15. Aunt Alice

Mom is dressed with her makeup already done and coffee in hand.

Usually I’m the one making her coffee, sometimes leaving for school without even hearing her stir.

“You taking me to school?”

Mom shakes her head. “I talked with the principal last night.”

“And?”

“You’re staying home today.”

“They still think—”

“No,” she says, stopping at the kitchen counter and directing her gaze toward me. “At least the principal doesn’t think it was your gun. But they still need to talk to some kids, look into it. She said it would be better if you stayed home.”

I sigh.

If this gets out, even if they find out it wasn’t my gun, I’ll be labeled as a troublemaker. Some freak.

Even more than a new student already is.

“We’re going to see your Aunt Alice today.”

I hear a rumble of thunder. “Any particular reason why today?”

“We should have gone last weekend.”

I almost say, “Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but you couldn’t get off the couch.”

Instead, I just ask, “What if the school calls?”

“They can leave a message.”

I look at the box of cereal. It’s some generic version of Cheerios, as if you could get any plainer than that. I pour some into a bowl and find the milk.

“Are you going to take a shower?”

“Think Aunt Alice is going to care?” I ask.

“I will.”

With a mouth full of soggy cardboard bits, I nod and mumble that I’ll be ready in just a few minutes.

The only place the directions seem to be getting my mother is lost.

The glaze of rain coming down sure doesn’t help. It feels like we’re driving in the gray of clouds, turning down a wandering rocky road without a name only to have to back up and go miles over the same ground. We’ve been driving for half an hour.

“So Aunt Alice is your mother’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember her?”

“A little. She was younger than my mother. I remember her at the funeral. She was a wreck.”

“And nothing over the years?”

Mom shakes her head, squinting to see the messy scribbles of her own handwriting on the sheet of paper. “A card every now and then. I’ve spoken with her on the phone a few times. The last being just a month ago.”

“How’d she sound?”

“Well, she gave me these directions. Which make about as much sense as she did.” Mom puts the piece of paper in her lap and keeps driving.

“She ever marry?”

“No.”

The no sounds like “not in a million years.” Like Aunt Alice couldn’t marry, like she has one arm and horns sticking out of her head and she talks in tongues. Or maybe has several tongues to talk with.

“My mother’s death really had an impact on our small family. There were just the two of them—the two girls. Aunt Alice just—she never recovered.”

“And she’s the only family member around here?”

“There are several from the Kinner side of the family, my father’s family. He had a couple of brothers, and I think their families are still in the area, though they’d only be cousins. I lost touch with them.”

Without the directions in hand, it seems that Mom does a better job navigating. We drive down a dirt road and come to a small side road with a crooked old tin mailbox at the end of it. The numbers say it belongs to Aunt Alice. The driveway, if you can call it that, wanders way back into the woods. Our car passes over ruts in the muddy road, ruts that are turning soft and gooey like warm fudge. We eventually come to a one-story house that looks as though it’s on its way to becoming one with the forest surrounding it.

“Seriously?”

Mom looks at me with a glance that says so much.

Be quiet, for one thing.

Get out, for another.

Mind your manners is surely in there.

And last but not least, This is freaking crazy.

Her sigh gives it away.

After several knocks on the crusted-over door with its welcome mat of dried paint chips, we hear a voice inside. We’d maybe look in the window, but it’s dirty, dark like the clouds around us, unwashed for a century.

“Hello?” my mother says in a friendly tone.

“Inside,” someone hollers in a not-so-friendly tone.

Mom turns the door handle, glances at me, walks in.

I start to get claustrophobic even before stepping foot inside.

If I thought that cabin I found in the woods was gross, this is something else. The smell of something rotten fills my nostrils, burning them. I don’t know what death smells like, but this reeks of it. Mom turns just as I’m about to say something.

“Hello?” she calls out again.

We hear something crash in a room in the back. We’re in the muted light of a living room, though it doesn’t look like any kind of living to me. The glow of two windows creates shadows in the otherwise dark room. There’s no light bulb lit. I half wonder if there’s any power to light one.

“Aunt Alice?”

A round goblin comes out of the darkness of the hallway. At least that’s what I see in my mind first, a round-faced figure hunched over, leaning on something.

As my eyes adjust, I see the woman. She’s both overweight and tiny, if that makes any sense. It makes about as much sense as anything around her. She’s short but round, with chunky arms and a couple of necks. By the way she moves, Alice hides half of her body.

“Aunt Alice, it’s me. It’s Tara.”

The eyes widen. She stops, leaning on what appears to be some kind of walking stick.

“Tara?”

“It’s Tara. Tara Kinner.”

My mother’s maiden name obviously rings a bell. I’m expecting the good ole “let me make you some biscuits and gravy” routine.

But Aunt Alice just stands there, leaning over, a scowl coming over her face. “What are you doing here?”

