Brood (9 page)

Darkness rolls through the house like black water that has breached a levee. Room by room, she keeps ahead of the darkness, switching on lamps.

Each lamp illuminates the piece of furniture next to which it stands. The Queen Anne sofa with the lilac damask covering, one of the few lovely pieces that somehow survived the chaos of Alex and Leslie's final days. An engraving by John La Farge of a ragged boy with a lyre mesmerizing a pack of wolves. The deep dark leather chair Cynthia bought in a home-decor shop near Union Square, part of her weeklong shopping spree as she tried to fill a huge house that had been all but denuded of usable furniture by her sister and Alex as they descended into animalistic madness.

Each time she turns on a light, Cynthia hesitates, listens. All she can hear is the life outside, the traffic noises that get in despite the soundproof windows. The house is silent, but within that silence, she feels there is a presence, something lurking.

Something crouched.

Something waiting.

She pulls a brass poker out of its stand next to the fireplace in the dining room. She doubles back into the living room and stares for a moment at the open bottle of vodka.
What an unbelievably lucky break,
she thinks,
having it here.
Her old friend and protector.

Yet something stops her. Some surviving thread of resolve. A promise remembered that rises from the ashes and is suddenly alive, shouting to her.
Pour it down the drain,
a voice commands her.

The voice is persuasive enough to prevent her from guzzling the whole bottle in one long, nihilistic swallow, but not quite so convincing as to get her to do its bidding.

It's a standoff. She glares at the bottle, points at it in a warning sort of way, and then turns her back to it—but leaves it full. And she continues to sniff her arm, sickeningly thrilled by the scent of the booze on her skin, the way she aroused herself as a young girl by paging through at the girlie magazines her idiot father thought he had securely hidden—how those Hindenburgian boobies transfixed her, whipsawed her senses between admiration and revulsion.

Oh, the body, the human body: what a source of humiliation and horror. Suddenly, Cynthia is desperate to relieve herself. Her bladder is full and it has blotted out every other sense, just as the dopey little moon can eclipse the enormous burning sun. Her hands clenched into fists, she hurries to the nearest bathroom. She hikes up her skirt, lowers her knickers, glances into the bowl—she will never again sit on a toilet without checking to see if some hideous creature is floating in the water. Her urine comes out of her in a long scalding twist; it goes on and on and on, for she has been holding it in since the morning.

She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. She allows herself to close her eyes—but a moment later, she gasps with terror. Something cold and horrid has touched the back of her neck. In her fright, her feet get tangled in her underwear and she falls to her hands and knees. She rolls onto her back, scuttling away, using her heels to propel her. She looks up and sees on the ceiling a dark spot, roughly the size of a human heart, and from its center comes the
drip-drip
of water.

Moments later she is pounding up the stairs, calling out for the twins. In the back of her mind she is trying to remember which room on the second floor is above the bathroom she was just using. As far as she can recall, it is not a room with water—it's a room with floor-to-ceiling glassed-in shelves, dark wainscoting, once the home of framed antique maps, precious old globes, and various artifacts culled from scientific and touristic expeditions Twisden ancestors took part in.

The room now is empty—freshly painted, but as yet unfurnished. There is an accumulation of water on the wide plank cherrywood floors. Cynthia looks up and sees the huge water stain on the ceiling—and here the water is coming down much more quickly. Each drop is the size of a thumbnail. As the plaster falls away, insects that have been living behind it start oozing out. Are they ladybugs? She's not sure. A clump of them, the color of ear wax, bubbles up, the collectivity of their little wings fluttering into a whine.

She races up to the third floor. She can already hear the water lapping out of the tub in the twins' shared bathroom. The door is closed and she stands there with her hand on the knob, afraid to open it. “Adam? Alice?” She waits for a moment and then twists the knob, pushes the door open, and walks into a world of thick soapy steam, choking in its sweetness. The steam touches her skin like a million tendrils. Fear like a finger opens her mouth, and the steam fills her lungs.

