a gothic serial novel: the turn, part 10

BY RACHEL FEDER

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Editor’s Note: This is part of a serial novel, THE TURN, which will be published in installments at Luna Luna. This is Part 10. Read the rest here.

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25.

The downstairs hallway is still and quiet. Quinn’s white noise machine buzzes softly somewhere upstairs.

Am I really here? Was I ever really gone?

Thebes’s bedroom is undisturbed, the rocker still. I lean over his crib and let out all the air in my lungs.

He’s there. He’s here. Sleeping peacefully.

But he isn’t safe. I’m not safe.

I need to figure out what’s happening, but I can’t leave him alone.

I pick the baby up, nestling him against my neck and chest. He nuzzles into my clavicle, making a slight snoring sound, but doesn’t wake up.

A sharp tooth. A glow in the window. A light in the yard.

My ankle slides when my foot hits a plastic potato from Thebes’s play kitchen. I bite my lip to keep from screaming out in pain.

I need to talk to Alison.

Thebes in my arms, I walk upstairs, locking the back door as I pass it. Turn, turn, and I’m outside her room.

Knock, knock.

Surely I can trust Alison; after all, Thebes is her baby.

Knock, knock.

It’s awkward, but I’ve been an easy houseguest. I’ve been a fucking fabulous nanny. Besides, I wouldn’t be waking her up if it weren’t important.

If it weren’t—I shudder—a matter of life or death.

Steadying the baby against my chest with one arm, I open the door.

The room is empty.

Fluttering in my lungs, ice in my chest, ants in my spine.

Alison is gone.

A couple paces and I’m in Quinn’s room. Quinn is gone, too.

26.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Think, Baxter.

Back in Thebes’s room, I change his diaper, then layer a jacket and hat over his fleece, footie pajamas. He screams with anger, then settles down and slips back into sleep in the baby carrier Alison hangs on the hook by the front door.

In the kitchen, I fill a canvas tote with two bottles of formula, a bag of cheerios, two granola bars. Shrug my winter coat over the sweatshirt. Curse my ankle, think about icing it, then decide there isn’t time.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on. All I know is that I’m not safe, and Thebes isn’t safe.

The baby was alone in the house. The door was unlocked.

I feel in my front sweatshirt pocket for the tooth but it’s gone. Retrace my steps and can’t find it anywhere.

I have an old beanie of Jack’s under my bed; it still smells like him. I pull it down over my ears, and pull my hair into a loose side braid.

I look at myself in the mirror. I look…

Thebes fusses, and I slip a bottle out of the bag, placing the nipple in his mouth. I need to get more formula, and then I need to get out of here before someone comes back.

I look like a mother. I mother walking into the dangerous unknown to protect her child.

27.

I leave the back door unlocked behind me. I’m not coming back.

The yard is so familiar. How many afternoons have I spent out here with the kids, whiling away the hours, watching the smoke collect in the distance, rushing inside as the ash began to fall?

Now the air is still and chill, the unseasonably warm day going cold on me. I can smell livestock to the north, odor of feces and animal gas pushing down the mountain range on the cold air.

The tree is gone—workers chopped it up and carried it away. Only the stump remains, loosed from its hold.

The door to the neighbor’s house is unlocked.

a gothic serial novel: the turn, part 9

BY RACHEL FEDER

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Editor’s Note: This is part of a serial novel, THE TURN, which will be published in installments at Luna Luna. This is Part 9. Read the rest here.

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23.

I cut down below the road—the shortest route back to the house is on the diagonal. The ground beneath my feet is slick with leaves, pine boughs a blur. My legs are moving independently of my mind, all animal instinct and taut muscle. The swish-swish of my leggings, my racing breath, and the heartbeat pounding in my ears drown out all thoughts but one.

Thebes.

The weight of his body on my wrists. The slap of his hand on my clavicle. The way he nuzzles into me, his eyes wet with tears. A laugh that bubbles up from a place I can barely remember, his babbling a map to something I’ve lost.

I need to get back in time. I need to protect him.

Arms pump at my sides, pressing through the fragrant mountain air. The bandana around my neck scratches at my chin. My sweatshirt is suddenly too hot, but there’s no time to pull it off. My body breaks into liquid.

Before I realize what’s happening, my legs come out from under me, ankle a sharp pain I feel in colors—red, pink, black—and then—my head.

24.

I’m in Thebes’s room, rocking him.

My chin on his soft, sweet hair.

He’s pinching my arm so gently. Pinch, pinch. As if to say, you’re here.

I kiss the top of his head so softly, as if to say, of course.

I’m not asleep but I might be drifting off. Pinch, pinch.

And then another pinch. Harder now. A scratch.

Startled, I look down.

Tortoiseshell glasses. Those eyes—so blue—

Pinch, pinch.

Now my eyes are closed and I can’t open them. Colors prick the edges of my field of vision.
My fingers run softly across lips. Over the outline of a sharp, pointed tooth.

