The Unquiet (37 page)

Creak … creak … creak …

The grinding of a rope swinging from the Hanging Beam.

Creak … creak …
back and forth, back and forth.

This isn’t happening. I am dreaming again.

With my breath puffing from my lips in shallow bursts, I open my eyes and peek up at the moonlit ceiling.

Nothing there. No rope. No swinging corpse.

Giddy with relief, I flip on my lamp, scramble up—and freeze.

There, on the floor, I see my chair—the same one I picked up yesterday after standing on it for some
sick, unknown reason
and pushed back under my desk—lying on its back, four legs pointed sideways. On the vinyl-cushioned seat, imprints of two bare feet fade away before my eyes.

Real feet. Toes and everything. Feet much bigger than my own size sixes.

“You’re not really here,” I whisper.
Whoever you are
.

No answer.

When I was little, I thought a monster lived under my bed, something with claws and fangs and foul, fiery breath. When my fear kept me awake, I’d scream for Mom and Frank till one of them showed up to promise me I was safe.

Feeling ridiculously immature, I hold the covers to my chin and call, “Mom? Mom!”

But Mom doesn’t answer, not even when I call her a dozen times.

I don’t hear a sound, not even the piano.

When I smell coffee brewing, I inch my comforter away from my head. Yes, the chair’s still there, a ghoulish monument. Tripping over my bare feet, I fly down to the kitchen. Mom, startled, sloshes coffee. “What? What happened?”

Good! She can tell something’s wrong
.

“My chair fell over last night for no reason at all.”
After it walked from my desk to the foot of my bed, that is
.

“Well. Isn’t that odd?”

Surely she doesn’t mean this as a serious question. “Do you think this house is haunted?”

“No, Rinn. Do you want toast or a bagel?”

“I’m telling you, that chair fell by itself!”

“Maybe it broke. Or the floor’s crooked. It’s a very old house.”

Or maybe Mrs. Gibbons tried to hang herself again
.

I lick my lips. “Mom, when’s Bennie coming back?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because … because somebody needs to check that pool room door.” When Mom stops, a bag of bagels in one hand, a bread knife in the other, I anxiously push Meg and
her
kitchen knife out of my head. “I think it’s unlocked. I mean, I
know
it’s not locked.”

“And how do you know that?”

I hate that I have to lie. “Um, I just heard that somebody broke in there again.”

She views me with increasing suspicion. “Why this sudden interest in the pool room?”

“I—it’s because—” I can’t say it.

You have to. HAVE to!

So I rush upstairs, grab my list of “Annaliese things,” then
race back to the kitchen and hold it out. Mom skims it and hands it back.

“Well? Do you get it?” I ask hopefully.

“Toast or bagel? Last chance. Though the bagels might be a bit stale.”

“Mom, everything on that list is true! She hurts people.”

“She?”

“Annaliese! It’s like everything you’re good at, everything you love, she steals it away. Or if there’s something you shouldn’t do, something you’re trying
not
to do, she takes away your willpower. She makes you fail. She sucks your soul out till there’s nothing left!”

Mom sinks into a chair and watches me intently. She’s listening. Listening!

“She killed Dino and Tasha. She could’ve just played with them, like she played with Cecilia and Meg—”

“‘Played with’?”

“Took their strength. Like she took away your music. The way she made you start smoking. She takes thing from people—but she
killed
Tasha and Dino.”

Calmly Mom asks, “What, exactly, do you think she took from
you
?”

“Well, nothing yet.” Though my guitar skills seem to be lacking lately. “But that’s because of my meds. She can’t reach me when I take them, but she
can
when I
don’t
. Somehow they keep her out. Mom, it’s true!”

Mom’s eyes narrow. “Oh, really. And how did you find
that
out?”

Fish-mouthed, I flop around in my own trap. Mom rises,
stalks to the counter, saws a bagel with the knife, and slaps the halves into the toaster. The lever slams like a guillotine.

“How long have you been off them?” she asks without turning.

I play with the salt shaker. “I’m not. I only stopped them for a few days.”

“You stopped them,” she repeats.

“I had to! I had to find out for sure.”

“Find out what?”

“If Annaliese is real.”

I hold my breath. Mom sighs, shakes her head, and returns to the table. She sinks back into her chair and takes my hand without hesitation.

Thrilled that she’s hearing me out, I rush on, “That’s why you have to talk to Mr. Solomon. He has to make sure that room stays locked. He has to, to
seal
it or something. And the tunnel? Mom, that’s not safe, either. Annaliese is dangerous! She is! And I think she’s getting stronger …”
Because she found me last night. She came into my room
.

Though her fingers remain entwined with mine, Mom’s voice floats over from an unexpected distance. “I can’t believe you stopped taking your meds, Corinne. You promised me. You promised Frank. After what happened to Nana, how could you be so
stupid
?”

