Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

I didn’t know any of that on this particular evening, but I knew good and well what Margaret was. She was a monster. And she had it in for me. She came back.

“Joey,” she said, outside my window, just a wick of her brown hair and one hungry eye visible between the curtain and the frame. That eye like a lamp, once blue like the sea but now lighter, luminous. I turned away from it, probably just in time.

Solly was curled up in a ball between my legs. He growled.

It wasn’t all that late, and I hadn’t quite gotten to sleep yet. The kite-frame cross was leaning up against the wall, behind my nightstand.

“Joey, may I please come in?”

I switched on my table lamp.

I shook my head, said “No,” and fumbled the cross awkwardly from behind the nightstand, almost knocking the lamp over. I was having trouble catching my breath, I got light-headed, almost passed out, but I held my bumpkin cross up and tried to think of a picture of Jesus with lambs behind him looking up at the sky. To my surprise, Margaret had a reaction to the cross; she turned away from it, not hissing like in the movies I would see later, but sort of hitching like she was being racked with sobs. Anyway, she moved away from the window. I was tempted to look after her to see if she was gone for real, but I didn’t think it was smart to get close to it—I could just imagine her punching a fist through the glass and grabbing my wrist or something.

I sat there, my heart pounding. “You’ll stop dirtyin’ that cross with your little Jew hand and you’ll open this window for me or else,” I heard her say. I wasn’t sure where she was. “Or else what?” I said, not smarty-pants-like, I really wanted to know what she was going to do to me.

“Or it’ll go worse for you.”

“Worse than what? What do you want?”

“I just want to hold you in my arms, little Joey. Just to squeeze you tight, wee little prince that you are. And I will. Make no mistake about it. Be it tonight, tomorrow, or next month. I got nothing but time now, thanks to you. Open this window and it’ll stop tonight, and it’ll stop with you.”

I had the urge to call for my dad, but what was I going to say? An Irish vampire is threatening me outside my window? No… but maybe an Irish thief was plausible.

I got up then, made my way to my parents’ bedroom, tried the doorknob. Locked. I knocked gently. “Dad?”

“What,” he said, almost immediately. They hadn’t been sleeping.

“I think there’s somebody trying to get into the house.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“I think so. An Irishman.”

I realized that sounded flimsy the second it stumbled out of my mouth. I bit my lower lip, looked behind me down the hall to make sure Margaret wasn’t coming. The floor runner, usually cheerful with its Turkish birds or whatever, looked foreboding, like the carpet they roll out for your murder. It seemed to go forever.

“How do you know he’s Irish?”

Good question, Pop.

“Because I think I saw Margaret. I think she wants to get back at us.”

My mom mumbled something low and fast and the springs creaked and the floorboards creaked and then the closet door opened, and I knew what that meant. I tried to peek through the keyhole for a minute, but then I heard Solly yapping. Really barking this time. I glanced back down the hall, and there stood Elise. My heart almost hiccupped out of my mouth.

“Elise,” I stage-whispered, “make sure the…”

Doors are locked, I was going to say, but she interrupted me, speaking in a wet slur. “Forgot something,” she said. Was she drunk? Was she drooling?

“Who forgot something?”

“Hurry up, Edwin,” I heard my mom say from behind their door. “They’re in the cigar box.”

Solly stopped barking.

Elise wound up and spoke again, looking toward me rather than at me. “Marg’it. Marg’it forgot. Her necklace.”

I heard the sound of a shotgun shell dropping on the hardwood floor, Mom saying, “Edwin!” Then I saw her. She was in the house. Margaret, looming up just behind Elise. Grinning with those awful teeth.

I tried to say “Dad!” but nothing came out. I held up the cross. Margaret looked away, but whispered something Elise heard. Elise blundered forward, her face almost apologetic, and grabbed the kite-frame cross away from me, snapping it over her knee. For as clumsy as she was, she was fast and strong. I couldn’t stop her, and we made a ruckus.

The key slotted into the door, turned it so it swung inward, revealing my pajama-legged father holding the short, double-barreled shotgun he shot partridges with.

“What’s going on?” my dad said.

Margaret was gone. Just gone. All he saw was a drooly maid with broken sticks in her hand.

“Elise, what is the meaning of this?” my mother said, pushing her back. Elise seemed to come unplugged. She looked at the broken kite frame in her hands as if it had just appeared there. My pop moved past her, drawing back the hammers of the shotgun. He went room to room, clearly meaning to check the whole house.

My mother was running a string of “I want an explanation”s and “Do not ignore me”s at Elise, who seemed completely out of it.

“Be careful,” I yelled to my dad, suddenly wondering if his sixteen-gauge full of birdshot would do any good against the ghoul I had seen. My interjection caused Elise to stir. Though still heavily charmed, she now became aware of me, and she considered me with an offended drunkard’s dawning contempt.

“You look at me when I’m talking to you,” my mother told the back of her head.

That seemed to decide it. Elise, wrinkling up her face like a baby about to have a tantrum, cleared the space between us in two steps and jammed the broken end of the kite into my thigh. Leaned into it. She should have worked the harpoon on a whaling boat. It stuck deep. I leaned against the wall, shocked past speech. My father was downstairs already. My mother, afraid to strike the crazed woman, just stared. As did I. The puncture was only just starting to hurt, and didn’t bleed yet—that would come later.

Regaining some composure, Elise stood up straight, said, “Excuse me,” and walked upstairs, locking herself in her room. When the police came, she was already packed and as ready to check into jail or the looney bin as any college freshman was to move into his dorm. Not that I saw this. I was on my way to the hospital.

Everybody decent has a guy like Walther in his life: a guy who comes over when you call in the middle of the night. He’s the guy who loans you money and never asks for it back, the guy who tells the cop your kid was with him when he was really getting in trouble; he’s the guy who takes your wife and son to the emergency room. Walther ran Dad’s flagship store on Broadway; he was a big guy, about fifty, had met Teddy Roosevelt, spoke Spanish ’cause he lived in Cuba for a while, made a hell of a pork roast that tasted like garlic and oranges.

“Take them to St. Vincent’s while I wait for the police,” Dad said, and that’s all he had to say. Walther had his hat on before he hung up his phone. When Uncle Walt, as I knew him, showed up, Dad had already put a tourniquet on my leg. My pants were getting all spotty with blood now. Mom was shrieking through the locked door at Elise with one shoe on and one in her hand.

“Go with Walt, Leah,” Dad said, mostly because he didn’t want to hear her anymore. Too bad for me and Uncle Walt. Mom put her shoe on. Walt carried me downstairs. On our street, West 11th, a lady in pearls, a fox fur, and iridescent stockings was passing by with her man-friend, but she went white and said, “Oh, my, oh my” when she saw the stick sticking out of me. I remember trying to smile at her, but the man-friend hurried her along. Walther bundled Mom and me in the back of his car, saying, “Don’t you worry, kid, they’ll fix you right up for Saturday baseball. Wanna stick a’ gum?” I shook my head no. “Shouldn’ta said stick , huh?” He mussed my hair. Whatever Walt drove, I didn’t know cars then, it was a big car that smelled like leather and Cuban puros . I remember that.