Moving so slowly that she barely progressed more than two or three inches at a time, Stacey carefully and quietly as possible reeled in the chain to minimize the amount of noise it would make when she actually started out of the room and down the stairs. She couldn’t pry the loop off her foot, so there was no other choice.
She remained on the floor until she had the chain neatly coiled against her body. Because of the tension and the excitement moving through her in a continuous, electric flow, she was able to ignore the pain in her hands and in her back.
Before she started to stand, she listened hard for any sounds suggesting that either Irene or Gerald roamed about. Satisfied that they were still asleep, she pulled herself up cautiously. Even the smallest tinkle of the chain made her hesitate and wait to see if either of them had heard.
It never occurred to her as she headed for the doorway in her bare feet that she was wearing only the flimsy nightgown. All she thought about was getting out of the house. Once that was accomplished without her being seen or discovered, she would run for miles if she had to, and not stop until she had found someone or someone had found her. She decided she would head back the way she had come. Maybe she would reach that garage; it would still be open, being an all-night business.
Just the thought of finding another normal human being flooded her with relief. As she walked softly to the doorway, she kept crooning to herself that soon, soon this would end; soon she and Tami would be fine.
She paused before entering the hallway and peered out toward what she knew was Irene and Gerald’s bedroom. The door was open, but there were no signs of any movement and she could hear no voices. She saw two other bedrooms with closed doors and imagined that in one of them Tami slept.
If only she could go to her and wake her quietly and then corral her out of the house quickly; but she knew the attempt would be too risky. Even if neither Gerald nor Irene heard them, Shirley would, and by now Stacey had come to fear her almost as much as she did the two mad adults.
She closed her eyes as though to block out the pain of leaving Tami behind, even for what might prove only a short while, and stepped into the hallway. It was only then she realized she had seen and taken note of very little in and about this house. She had come up those stairs blindly, in a rage to find Tami. She understood that it hadn’t been quite two days, but she felt she had been trapped for months.
She was weak from the struggle and from so little nourishment and from whatever Gerald had put in her food to suck energy from her. The tension and the torment had damaged her sense of perspective. She lost her ability to gauge distance and couldn’t determine how far she was from the front door. She couldn’t remember if the road bordered the house or stretched away from it. Nevertheless, she stepped forward, determined and strong as never before. Her husband might not have recognized her.
There was no carpeting on the hardwood hall floor. The boards creaked under her feet. The sounds were tiny, but in her heightened awareness, they broke like little explosions. She paused, holding her breath. She wanted to look back every once in a while to see if she had been discovered, but she couldn’t. Her mind was set totally on reaching that stairway. She even thought it might be bad luck to look back.
She prowled close to the wall on her right, noticing the streaks along the bottom half. The faded green paint was marred by what looked to be handprints and miscellaneous smudges. She imagined the random markings were the product of Shirley, the graffiti of madness, turning the place into the hallway of some kind of asylum for lunatics and the demented.
The small hallway light above her cast an exaggerated shadow of herself over the floor and walls. She felt as if she had been turned into a cold-blooded monstrous creature simply by being in this house. Hopefully, once she broke out of it, she would return to her normal form. Of course, there was always the possibility that she wouldn’t, that she would remain maddened and deformed. She would spend the rest of her life in some hysterical state of mind; maybe she would end up institutionalized.
She fought these thoughts back like someone trapped underwater groping for oxygen. Such thoughts could defeat her by leaving her immobile, shaking and stuttering on the stairway.
She reached the top of the stairway before the chain slipped in her sweaty palm. It wasn’t really much of a rattle, but enough to reach their bedroom. She closed her eyes and debated whether or not she should just rush down the stairs now.
But what if the sound hadn’t awakened them? Surely her rushing down the stairs would, and what if that front door was locked? She couldn’t get it opened and get out before Gerald reached her. She waited for what seemed to be minutes, but which were in reality only seconds. Encouraged by her success up to this point, she began to descend the stairs.
Here the house betrayed her even more. The steps sounded as though they might give way at any moment. A wild idea flashed through her mind. This house was supernatural; it was a part of who and what they were. At any moment it would shake and rattle its windows to alarm Irene and Gerald. Then, even if she did reach the front door, it wouldn’t open, nor would the windows or the back door. The house would keep her trapped.
She shook the nightmare from her mind and slipped down the stairs, coiling the chain tightly to her body and holding on to the banister with her other hand. Aside from the small light in the hallway above her, there was no illumination in the house. No moonlight shone through the windows.
