The sounds of someone behind them, distant yet in earshot, continues.
He’s trying to scare you. He could overtake you at any time.
Gary.
That was four years ago!
Could he have been waiting four years for revenge?
“Mommy,” the Boy whispers.
“What is it?”
She fears what he is about to say.
“The sound, it’s getting closer.”
Where has Gary been for four years? He’s been watching you. Waiting outside the house. He watched the kids grow. Watched the world grow colder, darker, until a fog came, one you foolishly thought would mask you. He saw through it. Through the fog. He’s seen everything you’ve done. He’s SEEN you, Malorie. Everything you’ve done.
“Damn it!” she yells. “It’s impossible!” Then, turning her neck, the muscles resisting, she yells, “Leave us alone!”
A row isn’t what it used to be. Not like it was when they started today. Then, she had two strong shoulders. A full heart of energy. Four years to propel her.
For all she’s endured, she refuses to believe it’s possible that Gary is behind her. It’d be such a cruel twist. A man out there all these years. Not a creature, but a man.
MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS
The sentence, Gary’s sentence, only six words, has been with her since the night she read it in the cellar. And isn’t it true? When she heard a stick break through the amplifiers she retrieved with Victor, when she heard footsteps on the lawn outside, what did she fear most? An animal? A creature?
Or man?
Gary. Always Gary.
He could’ve gotten in at any time. Could’ve broken a window. Could’ve attacked her when she got water from the well. Why would he wait? Always following, always lurking, not quite ready to pounce.
He’s mad. The old way.
MAN IS THE CREATURE HE FEARS
“Is it a man, Boy?”
“I can’t tell, Mommy.”
“Is it someone rowing?”
“Yes. But with hands instead of paddles.”
“Are they rushing? Are they waiting? Tell me more. Tell me everything you hear.”
Who follows you?
Gary.
Who follows you?
Gary.
Who follows you?
Gary Gary Gary Gary
“I don’t think they’re in a boat,” the Boy suddenly says. He sounds proud for having finally been able to make a distinction.
“What do you mean? Are they swimming?”
“No, Mommy. They’re not swimming. They’re walking.”
Far behind, she hears something she’s never heard. It’s like lightning. A new kind. Or like birds, all of them, in every tree, no longer singing, no longer cooing, but screaming.
It echoes, once, harsh, across the river, and Malorie feels a chill colder than any October air could deliver.
She rows.
thirty-nine
Don is in the cellar. Don is always in the cellar. He sleeps down there now. Does he dig a tunnel where the dirt shows? Does he dig a tunnel deeper, lower, farther into the earth? Farther away from the others? Does he write? Does he write in a notebook like the one Malorie found in Gary’s briefcase?
Gary.
He’s been gone five weeks. What has it done to Don?
Did he need someone like Gary? Did he need another ear?
Don sinks farther into himself like he sinks farther into the house, and now he is in the cellar.
He is always in the cellar.
forty
It is what Malorie will later consider to be the last night in the house, though she will spend the next four years here. Her belly looks so big in the mirror that it scares her, looks like it could fall right off her body. She speaks to the baby.
“You’re going to come out any day now. There are so many things I want to tell you and so many that I don’t.”
Her black hair is the longest it’s been since she was a little girl. Shannon used to be jealous of it.
You look like a princess. I look like the princess’s sister, she’d say.
Living off canned goods and well water, she can see some of her ribs, despite the bulge of her belly. Her arms are twig-thin. The features of her face are sharp and hard. Her eyes, deeper set in her skull, are striking, even to herself, in the mirror.
The housemates are gathered in the living room downstairs. Earlier today, the last names in the phone book were called. There are no more. Felix said they made close to five thousand calls. They left seventeen messages. That’s it. But Tom is encouraged.
Now, as Malorie examines her body in the mirror, she hears one of the dogs growl downstairs.
It sounds like Victor. Stepping into the hall, she listens.
“What is it, Victor?” she hears Jules say.
“He doesn’t like it,” Cheryl says.
“Doesn’t like what?”
“Doesn’t like the cellar door.”
The cellar. It’s no secret Don wants nothing to do with the rest of the house. When Tom instigated his plan for calling the phone book, assigning each housemate a group of letters, Don declined, citing his “lack of faith” in the process as a whole. In the seven weeks since they shut the front door on Gary, Don hasn’t joined the others for meals. He hardly speaks at all.
Malorie hears a kitchen chair slide on the floor.