She knew better now. She’d been drawn to this suffocated and decaying house, left so long without regular inhabitants, and stained, physically and psychically, by bloodshed. The Cooper family murders had taken place in a time before Ruby could remember, twenty or more years before, but the stains left by the slaughter, both mundane and mystical, were still there for anyone who cared to look. Before, Ruby had never cared to, but the thing within her seemed to relish the crimes it could still taste, nearly as fresh as the day they’d been committed. And the house tried again and again to speak to her, eager to replay its trauma.
Pay it the slightest attention and shadow would thicken, edges sharpen, and the image of Mr. Cooper would appear, limping and bleeding from where his wife had managed to stab him in the thigh before he ended her with his axe. The visions that arose didn’t match the timing of the sound that accompanied them; Ruby had many times watched Cooper’s lips moving, calling sweetly out to his children, long after she’d heard their terrified cries.
A few precious yards of the house’s entrance remained bare of the creeper vine, but growth over the rest of the place had been left unchecked. Ruby had ordered the boy Merle to see to it that the front window was boarded over, making it safe for her to visit the front of the house during the day. She could move freely through the rest of the place without further precaution. What little sunlight pierced the house’s other windows was dyed a dim bottle-green by the leaves of the knotted kudzu that had covered them over.
Ruby examined the blue pallor of her skin given an even more otherworldly sheen by the filtered viridescent sunshine. She could bear this sunlight; it didn’t scald her and send her fleeing for the closest source of cool and comforting shade. Ruby didn’t know why this light should be different from sunlight filtered by shades or curtain. That light still caused her skin to redden painfully within moments of exposure. Perhaps the plant fed on and absorbed the wholesome part of the light that was noxious to the thing inside her.
The thing to which she’d been joined relished the procession of images, turning its focus to the bloodshed again and again, like a child demanding to be told the same bedtime story night after night. Ruby, fascinated at first, now found the house’s reminiscences tiresome. She coaxed the thing within her to look away, knowing that the seemingly solid man, once ignored, would dissolve back into shadow. Besides, Cooper’s bloodshed only amounted to two tears in a bucket compared to the fate she’d planned for Conroy.
SIX
A horn sounded outside, and Ava Dunne removed her soiled apron, folding it to hide the blood from the chicken she’d just cut up, and laying it on the counter. She swatted away a fly that circled the dismembered bird. The horn sounded again. “All right, all right, I’m coming.” She smoothed her dress and headed toward the sound, the heels of her black flats clacking out a staccato beat on the newly laid linoleum. She pushed through the swinging kitchen door and headed down the Oriental runner that led to the front door.
She looked through the door’s window to see Charlie standing next to his red truck, one hand snaked in through the open window, preparing to honk the horn again. She opened the door wide, and reached up her right hand to touch her throat. “Charles Aarons, if I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times. This is a civilized household. I will not have you announcing your arrival as if you were Gabriel himself.” This was not the first impression she had hoped to make on her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. She turned her head slightly in the hope of seeing past the glare on Charlie’s windshield. After catching a glimpse of his passenger, she forced a smile to hide her disappointment. “A drab girl,” she thought. “A practical girl,” she rephrased it to
Pay it the slightest attention and shadow would thicken, edges sharpen, and the image of Mr. Cooper would appear, limping and bleeding from where his wife had managed to stab him in the thigh before he ended her with his axe. The visions that arose didn’t match the timing of the sound that accompanied them; Ruby had many times watched Cooper’s lips moving, calling sweetly out to his children, long after she’d heard their terrified cries.
A few precious yards of the house’s entrance remained bare of the creeper vine, but growth over the rest of the place had been left unchecked. Ruby had ordered the boy Merle to see to it that the front window was boarded over, making it safe for her to visit the front of the house during the day. She could move freely through the rest of the place without further precaution. What little sunlight pierced the house’s other windows was dyed a dim bottle-green by the leaves of the knotted kudzu that had covered them over.
Ruby examined the blue pallor of her skin given an even more otherworldly sheen by the filtered viridescent sunshine. She could bear this sunlight; it didn’t scald her and send her fleeing for the closest source of cool and comforting shade. Ruby didn’t know why this light should be different from sunlight filtered by shades or curtain. That light still caused her skin to redden painfully within moments of exposure. Perhaps the plant fed on and absorbed the wholesome part of the light that was noxious to the thing inside her.
The thing to which she’d been joined relished the procession of images, turning its focus to the bloodshed again and again, like a child demanding to be told the same bedtime story night after night. Ruby, fascinated at first, now found the house’s reminiscences tiresome. She coaxed the thing within her to look away, knowing that the seemingly solid man, once ignored, would dissolve back into shadow. Besides, Cooper’s bloodshed only amounted to two tears in a bucket compared to the fate she’d planned for Conroy.
SIX
A horn sounded outside, and Ava Dunne removed her soiled apron, folding it to hide the blood from the chicken she’d just cut up, and laying it on the counter. She swatted away a fly that circled the dismembered bird. The horn sounded again. “All right, all right, I’m coming.” She smoothed her dress and headed toward the sound, the heels of her black flats clacking out a staccato beat on the newly laid linoleum. She pushed through the swinging kitchen door and headed down the Oriental runner that led to the front door.
She looked through the door’s window to see Charlie standing next to his red truck, one hand snaked in through the open window, preparing to honk the horn again. She opened the door wide, and reached up her right hand to touch her throat. “Charles Aarons, if I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times. This is a civilized household. I will not have you announcing your arrival as if you were Gabriel himself.” This was not the first impression she had hoped to make on her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. She turned her head slightly in the hope of seeing past the glare on Charlie’s windshield. After catching a glimpse of his passenger, she forced a smile to hide her disappointment. “A drab girl,” she thought. “A practical girl,” she rephrased it to
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