It’s hard to explain it in a way where I don’t sound crazy. I can’t tell when I’m sleeping. I tried rubbing my eyes and I saw her sitting there. Sitting in my dad’s recliner across from me. Dr. Lim. We’re in the living room. I could still see plates on the kitchen table, a half-glass of orange juice and my father’s coat missing from the rack. My feet were covered in dust and I tried to curve my feet under the couch to hide it.
I don’t remember how I got there.
I don’t remember waking up or getting to that couch or letting her in. She doesn’t hesitate to play twenty questions. How have I been sleeping? Have I been eating? How are my moods? Am I keeping myself busy? What she really wants to know is if I’m doing a good enough job to keep my agoraphobia from driving me crazy. The answer is probably no. Cause if I were sane I probably wouldn’t be wondering where my morning went. What I really want to tell her is that I’m not sick, I’m haunted. This house has trapped me here. Or maybe whatever is in me is the same thing that got rid of my mom.
“It’s normal, you know, to feel restless and unmotivated, especially at your age. Agoraphobia can be overwhelming to deal with.”
There’s a tapping that comes from the window. I think I’m being toyed with until I see the blinds slowly swinging from the breeze.
“I know this is a difficult topic and I know we’ve talked about this before, but I wanna go over it one more time. I’m hoping it’ll give you some clarity and I’m hoping you’ll find something in it that you haven’t already. I want you to tell me about the night your mom left.” She stares at me waiting for me to stop avoiding her eyes.
Fuck it.
“She didn’t leave, she’s missing.”
“Y-yes, of course.” She repositions herself on the recliner, a slight cough follows.
“I never remember it the same way twice. It always kind of changes in my head… like a painting more than a picture, if that makes sense.”
“The mind is funny that way, we’re just reconstructing an image from scraps every time we remember it.”
“So it’s fiction?”
“No, not exactly. It’s not about the accuracy of the memory, no memory can be a hundred percent accurate. We tend to color our memories and they shift and change with time, the same way we do. How you remember it can tell us more than just the way it happened, it allows us to see the impact. Because that’s what memories are, these experiences are pieces of the framework that make us who we are. More importantly, how we see the world.”
I wonder if she really believes the things she says to me or if she’s just probing me for information.
My mom used to take me to this farmer’s market on Saturdays, by the square, when I was little. She used to always call me her little helper. She loved how I’d struggle to hold the little bag of produce for her as we made our way around the crowded market. She’d walk me to this little old bench outside the square and she’d remind me that this is where I should go if we ever got separated. I remember it because she’d do it every time before we’d enter the crowd.
The rest is where it gets kind of tricky. Sometimes when I look back, I remember her being in a rush, like she was scared or knew something or someone was coming. Sometimes when I remember it, I’m lost in a crowd, the adults all feel like large trees. They’re all mumbling to each other and I can’t seem to hear myself through all the noise. I call for her and all the taller bodies that surround me seem not to notice.
“There are times when I remember her sitting me on the bench and all she says is that she’ll be right back. Of course, she never really comes back. All those details kind of shift and change and it doesn’t matter how I lose sight of her. No matter how or what the details are, that day always ends the same. It’s me on that bench and I’m crying, bawling my eyes out. I mean I’m five years old, so what else am I gonna do at that point right? I call out for her, I cry and then I call out some more, and every time I remember it… well, you know the rest.”
It’s pouring now and she’s holding her bag up against the car door with her legs. Scrambling through her belongings in the rain. She must have misplaced her keys. Something about the sound gives me some peace. She looks up at me and I retreat from the window. A moment passes and I hear the car pulling out the driveway and I step back into view of the rest of the block. The house across the street has a truck parked outside. It’s been about five or six months since Alice and her family moved out of the neighborhood. It’s a family of four it seems. A daughter my age, a dad and baby sister held in the arms of her mom. Most of what they say is lost to me. Between the humming from the truck and the rain it’s hard to really get a good listen. The daughter grabs a box and runs to the door. For whatever reason she turns around and for the smallest moment, we make eye contact. I wonder if I imagined her smile.
