Wise creatures, p.14
Wise Creatures, page 14
When I was little I didn’t second-guess myself as much.
I didn’t know how bad it could get.
What they were capable of.
Until I did.
The board is just a prop, right, like the mirror. Nina’s face is intent, her eyes are closed. Her fingers are on the shot glass and I can’t read exactly what she’s thinking but I reach out for it anyway.
She doesn’t want you knowing.
Isn’t ready.
I know I think I know. But I need answers.
I close my eyes and I try to tune them in.
My phone buzzes.
It’s Oz Quigley.
He just says:
hey
And maybe that’s all I need to do.
I take a breath.
And clear my thoughts, my head.
And just think:
hey
hey, creatures
When I open my eyes, Nina’s face is stern. Like Susan’s when I have done something wrong. She puts her phone down, moves towards me.
‘Why is he still messaging you?’ she asks, and her voice is decidedly neutral.
I shrug. ‘I don’t know, Nina. Checking in on you, I suppose. That’s normally what it is, when he contacts me.’
‘Can I look at your phone?’ she asks. ‘I want to see.’
‘Nina, that’s not fair,’ I say. ‘Why can’t you just believe me?’
She holds out her hand.
‘Nina, you’re being ridiculous.’
‘I don’t like it, Daisy. You know how I feel about them.’
‘Them?’
‘Him and his dad. The way they acted when we had the ghost.’
There was no ghost.
I hand her my phone, and put my pointer finger back on the little shot glass.
‘Do we have to move it to goodbye?’ I ask, idly pushing it around a bit, from one letter to another.
D.A.I.S.Y.
She’s scrolling through.
‘It doesn’t fucking work anyways. It’s all made up.’
I can feel how frustrated she is by Oz messaging me, encroaching on her space, and I feel guilty. I should block him.
I try to push the glass towards the goodbye, but it won’t budge.
‘Nina.
‘Nina.
‘Nina!
‘It won’t move.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘You’re just trying to distract me. Seems like you guys message a lot.’
‘Not a lot a lot,’ I say. ‘A bit.’
‘But, like, a lot, for people who aren’t friends.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I say. I try to lift my finger off the glass but it’s held in place. ‘Can you put down my phone and just, like, help me?’
She sighs, and puts down my phone.
Her hand on top of my hand.
The planchette jerks to Q to W to H to A to T. I try my best to push it to GOODBYE.
NO
NO
A
R
E
Y
O
U
D
‘What are you …?’
Nina’s face is pale.
O
I
N
G
T
O
M
E
GOODBYE
Slowly, as though watching a motion capture of a bud unfurling, cracks appear in the sides of the shot glass and it splinters into tiny little pieces beneath our fingertips, making mincemeat of the tops of mine.
different things to different people
We sit with antiseptic, kitchen roll and bandages between us. The shards of glass wrapped up in a Penneys bag in the bin. The carpet scrubbed of blood. What flecks are left, you’d have to know that they were there to spot them.
Her hands on my shoulders digging in.
Nina’s eyes dart to the mirror, and then away as quickly. Like a bird pecking at a crumb, sensing a threat.
I sigh.
She smiles.
‘So … are you going to reply to him?’
I bark a laugh. ‘Oh yeah. Absolutely. BEST FRIENDS.’ I shrug. ‘Nina, I’m sorry. If you don’t want me to talk to him, I won’t.’
She blinks a bit too much.
‘No. no. It’s grand. It’s not his fault I’m mental.’
‘You’re not mental.’
‘Daisy. I’m fairly sure I am. I make up ghosts.’
I look at her. Hear her take a deep breath in.
‘Even before all this, I mean … I just can’t cope like other people do.’
‘I wouldn’t say that’s you being, like, difficult; more the world being difficult for you.’ I move beside her, put my head on her shoulder. ‘And I think … it’s going to get worse.’
She pokes me in the ribs. ‘You always think things are going to get worse. Maybe they’re nice ghosts this time, you know? Who’ll put things back in presses. Do the hoovering.’
‘I’m so sorry for this, Nina,’ I say, and there’s a little crack inside my voice.
Thick marks up her arms.
Blood in the grooves of fingertips.
‘At least we have each other,’ she says. ‘Like, we’re not facing this alone. Myself and Mom are here. And we have got you.’
I nod, but she just doesn’t understand.
What the creatures are.
The things that They can do. Inside me, and outside me.
‘I mean, how bad can it be?’
And I think.
You helped me call Them,
but I brought this on us.
It’s tied to me.
And it will be my fault
if something happens.
‘I’m frightened too, Daisy,’ Nina says. ‘That glass. It felt … deliberate. Brutal. Kind of slow and fast at the same time.’
‘How are your fingers now?’ I say.
‘You got the worst of it,’ she says with a smile. ‘They’ll heal … Isn’t it weird, how little scratches can be more annoying than the big ones?’
And I say, ‘Mmmmmm,’ but the blood is rushing to my head, around my body. I suppose it always is, but I don’t think of it. My heart, my lungs, my brain, they all go on without me really noticing. Until they don’t.
