Chapter 3
1
The car rolled on smoothly with Ms. Wilkes at the wheel, and even though Leah sat next to her in the passenger seat of the ‘01 Taurus, the girl did not make an effort at conversation. It was not that she had anything against the woman. She was a kind black lady of around forty, who had done everything she could for them so far, though Leah got the impression that she was thinking all the while: This is just business. Misplaced children were her business, and she did not want to be here just as much as they didn’t. So for the duration of the trip, Leah rested her head against the seat and looked out the window.
Many things passed by that window – trees, houses, signs, buildings – until Leah was nearly convinced that the car was sitting still and the earth was moving beneath them in a repetitive band, like in some old movie. She considered this for a while, though she knew it could be proven false by some law of physics or other scientific thing, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t really interested in any of that. She began to stare off into blank space, considering more important things along the road to Aunt Claire’s.
The girls had been to their aunt’s house before, more than once but not often. It had been three years since the last visit – and Leah remembered this clearly because it was the Thanksgiving just after her mother had left. Dad’s younger sister had volunteered to cook, and he had agreed that it might take the stress off the holiday if they went out to the country, but more importantly, if they spent it in a different house.
The four of them had gathered around the table in the kitchen that hadn’t been remodeled in ages, with the water stains in the ceiling corner and the lumpy linoleum, and they had pretended to be a family. It hadn’t gone too well. Claire had served them a meat she’d called ‘ham’ but Leah wasn’t sure she believed it. It was served with a dry, stiff bread that could scarcely be chewed, complemented by warmed bowls of canned vegetables. It didn’t take too many minutes of looking it over before Leah had decided that she wasn’t hungry. Tabitha had merely played with her food, building small forts, and their dad had eaten silently, absently. He might have eaten a cockroach and not noticed even after it was swimming around in his stomach acid. When they had finally left that day, Claire had seemed somewhat insistent that they stay, as if desperate for company, but Leah felt that they had all been glad to go. Now she was going back there and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She hadn’t allowed herself to believe that they would make it this far.
“Are you sure it was mom?” Tabitha piped up from the backseat after being silent for miles. Had she been dwelling on this idea for the entire ride? Leah rolled her eyes at the immediate sound of it. She had very bold words for such a slight girl, and Tabitha’s tone was skeptical, which always put Leah on edge.
“It was her; I told you,” Leah insisted, turning her head slightly to cast her voice into the backseat before looking back to the window. Tabitha wasn’t the first one to question the existence of the woman Leah had claimed to see in the cemetery. In fact, no one else seemed to have noticed that woman, or else could not isolate her from the rest of the blackened crowd, and no one at all had admitted to seeing her mother there.
“Well, did you see her face?” Tabitha pressed forcefully, defensive and taking stance for an argument. She hated to be wrong, and Leah hated to argue.
“I know it was her,” was Leah’s reply. Of course she hadn’t seen the woman’s face. There had been too much space between them, but she knew the truth. Her mother hadn’t intended for anyone to see her there, but Leah had seen her.
“If it was her, how come she didn’t come get us?” Tabitha demanded, her words escalating to a shout.
“She didn’t hear me,” Leah responded quietly, partially to convince herself.
“Why wouldn’t she want us!”
“Alright, that’s enough,” Ms. Wilkes finally intervened, but she did not offer an alternative option for their plight. Leah continued to gaze out the window and Tabitha sat back against the seat in a relaxed position, but her lip was still sullen.
“It wasn’t her,” the younger girl muttered quietly, but loud enough for her sister to hear. She wanted the last word. “It couldn’t have been her.”
The car turned off onto a road of tar and pea-gravel, and Ms. Wilkes reduced speed. Was this the right road? Leah wondered. Hadn’t it been all gravel and dust before? It must have been paved since then. A lot could change in three years, she supposed. They traveled for several miles along curves lined by patches of trees to straightaways with fields that went on for acres. It was like looking at the ocean, in which no spot of land could be seen, except that what Leah could not see was the civilized world.
