“Robin’s mother died during childbirth. It feels cruel, telling you that, given your condition. But if we’re going to get to know one another, it’s a story you’ll need to know. Robin was a great kid. Smarter than her father at eight years old. She liked the oddest things. Like the instructions for a toy more than the toy itself. The credits of a movie instead of the movie. The way something was written. An expression on my face. Once she told me I looked like the sun to her, because of my hair. I asked her if I shined like the sun, and she told me, ‘No, Daddy, you shine more like the moon, when it’s dark outside.’
“When the reports came on the news and people started to take it seriously, I was the kind of father who said I wasn’t going to live in fear. I tried very hard to carry on with our daily life. And I especially wanted to convey that idea to Robin. She’d heard things at school. I just didn’t want her to be so afraid. But, after a while, I couldn’t pretend anymore. Soon, the parents were taking their kids out of school. Then the school itself shut down. Temporarily. Or until they ‘had the confidence of the community to continue providing a safe place for their children.’ Those were dark days, Malorie. I was a teacher, too, you know, and the school I taught in shut its doors about the same time. So we suddenly had a lot of time together at home. I got to see how much she’d grown. Her mind was getting so big. Still, she was too young to understand how scary the stories were on the news. I did my best not to hide them from her, but the father in me couldn’t help but change the station sometimes.
“The radio got to be too much for her. Robin started having nightmares. I spent a lot of time calming her down. I always felt like I was lying to her. We agreed neither of us would look out the windows anymore. We agreed she wouldn’t go outside without my permission. Somehow, I had to make her believe things were safe and horribly unsafe at the same time.
“She started spending the night in my bed, but one morning I woke to find she wasn’t there. She’d been talking the night before about wanting things to be how they used to be. She talked of wanting her mother, whom she’d never met. It crushed me, hearing her like that, eight years old and telling me life was unfair. When I woke and didn’t find her, I told myself she was just getting used to it. This new life. But I think maybe Robin lost something of her youth the night before, as she realized, before I did, how serious it was, what was happening outside our house.”
Tom pauses. He looks to the cellar floor.
“I found her in the bathtub, Malorie. Floating. Her little wrists cut with the razor she’d seen me shave with a thousand times. The water was red. The blood dripped over the tub’s edge. Blood on the walls. This was a child. Eight years old. Did she look outside? Or did she just decide to do this herself? I’ll never know that answer.”
Malorie reaches for Tom and holds him.
But he does not cry. Instead, after a moment, he steps to the shelves and begins marking the paper.
Malorie thinks of Shannon. She, too, died in the bathroom. She, too, took her own life.
When Tom is finished, he asks Malorie if she’s ready to go back upstairs. As he reaches for the lightbulb’s string, he sees she is looking at the patch of open dirt along the wall.
“Freaky, no?” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Well, don’t let it be. It’s just one of the old-world fears, carrying over.”
“What’s that?”
“The fear of the cellar.”
Malorie nods.
Then Tom pulls the string and the light goes out.
nine
Creatures,” Malorie thinks. What a cheap word.
The children are quiet and the banks are still. She can hear the paddles slicing the water. The rhythm of her rowing is in step with her heartbeat, and then it falters. When the cadences oppose, she feels like she could die.
Creatures.
Malorie has never liked this word. It’s out of place, somehow. The things that have haunted her for more than four years are not creatures to her. A garden slug is a creature. A porcupine. But the things that have lurked beyond draped windows and have kept her blindfolded are not the sort that an exterminator could ever remove.
“Barbarian” isn’t right, either. A barbarian is reckless. So is a brute.
In the distance, a bird sings a song from high in the sky. The paddles cut the water, shifting with each row.
“Behemoth” is unproven. They could be as small as a fingernail.
Though they are early in their journey along the river, Malorie’s muscles ache from rowing. Her shirt is soaked through with sweat. Her feet are cold. The blindfold continues to irritate.
“Demon.” “Devil.” “Rogue.” Maybe they are all these things.
Her sister died because she saw one. Her parents must have met the same fate.
“Imp” is too kind. “Savage” too human.
Malorie is not only afraid of the things that may wade in the river, she is also fascinated by them.
Do they know what they do? Do they mean to do what they do?
Right now, it feels as if the whole world is dead. It feels like the rowboat is the last remaining place where life can be found. The rest of the world fans out from the tip of the boat, an empty globe, blooming and vacant with each row.
If they don’t know what they do, they can’t be “villains.”