Page 98 of Cackle

Last night, the laughter made me feel immortal, but in the yellow light of day, I feel ashamed of it. It was crazy to laugh. Why did I laugh? What was so funny?

“I thought maybe it was you,” I say. “Like the spider. I thought it was a curse.”

“It wasn’t me, pet,” she says, stroking my hand. “It was you.”

I have a flash of memory. Me spinning around and around, a swirl of trees, the house. The moon hovering above me. My feet numb. A mist like a silver aura delicate as lace. My voice. A strange song.

I remember how it felt. How I felt.

I conjure it. The feeling. The feeling of watching Dan spit bones from his wretched mouth. The feeling of dancing on the grass, in the moonlight. Of being seen by Lynn and not caring. Not caring at all.

I wasn’t myself. I’m not myself.

Or maybe . . . maybe I’m more myself than I’ve ever been.

“But how?” I ask. “How?”

Sophie puts a finger to her lips, a thought haunting her face.

“What?” I ask.

She smiles widely. “Nothing at all, my dear,” she says. “Let’s go out for breakfast. We can talk over pancakes.”

“You’re obsessed with pancakes.”

She shrugs. “What can I say? They are cake disguised as breakfast. I’ll go get dressed. How’d the dress work out, by the way?”

“It was perfect. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, my pet,” she says, walking upstairs.

I’m left sitting on the steps drinking cold coffee and questioning everything.

I let my eyes wander around the foyer. They distinguish each detail. The shape of the crystals dripping from the chandelier, not quite teardrops. They’re too sharp, and in this exact light, at this particular time of day, they look dangerous, like the kind of icicles that kill people.

The colorful silhouettes the crystals project onto the walls, they’re in constant movement. They make me dizzy.

I put my face in my hands and rub my temples with my thumbs. It smells like incense in here, a scent so rich it’s almost rotten. I’m finding it hard to breathe.

There’s a pain in my chest. A gnawing.

Once Sam and I were watching some show on the History Channel about medieval torture, and there was one type where the torturers would adhere a bucket of rats to your chest and then heat the bucket so the rats would panic and chew through you.

“That’s actually happened to someone,” I said to him, “to multiple people.”

“I don’t want these anymore,” he said, setting the bowl of Cheetos we’d been snacking on down on the coffee table. Then he used his foot to push them farther away.

“I feel bad for the rats,” I said.

He laughed.

“They didn’t do anything! Must be scary for them.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, still laughing, “too bad for the rats. Not the guys getting eaten by them.”

“I feel sorry for the people, too,” I said, because I did feel sorry for them, and because I didn’t like it when Sam laughed at me like that, like I was crazy in a not-adorable way. But then I decided to be honest. “I feel worse for the rats, though.”

I thought about how terrifying it must have been for them, to be minding their own business, happily nibbling on garbage and scurrying through the streets, only to be scooped up and find themselves in a situation in which they thought they’d burn to death if they didn’t eat through some smelly dungeon human.