There’s no one around for miles. We’ll be completely isolated.
A tiny beep alerted her attention and she reached into her bag to withdraw her whining cell phone. NO SIGNAL, it said across the lighted screen.
Yes, completely isolated. She wondered if she minded that. It would give her an excuse not to contact anyone from back home.
Leah sighed and rested her head back. It wasn’t long afterward that they arrived at the rickety house.
The house stood near the road, elevated on a short hill. There wasn’t much of a front yard and there were only two trees in front of the house: a large one to the right that cast a shadow over the whole structure, and a shorter one growing up against the porch that seemed eager to have the rotting swing for itself. There was no driveway, only a narrow gravel path leading from the road to the front steps. Ms. Wilkes simply pulled over a bit and parked on the side of the road.
“Hm,” she hummed thoughtfully as she looked up at 48 Pauley-Barker Road, but didn’t make any comments. Leah wanted to agree with this assessment, but she didn’t say anything. Aunt Claire had lived here for nearly ten years and Leah guessed that she’d never done a day of work on the place.
The house was three stories high, but Leah was sure that the top floor was attic space, and she doubted that Aunt Claire used the second floor either. The outside was covered in shingles that were white-washed, but they had not been tended in years and some of them were broken, discolored or otherwise missing. Leah guessed they were full of asbestos and didn’t plan on touching any of them. The roof of the porch was sunken in the middle. The window panes were splintered and rotting. Leah must have lingered in the car, gazing at the house for longer than she’d thought, for Tabitha suddenly grew impatient.
“Well, I’m going,” she muttered irritably. There was a click as she unbuckled her seatbelt and slid toward the door.
“Hold on; let me help you,” Leah grumbled through her own annoyance, opening the car door quickly to get out herself.
“I can do it by myself,” the younger girl insisted, and before Leah had gotten herself out of the car, Tabitha had put her weak legs onto the ground and pulled herself up by the door.
Standing before her sister, Leah looked down at the brace on her left leg once again.
It shouldn’t have happened. Why did I let this happen?
“Move, Leah.” Tabitha’s voice had brought her back. She was pulling the strap of her satchel around her neck, tugging her dark hair in the other direction. “You’re in my way.”
Leah didn’t fight. She moved back to close the car door she had left open while Tabitha started up the hill, her brace making a slight clacking sound. The noise had always surprised Leah. The brace was high-quality and made of plastic. It should not have sounded like an old clock.
“Should I walk you to the door?” Ms. Wilkes asked. She was beginning to undo her seatbelt.
“We don’t really need your help anymore,” Tabitha said sharply, giving the woman a look that could shatter glass. Leah took care of it quickly. She always had to do that with Tabitha.
“Thanks for everything, Ms. Wilkes. We’ll be fine now. You can just make sure we get inside.”
“Call me if you need anything,” the woman said, giving Tabitha a harsh look. Leah thought she’d be happy if she never heard their names again, though she must have seen her share of nightmare children in her line of work. They couldn’t have been the worst. Putting her hand on her sister’s shoulder, Leah directed them toward the house.
Mrs. Lowery had helped them pack yesterday, and the movers should have already taken all of their personal belongings to Claire’s house. Leah might have looked forward to going into a room that was arranged with all her things, but walking up that path that crunched beneath their feet produced such a strong sensation of anxiety that Leah felt her legs growing weak. She tried to imagine the car ride in a backward fashion, as if she could get back in the Taurus and be directly reversed upon the road they had come until she was back at home and none of this had ever happened. Because Leah remembered the last time she had walked up this path – in her dream three nights ago. It had seemed to take forever then, and it took forever now, though she would have been happy to have never arrived at all.
Finally reaching the porch, Leah watched as Tabitha used the handrail to guide herself up the steps without incident. Before they had topped the three steps, the door had begun to open. The image of a woman appeared in the doorway, though her features were blurred by the screen door. That was Leah’s memory of how Aunt Claire looked – a face with uncertain features – but once the screen door was pushed aside, her mental image cleared and she felt the click of recognition.
