my throat and my stomach has rolled over in great, choppy waves and it's all I can do to just chew on the food and swallow. And what's worse is that I'm still so hungry. Hungry and yet unable to eat a darn thing.

Rheemus thinks I'm sickening for something and wants to call Dr. Jacoby, but I can't bear the thought of that man here, studying me like I'm some lab rat. Watching me. I told Rheemus I'd had more than enough of that cockamamie nonsense in the hospital and I won't stand for it in my own home. And besides, doctors always have a habit of seeing more than you want them to and I don't want him here poking his sticky beak into my business.

I am sickening for something though, but it's not what Rheemus thinks. I don't even know what it is, but I'm scared, really scared, because I know it ain't nothing that can be cured by popping a couple of pills or a few days bed rest and some of Mama's chicken broth. And if the doctor knew that, I know he'd cart me right off to the nuthouse in the city and I've heard awful stories about that place, about how once they got you, you ain't never getting out of there again.

I can't even speak to Rheemus, because I don't want him looking at me any worse than he already does. He might even call Dr. Jacoby and make him take me away. And so I've said nothing. Nothing about how I hear things at night, things that move and shift in the darkness of the bedroom. Nothing about how every time I try to go to sleep, I hear someone whispering my name. Nothing about the flickering lights and definitely nothing about what happened at Barbara Arden's house. He'll think I'm pure crazy and maybe he'd be right. I feel crazy.

Brenda's making funny little sounds next to me in her basket and I want to take comfort in that, I want to be happy knowing she's happy, but it's like I've got this big ball of fear lodged right in my throat and I can't do a damn thing to cough it up. There's something wrong, something very wrong and I don't know what it is. All I know is these past few days, I'm just so afraid to even look at her.

Instead I stare at the television screen, vaguely aware that right now I should be watching Macdonald Carey and Frances Reid in Days of Our Lives, because I make sure never to miss an episode, but I'm watching static again. The screen flickers and white noise crackles out of the television speaker. I was going to get up and whack the box when it first happened, but for some reason I never did, I just carried on sitting here and now I can't seem to tear my eyes away from the screen. I don't really want to. I feel calmer when I'm watching the flickering, fuzzy screen.

Somewhere in the corner of my vision, something moves.

It's a spider, just an ordinary house spider mind, no bigger than a cotton reel, but ugly enough with a bulbous body and thick brown legs. It freezes as soon as I turn my head to look at it, almost as if it knows I'm watching it and as it waits at the edge of the rug, my eyes are drawn to it just as they were to the television screen.