Coughing, she waves the steam away from her as it rushes toward the cool air of the open door.

“Kids?”

She switches on the overhead light. It's dim behind the layers of steam, like a lozenge moon in a cloudy sky. She stands over the tub, peers in. There's no one in it—but she doesn't trust her senses; someone could be lurking beneath the surface.

She is standing in two inches of water. The overhead light is starting to sputter and spit sparks. She has a vision of herself stiff and charred from electric shock, an image so sharp and convincing it seems more like a memory than a premonition.

She twists the porcelain hot- and cold-water faucets closed, but water continues to flow over the lip of the tub and onto the floor. She must pull the black rubber plug that covers the drain. She reaches into the murky water, gropes for the plug. And something wet and rough wraps itself around her wrist. In fright, she yanks her hand out of the water—but it's only a washcloth, a dark brown washcloth purchased a couple of weeks ago from Bed, Bath & Beyond.

She stands there watching the water drain out of the tub. She doesn't know for the life of her why she is transfixed here. It could be as simple as this: Her mind is overloaded and she can't think of what to do next. As the water glugs down the drain, she throws some more of the Bed, Bath & Beyond bounty onto the floor, trying to soak up the water and prevent further damage—though soaked floors and falling plaster seem the least of her worries.

The tub is nearly empty now. Clinging to the sides is a layer of dirt so thick it seems almost like fur. In fact, it looks so thick that she must touch her forefinger to it, just to make certain. Whoever has bathed in this water was unspeakably filthy.

Now she does not think there is someone else in this house; she knows it. She wonders if she ought to dial 911…But how would it look if she called the police to find her own children in her own house? And who trusted the police, anyhow? With their guns drawn, their trigger fingers hyperreactive. If only this house were smaller.

She goes from room to room, each one as inanimate as a painting. Yet the more evidence she acquires that no one is here, the more certain she feels that she is not alone. She can feel the invisible presence like cold air against her. Unseen fingers almost touch her, just graze the ends of the down on her arms, the wisps of hair on the back of her neck.

Finally, every light in the house is on. And every room in the house has been inspected. Closets opened, clothes parted, hangers sent clattering. Beds looked under. They're not here. And yet, she is sure they are.

And if they are not, who is?

On her third pass through the front sitting room, she once again confronts the open bottle of vodka. No, not today, not today. She grabs it roughly by the neck, as if to master it, and pours the contents into the nearest sink, which happens to be in a tight little half-bath wedged beneath the staircase to the second floor. On the way out of the bathroom, she sees the heavy oak door that leads to the cellar.

Once that cellar was a crime scene. It was the place Alex and Leslie kept the pets they devoured more and more regularly as their appetites became more feverish and uncontrolled. And it was the place where they first ventured into cannibalism, eating a young Cuban immigrant piece by piece. It was into the cellar that Cynthia herself ventured after heeding her sister's call to come to New York, and it was here that she saw that poor caged young man, his arm devoured.

In readying the house, Cynthia instructed the contractors to take everything out of the cellar—not only the cages, and the sinks, and the darkly stained concrete slabs, but also the boiler and the hot-water heater, which were relocated to a small shed specifically built for that purpose behind the house. And once the cellar was but a shell, Cynthia padlocked the door, and she has not opened it since. The lock is huge and heavy, with a thick steel shank the weight of a log. And the lock, she sees now, is missing.

Whoever is in this house is right down those stairs.

She places her hand on the doorknob but then quickly moves it away, as if burned.

No. She must do this. She must.

She opens the door. It's so heavy. The cold dampness of the cellar rises up as if resurrected by the light. She gropes blindly for a light switch until she remembers that there is no electricity in the cellar—disconnecting the power was part of the room's eternal banishment.

She must get a flashlight. Kitchen. Drawer. Batteries? God, please let there be batteries.

She is about to close the door when she hears a high-pitched twittering noise, like a tree full of peepers, and then a light drumming sound, like a hundred small fingers nervously tapping on a table. Before she can ask herself what is making those noises, the answer becomes sickeningly clear: rats.