Ah yes. Aunt Claire. I remember you.
The woman greeted them with a smiling face, though neither girl could quite copy her pleasure. Aunt Claire was a thin woman of around forty with stringy blond hair and deep-set eyes. Her nose was slightly hooked and she was very pale. Her thin lips blended with the rest to her face, her only color being the shadows beneath her eyes. She wore an outdated floral dress and cheap flip-flops. The woman hadn’t changed much – maybe she looked a little older.
“So: you’re Leah, and you’re Tabitha,” she said, pointing to each girl in turn and seeming pleased with herself for matching them up correctly. Her voice was quiet and soft, wispy like cloud.
“Good job,” Tabitha said flatly, not bothering to force a smile.
“Hi, Aunt Claire,” Leah said, trying to cover for her sister’s rudeness, but unable to make herself sound enthusiastic either.
The woman’s cheery demeanor wasn’t squashed much. There was a slight change to her face, but it vanished quickly and then she was smiling again.
“Well, come in,” she bade them, stepping out of the doorway. Tabitha moved inside first and then Leah saw Aunt Claire give a little wave to Ms. Wilkes. After a moment, she heard the car begin to drive away. This was the last stop. There was no going back.
The first thing that was evident about the house was the smell – like dust and stale air. Unlike the homes of most lonely women, however, Claire’s did not stink of cat. Still, it could be said that fresh air had not coursed through the house in a while. Tabitha scrunched up her face and looked at Leah, but thankfully did not make any comments.
As Claire closed the doors behind them, Leah looked around the main room, which she recognized immediately – the wide room with the old TV and furniture huddled at one end.
The room the soldiers died in.
“Come on inside, girls,” Claire coaxed hospitably when they both remained frozen just inside the door. “I’ll show you around again in case you don’t remember. This is the living room, of course.”
Claire moved toward the door-less entryway at the far end of the room, bypassing the little hallway that was straight in front of them.
This is the same way I walked through the house in my dream, Leah thought as they both followed their aunt into the room beyond the den.
“This is sort of a little extra room,” Claire explained. “It isn’t really in a good place to be a dining room or bedroom since you have to walk through it to get into the rest of the house, so I don’t do much with it.”
That was obvious. All the corners were filled with boxes, and there were a few odd pieces of furniture here that were collecting dust. Claire moved on quickly, directing their attention to the room ahead.
“That’s the kitchen. It leads to the back door. I don’t use that door too much.” She passed the kitchen and moved down a dim hallway. “This is the laundry room,” she said, pointing off to an open area to the left. Leah only got to glance inside briefly because Claire did not even slow, but Leah deemed the title ‘laundry room’ appropriate. The floor was cracked concrete and aside from an old washer and drier, the floor was covered with large piles of clothes. She didn’t know if they were clean or dirty.
Claire moved on until she rounded the corner, and they were in the hallway that led back to the living room. There wasn’t much light here, and to the right was a dark staircase that bent overhead and vanished from sight. Within this hallway area was a door on the left, directly across from the stairs.
“This is my bedroom,” she said of the closed door. “There is a bathroom attached inside, and it is the only one on the bottom floor.”
“What about that room over there? Is that a bedroom?” Tabitha asked, pointing back to the door on the same wall, but close to the front door of the house.
“Oh, that’s a junk room,” Claire said, dismissing it quickly. “Your room is upstairs. The movers came earlier, so all your stuff is here. I didn’t unpack your bags or anything,” she said with a laugh as she started upward, “but the beds are put together and everything.”
Claire made it to the bend before she realized that neither girl was following her up. Leah wondered what the woman was thinking, and then decided that she probably wasn’t.
“What’s the matter?” Claire asked, halting on the stairs. The way they were both looking at her, she probably felt like a fool, and Leah did not feel guilty for making it so.
“Tab’s not really supposed to go up and down stairs very much,” Leah said before her sister could say it in a much nastier way.
