Here's Megan Taylor's entry in the Tin House Shirley Jackson story contest. Her title for it is "Ghastly." (What am I talking about? See this post. And if you entered the contest, I'd love to read your ending -- send it to jessyrandall@yahoo.com.)
I slowed as we got closer. I told myself it was because I was taking it all in, because it was such a funny house and we’d want to laugh about it afterwards, the way we always did. There was dirt and crabgrass in the yard, the way you’d expect but there were also some straggling flowers and I knew I shouldn’t be scared; of course Hilda wasn’t. She marched right up to the screen door and knocked, three short raps like she belonged there or something, but no one answered and by the time I got beside her on the porch, her little white-gloved fist was raised again.
“Hilda,” I said, “maybe we shouldn’t.”
I didn’t mean to say it, not out loud, but the porch smelt bad like rotten apples and I don’t know, but it kind of felt bad too. There were black gaps between the boards beneath our feet and the wood had gotten soft and I started worrying about cellars. What if the planks gave way and we fell down –
But Hilda gave me a look and knocked harder and then the door was scraping open and I gasped, the boards moaning and sinking as I stepped back.
A dirty man, I thought. A bad dirty man – well, at least now we’d finally met one!
I nearly laughed, except how could anyone laugh with that person standing there so close and looking – their eyes a yellow kind of hazel and their skin all gray and greasy, grease spots covering its house dress too – a dress, I realised, so it couldn’t be a man, but a woman. A dirty woman, except you didn’t get dirty women, did you?
She wasn’t much taller than Hilda and had black hair too, though of course it wasn’t washed glossy like hers. It was all sticking-out tufts and faded patches. The woman had a fat neck, with grime folded into the creases and there was more grime in the cracks around her dirty yellow eyes.
Of course Hilda paid no mind to the eyes or the dress or anything. She was too busy making her face little-girl again, and she held her gloved hands clasped together like she was praying or something.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” she said. “But we’re looking for our aunt. Our mother gave us this address. She’s very sick, but she sent us – that’s why she sent us...”
Hilda’s voice came out high and breathy and beneath her lowered lashes, her eyes shone – I didn’t think I’d ever seen her quite so ghastly. I felt the thrill of it, even while I was still feeling so stupid and scared – maybe because of that.
“Gee,” she said. “I think this is the right place. I sure hope so. We haven’t seen our aunt in years. And – and, we’ve come way across town. We only had the fare one-way.”
I held my pocketbook very still so you couldn’t hear the quarters jangling and I wondered what Hilda would do if the door slammed shut in our faces. Instead, the woman laughed.
“Your aunt!” she said – and there was something feathery about her voice, something lightly husked. “And your mother too! Your poor sick mother!”
She opened her mouth wide as she laughed. Her tongue was fat and pink and there were holes between her horrible teeth – black gaps that made me think about cellars again, but “Come on in!” she said and Hilda didn’t wait or anything; she just went right in.
I followed her into the brown hall, what else could I do? Though I kept thinking about the guy at the newsstand, how he’d told us to go straight home, and how this place was nothing like any home I’d ever been in – the apple smell was much worse inside and it became even more terrible when the woman swung around me to shut the door. She drew the bolts and flicked the key with such sudden surprising speed, I wondered if there wasn’t something truly ghastly about her, if she might actually be a witch –
Of course I’m too old to believe in witches, but she was standing even closer than before and for an awful moment I thought she might grab me, touch me, but she just put the key into her dress pocket and said “Come in!” again, which I thought was pretty dumb since we were already locked inside.
“Poor girls,” she said. “You must be tired after coming all that way. Let me fix you a drink and you can tell me all about your poor sick mother. What good girls you must be, what with your poor sick mother and all...”
She was already swaying down the brown hallway, moving thick and slow now, the way I’d imagined she would. Hilda turned to me.
“What are you doing?” she hissed. “Stop looking like that. You’ll spoil everything.”
