03 - It's Crawling Up the Outside Wall

Funny Games We Used to Play, a serial novel

This is Chapter Three of the serial novel, Funny Games We Used to Play. To start at chapter one, head HERE.

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The pill, the pill, that tiny white world, dissolved beneath her tongue, the softest place, and fled out through her blood stream, invisible constellations of movement that were absorbed here and there, slowed everything down, slowed and slowed her blood and her muscles and her eyes were heavy. Her heart pumped once every hour, every decade, a century between the blinks of her eyes, and time thickened to something she could hold in her hand, something that leaked through her fingers like syrup.

That’s when the Old Woman could sense it climbing the ivy outside the house, Nightmare, clinging to the stone with cracked fingernails, grasping up towards the sill, peeking in through the warped window panes, eyes moving here and there, flickering spasms. Her pulse surged in her neck. She quickly looked at the window again, to spot them because if she could, if she could spot them, they would run off. Nightmare doesn’t want to be seen. But all she saw through the glass was the very last of the night, a final exhale, as it prepared to turn towards morning.

She rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed, fighting the heaviness of the pill, and she let her legs drape over the side of the bed, hoping that would be enough to bring her body upright. Could movement stave off sleep? Could she last another hour, until the morning filtered through the summer trees? It helped, that movement, and soon she was sitting there in her pure white nightgown, her silver hair down to her shoulders, breathing heavy, squeezing her eyes shut and then opening them wide.

She had always loved her hair. It was still thick, even though she was in her eighties. She reached up, rubbed her eyes awake again, and then stroked her hair the same way she had when she was a little girl, holding a thick handful in one hand and running the fingers of her other hand through it, sighing. What was it about that sensation that gave her such peace? She remembered her little sister doing that when they were both young, over and over, fingers through hair, after they had left and sat in that strange house, evening closing in. Fingers stroking hair, soothing.

But the pill still threatened to overcome her, so she leaned forward, rising woozy and dim. Her knees quaked, and she could smell the lotion Vicki and Walls had rubbed into her skin. She sighed, and the sigh made a moaning sound, like wind through a hollow tree. She wavered on her feet, looked back longingly at the bed. Water. She needed to splash some water on her face. That would wake her.

But on the way to the bathroom, a shade passed over her, a darkness, and the smell of smoke, and she changed her mind, though she didn’t know why. And soon she was walking out of her bedroom, moving—so slowly!—down the long hallway, turning out the hall light, that thing Charles had never done. She was feeling invigorated, somehow, and—could it be true?—light on her feet. The carpet gave under her toes like moss, and the air in the house no longer felt stuffy from the summer evening but crisp and cold.

She held out her hand there in the hall, and a snowflake—honest! a snowflake!—drifted down and settled there, in her palm, like a promise. It melted quickly into a drop and she licked it from her palm, and then it was snowing in earnest, right there in her house, and she smiled and smiled as if she had become again a little girl. It was beautiful. She looked up, and the cold snow fell on her face, and she could just about see the hallway ceiling, there above her, somewhere in the clouds.

She walked on, and her feet didn’t grow cold, though the snow was gathering, powdering in tiny drifts along the baseboards. Outside, through the windows, she could see a bright moon passing among the trees, and then the walls and windows were gone and the third floor hall had turned into a path through young sycamores with peeling white bark, their bare-bone branches interlocking over her head. But when she reached the corner of the house, the far corner, (somehow she knew she was at the corner, even though the walls were gone), all the way over by the nursery, it was like Death placed its bony hand on her shoulder, and she wanted to run. Such a chill! Such dread!

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t run away. The thing she was looking for was so close. So close. Just here. Just around the corner. And a realization wormed its way into her mind, that yes, she did want to die, but there was also something else. Something in the house. Something she had to find, first, before the end. What was it? The knowledge of it rested just beyond her mental grasp, her mind so woozy—maybe if she slept a bit she could remember.

But something else was there, too, and it was Nightmare, somehow even in her waking. It was taut and thin and needy, and it wanted to pull her down. In the distance, she heard the whistle of the train, and she remembered all that had been taken from her. Her brothers and sister and parents, gone in an instant. She reached up and held her temples, a hand on each side of her head, and she wept, her tears falling hot into the snow and she wanted desperately to be back in bed again. Why had she come out here? What was she looking for?

The train whistle blew again, and a wave of desperation swept down the hallway, stirring up the snow, blowing it against the walls. Were the walls there, or were they not? She had to find it. Had to. It must be here somewhere, whatever it was she was looking for.

