AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She saw her son’s little face laughing at his own cleverness, at hisown little poems, and felt the agonizing distance between those everyday moments of happiness and the awful moments they were trapped in now.
How does he know, how does he know, how does he know that? He knows us. He knows your little boy but—
“You think anyone will notice smoke throughthisstorm? Atthistime of night? Far as this fuckin’ creepy place is from everything? Nah. You’re aaaaall alone.”
Her daughter nuzzled between her arm and robe. Her son still slept, somehow undisturbed by the noise, the threat, the music, and her fear.
He thinks he’s safe. Because he’s warm in the dark sleeping in his mother’s arms. But the Corner knows him, he knows us, somehow—how?
“Even bricks get hot. Even hidey-holes fill with fire.” The voice of the Corner luxuriated in these words, as if picturing something so beautiful it was impossible to describe. “One-two-three and the best for me. Hear that? Hear that, little pigs? Dried-up spotty sow, little pretty piggy-wiggy? I’m going to burn you up. You and this damn haunted house. Come on out now, before you fry like bacon. And maybe—” The Corner paused, as if thinking, and when he spoke, an edge of the human crept in. “Maybe if you’re good, maybe then the boy can be left out of it. He was never supposed to be involved.” Again, a short silence, the Corner’s voice shifting to grinding, accusatory, fury. “That’s your fault, old witch. That’s your doing. Another one hurt by you not accepting the way things should be. Don’t want more blood on your hands, do you?”
The words lapped so near to their wall she unconsciously pressed herself back on the cold chimney, away from the Corner, away from the creature that seemed to see through the wood, describe where they were, tongue licking over the words “bricks” and “hidey-holes.”The blood rushed and pounded in her ears as she clung to her little boy, and for a moment she thought it was the whoosh of fire.
More blood? What blood is on your hands? Breathe. It’s okay. You’re still okay. Be quiet. He’d never let your boy go. Never. He’s a liar.
The Corner muttered low, talking to himself, only bits hearable. “Living room, kitchen, basement…closet, closets…where? Would’ve seen…you know this…where?”
She understood from these broken mutterings that he was itemizing the rooms of the house, its closets, its underbeds and cabinets. She imagined him counting out on his fingers one, and two, and three, all the places he’d searched for them. All the rooms he’d combed through, snapping aside curtains, doors, covers. Trying to think of what he could have missed. Checking the trackless snow outside the windows for any sign of escape.
He creaked back and forth through the office, a beast in a cage. He sat with a wince of the armchair, then almost immediately began pacing again. Her body stayed pinned stiff and still against the masonry. Her eyes, blinded by the darkness, nevertheless darted back and forth as they followed the source of the words, the sounds, her mind running over everything, everything she’d seen, heard, trying to understand.
Easy-pleasy, easy-pleasy, it can’t be a coincidence. Think. Think! Make a list. This isn’t the first thing you’ve thought was familiar.
She breathed in and out to try to slow her frantic mind. Ordered moments in time and memories into a mental chart.
When you first saw him, saw how big he was, there was something you recognized. Your mind went blank the way it does when you see someone you know in an unfamiliar place but can’t remember their name with their body somewhere so out of context.
And then—his voice. Not the awful Corner voice, but the way he first sounded. There was something familiar, something scratching at you.
Your little girl. The Corner man from her nightmares, she said.
And when he said he just wanted money, he made it clear he knew you were alone in the house. He knows you, somehow.
And the yellow eyes. That shirt. It was familiar. It was!
Easy-pleasy. Easy-pleasy.
But these pieces didn’t come together in a satisfyingclick!Nothing interlocked to give her a cohesive whole, an explanation. She hung her head, dizzied by unfocused disappointment, not even sure if she should be frustrated with the failure of her own memory or if there was nothing at all to remember.
A grating sound, a low roar she recognized as the rolling noise of snow sliding off the roof, triggered the Corner’s footsteps. She pictured him rushing to the office windows at the front of the house to figure out the origin of the unfamiliar sound and seeing a curl of snowwhumphto the ground after slipping off the steep pitch of the roof.
“Oh, shit,” the Corner said, voice shifting out of its low rasp and into a higher register.
What does he see? Has he seen you?
“Holy shit,” he repeated, clearly talking only to himself but so excited, so thrilled at whatever thought had come over him, that his words grew louder.
“You idiot, all this time. You didn’t even think! You didn’t explore enough. Didn’t do what you should’ve. That roofline. There’s gotta be an attic.” He cackled aloud, clapped his hands together victoriously. “They’re hiding in the goddamn attic!”
Later she’d think about how if you grasp tight at anything fragile, you’ll crush it. And she’d think of how fragile memory could be. Clutching at the familiar voice, shirt, proportions of the intruder, at the sound of him saying “easy-pleasy,” her mind had strangled any cohesion between these disparate flashes of recognition.
But the Corner’s joy as he realized there must be an attic, the almost friendly tone he used to scold himself, the undercurrent of cruelty in that happiness, his anticipation of having them by the throats, caused every piece to fold together and set her mind alight.
It’s him. It’s completely and clearly him.
The realization that she knew this man, that she remembered him, burned through every vein. She started to retch, interrupted the physical response as best she could, but something vile still ballooned at the back of her throat, needing to be swallowed.
It’s him.