She searched her mind for any scrap of memory that would suggest the layout of the house at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t want to bump into anything and cause further noise, but she could recall nothing. Normally her night vision would have been adequate, but her anxious mind continued to play tricks on her. Objects looked like people. In fact, she thought she saw something move.
Three-quarters of the way down the stairs, she paused and studied something near the front doorway.
Was that a man standing with his back to the wall? What if Gerald had been down here all the time, waiting for her, playing with her? In his sadistic way, he would permit her to think she was escaping and then at the last minute…She brought her free hand to her heart and closed her eyes. Maybe he would kill her now.
The vision flashed through her mind. He would kill her and bury her body somewhere out there in the wilderness where no one would ever think to look for her. Like he did to Marlene. And to Donna…and who knows who else? If he killed her, they would tell Tami she had left her to live with them. If Tami cried about it, they would punish her until she stopped crying by putting her in that thing they called the Bad Box. David would never find her; Tami would grow up in this mad world, if she was left to grow up at all.
Such a story line nearly froze her where she was. Should she return to the room? she wondered. In a strangely ironic way, it seemed like a safe haven at this moment. She wondered if she was going mad. Perhaps she already had lost her wits. Everything she had done and everything she was doing was jumbled and confused. She was making mistakes, and they might prove fatal.
She flit open her eyes again and concentrated on the shape against the wall by the door. Slowly it focused into meaning, and she realized it was a grandfather clock. Relieved, she completed her descent of the stairs. Still, she did not look behind her. She felt like someone high up on the ledge of a skyscraper. As long as she didn’t look down, she would be able to get to safety.
She moved to the front door and turned the knob. Just as she had feared, the door was locked. She searched for a way to release it, but to her chagrin, this door had an old-fashioned skeleton keyhole. She would have to have the key to unlock it, even from the inside.
Refusing to permit panic to set in, she concentrated on the alternatives. She could go out a window or she could try the back door. Chances were the back door was locked as well, she mused. She would go to a front window and see if she could open it without making much noise.
She turned to do so and moved directly into the arms of the awaiting, naked Gerald Thompson. He embraced her so quickly and so smoothly, she barely had time to utter a cry, but when he pressed her up against his nude body, she brought her head back and screamed with all her might. Her panic turned into an hysterical shriek unlike any human sound she had ever made or had ever heard. Her own voice tore through her body, reverberating down her spine, shattering any sense of composure she had been able to sustain. The shrill yell would echo in her memory forever.
Yet she did not faint; desperately, she held on to consciousness, struggling to find the power of resistance that lay dormant in her most primitive part. Like some trapped forest animal, she reached out to claw him. The chain clattered to the floor and he lifted her over his head. She clenched her hands into little fists and pummeled the top of his head. He dropped her over his shoulder like a sack of so much feed and blood flooded into her face. She felt as though her skull was about to explode.
He grasped her by her calves and started back up the stairs. She stopped pounding him and tried to dig her nails into his skin. He roared with anger and pulled down so hard she thought he would snap her legs like sticks. The pain forced her to retreat and her screams turned to sobs as he continued to make his way up the stairs, the chain dragging over the steps behind them.
She opened her eyes only when Irene spoke from the hallway.
“What happened?” she asked. “You woke the children.”
“She tried to run away,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to bed.”
“The children are crying.”
“So go to them,” he said.
“No,” Stacey cried. She reached out to Irene, hoping to appeal to her common femininity, but Irene glared at her angrily.
“Gerald should put you in the Bad Box,” she said. “You’re ungrateful,” she added as she turned to go into the children’s bedroom. Stacey closed her eyes. Gerald carried her back into her bedroom. He threw her down on the bed and before she could sit up or offer any more resistance, he caught her face between the large, muscular fingers of his right hand and squeezed her cheekbones, pressing down on her at the same time. The pain was excruciating; she thought her face would crumple up like a paper bag.
Gagging, she pleaded incoherently. Finally he released his hold on her and picked up the chain. He lifted the bed easily with one hand and slipped the loop back under and up the bedpost. She didn’t move a muscle and she fought back the urge to utter any sound. Her sobbing was more like a series of hiccups instead. She was afraid to do anything that might further enrage him. He looked down at her for a moment and then left the room.
The pain in her face stung like a sunburn now. She imagined that his pincher grip peeled off layers of her skin, to expose raw bone. He was so large and so powerful that to her he seemed supernatural. What contributed to this new vision of him was the realization that he had been following her during her attempted escape. True, she had never looked back, but she had never even felt his presence. Why hadn’t the floorboards and the steps creaked under him as they had under her? She was convinced the house was as much a monstrous part of them as anything else, and would never betray them.
