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You have to help them catch him.
“Ma’am?”
You can do this. So what if your father-in-law thinks you’re full of shit. That it’s all a “pigment.” Screw him.
“All right, okay,” she said.
Slow and steady she walked the sergeant and the boyish officer through the shattered memories she’d carefully dusted of their terror and reassembled to try to separate fact from panic. She tried to keep it linear, but the sergeant insisted on circles, asking her to repeat things, the same questions again and again. She described the Corner once, twice, a third time. What he looked like at the top of the stairs. What she saw through the vent. Was she sure about the shirt? The weapon? The shoes? And how could she be sure? Wasn’tit dark, wasn’t he far away? What did his gloves look like? The weapon? Again she mimed its flop. Tried to imitate itsthwack.
The memory of that noise penetrated her spine, even through her pain.
She tried not to flinch as the sergeant asked her to justify her failures, then justify them again. Why not go for her car, the gun, her phone, a weapon? Why not take the children with her? Why was she so thin? Did she normally wear contacts or glasses? How had she been able to fall asleep in the hidden place, if it was all so frightening? How had she hit her head? Was she dizzied? Did she lose consciousness? How had she gotten so hurt in the woods, just running down a path? Was she sure of the intruder’s description? It was an awful lot of detail for someone she’d seen for seconds. Why hadn’t she recognized him immediately, if she was so sure it was the man from the café?
Each question sheared her confidence, highlighted how she’d been illogical; each explanation she gave felt horribly insufficient. Her brain went ever more liquid, swimming with whys and hows.
He’s right, it’s strange, it doesn’t add up, your memory is frayed. You made so many mistakes, why didn’t you think? How could you fall asleep? Why did it take you so long to recognize him?
No, there were no prescription drugs in the house. No, no illegal drugs.
Even the things she thought she’d done right, been smart about, were difficult to explain. The sergeant had her describe in detail how she’d gotten her children into the hidden place so quickly. Walked her through the order of what she’d grabbed when (Fuzzydoll, water, son, daughter, Pinkbunny, blanket, pillow) multiple times. The sergeant’s children couldn’t stay quiet for five minutes, how had hers managed for hours? She hadn’t known the fur coat was there? Well, wasn’t that lucky?
The sergeant’s interest perpetually rotated back to the Corner and his frightening voice. Around every bend in questioning lay the central strangeness of his behavior, his words.
“Why would this guy be speaking out loud? Why would he let you know he was headed to the attic, for example?” the sergeant asked.
Why would he? Why would he do that?
She swallowed heavily through her thickening throat. The sergeant was looking at her the same way as when he’d said, “Why don’t you show us where you put those kids?”
Her hands began shaking like they had in the hidden place as a thought licked like fire across her brain.
It’s not that he blames you. He doesn’t believe you. He doesn’t believe what you’re saying about any of it.
She swallowed, as if she could rid herself of this realization by gulping it deeper. “Like I—like I said,” she told him, hesitant now that the sergeant had transformed into someone she had to prove things to instead of someone who would prove things for her. “I think he was trying to scare us. He wanted to get us to make noise, give ourselves away, by sounding scary and saying scary enough things to frighten the kids.”
The sergeant’s steady gaze made her squirm.
He wants to unsettle you. That’s what cops do. Just tell him how it was. No matter how strange. You have to make him understand.
“He also seemed to believe what he was saying? He half explained it. He thought he should have—deserves—whatever he can take. Because he’s superior somehow. That he can ignore the rules, step over them, he said, and take whatever—whoever—do whatever he wants. The disdain was—you could feel it. Like we weren’t human beings to him. And that voice?” Again she stilled her handsfrom clutching and releasing the blanket. “Yeah. It was frightening. He meant it to be.”
“Your kids…they have a lot of ideas. They seem to think this ‘Corner’ was a monster, or something from a nightmare. Or a ghost.”
The kids know. The kids were there. He has to believe when there’s three of us.
“Yes. The scary voice he used was confusing.”
“What did it sound like?”
Metal and teeth. Barbed fingernails scraping a chalkboard. Steel wool scouring a pan bare.
“Raspy, I guess? Like you’d do a villain’s voice when you read aloud to kids.”
“So he was doing an act.”
“I mean, yeah. And it kind of fell apart, eventually. He realized the house had to have an attic. He got excited about that, thought we were hiding up there. And when he got excited, he sounded more normal, you know? All for show.”
The sergeant pulled a sardonic smile she could sense even through his paper mask. “You think he had multiple personalities?”