Pinch, pinch.

I startle awake in a field, in wet grass. Broad daylight. The crags loom over me.

Shudder when I notice a figure sleeping beside me. A knitted cap covers his hair. Is it Seb, or is it Jack?

Hey, I say, shaking his shoulder, but he doesn’t wake up. Hey, again, louder now, harder.

Pinch, pinch.

He rolls over, but I wake up right before I see his face.

25.

I come to just in time to see Jack’s headlights disappear around a bend in the road, the full weight of headache rushing in. When I shift weight onto my ankle, I see stars.

Thebes. I have to get home.

I flip onto my belly, pressing my palms into the leaves, and push up. I pull my good leg under me and brace my forearms against my thigh as I stand, then drag my busted ankle into position.

For a moment I think about calling Jack, asking him to come and carry me to the car and drive me back to Alison’s house, but there isn’t time.

Something bad is happening. And it has something to do with the baby.

Cursing under my breath, I step forward gingerly. Before long, I can see the house. I left the floodlights on in the backyard, and as I amble into their glow I feel a great stilling.

I’m here now.

Either something happened, or it didn’t.

There’s an object glistening in the grass, and I pick it up. Feel a strange sense of detachment as I look down at my palm, shivers crawling up and down my back like spiders.

It’s a sharp tooth.

I locked the back door when I left—I’m absolutely sure of it. But it’s not locked now. It swings open easily in my hand.

a gothic serial novel: the turn, part 7

BY RACHEL FEDER

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Editor’s Note: This is part of a serial novel, THE TURN, which will be published in installments at Luna Luna. This is Part 7. Read the rest here.

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19.

I lock the bathroom door and draw a hot bath, hoping the water gushing through the old pipes doesn’t wake anybody. I peel off my pajamas, throw them in a pile on the floor, then push them up against the crack below the door, shivering.

In the mirror, I’m a mess. Between the scratches and bruising on my arm, the bruises on my belly and hip, and the skinny scab on my breast, I look like a lion tamer, not a live-in nanny.

It’s so impulsive. So fucking impulsive, I know, but I take a picture of my reflection in the mirror. I almost text it to Jack, but I stop myself.

Let him remember me the way he remembers me.

My breath catches in my throat as I ease into the bath, the water burning the scrapes, then making them tingle numb. What happened last night?

I remember sitting on the right side of the couch, Alison and Seb to my left, the dining room and the arched entryway to the kitchen to my right. Was I watching the election returns? I remember looking at my phone, but not what I was doing. Was there a light in the yard?

The part with Seb must have been a dream. That’s the part I’m sure of. First, Seb would never kiss me. Second, the dream kiss didn’t feel like a real kiss. Not warm and quivering human and whisper of someone else’s breath, but instead something fast and hard and hot and sharp, like the explosion of a feeling you can’t describe, physical but not in the way touch is usually physical.

I sink down into the water, close my eyes. Jack says I’m not safe. He calls this danger. My hands find the soft curves of my own flesh, tactile patterns over pain. It’s a language I cannot read, at least not yet. I close my eyes, head back against the cold porcelain.

I hear the front door open and close. I hear a car start.

20.

For days, we await the election results, Alison’s timbre timid, the television a muted dance of maps. She’s quieter than I’ve ever seen her, and Quinn goes into herself, too.

I haven’t seen Seb in days.

On Saturday, the man who wants to be in charge wins, and Alison is ecstatic, if a little weepy. She’s on the phone with her friends all day. “He won,” she says, “thank fuck.”

That evening she tells me Seb has left on a research trip.

“Really?” my brow furrows, my molars crunching into a hummus-dipped peapod.

She shrugs. “Yeah, it’s OK. He’s still in his pod from work and they’re just at one of their field sites. So no biggie for him. Just, you know,” her eyes go misty as she gazes out the kitchen window. Then she furrows her forehead, revealing a crease between her eyes. “The heck is that?”

Alison presses onto the deck, Thebes on her hip, and I follow. The neighbor’s house, empty and cavernous, gapes at us, surrounded by the refuse of renovation.

One of the upstairs windows of the empty house shivers with an eerie, orange glow. Then we feel a gust of wind, and the light goes out.

21.

The man in charge has not conceded. Onscreen, he stands in the rain with no umbrella.

My scratches scab with indecision.

I know I should tell somebody about the bruises. Jack. Alison. A doctor. Why do they feel like a secret?

It’s late but I can’t sleep. The air pricks my skin all over. I put on my softest sweatshirt, the one with the crags on the front. I pace the room, straightening up, tinkering with things.

I wish I were at Jack’s place, crackle of firewood, heady scent of ponderosa, his arms around me, his old Jeep that could take us anywhere.

I should write, but even Alison doesn’t seem to be writing much these days.

I hear the back door close, freezing me in place.