Where was she? Who were they? Perhaps she had fallen out of the real world. Maybe this was hell itself.
She heard the distinct sound of another chain rattling as Gerald came back up the stairs. Stacey heard his conversation with Irene in the hallway.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m taking the children into bed with me, Gerald. They’re both terribly afraid because of what she did. You sleep in their bed tonight,” she added. Stacey didn’t hear his response. A moment later he was in her doorway. He paused, blocking out most of the light. Then he came forward, dangling the second chain in his right hand.
“No,” she said. It was only a whisper. “No.” She started to sit up, but he loomed over her. His body seemed to swell right before her eyes.
He wrapped her other leg with the chain and snapped the padlock shut through the links. Then he lifted the other bedpost and did the same thing. He stood up and looked down at her. Her sobbing had stopped; she was frozen numb with expectation. He brought his right hand to the small of her stomach and pressed his palm against it. She closed her eyes as his fingers crawled over her, his hand moving like a giant spider.
When he brought his other hand to her breasts, her efforts to produce resistance changed into efforts to block reality. It was the only defense left to her. Like the brain of someone going down in an inevitably fatal plane crash, her mind turned itself off. She didn’t become unconscious so much as shifted into another gear.
She was a little girl again, running over a lawn of fresh spring grass. Her face was warmed by the sunlight and her hair floated in the breeze. She was giggling and taking pleasure in the strength of her own limbs powering her up and down the small hills. She chased a blue jay and veered when it turned right and soared to a tree limb. She stopped to stare at a cloud because it looked like an elephant made of chalk dust pressed against blue paper.
Then she heard her mother call and she tilted her head to tune into the music of that voice, a melody that was as akin to her as the sound of her own voice. It came to her in soft, undulating waves. “Stacey, come home. Come back, baby. Stacey.”
“Yes,” she muttered. Had she said it aloud?
She drifted away with her own dying voice and never heard or felt Gerald slip beside her into the bed.
David heard Stacey’s scream coming from within the house. It shattered the darkness and brought the night down around him like so much broken glass. He was pounded by the reality. This was no dream. All of this was really happening. Pressing his eyes closed tightly, praying, promising, whatever he did to wish it away, none of it would change things. He was lying here in the darkness; his leg was broken and his wife and child were somehow trapped in the house before him.
He turned over onto his stomach and got to his hands and knees, but quickly realized there was no way he could put weight on his broken leg. He looked about, hoping to find a stray branch that could be used as a crutch, but even though the night sky was relatively clear, there was little illumination to help distinguish shapes.
This well which had almost become his grave was less than ten yards from the rear of the house. Except for a small area of hard dirt, most of the grounds around him appeared to be covered with recently trimmed grass.
He turned back and saw that the barn was to the rear. His first thought was that he should go and see what he could find to use as a crutch and as a weapon. But then he thought he’d never make the barn in his condition. He had to make his way to the highway and flag down a vehicle, he had to get help.
Stacey’s screaming stopped and a light went on in the house. He stared at it for a moment and waited. What was going on in there? Could he afford to risk the time it would take for him to reach the road? Could he chance waiting for someone to come along? What if no one came along for a while? This was a back road. There wasn’t much traffic on it during daylight when he first arrived; he remembered that even when one car did appear, the driver wouldn’t stop. He was sure he would be a still more frightening sight for anyone now. He would go mad standing around in the dark and waiting for someone to come along, all the while thinking about Stacey and Tami in that house. Hopping all the way back to the garage was out of the question. He doubted he could even make his way to one of the houses lining the road.
He looked back at the rambling Victorian structure and thought about Stacey. While he was lying here being logical, she might be dying. He considered the possibility that she might be dead already, and that Tami was left alone to face those terrible people.
Forget the barn; forget looking for a crutch, forget searching for a weapon, and forget hoping that someone comes along. Get to your wife and child. Get to them as fast as you can, he told himself.
He began to crawl over the grass. The pain from his broken bone traveled up into his hip, but he refused to acknowledge the ache or the pains in other parts of his body. His attention was glued fast to the house and he forced himself to think of nothing else. When he reached the back porch steps, he used the short banister to pull himself into a standing position, balancing himself on his one good leg. He hopped up the steps awkwardly and nearly fell forward on the door. He knew how important it was for him to be as quiet as possible, so he regained his balance first and then tried the doorknob. It turned, but the door didn’t give way. It was locked.