She looked back towards her room—she would go back now, back to bed, and Walls would come and the morning with her. But her breath caught in her throat, like a death rattle: a lone wolf walked slowly towards her, through the snow, eyes a solid black, head down, teeth bared, fur rank and matted in certain places, as if it had just endured a horrific fight with another animal. An arrow stuck out of the wolf’s side, but it didn’t seem particularly bothered by it, not bothered by any of its wounds, for that matter. It just kept coming, implacable.

She reached over her shoulder, as if to pull out a weapon, but there was nothing there, and she caught a glimpse of herself in the window. Her reflection. She was not young, did not have anything to fight a wolf. It was just her, old and weary and worn, with nothing but her hands. She looked down at her hands, empty, lined. She could feel something there, in her hand, like the hollow left in a mattress when someone gets out of bed. An emptiness. She remembered fighting.

But with what was she now to fight this wolf? This wolf that was coming for her?

It was almost on her, and it spoke to her—it spoke!—in words she could understand.

“You’re nothing now. You’re on your own.”

And she turned to run around the corner, and she slipped in the snow, and it came down on her, its jaws on her shoulder. She cold feel the teeth on her collar bone, the tongue bracing for the bite. There was the scraping feel deep inside of her, teeth on bone. She looked into its eyes and saw a long, narrow tunnel, the slipping way out of this world and into whatever comes next. And for a moment she was glad, but even then, even in the mouth of the wolf, she felt a deep longing to find something, something lost.

Then she was on her own bathroom floor and there was no snow and she was screaming, shielding her eyes from a bright light, and hands held her down.

“Mum,” Miss Walls was saying urgently in her ear. “Mum, it’s just me!”

She looked up. She was sitting on the cold tile. Her white nightgown was up around her waist, and she could see her bare, old legs, bent and veined and sagging. She was too tired to even cover herself.

Miss Walls knelt over her, nearly crying, her hand on the Old Woman’s shoulder, right where the wolf had bitten. Miss Walls had a scratch across the lower part of her neck, and a bite mark on her forearm that had just broken the skin.

“Oh, Walls,” the Old Woman gasped, ashamed. “Are you hurt?”

But Walls had only concern in her eyes, looking down at the Old Woman’s shoulder. “Mum, it’s you I’m worried about.”

Blood stained the bright white fabric, right where the wolf had bitten her. She sat up on the tile, her head splitting from the pill, remnants of the nightmare sticking to her, and she reached over and pulled down the collar of her nightgown. Four long scratches, from her collar bone down to the top of her breast.

“The wolf,” she muttered.

“Oh, Mum,” Walls said, with sadness in her voice, and she lifted one of the Old Woman’s hands with both of hers, and she held it as she would hold a child’s hand, a child’s hand that was injured. The Old Woman’s fingers were bloody, and she realized she had scratched herself in her sleep, quite badly, deep enough to draw blood, tearing her paper-thin skin and leaving wispy layers of it on her nails.

“Oh, my,” sighed the Old Woman, leaning her head back against the lifeless vanity. “Oh, Walls, what have I done. And you.” The Old Woman tilted her head to the side and tears gathered. “What did I do to you?”

Walls instinctively covered the bite. “Don’t you worry,” she whispered.

The Old Woman heard someone else come into the bathroom, and she looked over towards the door in time to see Vicki staring at the blood on her nightgown. Vicki’s face went from its normal pale shade to something more closely resembling gray ice, she gripped the doorframe, she sank to her knees, and she passed out.

“Vicki!” Walls cried, moving quickly from where the Old Woman sat to where the young lady lie motionless on the cold tile.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” the Old Woman said in a weak voice, shaking her head and sighing. Her eyes. They were so heavy. She could barely keep them open. She watched as Walls shook Vicki, slapped her gently on the cheek.

Besides Walls’ attempts at reviving Vicki, the stone house was completely quiet. There was no ticking of water through the pipes, no distant hum of some appliance. The size of the place, the time in which it had been built, meant complete silence was still possible.

“More like a mountain than a house,” the Old Woman whispered.

She thought for a moment about the three of them rattling around in this massive house, here during her last days, her sleep-walking and Vicki fainting every five minutes and Walls trying to hold it together. And Alan. Dear Alan at the bottom of the hill, caring for them all.

And then she remembered her dream. Death, yes, death waited for her, that long, cold walk through the narrowest place, and she wanted it now, or at least she was ready—but what was it that lay on the edge of her mind? What was this thing she needed to find before the end?

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To read the next chapter, HEAD HERE.