“Oh!” Claire exclaimed, suddenly realizing her mistake as she looked down at Tabitha’s brace. “But the thing is, I don’t really have anywhere to put you down here.”
Her every word dripped apology, but she was obviously not willing to do anything about it. Tabitha seemed to pick up on that as well.
“It’ll be fine,” the younger girl said, and before Leah could argue that it would not be fine, Tabitha had already started climbing the stairs. Seeing this, Claire went forward as well, leaving Leah at the bottom with a sigh of irritation. Then there was nothing left to do but carry herself up after them.
The second floor was wide with rooms on each side of an open floor area. There were a couple of sofas in the middle section, along with some of the furniture that had been in Leah and Tabitha’s rooms back home. Windows spanned across the front of the house here. There was an old air conditioner in one of them, but it wasn’t running. Leah guessed it must have been eighty degrees on the landing, but that was just her opinion.
“Its’ hot,” Tabitha said. “It must be one- hundred degrees up here!” She was ignored by both Leah and Claire.
“You two can do whatever you want with this middle space.” Claire began to point. “That’s a junk room and that’s a junk room. Your bathroom is over there.” Claire directed their attention to a room beyond where the stairs emerged from the floor. There was a light on inside and Leah could view the pale interior.
“And this is your room.”
Claire took them to the third door on the left and there Leah and Tabitha saw their room for the first time.
It was large – plenty large enough for both their full-size beds, which were assembled inside – and currently it was loaded up with boxes of their possessions that they had packaged up the day before. An oscillating fan was rotating in the corner, though it only seemed to be pushing the heat around. There was a fireplace on one wall that had been closed off long ago. The walls were plastered with dark wallpaper on two of the walls and the other two were coated with stained, flowered paper of a lighter color scheme. It made Leah feel dirty to look at it. She’d make sure her bed wasn’t near the stains and perhaps she could cover them with posters.
“We have to share a room?” Tabitha questioned so calmly that it cut like a blunt knife.
“Well, for now,” Claire explained meekly after a pause.
Tabitha didn’t say anything else, only went into the room, located some of the boxes with her name on them and began to open them up.
Though Leah didn’t feel like praising the dilapidated quarters that they had been given, she felt obligated to offer some kind of thanks to their aunt.
“We’ll be okay here,” she said, but when she couldn’t find the energy to come up with anything more sincere, she added: “Um, thanks.”
She moved forward and dropped her bag onto the bare mattress of her bed. Claire remained in the doorway but Leah was ready to ignore her now, just as Tabitha was doing, in order to achieve some sense of familiarity in this room.
“I know this is a difficult time for you girls,” Aunt Claire said sympathetically. When Leah looked up, she noticed that the woman was nervously playing with her hands. “But I hope you will both be happy here and consider this house your home.”
With that, she turned away from the door with a sweep of her floral pattern. Leah could hardly believe how quietly the woman had vanished, since every board seemed to creak beneath her own feet.
Bird bones, she thought.
Noticing that the sounds of rummaging behind her had ceased, Leah turned to look at Tabitha, who was looking at her purposefully.
“Weirdo,” the girl pronounced, and then went back to her unpacking.
2
For several hours, Leah and Tabitha busied themselves with unpacking and sorting through all their belongings – some of which they’d forgotten they had until packing them up the day before. Some things were taken out and then promptly put back into the boxes. They were unwanted items from past interests. The boxes of old things were moved out of the room and set in the floor outside. The closet space was small, not big enough for both of them to hang their clothes. There was a disagreement over who would get the closet and who would use the bureau, but after Tabitha decided that the closet smelled funny, the matter resolved itself.
Leah made sure that their sheets were found and their beds were dressed. She was relieved to see the familiar blue and white sheets that were her own, and found comfort in knowing that when she laid down that night, she could close her eyes and at least feel that she was back home.
