HANNA HADN’T TAKEN regular naps for years, but it was obvious by the time they slunk back into the house, their limbs all loose and poorly directed, that they were both wiped out. Suzette felt on the verge of collapse, and she’d sped home after her emergency hair appointment when she saw Hanna drifting to sleep in the backseat, hoping to get her into the house before she’d sufficiently rested.
They stopped in the kitchen and Suzette filled two glasses with cold water. They gulped in unison, which made her aware—for the billionth time—how similar she and Hanna were. Sometimes Alex remarked on it, how they’d both stand with one leg crossed in front of the other, or with their arms folded exactly the same way. They could sit like mirrored bookends on the couch, watching television in exactly the same position.
“I’m going to lie down for a little bit. You seem kind of pooped too. Have fun at the park?”
Hanna nodded without looking at her. Finished with her water, she opened the dishwasher and put her glass on the top rack.
“Thank you. You’ve been most very, very excellent today. Except for …” She pointed to her new layered bob, angled a little from the back. The left side still had a couple of slightly shorter layers, but most people wouldn’t notice. Meri suggested long bangs, swept off to the side. It was a very different look for her, but it was fresh, and modern. Hanna, indifferent, took off and galloped up the stairs. Suzette filled her glass with more water and followed her up.
Hanna was already lying on top of her comforter, looking through the weird book that Alex often read to her. Suzette paused in her doorway.
“I’ll leave my door open, if you need anything. I won’t be asleep for very long, I just need to …” Fall into a coma. Wake up in a new body. Hanna ignored her, so she retreated to her own space.
She set her water on the bedside shelf, but before putting her phone down she opened the camera. Using the selfie mode, she examined her new look. Definitely shorter than she was used to. But it was still feminine, pretty-ish. Stop being so tragic. It was hair, it wasn’t like Hanna …
Poked out her eye.
It could have been worse.
She flopped onto the bed, ready to sleep. Beams of sunlight poured their hopeful, generous energy into the room. They knocked on her eyelids but she held them tight. Her thoughts became jumbled-up images and sound bites of the school, like Mr. G was narrating a promotional video. Then came blessed nothingness.
At some point the nothingness ignited into a dream, a sexual dream. Suzette, a gauzy-clad nymphet, lay among immense patterned pillows in a room whose many windows contained no glass. The ever-aware part of her mind suggested that such a room would exist in a tropical place. But when the focus shifted past the fluttering sheer draperies, she saw not the wild greenery of the tropics, or sand or ocean, but towering mountains. At their base lay a body of reflective blue water. She knew, as one knows things in a dream, that she was a concubine, one of many, and through a distant room came the moans of passion as another whore enjoyed the pleasure of their master. She longed for him to come to her, give himself to her, fuck her like she was the only one he really cared about …
Deep sleep left her. Her director-self called “Cut!” and a clapboard signaled the end of the scene. She had no interest in a stupid dream about someone else’s pleasure. But as she awakened, the audio portion of the dream remained—a feminine voice, groaning. She pushed herself up to her elbows, confused. Was the window open? Maybe a neighbor was enjoying the sunny afternoon, fucking en plein air? Though it didn’t really seem like something the neighbors would do.
She glanced at the clock glowing on her shelf. She hadn’t slept that long, maybe twenty minutes.
With a dawning horror, she realized the gasps and moans were coming from within her house, from down the hallway.
She shook off the remnants of her nap and barreled out of the room, unable to process what was happening or what she expected to find. The sounds led her to Hanna’s room—
Who’s raping my child?
Hanna lay on the bed beneath her yellow comforter in her small but sunny room. For a moment, Suzette thought she’d found her engaged in an exuberant experiment in masturbation. Hanna’s denim shorts lay on the floor with the smiling curl of her pink striped underpants, and she could see the girl bucking and writhing beneath the comforter. But her hands were gripping it and her head was moving in such a way on her pillow like someone was thrusting against her.
Suzette stood there for a moment, unsure what to do. What was even happening? Her daughter’s knees made a tent of the fabric and she moved and sounded like she was enjoying a fine afternoon of hearty intercourse.
“Stop it! What are you doing?”
Hanna looked at her, neither startled nor embarrassed. She smiled as her invisible lover resumed making love to her. Suzette grimaced, inhaling with disgust even as it scared her to see her child gasp and writhe like a fully sexualized adult. She ripped back the comforter, but of course no one and nothing was there. Hanna pulled her knees together and turned over onto her side, giggling.