Rats.

Dozens of rats. Maybe a hundred. Locked down in that cellar, maybe born there for all she knows, and now raging up the stairs like a marauding army, drawn to the light and perhaps the promise of food, water. She sees whiskers, snouts, the pale pink of hairless feet. Screaming, she slams the door shut. The lead rat is already halfway through, and the thick door cuts it in half. Its furious little eyes go from wet paint to dry paint; its horrid little tongue protrudes halfway out its toothy, efficient little mouth.

With the poor blameless rat wedged so, she cannot fully close the door. She has a choice. She can open it up a little and clear the rat away with her shoe—unfortunately, open-toed sandals—or she can exert all her force and push the door until it cuts the creature in half. Plan A risks God knows how many other rats racing in—she can hear them squealing and scratching right now—and plan B (which already seems the more likely course of action) will probably mean a little geyser of gore spewing out of the dead rodent.

The other rats have already climbed on the dead rat's back. Tiny little claws show through the crack in the door. They seem to be throwing themselves against it, as if they had enough strength to force it open.

But then she hears a voice—a little weakened call of distress coming from the cellar.

“Help us!”

It's Alice. Alive! Here!

Confusion and relief fill Cynthia like a howling wind. For a moment, she is incapable of thought or movement. Then, with a surge of strength, she shoulders the door shut. It closes with a wet whoosh. The front half of the rat drops to the floor, immobile. One glance. No more. Look away.

“I'm coming!” Cynthia screams, hoping her voice can penetrate the heavy door.

She goes to the kitchen and finds the fresh, barely used broom standing in the closet, a bright copper dustpan attached to its handle. She also finds a brand-new red plastic flashlight. She clicks it on, checking the batteries. The flashlight's broad face yellows brightly.

She returns to the cellar door, sweeps the half-rat to one side. An inch of spine is showing, and a livid fringe of veins. She inhales deeply, as if to put the breath of life into her courage. Breathe in, breathe out. Her courage at first gives no sign of living, but finally, after the fifth deep breath, it stirs.

She waits. Her hope is that the rats that ascended the staircase became discouraged and retreated downstairs. She doesn't know what she will do about them downstairs, but anything will be better than having to cope with them on the staircase. She must move quickly, before her little bit of courage returns to its stillborn state.

She yanks the door open, screaming wildly—to frighten whatever rats might be lurking there and to let the kids know she is on her way. It hurts to scream. It hurts her throat, and it hurts her soul. It's like having her humanity taken away.

And the rats are indeed lurking there. She sweeps the beam of her flashlight frantically from left to right, and with her other hand, she attacks the swarm of rodents with her broom. Some of them tumble down the stairs—she can hear the thump and thwack of them as they disappear into the darkness. Some of them run away on their own. There are no rat heroes in this bunch; just hungry, frightened rodents. One of the rats, however, in trying to escape the sharp hard bristles, climbed onto the head of the broom, and now Cynthia lifts the broom and hits it against the wall with all her might—either killing or stunning the one brave rat. Either way, it surrenders its frantic purchase and is gone.

She directs the beam of the flashlight down the steps—the bar of golden light must raise hope in the twins; they rise to it like flowers to the sun.

“We're here!”

“Hurry! Please hurry!”

Who is more terrified, her or the rats? She is banking on the rats being more scared…

Swatting wildly at the steps, she descends as quickly as she can, mindful that if she falls, all is lost. The beam from the flashlight sweeps over the dun-colored backs of the retreating rats—they flee like villagers from a dragon. Cynthia stands now on the floor.

But there is one that is fearless. Perhaps it's a female; perhaps she has just had a litter of helpless, practically translucent little pinkies whom she is coded to protect. Whatever motivates this solitary rat, it rises on its hind legs, juts its narrow, despised face forward, and gives every indication of standing its ground.

“Kids?”

“They're getting closer to us,” one of them says. Adam, she guesses. He sounds resigned.