I didn’t say anything, but Hilda went on anyway: “And don’t think we’re leaving any time soon.” She tugged my hair where it had come loose. “It’s up to you now,” she said. “It’s your turn. You have to steal something before we can go.”
In the den, there was a lot more brown, a ratty brown rug and a brown scratched coffee table and a bookcase with spindly legs. Even the light leaking in under the blind looked brown and there were three brown battered armchairs draped with lace doilies the color of tea. I didn’t want to sit down on any of them, but Hilda did and so I did too, but I didn’t take my coat off. The chair’s lumps pushed into me anyhow. The apple air pressed close.
“I’ll bet you girls like lemonade,” the woman said. “Nothing quite like home-made lemonade! Bet your poor mother can’t make it anymore. I bet your aunt...” She trailed off, her yellow eyes blinking.
“That would be grand,” Hilda said.
“Grand,” I muttered too, but I was already looking about for something to take. I needed to be quick, and then we could go – in fact, it needed to be now, while the woman was off in her tacky little kitchen. I could hear her cracking ice and banging doors and I pictured shelves, stained and sticky and bowed beneath the weight of cheap canned soup. She’d have crates full of apples in there too, I thought, every one of them brown and running to mush...
But I had to concentrate. There was a green ashtray on the table and a row of pale ceramic figures on top of the bookcase. The doilies were closer, but I didn’t want to touch them. I didn’t want to touch any of it.
Hilda didn’t care of course. She leant across and picked up one of the figures. Her eyes flashed. “Oh, it’s all too great!” she said.
Up close, I could see that the ornament was some kind of cherub, a fat angel-baby, except because of the dirt caught in its crevices, it looked wrinkled, its face like a devil’s, its ceramic eyes spookily blank.
I thought about the woman, only a room away. I thought about her yellow eyes and gray neck and what it might be like to have to touch her... I reached out to snatch the cherub from Hilda, but she swept it away from me. She slid it back on to the bookcase just as the woman reappeared in the doorway.
Hilda mouthed: too easy.
“You’re still here!” the woman said.
She was carrying a tray with a clouded-looking pitcher on it and two tumblers. Ice clinked as she shuffled closer and for the first time, I looked down at her feet. They were black and rippling, and they merged with her shadow like some kind of puddle, like sticky oil. I looked away and when I looked back again the black had parted and become two separate slinking cats. The cats slithered ahead, one of them vanishing with the dark under Hilda’s chair.
“Excuse my babies,” the woman said.
Her slippers trailed after them, ordinary and oatmeal-colored, peeling at the toes. She set the tray down on the table, knocking the ashtray on to the brown rug. No one picked it up, but I wondered if I might be able to sneak it into my purse later.
“It’s just lovely to have you!” the woman said. She lifted a long wooden spoon from the tray and stirred the pitcher. “Two good girls, with a sick mother. Coming all this way to see me!”
The shrivelled chunks of lemon bobbed as she jabbed the spoon in harder. Her yellow eyes looked watery, her lips wet.
“I had a sister once,” she said. She raised the spoon to her big dark mouth and sucked on it. “More sugar,” she said. And then: “You are good girls. Aren’t you?”
Hilda’s smile flickered small and tight, but “yes!” she said. “I mean, I like to think so. I hope so.”
Hilda and I watched the woman as she dumped an entire bowl of sugar into the pitcher, as the spoon that had been in her black, gapped mouth descended again, and circled.
“What an interesting place you have,” Hilda said. “So many nice things.”
She turned to me and I wondered if she wasn’t suddenly wishing that I’d been faster too, that maybe now she wanted to get out as badly as I did – except that Hilda never got scared.
“I hope so too,” the woman said, pouring. “Because some girls I know like to make up stories. Some girls like to play tricks.” She handed us our tumblers. “My sister and I used to play tricks, I think...”
Hilda stiffened. She stared at her lemonade, and then took a thin breath and downed half with a flourish. “Delicious!” she said. “Thank you!”