Starkly confused, I recoil. Mom, back at the counter, taps the same knife impatiently on a plate. Jaw fixed, face creased, she glares at the toaster as if willing it to pop before she smashes it on the floor.

Yet she’s
also right beside me
, speaking in sync with the “other”
Mom: “I’m so sorry, honey. I’m trying to understand all this, but—”

“Mom?” I glance fearfully from the Mom at the sink to the Mom holding my hand.

I’m hallucinating. I never should’ve stopped those pills. Now they don’t work at all! I’m doomed
.

“This is what I get for trusting you,” says the Mom at the sink … while the Mom at the table says earnestly, “I can’t ask Mr. Solomon to seal that door, not without—”

“—this was a bad mistake, bringing you here. You’re sick, and you know it, and you won’t take your goddamn pills. Oh, yes, the doctors warned me. It’s never going to end—”

“—a
sensible
reason. Honey, you need to be truthful or I can’t
help
you.”

“—for us, will it? How much more can I take? How much?
How much …?
”

Chlorine spirals up my nose. I yank loose and slap both hands over my face. “Shut up. Both of you!
SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!
”

Wearing only my SpongeBob pajamas, I fly out of the house to crouch beside the garage. Is this part of it, too?

Is this Annaliese?

Or ME?

I can’t tell, I can’t tell!

“Rinn!” one of the Moms shrieks from the back door. “Get in here! It’s freezing!”

I can’t. I’m afraid
.

I shiver against the splintery garage wall, my bare feet burning holes in the dazzling new snow. The back door slams and muffled clomps draw near as Mom—or whoever—marches over.

I flail my arms. “Don’t touch me!”

“Rinn! Stop it!”

I shrink away, afraid to look, as she swoops me into a ferocious hug. I smell cigarettes and chlorine, but the anxious eyes that meet mine are my mother’s eyes. Still, I want to hit her, to fight her off. I want to run, run, run, but I’m not even dressed, and where would I run to?

No place is safe
.

Instead, I let this Mom hug me and wipe my tears on her robe—tears,
real
tears, for the first time in forever—and lead me back into the house.

Believe it or not, I’m relieved to see my desk chair where I left it: ordinary and benign, just a knocked-over chair with no ghostly feet imprinted in the seat. Even if I did imagine those footprints, at least I know the chair really
fell
. It would’ve been worse to find it back by my desk where, in a normal world, it would’ve stayed all night.

Gathering courage, I lift it upright and then whip my hand safely away.

Nothing happens. The chair simply sits there.

I pile every blanket I can find on the turret floor, far away from the Hanging Beam, and stay there all day, not reading, not thinking. When Mom shows up later with Pepsi and a tuna sandwich, I pretend to be asleep. I don’t want to have to guess which “Mom” this really is.

There were
two
of them this morning. One said “goddamn,” a word my real mother never uses.

Forget the pool room. Forget the tunnel.

Annaliese can reach me no matter where I am.

Sunday, December 14

Calmer by morning, I call Nate. He and Luke are on their way out to visit relatives in Cincinnati. At least they’re not hunting, I think, though I can’t imagine Nate
ever
picking up another shotgun.

So while the guy I am now madly in love with is missing in action, I finish an English paper, paint my toenails blue, and jam on my guitar. I leave my room once during the day to pee, grab an apple and a bottle of water, and take my meds. Mostly, I sleep. I do manage to get through “My Sweet Lord” without missing a note.

Take that, Annaliese
.

You too, Mom. Both of you
.

Around midnight, I notice the lavender scent seeping up through the iron latticework of the heat register. Mom, burning a candle so late? In a surreal daze, I walk downstairs to ask her to blow it out. Honestly, I
hate
that smell now.

The candle, however, sits unattended on the steamer trunk table, which means Mom left it burning when she went to bed.
Is she trying to burn down the whole freaking house?

The thought nauseates me.

Remembering the séance and that massive puddle of wax—
hot
wax, when the rest of the pool room felt deadly cold—I
poof
out the candle, run back upstairs, and curl up in my turret in my nest of blankets.

I don’t turn my light off.

Monday, December 15

“Well, hi, stranger,” Mom greets me. “It’s about time you came up for air.”

I fake a smile and steal a look around for any sign of that “other” Monica Jacobs. Mom watches, her thoughts perfectly clear to me:
Hmm, darting eyes. Rinn must be paranoid again
. I’m sure she noticed I didn’t eat her tuna sandwich, either.

She shakes out my meds for the first time in ages. Is this a Fake Mom trick? Or has Real Mom decided she’d better start divvying them out again?

She withdraws her hand as I reach out. “Promise me.”

“I promise.” Trust me: I
know
I’ll have to take these the rest of my life, and no, I will never be stupid enough to stop them. Funny how this knowledge no longer makes me angry and resentful. Instead, I find it liberating.