When she glanced at the clock it was almost three thirty in the morning. Something had awakened her, a sound she couldn’t locate. After her fitful sleep, she decided to check on the children, concerned about how they might be processing the snow outside and the tension inside. Shaw wasn’t in bed beside her, so that must have been what she heard; he’d probably had nightmares of his own and was wandering around downstairs, maybe checking on the furnace again. She shuffled into her slippers and threw a sweatshirt over her head.
In Tycho’s room, she found him curled on his side, all snuggled up, nothing amiss except for his moose, which had fallen onto the floor. Orla tucked it in next to him, on the wall side, so it wouldn’t fall out again.
In Eleanor Queen’s room, she found less evidence of restful sleep. Her rumpled comforter had half slipped onto the floor, and her sheet was so twisted it covered only her belly and one leg. Careful not to wake her, Orla rearranged her sheet and laid the comforter atop her as delicately as she could.
“Oh, Bean,” she whispered. Orla wished Eleanor Queen had called out or come to her parents’ room for consoling, but maybe she hadn’t been able to wake herself up. That her daughter might have been as trapped in a bad dream as they were in the house made it even more unbearable.
She went to find Shaw. They needed to agree on a plan.
“Shaw?” It was dark in the living room, but a strip of light glowed beneath his studio door. The curtained windows hid the white evidence of their impending suffocation. She switched on a lamp on her way—no point in stumbling around in the dark, especially since they were both awake. What a sense of purpose he’d developed, at least where his art was concerned. Orla didn’t mean to be uncharitable, but she didn’t like it. Obsession was not the same thing as discipline, and if he was serious about following through with his plan to walk somewhere in the morning and make sure someone was aware of their situation, it would be better if he was well rested.
She rapped with her knuckle and turned the knob. In recent days she’d stayed clear of his studio and its closed door, hoping his work would evolve past its dark phase. A scream escaped, even as her body froze in the open doorway, one hand still on the knob. Her heart hammered every dissonant chord, its natural rhythm obliterated by the tableau. Her brain couldn’t process what she was seeing well enough to help her decide: run to him, or approach with caution.
In her peripheral vision she saw red. Was she too late? But it was only paint. Smeared on a canvas.
Shaw sat on the floor, leaning against the wall beside the closet. The shotgun to his mouth.
“Shaw? Baby?” Her voice trembled. She tiptoed toward him, as hesitant and uncertain as if she were walking across shattered glass.
He didn’t look at her, but tears streamed from his eyes. As she came closer, he held out one hand—stop—but kept the other firmly on the barrel.
“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry—I’ve been trying to understand…everything. And I’m sorry if I didn’t. Please, we need you, I need you, I love you.” She fell to her knees, weeping, afraid to go closer, her hands in fists as she fought the urge to reach for the gun, snatch it from his hands.
He shook his head, his lips still on the metal.
“We’ll fix this—I’ll help you fix this,” Orla begged, inching toward him on her knees. “It’s not your fault, none of this. I know how hard you tried, but this, what’s happening, you couldn’t have known—”
Finally Shaw crumbled. As he burst out sobbing, he lowered the gun, and Orla lurched forward and took it away from him. She kept her body between him and the weapon as she took him in her arms and let him wail.
“It’s not your fault,” she said again and again. “We all love you so much—we’ll figure this out, you and me, we’re a team, we’ve always been a team…”
She felt the weight of his defeat as he let her hold him.
“Make it go away,” he whimpered, turning his face from her.
Orla, thinking he meant the gun and happy to oblige, got to her feet and, with the barrel pointed down and away, struggled to crack it open as she’d watched him do at Walker’s house. Tears impeded her vision when she dislodged the unused cartridges. She’d hoped that maybe in his despair he’d forgotten to load it and couldn’t possibly have succeeded in ending his life. But no.
If she hadn’t awakened. If she hadn’t come downstairs.
Her hands shook so badly she fumbled securing the gun in its locker. She shut the closet door and pressed her back to it, not sure which was more likely—that her husband would change his mind and push past her to finish what he’d started, or that the gun possessed some unnatural ability to crawl back out and destroy their lives.
“There.” The matter wasn’t finished, couldn’t possibly be finished until she got her family away from this place. But they were all alive. He’d survived his worst moment. That’s where they were now, one moment—one second—at a time.
Still slumped on the floor, Shaw wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt and looked at her as if he hadn’t been fully present before. “What are you doing?”
