“Mmm?”
“I’ve never met Hilary,” Delilah said. “I’ve been inside his house four times—I even spent an hour in there alone one day—but I’ve never even heard her.”
? ? ?
Unease tripped through Delilah’s veins and opened up a space inside her chest that felt like it would keep growing and growing until she cracked wide open. I must look like a crazy person, she thought, as she practically ran home—avoiding cracks in the sidewalks, working to stay out of reach of branches, hoses, lampposts. Her temples ached and the entire sensation made her uneasy, as if it wasn’t from thinking too much but from the house, somewhere, trying to press into her mind. She hopped up her front steps, exhaling a tight breath when she opened the front door and her house felt as flat and lifeless as it always had.
“Mom?” she called out.
“In the kitchen!”
Delilah dropped her backpack near the stairs and walked toward the back of the house, looking at things more closely than she ever had before. Nothing seemed to be obviously awry. The shelves were cluttered with hundreds of tiny porcelain figurines—including the fawn.
She closed her eyes, knowing now that it was all in her head. She never wanted to go back there. She would stay the hell away from the house, and the house would stay the hell away from her until she finished school and could get the hell out of Morton.
With Gavin in tow.
She pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and sat down.
“Long day?” her mother asked without looking up from the sink.
“Yeah.”
“Did you keep your arm dry?”
Not How is your arm, or, Are you in much pain, but, Did you keep your arm dry? Delilah paused, looking down at the gauze wrap. “Yes.”
“Good.” Turning, her mother deposited a handful of washed spinach on top of a cutting board on the island. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a knife.
Delilah had seen it before, but it felt out of place here. The handle was ivory, the blade long and so clean it gleamed like a mirror. Dread chilled her hands, and the cold spread up her arms and into her throat.
It was from the shed.
“Mom, is that one of your knives?”
“It must be,” Belinda said, lifting it to turn and inspect it for a beat before bunching some spinach in her hand to begin chopping.
Without thinking, Delilah reached for the knife, yanking it from her mother’s grasp. It flashed hot in her palm, the pearly handle coming to life in a repulsive slither. With a scream, she hurled it at the wall, where it hit and stuck with a horrible, squelching thud. It didn’t sound like a knife going into paint, plaster, or wood. It sounded like a knife hitting a chest and sinking through bone into something wet and vital. She stared, her heart thundering, expecting to see blood—or roaches—spill from the wall.
But instead the knife trembled from the force of the impact and then grew still.
The room was swallowed in shocked silence.
“Delilah Blue,” her mother whispered, voice shaking. “What on earth is wrong with you?”
“That knife isn’t yours, Mom. It’s not yours. It’s—” Her voice withered away into a soft gasp. The knife protruded eerily, the dim kitchen light slashing shadows along the blue paint. But instead of gleaming ivory, there was only wood, the wooden handle of an ordinary chef’s knife.
Belinda threw up her hands, voice hysterical now. “Well, who cares whose knife it is? It works just as well as any other! You don’t throw it at the bleeping wall!”
“But how. . . ?” Delilah said, stepping back, unable to look away from the object embedded in the wall. “I don’t know what’s happening, but. . . just don’t touch it.” Finally, she looked at her mother’s face, her voice flat and hollow: “Don’t even look at it.”