THREE YEARS AGO
Mama looked at me as she set two rabbits on the counter. Their fur was shiny and silver with a little cotton ball on their bottoms. Their ears stuck straight out, and it seemed they had lived good lives eating some of the plants in the woods near our home.
“They are cute,” I said.
With raised eyebrows she answered, “Better than that, they are tasty.”
“Are you making a soup?” I asked.
She nodded. “Potatoes. Carrots. Celery. It should be pretty good this time.”
I felt excited by the idea of a fresh stew. Lately, we had to make do with just veggies because we hadn’t caught anything in the traps. Well, we hadn’t caught any food. This morning, Papa had found a new greyskin, though with a much bigger trap. The noise had woken me. Then I listened to Mama and Papa fighting about it.
“Why do you have to bring those things to the house?” she had demanded. “Why can’t we build a different building for you to do all that?”
“I plan on it, Sarah, but right now I think I’m on the brink of something big.”
“You say that a lot.”
Papa had been downstairs in the basement ever since.
“Oh, shoot,” Mama said. “I need to go dig up some potatoes. I thought we had more in here. You’ll cut up the celery?”
I smiled and nodded. She leaned down and kissed my hair before walking outside.
My eyes lingered on the door in the main room, then they traveled to the entrance to the basement on the other side. It was cracked slightly open, something that almost never happened. Papa was always sure to leave the door locked.
I was forbidden to ever go into the basement. That was where Papa did his experiments on the fresh greyskins. Always looking for the cure.
Of course, having the curious mind that I did, whenever I was told I couldn’t go somewhere, I only wanted to be there all the more.
Papa had the greyskin locked away. It was safe. I had always wanted to see a greyskin up close without it having the ability to sink its teeth into me.
I looked out the window and watched as Mama got on her hands and knees in the garden, digging around for big potatoes. I had lived in this house for most of my life, and I had never been into the basement. The only greyskin I had ever seen was from a distance.
I was always taught that having a curious mind was good—that discovery was to be encouraged.
“But not at the expense of safety,” Papa said.
I often wondered if him bringing greyskins into the house was giving in to curiosity at the expense of safety. I never doubted that Papa knew what he was doing, but Mama sure didn’t like it.
For the moment, I ignored the celery. My bare toes were quiet against the wood floors, and I set my fingers on the cold doorknob and pulled slowly. The stairs down to the basement were dark, but there was a light on below. I could hear the greyskin moving, growling, clawing at whatever Papa had used to keep it caged.
Each step I took was careful, and I hoped the wood wouldn’t creak on the way down. When Papa came into view, he had his back to me working on something at a bench along the wall.
The greyskin stood behind a glass door, its eyes fixed on Papa’a back. The glass box must have been strong because Papa didn’t even flinch at the noises the creature made.
Its eyes were black and dripping with snot. Its teeth were rotted and bit at him over and over. I had never seen one of these things up close. To think that it used to be human—a person with thoughts and feelings…
That could be me, I thought. That could be any of us.
Mama had always told me that it was essential to think of the greyskins as creatures or monsters. They were not people. Maybe they used to be, but not anymore.
“Killing one of those things would be like killing a bear that was trying to eat you,” she had told me. “It’s not something you think about. You just do it and move on.”
But I always wondered what life the person lived before they became a greyskin. The one in the basement used to be a man. It was hard to tell if he was young or old. He was tall, and there were large gashes in his shoulder where he’d been scratched. They were the wounds that brought him here. But what if this was the greyskin Papa would use to discover the cure? That man never knew that his scratches would help save the world.
Papa always thought he was close to discovering the cure. Maybe he was, but he never got past close.
“What are you doing?”
Mama’s voice made me freeze, and I saw Papa look up at me, his eyes wide.
“Sky?”
I looked up at Mama, her hands full dirty potatoes.
“You aren’t supposed to be down there!” she screamed. She dropped the potatoes to the floor and ran down the stairs and grabbed my arm, yanking me upward.
In a flash, we were in the main room. Her hands shook as she knelt in front of me. “Sweetheart, what were you doing? We've told you never ever go down there!”
She pulled me in close and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me tight. Tears pooled in my eyes, but I wasn’t sure why. I felt embarrassed. Guilty.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry. I just…”
Papa came through the basement doorway, and Mama held me out at arm’s length. He looked like he was about to say something to me until he saw tears falling down my face. He and Mama looked at each other, words passing between them in silence.
Papa looked down at the ground, thinking about something, then nodded slowly. He looked at me, disappointed. Then he went back to the basement steps, closed the door behind him, then locked it.