“I put it away.”
“Oh Orlie, it’s not that simple.” His head dropped back against the wall with a thud. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t. I don’t understand.” She sat on the floor in front of him, legs crossed beneath her, and squeezed one of his hands. “Please help me understand.”
It gushed out of him, all that he’d been bottling up since they’d arrived. “I thought, at first…I thought it was helping me paint—I know it sounds stupid, but I thought I’d found my muse. But it—they, someone—kept creeping into my head at all hours, when I was awake, when I was asleep. This thing—I don’t know what this fucking thing is, Orlie, but it started to really scare me.” As his words were scaring her. Steely spiders tickled her skin. “It wanted something. I know I wasn’t wrong—it’s about this place. The people who died. But I didn’t want to understand anymore, I just wanted it to stop. I needed a door to close, a way to shut it out.”
“That’s what you were trying to do? Shut it out?” she asked cautiously. Maybe he hadn’t actually wanted to kill himself but to silence the things he’d been hearing.
“No, it was more than that,” he protested. “Someone, something…needed me. I couldn’t let it in. It wanted to be inside me. It kept pushing on my consciousness—In, in, in, it said. How could I let it in? It scared me, Orlie, scared me so bad. What if I couldn’t stop it? I didn’t know who I’d be—what I’d be—if it got inside me. I kept telling it in my head, No, go away, leave me alone! It’s bigger than me, stronger. What does it want with me? And if I lost, if it got me—I think that’s what it wanted, with the snow. So I’m here, trapped. And it gets me. And I’m not me anymore…and what if I hurt you or the kids? I couldn’t take the risk that I’d lose myself, and do something to you, or Tigger, or Bean…”
Orla sat there, stunned. They were simple enough words, but she couldn’t fathom what she was hearing. Her husband thought something was trying to possess him? Something that might hurt one of them? In his mind, this attempted suicide was a sacrifice to save them from what he feared he’d become? This fucking place.
“We’re gonna get out of here.” She snuggled beside him, her arm gripping his shoulders. “In the morning. We’ll all put on snowshoes. We’ll get down to the road, at least, see if it’s been cleared.”
Shaw nodded. “I didn’t want to fail you—”
“You haven’t. Don’t even think that way. Look what you were willing to do to save…” It didn’t matter if she couldn’t fully grasp it, the dire voices ricocheting in his head. More important, she believed him: Something was happening here. Sparking madness in their minds. And in the only way he knew how, he’d been trying to keep them all safe.
“Come on.” She got up and tugged him to his feet.
“I’m so sorry. For upending our lives. I just wanted an adventure, a chance to do something of my own. I really thought—”
“I wanted that too. And you’ll still get it, an adventure, and all the things you want to do.” She supported him around his waist as he trudged beside her, stiff and heavy, as if his body had fossilized and he wasn’t quite sure how to make it move.
She didn’t bother to turn the lights off before they went upstairs; what did it matter? The electric bill would be nothing compared to the loss they were going to take on the house. They’d head to Pittsburgh the moment they could. There was more space in her parents’ house than they’d had at Walker and Julie’s. The kids could have her old room, and she and Shaw would take the guest room. It had been so long since she’d lived under her parents’ roof, but it was the refuge they needed.
Holding Shaw’s hand, she led him up the stairs. The wood creaked beneath their feet, and when they reached the top, Eleanor Queen was standing just outside her door.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Papa’s not feeling well.” Her daughter’s face was in shadow, but Orla saw her turn her head, studying her father as he shuffled past. “It’s nothing to worry about. Go back to bed—we’re going to trek out in the morning.”
“Trek out? Where?”
“Away.” She doubled back and kissed Eleanor Queen’s forehead before gently pushing her toward her bed. But when Orla got to her own doorway, her daughter was leaning into the hallway, watching her. “Go to sleep,” Orla told her again.
“It’s not that simple,” said Eleanor Queen.
“Just close your eyes. Imagine yourself writing the alphabet, one slow letter at a time.”
“No. You don’t understand. It wanted us here. And we’re not done.” The girl retreated into her room and shut the door.
Orla’s mouth tingled with nausea. Everything was slipping away. Only Tycho hadn’t shown signs of delirium yet. Once she’d felt a great sense of purpose as a dancer, as the family’s breadwinner. Now they needed her to do something else.
Save them.