Everything still felt a bit off, but she was home, and that word “home” was a miracle. The breakfast dishes sat on the counter. And for the first time, she didn’t mind that Isaac hadn’t bothered to soak his bowl, that cereal was glued to the sides, and she turned on the water to fill the sink.
As she set the last cup on a towel to drain, a floorboard popped upstairs. She thought she should be scared. But she wasn’t. This ancient place was always adjusting itself like an arthritic old lady. Even if the house did have ghosts, she figured they were nice enough. The way she saw it, the house loved her. It kept her fed and warm and cared for.
Did Isaac love her too? He was good to her. She gave him that. Better than good. But love? She didn’t think so. He wanted to. In the name of the Lord, as evidence of Divine Light, he wanted to. But he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. He might have buried all his love with Daniel.
She started drying the dishes, and the house spoke again, louder this time, a full-on thud upstairs, heavy and muffled, like a sack of wet sand landing. She’d blame Rufus, but right then she heard the dog barking in the back field. Ah, so that’s what had been odd when she arrived home: Rufus hadn’t been there to greet her. Had he been out all day?
Another thud above. Isaac had asked her to leave that space alone, and she had obeyed. No matter how many times she’d gone to the stairwell door, she had never once opened it. But now the house was calling her, was being rather insistent in fact.
Evangeline crept to the door. Some kids at school said the second level was creepy and unfinished and asked if she ever heard Daniel up there. They were trying to freak her out. She hated when people did that. She hated even more that the tactic had worked. The reason she hadn’t opened the door wasn’t a lack of curiosity or even her promise to Isaac. The reason she hadn’t opened the door was that she had been afraid. What kind of way was that to live?
She stood a few seconds with her hand on the knob, then swung it open fast. Just an unfinished stairwell with rough-cut slats, scratched like someone had run up them wearing cleats.
“Anyone home? Isaac?”
The house, having drawn her attention, had gone silent. “Okay, house,” she said. “I’m coming up. That’s what you want, right?”
It didn’t answer, but the silence drew her up anyway, one slatted step at a time.
* * *
—
SHE STOOD AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS. A naked bulb swayed on a twisted cord, and somewhere in the dark rafters, wings beat and settled, a hard-edged cutting and folding of air. The frame of a bathroom stood before her, two-by-fours without walls, bare pipes rising from below. A shower, a flimsy one-piece plastic job with a mold-stained curtain, floated in that emptiness like an alien pod. To her right, someone had hacked a doorway through plasterboard. Her eyes jerked away—the sound had come from there. In this unfinished space, Daniel was fully alive, as if even now he might walk out of the darkness.
She’d often thought of Daniel since she’d moved in—how could she not?—though less and less over time. Sometimes she’d pick up his pictures and study them, wonder if her child would look like that, athletic and tall and good-looking. But each day the baby grew, it seemed more of its own making. She’d taken to thinking of the life inside her as an immaculate conception. Laughable or not, it felt simply true. Whatever the biological facts, none of the possible conception stories could be told in a way that didn’t take an innocent and impute another’s guilt.
Evangeline turned now, faced what she assumed was Daniel’s room. Something sharp jabbed her scalp and she slapped the spot, desperate to swat away whatever it was. A stinging insect? A protruding nail? But there was only her hair and a buried point of pain.
She tried to get her legs to return her below, but they refused. In the end, she headed to Daniel’s room willingly. She believed in facing fear when there was no other option. When she got to the doorway, a bitter cold hit. She stood, attempting to discern shapes in the darkness, and heard what sounded like moist breathing.
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
Movement on the bed, something heavy and dense, and she marveled at how whatever it was changed the air, compressed its shape into the room. She could almost see it through the pressure on her skin.
“Hello?” she said again, and this time she heard a rhythmic thumping.
“Rufus?”
The thumping picked up, and she laughed. “Rufus! You scared the shit out of me! Come on, now. Come on.”
But Rufus didn’t come. She hesitated. Her eyes hadn’t fully adjusted and some doubt remained. Why hadn’t the dog greeted her when she came up? Why was he choosing now to disobey? And how did he get up here anyway? She’d never seen the door below open, and it’d been closed when she went in search.
“Rufus! I mean it,” she said. “Come on. Right now!”
The thumping stopped, and she heard only panting. She bolstered her nerve and strode in, but as she reached toward the dark bulk on the bed, she heard a low growl. Not ferocious, only a warning. Still, she snapped her arm back. A dog like Rufus could tear a limb right off. He had never before growled at her, and she half wondered if maybe this wasn’t Rufus after all but a ghost dog paying a visit. She noticed a nightstand lamp and switched it on, producing a dim light through a brown shade.
It was Rufus all right, sitting on the bed, staring at her, the doubled reflection of the hall’s corded bulb swaying in his eyes. Evangeline stepped back, and he seemed suddenly apologetic. He dropped to his belly, pushed his hind legs straight back, and army-crawled forward to exaggerate the stretch. Then he rolled to exposed his naked belly, turned his head toward her, and whimpered, a look so endearing she went to him and stroked his chest.
“Why’d you do that, boy? Why’d you scare me like that?”
With her touch, he closed his eyes, and his lips curled as if in a smile. Evangeline sat on the bed. Even if the door below had somehow blown open earlier, even if a draft had closed it after the dog ventured up, hadn’t she heard Rufus barking in the back field?
Then she saw the curtain billowing. No wonder it was cold; the window was open. Rufus had probably hung his head out, bellowing his indignation at deer in the field or perhaps announcing his entrapment above. She rose, and Rufus snapped onto his side, staring expectantly. She closed the window and said, “Let’s go, okay, boy?”
The dog didn’t move. She would’ve grabbed his collar and guided him down, but that earlier growl made her hesitate. She sat next to him, getting a sense of the room. Though Rufus had mussed it, the bed had been neatly made. In fact, everything seemed arranged: a bouquet of dead flowers on the chest, college pamphlets on the desk, shirts hung on hooks on the far wall, track shoes and work boots lining a corner. Someone had tried to make it neat, as if hoping the occupant would return.
Rufus resumed his whimpering, and she stroked his muzzle, his eyes gentle now. The dog could hypnotize you with his gaze, make your muscles go limp, your eyelids droop. She yawned, and he flipped the other way, let her curl against his back.
When she’d slipped to that place between consciousness and dreams, another presence entered the room and sat on the bed. She tried to open her eyes, to see who it was, but her muscles refused her commands, as if her body had fallen asleep without bringing her mind along.