Tabitha had moved the fan up closer to her side of the room, and once Leah had decided that she could no longer stand the heat, she went out onto the landing toward the air conditioner in the window there, praying that it would work. She didn’t know much about appliances, but she was able to match the shape of the plug to an outlet in the wall, and when she turned the dial, sighed with relief when the machine roared noisily to life. Cool air began to roll out of it, and she only hoped it would be enough to circulate into their bedroom.
After scolding Tabitha for standing in a chair to hang up posters, they decided to see if their aunt had anything to feed them. With fresh memories of that past Thanksgiving circulating through her mind, Leah wasn’t too eager to see what they would be offered. If it was up to her, she probably would have elected to go to bed without eating, but since Tabitha complained of a growling stomach, she dared to venture downward to receive the unknown.
Making sure her sister got down without incident, Leah led the way toward the kitchen. The large room was as she remembered it, with the peeling linoleum and stained walls. The table was to the right and the sink on the left, mounted on a long line of faded yellow counters that wrapped around to meet the rusted stove on the wall in front of her. An old refrigerator stood beside that, humming away, and near that in the corner was the back door. Sheer curtains covered the window in the door, but they were ripped in one place. The smell of coffee was on the air, and Leah could see a full pot on the counter, deep and dark, but there was no other savory scent of food.
I guess we’ll have to ask for food, Leah decided, turning with the intention of searching for their new guardian, but she heard the click of a door down the hall, followed by footsteps, and then Aunt Claire appeared in the doorway. She was holding an empty mug in her hands when she rounded the corner, and when she noticed them there, she gasped in surprise, putting a hand to her chest as if to calm her heartbeat manually.
“Oh! I didn’t hear you girls come down,” she said, moving past them and setting the mug down in front of the coffee pot without pouring any. “Looking for food, I guess.”
“Do you have any?” Tabitha asked, as if she wouldn’t have believed it. Still, she went to the table and sat down.
“Be right back.” Claire left the kitchen and went into the hallway. After a moment, she came back with two cartons of frozen Chinese food. After they were heated – and after there was arguing over the orange chicken – they sat down to eat, and though it wasn’t gourmet, it was more than what Leah had expected. Claire sat down with them but she did not eat, only watched them as they picked through the paper cartons.
“So what do you think of the house?” she asked eventually.
Tabitha didn’t even raise her eyes, and Leah wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. If she opened her mouth, she might tell the truth. Claire watched them eagerly, but then began to talk again as if she had never expected an answer to begin with.
“You know, this house is all that’s left of the original town of Temple. In Civil War days, there was a battle here, and this house was used as a hospital for the wounded soldiers – right in there, in the living room.”
Leah listened, but she was sure she had heard someone mention this before. She definitely remembered the part about the soldiers. Tabitha stopped her chewing.
“So people died in there?” the younger girl asked.
“Hm?” Claire questioned, as if she had thought they couldn’t speak. “Oh, well, yes, I’m sure they did. But the town began to migrate north after the war, and this was the only house left that was livable.”
Claire did not miss a beat going back into her story.
“A local man bought a lot of the land and started farming it. All the barns are gone now, of course. Many people have lived here since then, up until I bought it about ten years ago. I used to lease the land out to some farmers for a while, but I just couldn’t stand the noise. All those tractors coming around, tilling, planting, then again spraying insecticides, and then coming back again to harvest… I just couldn’t stand all the commotion! So now the land just sits there.”
The woman had a soft voice, but she spoke with energy, as if it was the most normal thing to have a conversation with people who wouldn’t respond – or perhaps to talk with no one at all.
Since the mention of deaths in the house, Tabitha hadn’t touched any more of her food. She stirred it around a bit, then let go of her fork and the box fell over, spilling some of the orange chicken on the table.
“I think I’m done,” the girl said.
Aunt Claire simply looked at her a moment, but Tabitha remained seated. Leah wondered if she was waiting to be excused. She had never exhibited such manners at home.
“You can go whenever you’d like,” Claire said, folding her pale fingers.
“I’m not going by myself,” Tabitha informed her, directing her gaze at Leah then.
