Page 132 of Play Nice

With the two of them gone, I stand alone in the closet, gazing up at the dark void.

I climb the ladder.

When I get to the crawl space, it’s exactly as I pictured it, as Mom described it. There’s insulation, white like snow. Cobwebs hanging from the rafters, dancing in a nonexistent breeze. It’s dark and it’s freezing. I can’t feel my face.

Death is strewn everywhere. Motionless flies. Mouse parts. Tiny skulls. Dried-up wads of fur. Tails slithering through the insulation.

But it’s not just carnage. There are photos. Pictures of Mom, of me and my sisters. Empty bottles of liquor. A jewelry box—it was Mom’s; I remember admiring it as a kid, seeing it on her dresser. The cups, our cups. The pineapple cup, the strawberry, the apple. And there are copies of the book. I count two. One out of reach, but one just at my feet.

I pick it up. Flip open the front cover.

For my Daffy—

Your kind and gentle spirit inspires me. You may be my daughter, but I’ve always looked up to you.

I hope this book finds its way to you, and I hope you can find it in your beautiful heart to forgive me.

Love forever,

Mom

A sudden creaking startles me. I drop the book, follow the sound. There’s movement. A bulge, a bending where there shouldn’t be. Where the angles of the house should meet clean.

A shape emerges. I watch as it births itself from the rafters, peels free from the wood—sheds its house skin. It hunches in the gable.

It edges closer, its movements graceful.

Don’t look.

I have to look.

So much of my life I’ve been preoccupied with beauty, and this face in front of me erases it all.

Big milky eyes. Red slits for pupils. A gaping, drooling mouth crowded with sharp teeth. A long, slim crimson tongue split like a snake’s.

I wonder if it loves me most because I can see it in all its hideousness, in all its glorious depravity, and I won’t turn away.

“Hello,” I say.

Hello, I said the first night it showed me its form, the first time it came down out of the attic, into my bedroom. The first time I saw it in my closet. I didn’t scream or call for Mom. I just said hello.

The memory reveals itself to me in the demon’s eyes, like two screens playing home movies. All that was lost to me, all that was forgotten. My memories. It kept them for me. Or from me. So I would come back.

Its claws are sharp against my neck. Its split tongue strangely dry as it grazes my cheek. As it licks a rogue falling tear. As it laps up my fear.

It starts to laugh.

I understand why some ears bleed at the sound of this laughter.

It’s not evil. It’s not joyous. It’s a lonely sound.

This being in front of me is what it is, and it cannot change. It lives in this place amid the damage and the chaos it reaps just by existing, and it breaks my heart because it’s so familiar to me. I love it and I hate it, and I admire it, aspire to be it, and I resent everything about it that I recognize within myself.

It’s got my hair now. It pulls me deeper into the attic.

Gently, at first. Until I resist.

It wants to keep me here. And maybe I would let it if it weren’t for the sound of my sisters calling my name.