For a moment he stood there listening. Apparently no one within had heard him. Once again he considered his options logically. There was no point in going around to the front of the house. If they had locked the back door, they were sure to have locked the front door. He decided to work his way around the house, trying as many of the screened windows as possible. Perhaps one had been left unlocked.
But when he leaned on the banister and moved back down the porch steps and turned to the right, he saw the Bilko basement door. He was familiar with the way they were constructed, and he knew the metal door opened onto a short cement stairway which would lead down to a basement wall door. Bracing himself against the walls of the house, he hopped over to the metal door and knelt beside it. He turned the knob and was encouraged when the door lifted easily. Holding it up and open for a moment, he listened again.
Suddenly the light he had seen turned on after Stacey’s scream went off. He surmised that whatever was being done had been completed. The possibilities frightened him, but he told himself this was no time to dwell on such things. He slipped his body under the metal door and then let it close gently so there would be a minimum of sound.
Inside, he found himself shrouded in total darkness, and carefully felt his way down the stone steps to keep pressure off his bad leg. Even so, he couldn’t help but occasionally bump and graze his broken bone. The pain was excruciating every time, robbing him of breath and engulfing him in nausea again. He had to pause and gulp in deep breaths to will the pain away.
When he crawled to the bottom of the cement stairway, he groped toward the basement door until he found its handle. He held his breath. What hope was there if this didn’t work? He turned the knob and heard the tooth scrape in retreat. The door opened. A few seconds later, he was inside the basement of the house. He closed the door behind him and waited to be sure that no one had heard him enter, then he cast his gaze around, getting accustomed to the room.
He realized he was in a children’s playroom. There was a large dollhouse to his right and next to it a shelf lined with dolls. He saw a small couch and an easy chair directly across from him. The legs had been cut off the couch and the chair to accommodate a child’s size. In fact, everything that he could make out in the room looked miniaturized. He felt like Gulliver in Lilliput.
He limped deeper into the room. There was a small table circled by four chairs and flanked by a phonograph set on a short and very narrow table. The floor was carpeted with very soft, thick piling, but the darkness blurred the exact color. It looked pinkish brown.
He crawled to the doorway of the playroom and peered into the darkness of the adjoining room. From what he could see, this looked more like the typical basement: concrete floors and walls, oil burner and water heater in the right corner, and some other furniture and storage cartons.
What interested him the most was what looked to be a very large trunk set in the center of the room. He thought it was as long and at least as wide as a casket.
Christ, he thought, as remembered frames from a dozen horror films passed through his mind, am I in the house of a vampire?
Twenty-four hours ago, such a thought would have brought laughter, or at least a wide smile to his face. But after all that had happened to him, including the acrid odor at the bottom of the well, and all that had obviously happened to Stacey and Tami, nothing seemed ridiculous anymore. He needed to look to make sure. Crawling toward it, he pulled himself up as best he could and opened the lid.
It was so dark in the basement that only contours were really distinct, but he didn’t need a great deal of light to fathom the box’s purpose. The soft, cushioned interior made it clear to him that this was indeed a coffin. Fortunately it was empty. Groping further he noticed a latch on the lid to keep it locked down. He thought that was odd. Did they expect the dead would rise? Who the hell keeps a casket in their basement anyway? What is this place? Who are these people? he wondered.
A shudder rippled through him and turned the muscles in his body into jelly. He felt he would sink to the floor. He felt as though his torso would pour through his legs and settle like a puddle around this…this thing.
A sound of scurrying, probably mice, made him look to the left where he spotted a stairway that led up into the house. He knew he would have to go up there, but for the moment he closed the lid of the coffin quietly and retreated to the playroom. He knew he needed some kind of plan. He was in no condition to confront the big man face to face. He wouldn’t have been able to do it if he was in perfect shape. Now that he was cocooned in the playroom, he had to think of something to gain the upper hand. He decided surprise and a weapon would work most in his favor.
Of course, the first thing he had to determine was where Stacey and Tami were in the house and how they were. The enormity of his task now sank into him. What was he thinking of when he decided to come inside? He was badly injured—practically helpless. It was understandable that he couldn’t tolerate their being trapped in here, but what would he do and how would he do it?
He couldn’t keep crawling around on one good leg. It was too easy to stumble over the objects in the overly furnished rooms. David mulled over the unpromising situation. Suddenly the realization of this bizarre setting, the pains and weakness of his broken body, and the terrible plight of his wife and daughter rushed over him and drove him into a depression. He sagged into the chair beside the small table holding the phonograph and lowered his head to his chest.