“What are you doing?” She snatched up the panties and shorts and restrained herself from throwing them at Hanna’s face. She dropped them next to the pillow, her hand shaking. “Get dressed.”
“That’s how I get my power. From the devil, when he comes to me.”
Her voice sounded different—mature and confident. It spooked Suzette. She stumbled backward a few steps. “Marie-Anne?”
Hanna sat up, covering herself with the comforter. She maintained unblinking eye contact with Suzette.
“I like it when he comes to me. It feels so good. He loves me and he puts his thing in me and fills me with the world.”
“Leave my daughter alone!” She didn’t know whom she was saying it to. The invisible demon with his fire-hot phallus. The long-dead witch who made her daughter claim she was Marie-Anne. Her mouth went tingly and she backed out of the room. She wanted to vomit. Her daughter needed help, but not this smiling thing who writhed so happily beneath the covers. This girl needed to go away, leave them all alone. “Go, just go—go!”
But it was Suzette who left, heaving, running for the bathroom.
Her mouth still tasted like the sour gut-spoiled remains of her lunch, but she didn’t care. She had to find the papers from the pediatrician’s office. They should have been in the folder, the one they kept in a file box in their walk-in closet that contained all of Hanna’s medical and immunization records. Had she misfiled it? Misplaced it?
She turned, feeling a presence behind her. Hanna, fully dressed, wore a familiar and non-threatening question—“What are you doing?” But she didn’t have time or patience. She sprang up, scooped the girl around her ribs, and carried her back to her room. Hanna’s face asked “What’s going on?” as she hung over her mother’s arm, but she didn’t otherwise protest.
“I don’t have time for this. Play with your devil friends. Read your books. I’m sorry, but something’s wrong with you … I have to find out what.” She deposited the girl in her room and shut the door.
This time, she locked her own bedroom door behind her and fell back to her knees as soon as she reached the closet; she dug through the file box again. She considered calling Alex. But she could already hear him, confusion in his voice, stuttering about how everything had been fine—better than fine—not two hours ago. How could she explain what she heard, and then saw, and what their daughter—was she still their daughter?—said while her little-girl underpants lay abandoned on the floor? Their practically indestructible recycled rubber, better than other people’s floor. Alex still used photos of their house in the company’s portfolio. Oh, yes, they looked the part. As long as no one knew what went on within that house. She couldn’t expect Alex to really help—not until he got to experience firsthand Hanna and her other self, the self who knew more than any seven-year-old should.
She found it, stuck between two hanging file folders. She flipped to the last of the stapled pages, where the doctor had included the information about the referral to … Dr. Yamamoto. They might hear from the insurance company any day, but it couldn’t wait. She dialed, shaking like she’d narrowly regained her balance at the edge of an abyss. It went to voicemail. Her words came out in a panicked flurry.
“Hello Dr. Yamamoto, my name is Suzette Jensen and I was referred to you by my pediatrician. I’m … We’re having an emergency and I urgently need to speak with you and make an appointment for my daughter. Please, as soon as you get this. Please, as soon as possible. Thank you.” She recited her phone number twice, just in case.
After disconnecting the call, she tossed the phone onto the bed. She paced the room in long strides. Maybe she should see someone, too. The possibility of it came up from time to time. Part of her hesitation was not being able to figure out how to get a whole hour to herself. She didn’t want to drag Hanna with her, leave her alone in someone’s waiting room to do God knows what. But it was getting increasingly worse. The medical PTSD, the fear that motherhood had been a terrible mistake, the guilt that she wanted to undo it but couldn’t. She felt unhinged, like any large noise would force her body parts to separate and trail off into space in a slow-motion explosion. She wanted sleep. Real sleep. Maybe this was a dream, too, a dream within a dream and she could laugh to herself about it later, how she’d lost track of the levels of unconsciousness.
It struck her, replaying it in her head, that Alex cared only about what Hanna’s words had sounded like, not what they meant. But they needed to know where the delusions were coming from. Dr. Yamamoto could help her sort that out, of course she could. And the good therapist would help keep her fears from tumbling into the unreasonable—the supernatural. Left to her own degenerating uncertainty, it was too easy to imagine googling “experienced exorcists Pittsburgh PA” as if there’d be a local or regional list. It almost made her laugh, the progression that started with speech pathologists and auditory specialists. She didn’t even believe in possession or exorcism. But until she understood what was wrong with Hanna, despair might lead her there.
