Page 55 of Play Nice

I stare at the ugly countertops. At the jar of peanut butter. How did it fall? Did I leave it right on the edge? I must have.

At least it didn’t spatter everywhere.

Like it did in that scene of Mom’s book.

Who did this?

Is this supposed to be funny?

“It was probably the thing that lives in my closet,” I hear myself say, reaching for the jar and tucking it away in a cabinet. I roll my eyes at the idea of a demonic entity with a love of nut butter.

The more I think about the demon or whatever, the more I entertain the idea of its existence, the more real it will become. If I allow myself to attribute every noise, every odd occurrence, every chill in the house to a boogeyman, I will have a boogeyman.

Two years ago, Veronica went on a meditation retreat and came back saying she had this epiphany that the universe sends her butterflies as signs that she’s on the right path. Now she sees butterflies everywhere, all the time. She’ll be getting day drunk at a bottomless brunch, see a butterfly, and think, Wow, the universe is so happy I’m on my fourth Bloody Mary—good for me. It’s a sweet belief, albeit a little self-aggrandizing, but who am I to judge?

It just makes me wonder about belief and delusion. What’s the difference there, really?

Maybe delusion is an eagerness to believe. A desperation for it.

Did Mom ever think about any of this? Did she ever ask herself these questions? Not Mom in the book, in her memory, or mine. Mom in life. Back then, in real time.

I’ll never know.

I yawn and step out into the hallway.

The dragging noise is back. It transforms quickly into a scraping. An ugly racket. Nails on a chalkboard. Coming from…below me? Beneath my feet?

It’s like someone’s downstairs pulling a rake across the ceiling.

This isn’t a matter of belief or delusion. It’s happening. It’s happening.

The temperature drops. My heart plummets into the pit of my stomach. My knees buckle. I’m dizzy, and nauseated, and…and I don’t know how to be scared like this. My body doesn’t know what to do with this fear. My mind either.

I have no fight-or-flight reflex. I’m a creature who has existed in comfort practically all my life, and the supreme discomfort of listening to this scraping is maddening. My hair is in my fists. My back against the wall.

Are the walls bending? Is the floor tilting? I can’t get my footing.

The scraping stops, and the world holds still, and it’s brief but it’s there.

Laughing.

A split second of it as the lights flicker and then go out.

In the dark, it’s quiet again. I reach out as my eyes adjust, stumble forward, totally disoriented.

What I feel is skin. Hot skin at my fingertips.

The lights fizz back on and there’s nothing in front of me.

I stay where I am, hoping in vain to steady myself. After a minute I make my way over to the couch on Bambi legs.

I sit and stare straight ahead. I listen.

The silence is somehow more menacing than the strange noises—than the dragging, the scraping. The laughing. This silence isn’t calm; it’s waiting. There’s something coiling inside it, I know. I can feel it. I believe it. If I were to close my eyes, I would see it.

Sometimes silence isn’t peace; it’s war.

I’m afraid to blink.