Leah had been eating slowly, not feeling much of an appetite even after being served something edible.
“Well, are you done too, Leah?” Claire asked.
Leah swallowed the last bits of supper she would take and nodded slightly. She usually caved under pressure.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Claire said, rising up from the table. She moved to the counter and retrieved the mug she had brought in, filling it with coffee from the pot. Without another word, she left the room.
3
After what Leah considered an uncomfortable meal, the girls returned to several more hours of unpacking and shifting furniture. Leah got her closet mostly in order, propped up the picture of their mother on the nightstand and even resulted to covering one of the stains near her bed with one of Tabitha’s soccer posters. Tabitha had given up her efforts at organization first, content to sit on the bed with her iPod and read from her collection of manga. Eventually, Leah had grown tired of looking through so many things that no longer had a proper place. She decided to try and sleep.
Lying in bed – her own bed but in a strange room – she considered her situation as she stared up at the ceiling. The house was old, too hot and too dark. Aunt Claire was, for lack of a better word, odd. She was flighty and clueless. After dinner, she did not check on them again, and now, thinking back, the woman seemed to be relieved to be rid of them after they had eaten. Leah was expected to sleep now in this house that would have been too quiet if not for the hum of the air conditioner and the buzzing of the fan.
Will I ever be comfortable again? She wondered this, but she knew that her inner discord had started long before today. This was just the beginning of another chapter.
“Leah?” Tabitha’s voice traveled to her across the room, originating beyond a light on the bed stand that she had yet to turn off.
“Yeah?”
“Do you think this house is creepy?”
Leah didn’t have to think about that one for long, but she also didn’t want to give her sister any bad ideas. Tabitha wouldn’t even want to go to the bathroom by herself if Leah told her that this house was reminiscent of a haunted mansion where secret eyes spied through the walls.
“It’s old, but it’s just a house,” Leah said.
“So you don’t believe that stuff about the soldiers?”
Did she believe that soldiers died in that room downstairs? Yes, she could believe that. Did she believe that they were still hanging around?
“Even if it’s true, that was a long time ago,” Leah assured her, inwardly marveling that she could see no glare of security lights through the window, and there was no growl of cars driving past.
Tabitha was quiet for a moment, and Leah noticed there was a spot on the ceiling that looked somewhat like a butterfly.
“Read something to me,” Tabitha requested. It wasn’t unusual for her to ask for this, but Leah couldn’t tonight, and didn’t particularly want to.
“All my books are still boxed up.”
“Well, make something up then.”
“I don’t really feel like it.”
“I’ll never go to sleep if you don’t,” Tabitha threatened, kicking at her sheets with one leg.
Leah sighed, but she figured she should go along with this, just to appease her sister, or else she would never find sleep of her own.
“Okay, so there was this flower field,” she made up, which was probably inspired by the butterfly stain overhead. “There were people who lived in the field, and they were very happy. Not a care in the world. They played all day and enjoyed being together. They were so glad to be there that they never left the field. They never even wondered what else was out there. But one day, one of them began to wonder what else could be beyond the edge of the field with the flowers and butterflies. Even though she loved the others, thinking about the outside world made her feel discontented until she couldn’t stand it anymore. So she left. She was gone a long time – so long that the others thought she would never come back. Just when they were about to give up hope, the one who had gone away came back, and brought lots of gifts from all the places she had been, and–”
“Leah,” Tabitha said, interrupting the flow of Leah’s tale so that she stopped and had soon forgotten what she’d already said. “Leah, this story is about mom, isn’t it?”
Leah was silent. She hadn’t been paying attention to the story as she was telling it, only saying the first thing that came to her mind. She knew the story she had been telling was seriously lame, but she hadn’t associated it to their mother – until now.
“It sucks,” Tabitha said, clicking off the light and rolling over to turn away from Leah, leaving her alone on the dark with her thoughts.
4
Leah awoke at some time in the night, but the darkness was so thick that she wasn't sure whether her eyes were actually open or if she was simply staring at the backs of her eyelids. Either way, she knew she was awake, and she knew she would not be going back to sleep.