Tap
Tap
Tap
Tap
Bang
‘It will be okay,’ I tell my sister.
She smiles, cos I don’t lie.
But I am lying.
secrets
Susan wakes us in the night. Her face is the way it was the night she told us Caroline and her were breaking up. The lines under her eyes have gotten darker and darker since then. Right now they look like someone drew them on. She pulls her robe around her, squares her shoulders.
Always worried she won’t be enough
all by herself.
‘There’s something in the walls, girls,’ she says, and I can hear her trying to keep her voice even, to communicate to us that she is calm. Of course she isn’t calm. She woke us up because she didn’t want to be alone. I stand closer to her and try to channel a more rational and capable version of Susan. One who thinks more clearly about things. Douses our apple slices in saltwater so they won’t go brown by lunchtime. That sort of energy. That sort of comfort.
She won’t keep you safe.
‘Could it be mice?’ I ask. ‘They do come into houses, looking for warmth.’
Nina rolls her eyes. ‘Good luck to them. It’s freezing.’ She casts a long lingering look towards her bedroom door, only dying to go back to bed. Susan doesn’t really seem to notice. It’s almost like she’s talking to herself.
‘No, not mice. It’s like damp. Or black mould, but more navy blue than black.’
The colour of a road.
Tap
Tap
Daisy.
‘I probably shouldn’t be waking you,’ she says.
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ says Nina. ‘How dare you.’ She’s kind of joking, but I wave my hand to shush her.
‘Nina, you do this all the time, let Susan show us her wall-mould.’
Everything will
rot
will fall
apart.
Susan smiles. ‘It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way. And I’m sorry, but …’ she is looking somewhere far away, ‘I just want you to look at it. To see it.’
She feels like
there is something
looking back.
She opens the door to her room. I rarely go in here. Nina generally barges in, but I always knock and wait. I don’t remember being taught to do that, maybe it’s something I picked up by myself. A reminder that I am not always welcome.
Her daughter
not her daughter
all at once.
Susan’s room is neat, with folded laundry on the chair beside her dresser. Her bed is the one she and Caroline shared, it’s kind of old-fashioned looking with a wrought-iron frame. It’s always been her bed since we were small. A floral patchwork throw over her duvet. The sheets are rumpled. The bedroom walls in our old house had wallpaper, here they’re painted. Susan says that she’ll get them done when she has time. She always leaves stuff like that for as long as possible though. She hates having strangers in the house, it puts her on edge, it always has. I remember staring at a plumber with her when I only came up to her belly button, and the sense that if we looked away he would do something awful pouring off her. Caroline handled that sort of thing once we moved in with her, but maybe Susan is better about it now, considering all of the people we’ve had in and out with Nina.
Not your mother.
The paint is rippling up and out from the wall in a thick curve, round and dimpled as a baby’s leg. I reach my hand out to touch it.
Awful.
‘Don’t,’ says Susan, but I press it anyway, and navy stuff spills out from the cracks, like a spot that has been squeezed. It’s got a thick grainy consistency, like warm tarmacadam. A shudder of revulsion goes right up my wrist bone into my chest. It leaves a sort of coal-dust film on my hand and I don’t want to wipe it on my pyjama bottoms so I go into Susan’s en suite and scrub away. It sticks and sticks. I can see flecks of it between my nails and I have the strongest urge to get a knife and saw and saw and saw my arm off to get it gone away, away, away.
Tap
Tap
Tap
Tap
Bang
‘DAISY!’ Susan shouts, and I turn to her.
‘I can hear you.
‘‘I’ve been calling you for ages, love,’ she says. ‘Where were you? Your eyes went like this.’ She rolls hers back in her head, and reaches out her arms. ‘You’re shivering. Would it help to hold you, love?’
Nonononononononono.
I shake my head. My skin feels too hot and cold at the same time, and I’m trapped. I’m trapped. I cannot function. As I scrabble to get them away from me, away from whatever this is, I move back towards the blanket box at the foot of the bed and trip. I see the distortion of the wall for what it really is.
Veins on a hand.
Say I am open, take me.
Say it.
Say it.
I go towards her mirror, and I can see what I hope is myself. When I reach my hand to touch the surface it is clouding up, damp with something that’s not condensation. My hand towards my nose. It’s sweat. Susan and Nina are staying where they are, staring at me. I cannot read their faces but I will them to know me well enough to not come closer. I lose my balance, cannot touch the wall to right myself. I wrap my hands around my legs and try to go away, to leave my body.
I am open.
Take me.
Susan looks at me, and I can see her putting adulthood back on, like an ill-fitting suit. She swallows, and her voice when she speaks sounds the way it does on important work phone calls. Curt and to the point.
‘I blame you for this, Nina,’ she says. ‘You started it with the ghosts. Go down and get poor Daisy a cup of tea. I’m taking your bed tonight, and we’ll deal with whatever this stuff is tomorrow. You can sleep beside me or take the couch. I’ll see about this in the morning. There’s probably a rational explanation.’
Nina nods and heads out the door, giving me a worried little glance on the way out. A smile like, Are you okay? I smile back like yeah.
