The Girl Below(74)

The only thing I was sure of was that I was no longer in the attic bedroom. Wherever I was, it was claustrophobic, with a harsh smell of mildew and wet concrete. Overhead, thick earth bore down and my hands, I realized, were lying in a puddle. My clothes had become heavy with water.

The experience was dreamlike, but it was not a dream. Instead, it was like being pulled backward through time to a distant memory, reliving it with perfect sensory recall. In the dark, when I reached out, I was able to touch the dry nylon coverlet of Caleb’s sleeping bag, but when I tried to shake him, my hand was too weak to close around the fabric. My voice, when I shouted his name, went backward into my throat.

Shifting my weight to try and stand up, my hand struck a group of small, wet objects that were smooth and hard, like pebbles. Straightaway, from their irregular shapes, I knew they were teeth—not just two but enough for a whole set—and my hand shrank from them, colliding with other debris. The water was crowded with matter that hadn’t been here on my first visit, and I groped at textures that were hard, like bone, but also slick. Mixed in with those were fragments of organic material, hair perhaps, and fingernails, an unholy bric-a-brac of human remains. In protest at the strong smell, my nostrils clamped shut. My chest heaved in a sob that I couldn’t hear, and in spite of a rising feeling of disgust, my hands kept searching through the swill for something I’d lost. On my hands and knees, I crawled forward, and encountered a familiar child’s leather shoe, rounded at the end with a metal buckle and an old-fashioned T-bar strap.

My fingers closed like a vise around the shoe, and in the same instant a tapping began, quiet at first, then louder and more insistent. The rotting odor receded, replaced with the doughy smell of a sleeping body, and I was completely dry, no longer submerged in water. Before I opened my eyes, I noticed that one side of my body was jammed up against an intense source of heat, but the knocking sound distracted me from that. My eyelids flicked open, I was back in the attic bedroom, and there stood Harold, framed by the doorway, his body a dark silhouette.

Three or maybe five seconds later, I clocked that Caleb had shunted over in his sleep until he was crammed hard up against me. I rolled away from him, but too late. From his vantage point by the door, Harold would have seen Caleb and I wedged together, my belated attempt to roll away from him, and worst of all, my stunned expression—a possum caught in headlights. I reached for my glasses, and put them on.

In the early morning gloom, the look on Harold’s face was hard to make out, and he was unmoving, silent.

“Hi,” I said. “How long—how long have you been there?”

“Long enough to figure out what’s been going on in this house,” he said.

While I tried to think of something to say, Caleb sighed awake, registered it was morning, and looked over at the wardrobe. “You didn’t wake me up for my shift,” he said. “What happened?”

Harold cleared his throat and flicked on the light switch, startling Caleb. “I’m sorry to interrupt your slumber party, but Pippa just called from Greece.”

Something in his tone made us both sit up and try to look awake.

“It’s Peggy,” he said. “Her fall was worse than anyone thought, and because it wasn’t treated immediately . . .” He trailed off.

“Is she okay?” I said.

“Not really, but she refuses to go to Athens, where they could treat her. She wants to stay put in Skyros, come hell or high water.”

“What does that mean?” said Caleb.

“It means we need to get there as soon as possible,” said Harold. “And that includes you, Suki.”

“Me?”

”Yes,” said Harold. “All three of us.”

“Great,” said Caleb, throwing off his sleeping bag. “That’s just fucking wonderful.” He got up and stomped to the bathroom, banging the door shut behind him.

“Why am I going too?” I asked Harold.

“I don’t know,” said Harold. “You tell me.” He looked meaningfully around the room at the pillows, torches, and junk piled up on the bed. Surely he could also see that my sleeping bag was zippered to the top, as Caleb’s had been.

“You don’t think—” I began, but didn’t know how to continue.

“You might want to put this room back the way you found it,” said Harold, and turned on his heel and left.

Alone in the attic room, I felt a stinging sensation in my hand, and unclenched my fingers from around the phantom shoe. On the palm of my hand, small, but very clear, was a dot of blood where the pin of a shoe buckle had gouged a hole in my skin.