What time is it? She hadn't plugged in her alarm clock, and she'd let her cell phone go down since there was no signal.
What am I supposed to do now? I'm exhausted but I can't go back to sleep.
She rubbed her eyes, pulling back until her skin stretched, but stopped when she thought of giving herself wrinkles.
I can't turn on the light; I'll wake up Tabitha. She lay in bed for a few moments, rolling back and forth to try and get comfortable. She couldn’t understand why until she realized how quiet it was in the house. The silent depth of it seemed to stretch on forever, and she knew now why should couldn’t go back to sleep. She was too hot, because the air conditioner and the fan weren’t on anymore. She wondered if she should pull herself out of bed to deal with this problem, drifting back and forth outside the border of sleep.
That was when she heard the noise.
Against the silence, it was not hard to detect even the smallest sound. Leah raised her head and held her breath, listening carefully as her heart began to speed. What was that sound? A door slamming? She heard the noise again and she decided that there were only two options: Aunt Claire was moving around downstairs, or there was someone else in the house.
Leah put her feet over the edge of the bed carefully, rising up and hoping that the boards wouldn't creak beneath her weight.
Because I can't wake Tabitha up, her groggy mind thought. I have to be quiet.
She crept out onto the landing which wasn't quite so dark because of the moon shining through the windows there. She continued to hear the sound passing through the shell of the house, steady, though the noises were not evenly spaced apart. There was no doubt that they were coming from below.
Leah placed her feet carefully on each stair, carrying herself down in her sleeping attire – a blue tank top and some polka dot shorts, her legs and arms suddenly chilled as she continued downward. She hugged herself, though all the while wondering if the prickly little bumps rising up on her skin were from the cold or from fear.
After careful maneuvering, she reached the bottom, where it would have been equally dark if not for a dim light shining around the corner from the kitchen.
Is Aunt Claire up making coffee at this hour? And is she preparing the grounds herself with a mallet or cleaver?
That was what the noise sounded like to her now – laborious chopping against the tabletop.
She continued to move slowly toward the yellow light that splashed out from the kitchen, her bare feet sticking and then peeling up from the sweating floor. When Leah turned the corner, the room came into view. As she had suspected, there was a woman standing there, hacking away at masses of bloody meat with a cleaver.
“Aunt Claire?” Leah questioned, aghast. The woman stopped her work, but as the girl's eyes lingered over the raw flesh and the blood that dripped off the edge of the table, she realized that the meat was not a slab of beef.
Human... She’s chopping up the bodies of the Civil War soldiers. This is not a proper operation.
The woman in black turned to face her, and it was with shocking clarity that Leah saw her face, realizing that it was not her aunt.
“Mom...” she uttered, her breath catching in her throat.
Her mother's face was like in the picture beside her bed, smiling and happy, but she was wearing the black dress and hat that Leah had seen her in at the funeral.
“Hi, sweetie,” her mother said, cheerily. Blood ran down the edge of the cleaver and was speckled across the woman’s face. “Would you like a thigh or a breast?”
Leah stared at the human flesh on the table, completely horrified. How could mom do this? She'd been a vegetarian.
Things change. The girl was shocked violently by these images.
And when she woke up, she did so with a shriek in the darkness of her room.
Just another dream, she realized, trying to calm herself down as she clenched the bed sheets in her fists. She had never actually left her bed. While she’d been thinking about the fans, she must have drifted back to sleep. It was only a dream and everything was fine.
Across the room, a light clicked on near Tabitha's bed and the intolerant expression of the younger girl leaned forward out of the darkness.
“What's your problem?”
Leah was still too shaken to respond properly, and there was a long pause before she answered.
“I had a bad dream,” she murmured, trying to push the bloody scene from her mind by imagining flower fields.
Tabitha didn't say anything else to that. The light was clicked off again, leaving Leah alone in the dark with the remnants of her disturbing dream.