Obviously not.
When am I ever?
Susan hunches down on floor, next to me. ‘Daisy, love, this was a lot for you? What do you need?’
I look at her face. If I asked, she’d let me sleep in with the two of them. I could bring the blankets in, make a little nest on Nina’s floor.
She doesn’t want that.
She is too tired for this.
Too tired for you.
I let the panic hum away in the background of me and I tell her that I am okay now. That it was scary but we’ve been through worse. That I just need to sleep. All the things I think she wants to hear. And if my voice is a little flat, my eyes a little dull, she doesn’t seem to notice. She moves beside me, our shoulders an inch apart, and we stay there, breathing together, until we are in something like a rhythm.
‘Can I hold your hand, love?’ Susan asks.
I nod.
She takes it. I can feel her fingers and her thumb against my finger-webs.
I also can’t feel anything at all.
After a while, Nina comes up with the cup of tea, and I take it to my room and sip it slowly, staring at the space between the curtains until the sky pales and the morning comes.
dead decaying things
The smell of coffee permeates the house. Susan’s face is bright. She has put more make-up on than usual. It suits her.
‘How did you sleep?’ she asks.
I smile. ‘I didn’t.’
She takes a sip from her espresso cup. ‘Fair enough.’
I went into her room first thing this morning. Looked at the wall. The mould is still there, and the paint is warping with it, crinkling up like skin that has been burned. The air upstairs is thick. It smells familiar.
Welcome home,
Daisy.
I put my fingers tight against my temples, drawing circles, trying to drown Them out. This. The absence of this is how I knew the haunting wasn’t real. I didn’t feel a stranger in myself. I sit down gingerly, as far away from them as I can manage.
It’s in me.
Or it wants to be.
I feel the urge to carve at myself rise in me. If I could cut Them out, this sense of rot. In geography we learned about algal bloom, this rapid growth of something that was always there before but now it’s stronger, more. It poisons other life, it blocks the sun. What’s inside the water cannot breathe. The world is dangerous now.
A place with teeth.
I stare at Susan. A small amount of spittle has collected on the outside of her lip. She hasn’t noticed. Her lips are red pulsing water creatures, and I have to push to focus on her words.
They’re here.
They’re here.
‘I miss when all the ghosts did was throw the odd thing and annoy Nina,’ she says. ‘I mean, this is probably going to cost thousands to rectify.’ Her smile is getting wider as she speaks. Wider and tighter, puckering her skin.
Her face is lying.
‘Will I make you another coffee?’ I ask, going over to the kettle. Pressing click and waiting for the hum.
‘Thanks, Daisy,’ she says, popping four slices of bread into the toaster. As if we weren’t rotting from the inside. As if we were still safe.
Nina walks in, quiet as a mouse. I turn towards her.
It smiled at me.
It went in Nina’s room.
And there it stayed.
The other me,
the me who is the creatures.
‘Want one, Neen?’
Nina shakes her head.
‘No.’ Her voice is low. Last night was a lot. For all of us.
I decide to make the coffee anyway. They’ll want it when they see it. My hands need some sort of task to focus on. I spoon it carefully into the coffee-pot and add the water.
It takes a while for things to bind to you.
To grow in strength.
‘So, has anything else happened since the investigation?’ Susan asks, her tone going for light but coming out sharper than she means, I think. ‘Anything I need to know about? Because neither of you seemed all that surprised by my walls.’
She butters the toast, and plonks it on the table.
I shrug, and try to keep my voice as calm and level as I can. ‘I’ve been hearing bits and pieces at night. Like I said, I thought it could be mice.’
Nina is untangling the ends of her hair and smoothing it down. A knot comes out in her hand and she leaves it there, beside her untouched toast.
‘Nina.’ Susan is exasperated. She scoops it up and puts it in the bin. ‘We’re eating, pet.’
‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Well, we all need to be thinking. Because whatever this is, it’s not mice.’
‘If we …’ Nina says, ‘were all thinking, you wouldn’t have buttered my toast, would you?’ She tosses one slice each on each of our plates.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Susan says. ‘Can we focus on the haunting for a second?’
‘We …’ Nina rises, grabs two slices of bread and puts them in the toaster. ‘We did the Ouija board the last day and the glass shattered. Is that the kind of thing you mean?’
She’s standing with her back to Susan. Her hands are on the counter, and they’re shaking.
‘It is.’ Susan’s voice is terse. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I look at Nina. It hadn’t even occurred to us to tell Susan. There wasn’t like a conversation or anything, it’s just the way it goes. The raised marks on her arm. The creatures in the mirror, in my brain. The hunger in Them. I chomp down on my toast.
It tastes of salt and fat.
Of something animal.
Nina smiles blandly. ‘Because we didn’t want to worry you?’
‘Worry me?’ Susan’s voice is shrill. ‘Why would I be worried by the both of you literally summoning spirits a wet week after we’ve had the paranormal investigators in? When precisely did this happen?’
Nina turns to me as though I have the answers. What is she up to? Is she actively trying to make Susan lose the plot?
‘Um … like two nights ago?’