Her phone rang. She recognized the number immediately, having just called it. It brought her back to earth a little: she needed help. What was Hanna going to do next?
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Jensen?”
“Yes—”
“Hi, I’m Beatrix Yamamoto—”
“Thank you so much for calling me back so quickly.”
“Happy to. Glad I had a break in my schedule. You sounded kind of panicked on your message—”
“Yes—”
“Is there any sort of emergency? Does one of you need immediate help? Is this a 9-1-1 situation?” In spite of the implied urgency of her questions, the therapist sounded calm and levelheaded.
Suzette was already grateful for her help; in an instant Dr. Yamamoto put the crisis in perspective, something she had been unable to do. She perched on the edge of her bed and the mania and dread started seeping out of her. Her spine softened; her shoulders relaxed.
“No. No, nothing like that.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’m booked the rest of the day, but I could see you on Monday. I work from my home, in Squirrel Hill.”
“Yes, perfect. Do you have something in the afternoon, after school?”
“Let’s see … Four o’clock?”
“Perfect, thank you.”
“And I have a few minutes now, if you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Yes …” Suzette walked as she talked, back and forth, but in an absent sort of way, without her earlier frenzy. She filled the doctor in on Hanna’s medical history, and the recent efforts she’d made to get her into school.
“Things just accelerated so quickly, with her behavior. And it should be good that she’s finally talking, but the things she’s saying … And only to me.”
“What was she saying?”
She took a couple of breaths and looked out the window. A squirrel scampered out along a tree branch. No houses imploded. No zombies lurched down the street. The normality of it all was a comfort. The woman across the way knelt on a pink gardening pad, planting something in her flower bed. A group of teenagers went past in their huddle and she saw flashes of school uniforms and crazy hair and cell phones and earbuds and arms filled with bracelets.
“Well, the first thing she told me … She said she wasn’t Hanna. Later she told me she was a witch named Marie-Anne Dufosset. My husband didn’t seem that concerned, said she must have read about it online. Or maybe he didn’t believe me at all. That’s part of it, the problem. It’s such a cliché, you know, from horror movies. And the woman starts to experience things and the man dismisses her and she becomes the crazy one.”
“Is that what you think is happening?”
“Maybe. Sometimes I feel like it’s true, maybe I am going crazy. I don’t understand what she’s doing. I don’t know what it means, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do—”
“Did something happen before you called me?”
“Yes …”
“I know you’re upset. And I know whatever happened was upsetting.”
“Yes … My daughter … I heard her, in her room. And when I went in there … It was like she was having sex. Making these noises—very, very realistic noises. And at first I thought she was masturbating, which is fine, we’d have no problems with that. But then she looked at me, smiling, and told me the devil was fucking her, basically—that the devil was fucking her and she liked it.”
“Mrs. Jensen, I have to ask you a serious question—”
“Okay.”
“To your knowledge, is there any chance your daughter has been sexually abused?”
“No!” The bile ignited within her again; she tasted it rising in her throat. She’d kept her daughter safe, she’d always kept her safe. Except for the radiation from the CT scans, and whatever pollutants they were all subject to in their toxic world. It was too horrible to think about, but she needed to not get defensive; now more than ever she didn’t want the doctor jumping to the wrong conclusions.
“I don’t see how she could have been.” She swallowed down the horrible taste at the back of her tongue. “She’s been with me, at home, almost all the time. And Alex never—I mean never. He is a mature, kind, sophisticated man … He’s Swedish,” she said, stupidly, like that would convince her, like no Swedish men ever molested their children.
Oh, God. She covered her mouth, afraid Dr. Yamamoto might have heard her gasp. She’d almost forgotten about last year, when Alex had started growing facial hair, on his way toward a beard. He’d trimmed it to a goatee with a kind of elongated mustache.
“Do I look super cool?”
Suzette remembered how she’d replied. In front of Hanna. “I think Daddy looks like a Scandinavian devil.”
It made Hanna giggle. Alex smirked—and returned to the bathroom to reconfigure his mustache.
Could Alex possibly have …? When Hanna said “he comes to me,” could she have meant her father, the Scandinavian devil?
No. No, not Alex. She banished the absurd thought. “No, it isn’t possible.”
“I understand it’s an upsetting prospect. But it’s something we’ll need to clarify. It’s not uncommon for children who have experienced inappropriate sexual contact to act out in some way.”
