Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 4

“And then one day… you were still so sick. I was so worried about you. I’d spent all my summer pay to bail out your dad, and my reward was having him call in a drunken stupor every night to tell me either that he was going to make it up to me, somehow, or that he was going to kill me. Depended what he’d been drinking. I think it must have been the possums that made me even think of it, because to be honest, I didn’t have time or energy to worry about Evie. She’d stopped moaning. But instead, she kept prowling around up there, every single night, at any hour. I think she was barefoot, at least. I could barely hear her. Just these little scratches. Little slides. Back and forth, in little lurches. All blessed night. Just enough to keep me awake. It also made me even more sad. And tired. I’d never been so tired in my whole life. This went on and on.

“Until that one day. The last day.” She takes a huge breath and holds it, as though trying to cure hiccoughs. She does that for so long that her knees start to wobble.

“Mom, come on,” I say.

“I came home.” Her voice shakes. “And I saw the possum family at the top of her steps. And the spider webs all up and down the stairwell, as though no one had used it for years, which was ridiculous. The mailman went up there every day, for one.

“But something about it gave me this weird feeling. And it set me thinking. I hadn’t been invited to Stan’s funeral. Evie hadn’t said anything about it whatsoever. I was sure she would have invited me, or talked to me. I went inside and found the number of the undertakers, and I called them.

“And that’s when I found out. They’d come, alright, on the day I’d summoned them, and knocked at the door. Evie had answered them through it. She said everything was taken care of. And the undertakers said okay and left.

“I hung up. I had no idea what to think. Then you started crying. And your father called. Then he called again. And you cried some more. And I started crying. I think I just switched on the tv and left you in the living room with a popsicle and a blanket and ignored you when you yelled for me. I locked myself in the bedroom to try to get some sleep before Evie started pacing again. I think somehow I must have got some, too. Because this time it was the screaming that woke me up.”

“Jesus,” rasps the old woman in white, right next to us, and I jump forward and whirl around. How is it possible for something that slow to sneak up?

She’s got a crooked, stumpy hand in my mother’s hair. Holding on to her braid, like a child grabbing a cat’s tail.

“It really is you,” she rasps, her voice so honeycombed that it might be the wind talking.

Even then, several stunned seconds pass before I recognize her. And my mother ignores her completely. She just rambles on, as though the woman isn’t even there.

“I hurtled out bed and came racing out the door. I thought it was you, even though it sounded nothing like you. I just felt so bad. So guilty. About so many things.” Tears stream down her face. To my astonishment, she lays her head on the old woman’s shoulder. The woman strokes her braid.

“ Madolyn ?” I gasp. While thinking, where’s the rest of you ? The shapeless dress drops without interruption past her waist. The sight is horrifying to me. Incomprehensible. Sad. Wrong. New York without the Trade Centers.

“It took me a minute to realize the screams were coming from outside. From the driveway.” My mother burrows deeper into Madolyn’s collarbone, which looks bony, now, and can’t be comfortable. “I raced around the building. And there was Mr. Busby, standing by what was left of his Jag.”

Madolyn still holds onto my mother’s braid. I have to stifle an urge to grab her wrist, shake her loose. It’s like my mother is a child’s pull-toy, and as long as Madolyn keeps yanking her hair, she’s got no choice but to keep talking.

“I never thought you’d come back here,” the old woman rasps. “Either one of you. You look good, Ry. Like you made it. I thought you might.”

“They’d broken every single window,” says my mother. “Bashed the windshield to pieces. Stolen all the tires. Knifed the seats.” She speaks faster and faster. One of her hands has snared itself in Madolyn’s dress. “On both sides, into that beautiful pink paint, they’d keyed the words Black Fag .”

I blink. “What? Who?”

“Leyton was just shaking, when he wasn’t shouting. I felt awful. I tried to say something comforting, but he wasn’t having it. I didn’t even hear what he was saying at first. That he was actually accusing Evie of this. And even if I had, it was so crazy. But how could he not be crazy, after that? ‘Oh, Leyton,’ I told him.

“‘Too far,’ he was shouting. ‘Too far, Old Bat. Not funny. Way too far.’ And then…” my mother twitches in place, and Madolyn gives a gentle tug on her braid. “Then…” Again, the twitch and tug. Like she’s stuck.

“Mom,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.”

“He started for the stairs. He was still screaming ‘Old Bat’ at the top of his lungs, and—”

“Come on ,” I snarl, yanking her away from Madolyn. A shudder ripples from her neck all the way down into her feet, and she stumbles against me and then straightens up.

She’s holding my hand. Standing tall. Somehow, I’ve forgotten that my mother is taller than me. She’s blinking furiously. She reaches up and at least smears the wetness flooding her face. Only then does she seem to see Madolyn.

“Oh,” she says. “Hello.”

Madolyn eyes her up and down. Her skin is tanning-bed orange, her brow surgically lifted so high that it seems pinned to the crest of her head. She looks like a doll, a Madolyn action-figure, denuded of its most characteristic elements. Sanitized.

“You , on the other hand, don’t look so different from the night you left. I’m sorry to say.”

My mother tries a laugh. As if Madolyn were kidding. “I was just telling Ry the story. It seems so silly, now.”

“Silly,” says Madolyn.

The urge to get my mother away from here, and from this woman, has become overwhelming. I’m way past questioning it. I start to pull her toward the curb. But she digs in her feet and won’t budge.

“I just thought she should know.” She’s practically chirping, trying so hard to sound like an ordinary, comfortable person that it breaks my heart.

“I agree,” says Madolyn. “She should.”

“You know,” my mother says, forces a laugh, waves an airy hand. “What caused me to… it seems so ridiculous, in retrospect. What I thought I saw.”

“Thought?” says Madolyn, very quietly.

“It was just such a hard year for me, you know? Such a terrible time. Watching that poor old woman go completely to pieces. And Leyton stomping around his place and the yard, not knowing what to do with himself or how to go on, and you across the street—” she’s talking to Madolyn, almost accusing her—“in your little mausoleum to yourself, with all those pictures of you and a guy you don’t love on the cover of People or whatever, blown up to cover every inch of wallspace. And that moaning and pacing upstairs every single goddamn night.” She turns to me. “And you. My sweet, sweet daughter. Sitting out here by yourself day after day, with no one to look after you properly. With a turtle for a playmate. We were all so lonely. So, so lonely. I guess I got lonely, too.”

“You become the neighborhood,” I blurt, and tear up again.

“I guess it all just boiled over. Messed up my head. And when Leyton got up the stairs and started banging on that door, screaming for Evie to come out… When he kept banging and banging and banging, while I was screaming for him to stop…