Hackles of the beast I was raise on my back. There’s somebody in the yard.

I can’t make anything out; it’s just a dark, roughly human shape. No light this time, moving away from me, and then it disappears.

Did it see me? I had the curtain wide open, the lamp on. Quickly, I move to turn out the light, but the figure is gone.

And then I see it. In the neighbor’s house, the one they’re renovating, behind the empty space where a tree was felled, and dismembered, and hauled away.

There’s a flickering orange light in the window.

I reach for my phone and text Jack as quickly as I can.

OK you win. When can we meet?

A Gothic Serial Novel: The Turn, Part 4

BY RACHEL FEDER

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Editor’s Note: This is part of a serial novel, THE TURN, which will be published in installments at Luna Luna. This is Part 4. Read the rest here.

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11.

I read and reread Jack’s message, cocooned under my comforter:

Fuck. Baxter, it’s not what you think. When can I see you?

I try to think of something to say. No way am I seeing him—Alison has strict pod protocols, plus I know Jack too well. He may be alone most of the time but there’s no way he’s gone all these months without bringing beautiful younger women back to the woods with him. The thought makes my stomach turn.a

I tuck my phone under my pillow and try to fall asleep. I don’t know how much time passes before I’m awakened by the soft, decided weight of a body landing on the bed.

“Baxter,” Quinn whispers, “it’s outside.”

“What’s outside?” I sit up, drowsy, touch her hair.

“The light. The light’s outside again.”

I push the curtains aside, and sure enough, there’s a small light moving across the yard. At least, it seems like it’s in the yard. I squint but I can’t make anything out.

“It looks like it’s right outside,” I tell Quinn, rubbing my eyes, “but it could be a headlamp out on the trail.”

“But why would somebody be hiking in the middle of the night?”

I shush her, shrug my shoulders, and draw the curtains. Walk her back upstairs, pour a cup of milk, and tuck her into bed.

Back downstairs, I step outside. The yard is empty, the light gone. Chill of autumn air across my cheek.

I crawl under the covers but I’m too rattled to fall asleep.

Around three in the morning I hear the front door open and close. I hear a car start.

12.

A fire has broken out due north of the house. I let the kids play in the yard while the smoke thickens, an amber pillar gathering in the distance. We’re just outside of the evacuation zone.

“Thank god,” Alison spits, slipping her hand into the back pocket of Seb’s Dockers. She doesn’t realize we have come inside.

After dinner, I sit on my bed watching ash fall in the yard and loading and reloading a map of the fire on my phone. Jack’s cabin is right in the middle of the action. Either he’s moved on, or he’s in danger.

I take a deep breath and text him. Are you OK?

Three blinking dots indicate that he’s composing a reply, but in the end, he doesn’t answer.

A knock at the door, firm. I open the door and Seb’s sapphire eyes catch mine. My breath catches in my throat despite myself. He pushes his sandy hair out of his eyes with a calloused hand, adjusts his tortoiseshell glasses.

“Alison is making brownie mix,” he says, his voice disconnected, eyes going soft on some focal point beyond me. I feel the tension dissipate. “She wants to know if you’re watching the debate with us.”

“I’ll come grab a brownie in a bit,” I say, and he’s already halfway up the stairs.

I pull my hair back, bite my lip, and text Jack again. Please, just tell me you’re safe. This time there’s no reply, not even the little dots.

Upstairs, the man in charge tells us the air is sparkling clean. We are reminded that hundreds of children have been separated from their parents, parents who cannot be found. The man who wants to be in charge calls this criminal.

Seb slides his arm around Alison, kisses the top of her head as she presses her temples. I’m behind the couch, leaning against the arch in the kitchen wall, eating the last bits of a brownie with my fingers, pressing the crumbs into one another to make bigger crumbs.

13.

I wake up with a start. I’ve slept in, and my arm is numb. Thebes’s head is pressed into it; he’s curled up against me. It’s funny—I don’t remember bringing him into my room.

Alison is phone banking at the dining room table, her computer open and her headphones in. She is trying to convince someone to vote for the man who wants to be in charge. She is saying things like “there was never any plan to reunite these kids with their parents” and “common decency” and “as a parent myself.” When I emerge, she winks at me.

“You two looked cozy,” she tells me quickly, then hops on her next call.

I set Thebes up in the highchair next to her, mix some rice cereal for him, and rush downstairs before Seb can see me without a bra on.

Back in my room, I pull the door tight, push back the curtains, open the window to let out a little of the stale air. I brush out my tangled hair and pull it into a bun, then peel off the pizza-print pajamas Jack bought me as a joke gift back when everything was different.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I watch my own brow furrow, my hands moving to my abdomen. I look down at my body, then back in the mirror, then down again.

My belly and hip are mottled with bruises. There’s a scratch on my left breast, and dried blood shimmers like rust on my shoulder and clavicle.