AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It’s a groggy morning. I wake up slow, like my brain is trudging through mud. I can taste the sleep on my breath, thick and heavy, and feel a phlegmy film on my tongue, like the kind you peel off a boiled egg. It takes a few blinks until my eyes are fully adjusted, the world coming to in a blurry kind of haze, but when it does, I instinctively know that something is wrong.
The first thing I notice is the quiet. There are no cicadas shrieking outside my window, no birds signaling the start of a new day. It’s almost as if the world has stopped turning and I’m caught up in the stillness of it, floating. There’s the smell of the marsh, too. It’s stronger than last night, almost overpowering, like the water somehow seeped in through my window and spilled onto the carpet.
I imagine it for a second: the tide, getting higher, until it reaches the house. Climbing up two stories, brown water pouring through every crack and crevice and window and door. Trapping us inside, taking us down. Drowning us all.
I clear my throat. “We slept in.”
My voice has a croakiness to it, like an unused instrument, andI roll over to face Margaret. I expect to see her face pushed into my pillow—those big, blue eyes staring back into mine—but she’s not there.
“Margaret?”
I sit up. That’s why it’s so quiet, I realize. Margaret isn’t here. Usually, when I wake up before her, I can hear the steadiness of her breath; a gentle snore vibrating in her throat. The graze of her limbs rubbing against my old, scratchy sheets.
I glance over to my attached bathroom, but the door is wide open. She isn’t there, either.
I fling my legs over my bed, push my feet into the carpet, and feel a wetness gush through my toes. I yank my feet away and look down, the little puddles that had collected from the pressure sinking back into the carpet like footprints on damp sand.
“Margaret?”
I get out of bed and start walking toward my bathroom. The carpet is moist, and for a second, I think again about that strange vision—the water from the marsh pouring into my bedroom—but I know that’s not possible. It could never get that high. I turn on the bathroom light and squint at the brightness, noticing more water on the floor—one giant puddle creeping toward the walls—and a few dank towels heaped in the corner. Already, they’re starting to sour.
Was this from our bath?I wonder, taking a step closer. Maybe we made a bigger mess than I thought. I imagine Margaret clambering out, water spilling from the side of the tub before Mom grabbed a towel and dried her off, tossing it in the corner. Pulling on our pajamas and turning off the light, leaving it for tomorrow.
But then I see myself in the mirror’s reflection, and I know that’s wrong, too.
I look down, grabbing the fabric of my nightgown in my hands. I’m wearing a different nightgown from what I had on last night. Iknowit’s different. I remember, because I remember the little daisieson Margaret’s, her body like a flower field as she lay on my mattress. Mine had daisies too, only bigger, like Mom meant for our clothing to signify our age.
But now, the one I have on is just a clean, crisp white.
“Margaret?”
Something is wrong. Iknowsomething is wrong. I can sense it, a throbbing in my bones, like waking up after a growth spurt. Like my body is threatening to rip straight through the skin.
And then there’s thatfeelingagain, that niggling in my brain, daring me to remember.
I lift my arms and place them on my neck, feeling my jugular pulse. I’m trying to relax, slow my breathing, and that’s when I feel it: something behind my ear, beneath my jaw, that little patch of delicate skin. I lower my hand and look down at my fingers, at the faint smear of brown, and lift them to my nose, inhaling slowly.
I’d recognize that smell anywhere, like death and decay.
It’s pluff mud.
I throw my hair over my shoulder and lean into the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse at my neck. And there, just beneath my ear, are three little streaks. Like fingers.
I run back into the bedroom, feeling my heartbeat climb in my throat. Then I dash into the hallway and run down the stairs, taking them two at a time. My thoughts are swirling around me now, thick and heavy like a cloud of gnats. The spring tide and the water on the floor and the footprints on the carpet. Me, eyes open, walking into the darkness. My mother’s painting, my toes in the marsh.
Margaret, always following me, even when she’s afraid.
I hit the landing and turn into the kitchen, expecting to see her there: Margaret, sitting at the table, doll in her lap. I’m waiting for her to register my appearance. For her expression to sour, her eyes to roll, shaking her head: “You were doing it again.”
Instead, I see my parents.
They’re sitting at the kitchen table, two mugs of coffee between them, their eyes cast down to the floor.
“Dad?”
They don’t look up; they haven’t even noticed me. For a single, unsettling second, I feel like I’m dead. Like I’m just another ghost haunting this place, my body stuck in the walls like rot.
“Mom?”