“But with Hanna.” She felt the perspiration in her armpits, the sweat of renewed panic congealing on the back of her neck. It was all so crazy, she’d never be able to make anyone understand. “I just … I think it’s something else.” Not Alex. “This witch she’s claiming to be—this weird sexual thing is some sort of offshoot of this persona, this other person she’s … I can’t explain it, I know it doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s hard, and it’s complicated—I understand. Maybe over the weekend you could do something for me, which might help for our appointment on Monday.”
“Of course.”
“Write down, as precisely as you can, everything your daughter has said. Everything she said, and everything you can remember about what was going on at the time, and how you reacted. Young children can find strange and creative ways to react to things they don’t understand. Her not speaking for so long is one issue that we’ll need to address. But what she has chosen to say now is another issue. It might take some time, but we’ll sort this out.”
“I’ll write down everything I remember. Thank you so much, Dr. Yamamoto. For listening to me, and taking this seriously.” She was back to where she’d started at the beginning of her conversation, feeling like this woman would calmly and methodically get to the bottom of the problem.
“Please, call me Beatrix. And I know it’s scary, I understand. There’s nothing scarier than loving a child and not understanding what they’re trying to tell you—”
“Yes,” she said, her breath making the word an exclamation mark.
“But you’re taking all the right steps. And we’ll sort this out. So try to have a good weekend—”
“You too—”
“And I’ll see you and Hanna on Monday.”
She hung up feeling—for the first time in a very long time—vindicated. The doctor said she was taking all the right steps—a statement that implied action was necessary. She said they’d sort it out. In her mind, Beatrix—with her lovely, soothing voice, her confident manner—bore the majesty of a powerful and beautiful woman. She’d understood Suzette was afraid and hadn’t dismissed her in any way. She needed to do better around Hanna and Alex—not show them how she could become flustered and disturbed. That Beatrix had thought of sexual abuse ahead of demonic possession proved she was grounded in reality, something Suzette needed to keep in mind when Hanna next attempted to torment her. She couldn’t imagine when or how she might have come into contact with someone who would abuse her, but maybe she could help rule one person out.
Over the weekend, in addition to compiling her notes about Hanna’s communication efforts, she’d check Alex’s search history—see if there was more beyond Hanna’s morbid interests. It would invite new questions about his secrets—for creepy kinks and other taboo fetishes—if he was visiting pornographic sites about witches or dead people. But that seemed unlikely. Throughout their relationship, Alex never hesitated to enumerate his reasons for hating pornography whenever the subject arose. By ruling out porn, she expected to free Alex of any suspicion. He couldn’t—in any way—be the source of Hanna’s perversions. Beatrix needed to know she and Alex weren’t the problem; it would help Beatrix’s ability to treat Hanna.
She sent Alex a text asking him to bring home their favorite Thai food for supper—a bit of a celebration.
Maintain normalcy. Look like everything’s fine.
When she came out of her room, Hanna’s door was still closed; she pushed away the unwelcome images of what might be happening within. Between their rooms was the laundry alcove and Hanna’s bathroom. Suzette kept a stash of cleaning supplies beneath every sink in the house. In need of comfort, she slipped on her rubber battle gloves.
Hanna’s door creaked open as Suzette emerged from the bathroom with a bucket. She went to the stairs and sat on the second step. From there she scrubbed the top step. Then she scooted down to the third step and scrubbed the second step. Hanna peered at her over the hallway railing. The little spy monitored everything.
“Better come down now, before all the steps are wet.”
The girl zipped around to the top of the stairs. In her monkey knee socks, she descended like a dancer en pointe, with only her tippy-toes touching the damp wood. When she was safely on the dry landing, Suzette turned to address her.
“Since school starts on Monday”—Hanna stopped in mid-escape and met her mother’s eyes—“you don’t have to do any schoolwork today, if you don’t want to.” Excitement and disbelief wavered on Hanna’s face. “Really. You can have the whole weekend too, to just have fun. Sound good?”
Hanna’s face lit up and she burst like a firecracker down the rest of the stairs. She disappeared into the living room and a second later the television came to life with giggly cartoon voices.
“Good Mommy. Nice Mommy.” Suzette smiled without mirth. “Can’t ruin Mommy. Or scare her to death.”
It was in all their best interests to keep the coming days as drama-free as possible. Monday—with a new school and therapist—would be challenging enough.
Her wet rag demolished a universe, one step at a time. Worlds that would never grow. Forests that would never mature. Vinegar-infused annihilation. At least in one area of her life she was powerful and divine. She worked in the only direction she could go. Down.