The tumbler chilled my hands. I felt them both looking at me. I took a sip. It was very sweet, but there was something coarse about it too.
But: “Delicious,” I murmured, and then when they wouldn’t stop looking, I made myself drink more.
“Good!” the woman said. “Good girls! What d’you like doing, you two good girls? I’ll bet you like riding don’t you? Riding horses – and streetcars too, right across town. Only it’s a shame when you don’t have the fare, isn’t it? When you get stuck way out and can’t even call home...”
The cold and sweet travelled from my throat up to the back of my skull. I felt it settle there, underneath my hair, little clammy ceramic fingers.
“It’s very cold,” I said, but nobody heard.
“I’ll bet you like swimming!” the woman went on. “I bet you’ve got your very own pools – I’ve got one myself – I know! You wouldn’t think it from the neighborhood, but I’ve got nice things too, don’t I? Didn’t you even say I had nice things? Just cause it’s gotten a little run-down around here, doesn’t mean I don’t like to keep nice things when they come calling.”
Hilda had finished her lemonade. She reached out to set her tumbler down, but her hand floated mid-air.
“I don’t feel so great,” she was saying – but then something touched me. I felt it skim my calves, a prickle of matted bristles as the shadows crept from under Hilda’s chair to mine. I jumped up, spilling what was left of my drink on to the ratty brown rug. The cold in my head flared whitely and when it cleared, I saw that Hilda had dropped her tumbler too. I wanted to laugh again – at least you wouldn’t see the stains!
But then the woman stood, beside me. She looked taller than before, and even wider.
“You want to see my pool?” she whispered. “It’s out back.”
For a moment, I thought she was going to open the door and I could run, but instead she shuffled to the window. “Here,” she said.
I stepped over Hilda’s tumbler, and then carefully across the rest of the rug in case it started squirming – it seemed quite likely that it might. I thought of rats’ tails and of the cats, oil around my shins. I held my hands out for balance; I didn’t want to fall.
The woman lifted the blind, but I had to squeeze in close to make out anything through the smeary panes. Even then, I could only just see the house next door, the only other house nearby, with its empty black windows. I couldn’t see any pool, just a dark trench hacked into the ground. It was only about long enough to lie down in, but it was deep –
“Ain’t it great?” she said. “I’ll bet all the neighbourhood kids will drop by – the decent kids, anyway. The Winners, the Andersons...”
Suddenly, I knew that I had to steal the key. That’s what Hilda would do, and she’d help me, even though it was my turn – didn’t we do everything together? Wasn’t she ghastly? But when I turned back, I saw that Hilda was curled up and her eyes were closed. She had her gloves folded over her stomach and she was moaning softly, the tea-stained doily hanging right by her mouth. And then the whole room lurched, the walls and floor no longer meeting. Everything trembled, although that could’ve been just me – my papery hands, my cold, bright head –
“I have to go,” I said. “My mother...”
“Is sick. I know – didn’t you tell me? Or was that your tricky sister?”
The key, I remembered, was in the woman’s greasy pocket. Hardly thinking, I reached out and when I started to fall, she caught me. She hooked her big arm around me and her touch was much lighter than I’d imagined, gentle and fluttering, like her voice. She lay me down carefully on the rug.
“You’re tired,” she said. “No wonder – coming all this way, crossing town! And just to visit your old aunt. Aren’t I your aunt?” She laughed. “Didn’t you tell me that?”
The brightness in my head was finally dimming. Darkness hovered close. I felt it flowing over me like the slither of cats, like oil, black and glistening.
“Yes,” the woman said. “You get a good rest. You’ve come to the right place, you and your sister. Don’t you worry now, I know how to have fun. When you wake up, I’ll fix some fresh lemonade. And later on, I’ll take you swimming.”
Megan Taylor is the author of three novels, How We Were Lost, The Dawning and The Lives of Ghosts. As a massive Shirley Jackson fan, she was overjoyed to be named second runner-up in the Tin House competition. To find out more about Megan's writing, please visit www.megantaylor.info.
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