There’s a thud behind me, a mug had dropped on to the carpet. I turned around and found Quinn with her hands up, as if she was caught with her hands in the cookie jar.
“How long have you been here?”
“Not long, just a minute or two, I let myself in if you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were in the middle of your session and it didn’t seem like either of you noticed me come in, so I’ve been… you know. Looking through your things, checking your drawers. Just general snooping.”
“Yeah?”
“No, but I bought this new book. Seemed like a good time to crack it open. It’s called Purple Dinosaur Boxers, riveting stuff. It’s all about the dichotomy of boxers versus briefs and the personality types associated. You know, like what kind of man still wears tidy whities? I’m honestly asking, why?”
I reach down to pick up the mug from the carpet floor. I blink and the room has warped in front of me. I’m now sitting on the staircase and I see something shift quickly by me. Bang! Bang! The knocking turns into ringing and she begins to slam the doorbell. As I look up, it stops and the only thing in front of me is the bulky mass that is my dad. His hands were placed gently on the top of the coat rack. It feels like there are words left between us and he turns his head. I can see a shadow of his lips moving, but nothing comes out. He pulls his coat from the rack and in one motion he puts it on. I had the words prepared, but just the thought of saying them caused me to choke. My stomach vacuumed the air from my lungs, my vocal chords reversed. The door slams shut and the floorboards raised and rippled toward me like a wave, I was flung further away from the door.
“Clive, we need to talk,” she said as she started to knock.
“Please don’t pretend you’re sleeping, I can see the light from here.”
I noticed something on the bottom step. It was an old polaroid we took together, Alice and I. Her big smile and my tiny one. I went back to a moment when she asked me why I’d spent so much time looking out my window. I told her that sometimes I felt like a ghost. That I felt like I was mourning a life I’d never have. She told me that the only thing I ever had to do, was not hide.
I started to run. But the faster I ran, the further the door seemed to be. Until it was almost an endless hallway, with the faintest light of the door in the distance. It didn’t matter the effort I put in, it just felt like I’d never reach.
The kitchen table made a noise as he put the pot on the table beneath a board.
“Eat up,” he said as he stuffed his face with spaghetti.
“Did you ever finish that drawing?” He asked between his stuffing.
“Which one?”
“You had a whole page filled with sketches of birds, with hair.”
“You saw that?” I laughed a little from embarrassment.
“It was… very different.” We both started to laugh.
“It wasn’t bad, was it?”
“No, no. Not at all. Strange maybe, but not bad. I like that you have something that’s just your own. There was one bird with long hair, was that supposed to be the girl who lived across the street? What was her name again?”
“Alice.”
“Is that weird?”
“No, I don’t think so. You probably don’t remember it because you were so young, but you used to have playdates together all the time, at that park your mom used to take you to. You were only two or three at the time. Quinn might not like to hear it, but she was not your first friend.” He laughed quietly to himself as he scarfed down mound after mound of spaghetti, making a mess of his beard. I motioned to my jaw with my hands, letting him know he had a little mess on his beard. He chuckled as he wiped his face.
“Saving some for later?” I joked as I pointed to the small string of spaghetti hanging from my father’s beard.
“I don’t eat pretty,” We both started to laugh.”You didn’t know? I always have a midnight snack!” He said between breaths. As our laughter died down he said in a strained tone, “God, your mother used to make that joke,” wiping the excess food from his face. “She was so funny, it caught you off guard. Had a hell of an imagination too. I ever tell you what she used to call the house?”
“No,”
” ‘The little blue house with the red door,’ she even went as far as painting the door. She couldn’t be bothered with the rest of the house though, said it was too much work,” He roared in laughter, a deep bellowing sound that shook even the table.
