Silla is very upset today, so I sit in the corner very quiet and I wait. Maybe if I am very, very still, she will notice that I am not moving. Maybe she will stop long enough to hear my tummy rrrrraaawwwwrrrrrr like a monster. I know what it means—it means Feed me—but Silla doesn’t always know that.
It is dark today, darker than yesterday, and I think maybe a storm is coming. Maybe it will blow a path for us to follow to a big garden full of strawberries and gooseberries and potatoes! They can’t all have died? They might just be deep, deep down or far, far away.
I like that boy. That boy, Gowan. He was nice and he played with me when Silla was angry, and I forgot about the monster in my tummy for a bit. But the monster is back now and Silla still hasn’t noticed.
Hungry, I sign.
She doesn’t see me. I tug on her sleeve.
Hungry.
There is a flash of a different monster in her eyes and I shrink back. I don’t like it when she looks like Daddy. I look over at the tall, smiling man in the corner, but Silla doesn’t seem to mind him staring at us, even though he has no eyes, so I just go back to being very, very still.
He’s nice, Nori signs.
I know she means that boy from yesterday. “I don’t trust him. Why was he here?”
He’s come to look after the garden! Said he used to live here.
“With Cathy?” I force my nature down and think. “She’d remember him, then, I suppose, back from her younger days. Maybe I should try to ask her.”
Nori, at seven, looks doubtful. Okay…
“She could have told me she asked someone to come. I didn’t even see her leave the attic.”
Nori shrugs.
She might have bloody well brought back some food.
I shake my head and continue to fold the laundry, which is still damp, though it has hung outside all day. Nothing ever dries anymore in this damn climate. Our clothes are all slightly moist, and they have the smell of it, too—of mold, of wet, of rotting material. Even my skin smells mildewy.
God, I need a proper shower. Hot, running water. Stupid bloody generator. It broke a few months ago. I fixed it, and it works… some of the time. But the water pressure sucks the farther up the house you go. And the shower is on the third floor—in the abandoned hallway.
I can’t get my thoughts off that boy. Gowan. If he really did live here once, why come back? There’s nothing left. It’s so isolated—not a single neighbor now for thirteen or fourteen miles. Unless you count him. Three miles from town. Three miles from us. But this land is poisoned, infected, dying, and I doubt he can fix that. I doubt anyone can. So why come? What’s the point?
“Have you seen him before?”
No.
“He seemed familiar.”
He’s fun. We should go visit him.
“No!” I spin, grab my sister’s tiny shoulders, and give them a shake. “We are never entering the woods, do you understand me?”
Nori blinks at me and then begins to cry. She tries to wriggle free from my hands, her bad arm bent and useless.
“Nori, I’m serious. He could be a spy or a hobo or some kind of terrorist! He could be looking for a place to set up some kind of military base—”
Stupid! Nori yells with her hands. I have to admit, I do feel kind of idiotic.
“It’s possible,” I insist. “Remember what they were saying on the news before we left? We could be the only ones left for all we know.”
She tugs away from me again. Go away, go away, go away!
“Nori, promise me you won’t go into the woods! They’re coming closer!”
I don’t mean to say it. It slips out. There is a pause, and then Nori jerks hard, manages to get free, and rushes from the room. At the doorway, she turns back, her face red and wet. Too late! The woods are coming! And he’s already here!
THE KIND MADE FROM LOVE
“Auntie?”
I am getting older now and creaking in all my bones. I turn; my eyes fall on the girl who stands at the bottom of the stairs. I know she’ll come no closer, so I linger in the doorway, looking down. How much the girl has changed.… She is not a child any longer; she is a younger version of me. Of little Pammy. Except for that dark hair.
When first the two children came, there was life in this house. Not much, but I managed to hold the dark at bay. He was confined to the woods. The children, my nieces, were innocent—or at least the young one was. The eldest, though—Silla, who stands before me now an almost-woman—had seen a sliver of darkness already. Still, she was innocent in that she was untouched by the madness that infects this house.
But that is gone now, too.
“He’s out there,” I say, turning back to the window. “Always watching. Getting stronger.”
The girl steps hesitantly onto the bottom step, eyes darting up and away like a skittish cat, and stands awkwardly on the very edge. “Who is?”