When he ran his fingers over the broken part of his leg, he winced at the pain. He thought about pressing the bone back into place and tying something tightly around the leg, but when he pressed in gently, the shock of pain that traveled to his heart sent him reeling with nausea. He started to retch again and fought back unconsciousness. He knew he couldn’t fight it for long; he was simply too exhausted.
For a moment he lost his balance and leaned against the small table, tipping it enough to one side to send the phonograph crashing to the floor. He stared down at it as though it had just read him his death sentence. As quietly as he could, he reached over and fitted the case top back on the turntable before putting the machine back on the table. After that, he listened.
Creaking floorboards overhead as he crawled to the playroom doorway signaled that he had awakened someone. A moment later he saw a light from above spill under the basement doorway.
Forlornly, he looked about the dark room. He couldn’t remain where he was. As soon as someone turned on the basement light, he would be discovered and then all hope of helping Stacey and Tami would be lost. There was no place to hide in the small playroom. Where could Gulliver hide in Lilliput? Anyplace he went, he would stand out.
His mind ranged over his alternatives. He could conceal himself behind the water heater in the other room, but he would be hidden from only one angle. The same was true for the oil burner. Yet he had to shelter himself to spare his wife and daughter. Suddenly the solution came to him. It was grotesque, but it was safe. He would hide in the coffin.
It would be only for a little while, he told himself as he crawled over to it. Forget about it being a coffin. It was going to be comfortable. He would have enough air to breathe for a while and no one would suspect he was there. At least no rational person would, he thought. These people might, but what choice did he have?
He had to avoid discovery. He would have no chance otherwise. The pain was too piercing to ignore and the effort to climb out of the well had drained him of much needed strength and energy. Who knew what he had to face in order to rescue Stacey and Tami? This was the logical thing to do, and no matter what his emotions told him, he knew logic would bring results. It always had before. He had to drive back the hysteria; he had to be a stronger man if he was going to pull off the impossible.
He opened the lid, looked about, and listened to the noises above. The sound of footsteps was drawing closer to the basement door. Without further hesitation, he climbed into the coffin. He pulled the lid down slowly over him and adjusted his sore body as best he could. He held his breath and listened. He heard the basement door open; the basement light switch clicked too. The coffin was built so well and the lid fit so perfectly that not the slightest bit of light seeped through.
The air-tightness frightened him when he realized how shut off he was from any fresh oxygen. He had to pray that whoever it was didn’t remain long. He had no idea how long he could last sealed inside and he couldn’t risk lifting the lid even a little.
From the heaviness of the footsteps on the basement stairway, he knew it was the farmer. He heard him pause before he reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a long moment of silence and then the steps continued until the man reached the bottom. David heard him walk to the playroom. He heard him snap the light switch in there. Again there was a pause. David prayed he had reassembled the phonograph correctly.
For a moment he panicked: what about the outside basement door? Had he closed it completely behind him? He waited and listened. A few moments later the light switch in the playroom was flipped again and the footsteps drew closer to the coffin. He sensed the man standing beside it; he even thought he heard the man rub the palm of his hand along the top of it. David expected him to lift the lid at any moment. His heart was pounding so hard he was sure the man could hear it.
David raised his hands slowly in anticipation, realizing any defense of himself from this position was ludicrous, but the man didn’t do as he expected. Instead, he walked back to the stairs and paused. Then, after another long moment, he started up the stairs. David heard the basement light switch off and heard the basement door close above.
He didn’t twitch a muscle. The man could be using subterfuge to flush David out of hiding. He would wait, he thought, until he could stand the stifling air of the box no longer.
He was surprised at how comfortable he was inside. The darkness was soothing; the interior was soft and plush; his tense muscles relaxed. Perhaps if he just rested for a while, some of his desperately needed stamina would return and he would be able to think again. True, he was in a coffin, but only for a little while.
Finally he lifted the lid a little and waited, listening. Nothing stirred in the dark room, encouraging him to open the coffin completely. Certain he was alone now he sagged against the cushion and let the softness seep into his bones. Now he could breathe unfettered air and let feelings of safety wash over him soothingly.
He felt guilty but he had to rest; he had to. He would be no good to Stacey and Tami if he had no strength at all. It was quiet above. Whatever was being done to them probably had ceased; he would get to them before morning. He swore to it. The resolution soothed and quieted his conscience.
