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“Honey, he’s a bad guy, like he said. He’s trying to frighten us. So that we make noise. So he can find us. We have to be quiet.”
Delicious.
“Is he trying to hurt us?” her daughter whimpered.
She was afraid that if she told the truth, the children would dissolve into fear, cry, give themselves away, and in the inky blackness she couldn’t speak.
“Is he going to hurt us?” her daughter asked again. “Mommy?”
It was always difficult, lying to the children. Her husband had gotten angry when she’d matter-of-factly explained what had happened to her mother after her daughter asked why they’d never met their “other grandma.” He’d been even angrier when the children blithely recounted to him her detailed description of where babies came from. He couldn’t understand why, without any discussion with him, she’d answer direct questions honestly, risk having a five- and eight-year-old informing their friends about the birds and the bees, about violent grandmother death, yet still keep up the farce of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. She couldn’t explain it, either, just found herself oddly incapable of lying to those gentle, upturned faces when they asked her straightforward questions about things so fundamental.
She rubbed her mouth, hand gritty from the grime of the hidden place. The children stiffened when, from a different part of the house, far enough away words were impossible to make out, againcame the rumbling sound of the Corner trying to frighten them out of a new room.
“He won’t hurt us, because he won’t find us, okay?” she at last managed to say.
“Was the Corner man talking about me, Mama?” Her daughter’s voice wavered. “Was the little girl he talked about me?”
She shouldn’t have to think about these things. She’s so little. So little.
“I think so, love.” She stroked her daughter’s back. She tried to keep the sob out of her voice. “We all need to stay quiet and safe together. We’re a team.”
Her daughter thought a moment, then said, “Okay, Mama.”
Such a brave little girl. And he was talking about you, too, wasn’t he? The “female obstacle,” he said. The “old sow.” That’s you. “I step over,” he said. You’re one of the obstacles he’s stepping over to get what he wants.
Her son’s voice burbled with tears. “I want him to go away.”
“I know, love.” She ran fingers through her son’s hair as steadily as she could manage.
The windows rattled in their frames. The storm was picking up. Frozen air came rushing down the chimney, forcing dust through the masonry around them. The whole stack seemed to sway, surrounding them with the crunching sounds of brick on old wood.
He watches from corners. Hides in nightmares. Watches her sleep, she said. Of course it’s nightmarish to her. Of course she’s afraid. You have to be the calm one. Think of next steps. Don’t let him win.
You need to get the children comfortable so they can stay quiet.
“Let me move the blanket so I can wrap you two up,” she whispered. “So you can sleep. We need to stop whispering, though. Stop talking.”
She guided them slowly, blindly. On all fours, she dragged the blanket as deep into the hidden place as she could, as far away from the opening of the vent as possible, one hand up to protect herpulsing skull from further damage. She spread out the blanket. Patted hands around to find the pillow, and placed it.
It was narrower where the space backed up to the domed shape of the beehive oven set into the living room fireplace. Feeling with her fingertips, she got an idea of how tightly they were tucked between the paneled wall of the office, the curve of the oven, and the tall climb of the chimney.
A den, not a tomb. A den, not a tomb.
“Come here, crawl, please, carefully,” she whispered. She spread fingers wriggling in blackness until she felt one child, then the other. One of them kicked her in the breast, another poked her in the eye as she helped them to the center of the blanket. She blinked the poked eye. Rubbed the bruised breast.
She couldn’t stop touching the children. Stroking their hair, squeezing a hand. Her arm around a shoulder, lips kissing a forehead. The quiet, the blackness, was so all-consuming, made them so unseeable, that without that touch she feared her children might disappear. Be eaten. Again a line from one of the children’s books she’d read and reread aloud to them flitted through her mind.
I’ll eat you up I love you so.
She folded them in the blanket, stroking it to be sure their soft little limbs were covered, heads sharing the pillow. Found Pinkbunny, found Fuzzydoll. Knocked the dust off them. Made sure the children weren’t so close they’d go straight to shoving each other. Were close enough they’d warm each other.
“It’s a little blanket burrito. Not so bad. A snuggly little burrito,” she said.
She curled her body around them. Felt the cold air freeze her legs in the exposed place between her slippers and the robe. Felt it creep along the back of her neck, down her sternum, chilling her sweat.
Again and again, she told herself this was all real, it was no nightmare, that no fanged Corner had crawled out of dreams or shadows to devour them.
He’s a real man. A real person.