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. You might be the only person who does.” My father sighed and then adjusted before continuing, “I still can’t wrap my head around something you said to me around the time that it happened. You were so petrified by the ordeal, I don’t think you even knew what you were saying. You told me that you went looking for your moms that day. That you wanted to find her. That you followed her into this clearing on the other side of the square. You practically dragged me there to show me. You kept saying something about a monster. That when you finally found her there, it was eating her. I’ve never been able to shake that.”
I wiped my plate clean, and most of the pot was empty given my father’s large appetite. I looked down and could see all of my father’s work reflected in his hands. They were rough with grime so thick on his nails that cutting them would be the only way to remove it. I watched my father’s giant calloused fingers delicately stack the plates. I looked up at him as he stood up to clear the table.
“You always did have your mother’s imagination.”
It was the smell that got me out of bed, the sweet crisp scent of buttermilk. I couldn’t muster the energy to move and instead resigned myself to watching the rotating ceiling fans spin above me. Voices coming from downstairs had followed the smell up to my bedroom. Maybe it’s Quinn, I thought, talking to my dad.
Then there was that laugh, it was a warm high-pitched squeal that sent a wave down my back. I suddenly recognized all of it, the voice, the laugh, and even the smell that had crept up to my room. The touch of cinnamon should have been obvious.
I flung the blanket off and lifted myself. I followed the sound almost as if it was a trance. On the top of the stairs, I stood trying to get a visible angle on our guest. I could only see a shoulder, though the black shawl that hung from it was unrecognizable.
“There he is,” My dad announced, pointing at me as he chuckled in a strange, infectious enthusiasm. A smile plastered across his face, overpowering the gruff veneer his beard usually afforded him. The mysterious woman had gone stiff from my father’s announcement. She faced my father and I could only see the back of her head.
“Martim,” she said to my father as he continued to point at me from where he stood. “Don’t startle him, this is going to be an adjustment for all of us,” she turned around. It was her.
It felt like she had been preserved in time, not a day had passed since I’d seen her last. I felt a single tear slide down my cheek as she forced a smile. I leaped from the final step and jumped in for an immediate hug. I held onto her as tight as I could. It felt like the kind of hug only a mother could return. For a moment I felt like everything could be normal again.
“I’m so sorry honey, I got lost and it took me a lot longer to get back to you than I hoped,” She said in a voice that could only be hers.
“Where have you been?” I asked in a whisper as I fought off the onslaught of tears from my face. Even after all these years I still felt tiny in her arms.
“What’s important now is that we’re together again,” She said as she tightened her hold on me.
I looked up to see her smiling face. She laughed and sighed and then laughed again louder but with more force. The laughter changed pitch, first a sign of relief but now an unnerving shriek. The color in her face began to fade, graying at first and then rapidly decaying. Pieces of dry skin fell off like layers being peeled, dropping from her face like wilting leaves in the fall. I couldn’t move as the laughter grew in its intensity. The room and its surroundings began to lose color, draining with the creature’s vile sound. I had been locked in tighter as another joined the hug and I noticed my father holding us more steadily in our combined embrace. We all began to sink, the floorboards became like quicksand and we were being enveloped by the house; descending into its depths, drowning. “Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?” The creature screeched. “Now we can be together forever.”
I opened my eyes and my hands rushed to grab both my neck and my shirt collar. I could hear what I sounded like struggling for air. My body reacted as though I were being suffocated; as if the air in my lungs were being sucked out directly.
‘It was all a dream,’ I kept telling myself. My heart was racing, my body trembling, shivering as if I were thrust into the cold. I loosened the grip on my collar, my breathing calmed and the panic subsided. I pushed down on the mattress to brace myself and felt the soaked bed beneath me. I was drenched, every inch and crevice of my body covered in sweat.
I looked down and see dark red stains on my shorts. I got to inspect and noticed that there were these long, deep gashes down my forearms. I was bleeding and for whatever reason I was covered in soot.
Help me.