No longer having to deal with his resistance, sleep, the balm to his pain, flooded over him eagerly. His last conscious thought was “It’s going to be only a little while longer. Then I’ll come up with a solution.”
The darkness that he had pierced as he roamed through the basement closed in around him and all was deadly quiet.
Shirley made sure that she was closest to Irene when Irene made her and Tami come to bed with her. She stepped in front of Tami as they walked out of the room and left her behind, wiping her eyes and sniveling. Irene ushered them into the bedroom and told them to crawl under the covers quickly.
Shirley moved fast, leaving barely enough room for Tami. Irene didn’t seem to notice. She came around the other side of the bed and crawled under the covers. Shirley watched her carefully. She hadn’t been in bed with her mother since she was a very little girl. Gerald always disapproved of the idea, even when she had nightmares, and even if those nightmares were about Arthur.
Once she told him that Arthur was at her window looking in; another time she told him that Arthur was back in his room, crying. She swore she heard him. Each time Gerald scooped her off the floor of their bedroom and practically threw her back into her own bed. He smacked her hard on the buttocks and warned her not to come out of the room again until morning.
But she heard him go to Arthur’s room; she heard that. Why would he go there if he didn’t think she was telling the truth? He didn’t come back and tell her she was lying. He sauntered back to his own room and went back to sleep. She pulled the covers up to her ears to shut out the sound of Arthur whispering in the hallway.
Right now Irene had the covers up to her chin. She remained on her back, her arms at her sides, staring up into the darkness. Shirley could see her eyes illuminated by the weak light that spilled in from the hallway. After a few minutes, she turned; she could feel Shirley staring at her.
“Why don’t you go to sleep?”
“I’m not tired now,” Shirley said.
“You have to be tired now. Look at Donna,” Irene said. Tami had curled herself into a fetal position and was sucking her thumb. Her eyelids were shut like curtains. “She’s being a good girl. Why can’t you?”
“I’m good.”
“Then go to sleep,” Irene said as she turned her back to her. Shirley stared at her a moment and then looked at Tami.
Without any warning, Shirley leaned over and took Tami’s right earlobe between her teeth, biting down hard and fast. Tami screamed and Irene spun around.
But Shirley had her eyes closed and was lying back on the pillow. She pretended to be just as shocked by Tami’s outburst.
“What is it?” Irene asked.
“Maybe she had a bad dream,” Shirley put in quickly.
Tami rubbed her ear but said nothing.
“Get on the other side of me,” Irene commanded. Tami didn’t move. “I said get on this side,” she repeated. Shirley nudged her hard and Tami fell off the side of the bed. Shirley burst into laughter and Irene sat up. “Donna!” she shouted.
Tami got up slowly and walked around the bed, eyeing the doorway as she did so. Somewhere out there her mother waited, though her mother’s scream clearly indicating that something terrible had happened to her. Tami could do nothing to help her. Thinking only tormented her. All she could picture was the gleaming blade of Shirley’s cleaver as it fell inches from her soft hand.
Tami crawled into the bed as Irene lifted the blanket for her. Irene enfolded her under her left arm, clasping her so close she felt suffocated. Irene’s body was hard and bony. Tami sensed none of her mother’s softness or pleasing scent. Irene smelled like something stale and rancid, and Tami felt trapped against her. She was afraid to move a muscle.
Shirley saw the way Irene had embraced Tami. She stared for a while, vaguely recalling a time when Irene had held her like that. Jealousy began to swell.
“She’s a crybaby,” she said.
“Shh,” Irene said. “You’ll wake Arthur.”
Tami opened her eyes. Arthur? Was he in the house? She pressed her hands against her face protectively and waited.
“Sooey-face,” Shirley whispered.
The house creaked ominously and shadows slid down the walls. If her mother couldn’t help her and her father wasn’t here to help her, who would? Suddenly she remembered when her father explained to her what it meant to pray.
“It’s all right to ask God for things,” he told her, “as long as they’re not bad things. But you can’t always ask for things only for yourself. That’s selfish and it’s not fair.”
“Will God give things to you?”
“If they’re good things and you’ve been good.”
Her mother had told her something similar, but Tami had never really experimented before.
Now she struggled to remember what her father had said about God not liking people who ask for things only for themselves.
She didn’t know exactly how to phrase the prayer, so she closed her eyes and thought.
“Help Mommy.” She mouthed the words. “If you help Mommy, Mommy can help me.”
She opened her eyes and waited. Never before in her life had Tami wanted to see the morning light as much.