“Alice, I came by to see you. I want you to meet someone.”

“Why did you come back?”

“Alice, this is Chris, my son.”

Thanks, Mom. Great time to be introduced.

I stand like a complete lump and long for the days of simply being neglected in a classroom.

“You shouldna come back here.”

Her voice is grainy, Southern to the core, almost hard to understand.

Mom looks at me.

“Hi,” I say weakly.

“What do you want?” Aunt Alice asks.

I see the black outline of a crow in the corner, either a stuffed one or a carving. I swear I see its eyes blink.

Then the bird moves.

My skin and my heart move with it.

It flutters for a few minutes, then settles, having announced its presence.

If my mom is surprised or scared, she doesn’t show it. “Do you mind if we stay for a few minutes?”

“This place isn’t for you,” Aunt Alice says, shuffling on toward the kitchen, which is separated from the living room by a half wall.

Mom points at me to sit down. I half expect to find bird poop on the chair or maybe a snake coiled up. I smile and stay standing.

Aunt Alice lights a couple of candles that make the place even creepier than before.

There’s nothing in here that’s pleasant.

A big frame shows a man who is as pale as a ghost with a bald head and an expression that makes me think he wants to kill the photographer. Then I notice that it’s a painting.

“That’s my grandfather,” Mom tells me.

“Nice.”

“Shhh.”

Mom goes toward the kitchen. I can’t help keeping my eyes on the crow that’s resting on the back of a chair. It seems to be watching me.

“Don’t have much around here,” Aunt Alice says. “Don’t get many stoppin’ by.”

“That’s okay. We’re fine. I just wanted to come by and let you know we’re here.”

Aunt Alice opens what appears to be an ancient refrigerator. My eyes take in more of the room.

I see a small table with a few pictures on it, some strange beads covering them, a woodcarving of an owl.

That better be a woodcarving, ’cause if that sucker suddenly hoots, I’m outta here.

I move toward the kitchen and past an armchair; then I turn and almost pass out.

A figure is sitting in the chair.

It’s a corpse.

A rotting, stinking corpse.

It’s the reason this place smells so bad, and the reason that I’m so out of here.

I jerk back and hit the wall and knock down something to the ground.

“Chris.”

“Mom—did you see—”

But it’s not a dead body. It’s a mannequin.

A dressed-up mannequin of a woman wearing pants and a jacket.

Dead eyes stare back at me.

I can just picture having a cup of coffee while sitting next to that thing. Maybe if I stay long enough, it’ll start talking.

Mom keeps chatting with Aunt Alice while I pick up the framed stitching I knocked off the wall.

It’s a pentagram.

I’m not sure what side was up or down. I forget what a pentagram stands for. Upside down or not, I’m beginning to think wonderful little Aunt Alice is into some weird stuff.

She lights more candles and proceeds to sit in the chair that the crow is resting on.

I lean against the wall, telling my mom I’m fine right where I am. Away from the mannequin.

“Are you Chris?” Alice asks me.

I was beginning to believe—well, hope is the word—that she hadn’t even noticed me.

“Yes, hi, hello.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

Her eyes grow dim. Even in a chair, she slouches, as if her back is permanently bent. I see spotted, fleshy hands rub something—a clear stone that’s on a chain. It looks like a triangle.

“When are you leavin’?” Aunt Alice asks Mom.

“We’re here to stay.”

“You can’t stay around here.”

“This is our home.”

“No home to you, not anymore. You should know that. You should know that by now.”

“How have you been?” Mom asks her, ignoring her threats and warnings.

For fifteen of the longest minutes of my life, I listen to Mom try and engage the lady in this strange, smelly house in Nowhereland. The sound of the rain hits the metallic roof. My legs are tired, but I’m still okay standing. In case I need to run out of the door for any reason. In case the mannequin sits up and starts singing “Hello, Dolly.”

“This is no place for him. For a family. For young’uns.”

“Have you seen my brother, Aunt Alice? Have you see Robert at all?”

“Don’t know a Robert.”

“Bobby?”

Aunt Alice thinks for a minute, still rubbing that rock of hers.

I see something white come out of nowhere and slip between her legs.

A cat. Some big white ball of fur.

“He was around not long ago.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“The mouth of the beast swallowed him up,” Aunt Alice says. “Just like Jonah. Just like Annie. Just like it will swallow you.”

Mom seems unfazed. “Did you talk to Bobby?”

“Death surrounded him. Death hung in the air around him like a broken halo. Death chased after him.”

“What happened to him, Aunt Alice? Where’d he go?”

Aunt Alice suddenly turns to me, then starts to laugh.

I see missing teeth—either that or black ones. She starts to howl with laughter.

“Hell,” she says in that southern drawl. “Hell. He stopped by just before he reached hell. Just like the two of you. Just like you.”