Here's R.M. Morrow's entry in the Tin House Shirley Jackson story contest. His title for it is "Hilda." (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.)
Nobody answered the door when we knocked but it turned out somebody was in the home. In the cellar, it turned out. And this somebody I'll name later followed us back to our homes. Then, as chance had it, he followed Hilda to her home. And he wasn't returning a dropped handkerchief. He wasn't exactly the romantic type.
Hilda's father is something like a doctor, so I have to believe him when he says its unlikely that Hilda suffered much in the way of fear or pain when she was murdered. He said that she was fast asleep when the culprit sneaked in through a jimmied bedroom window. He said that her murderer did the job with one clean stroke of the hammer. I have no reason not to believe Hilda's father. Like I said, he's something of a doctor and it is his job to know these sorts of things. He could be lying for me or to himself, but either of us outright knowing or bitterly acknowledging that she died in fear and agony won't stir her bones and bring Hilda back from the grave. It would only make our nights seem a few hours longer and a few shadows darker. As it is, when she died it was as if I had a pantry shelf inside me that was swept clean of its bags of flour, sugar, and salt, and repurposed, restocked with a box of drywall nails, a box of rat poison, a can of abrasive detergent and a jug of off-brand paint solvent.
The trial was spectacular but brief. I was given caution that I might have to take the stand as a character witness. And as much as I would have liked to talk up a storm about what a great gal Hilda is it never came to be. Like I said, my father is a lawyer and he did all he could to abbreviate this unexpected chapter in his daughter's life. The killer wasn't much of a surprise. He was the exact type of human being that fascinates Hilda and me. He was greasy and grubby, all ribcage and pointy elbows and knobby knees with no light in his eyes. If he had not been sent to the electric chair, or to the scaffold, I forget which card the judge and jury dealt the scarecrow, he would have lived out his remaining days as a drunken car mechanic or simply as an unremarkable drifter. He really was just the cut-here and fold-there paper doll replica of the ghastliest sort of human being. His name was Fred and he was a generic monster. And that is all I will say about that.
Hilda has become much more popular without me. She has been invited to appear at all the slumber parties, and reports are that she is quite open to discussing her life, her death and, naturally, all manner of topics that sustain what I can only imagine is the robustly intellectual salon atmosphere of an overnighter at Sally's or Becky's or Molly's. Boys, for example. I never knew she had it in her, but Hilda apparently knows which boys have eyes for which girls. I am both slightly charmed and a little unnerved to learn that Hilda has developed this talent. And she's transformed into a regular butterfly. I understand that just last Friday she bellied up to no less than five Ouija boards in one night. She was the opening act to that dead Norton girl. Not the one you're thinking of, but the other one. The one who tripped over some rocks and drowned in Sanders pond about eight years ago. So they say. Hilda really is much more sociable now. I can't say the same about myself.
I've taken to hiding out in the school library. The long shelves and high stacks provide sanctuary while I go about my way losing weight from skipping lunch and reading the beauty magazines. It is not so bad. I tell myself that I am preparing my body and mind for the spring fashions. Unless they're too ghastly. And my grim presence and its attendant relationship to Hilda has the benefit of discouraging many young lovers from turning the seven-, eight- and nine-hundreds of the Dewey Decimal system into their own private moonlit forest of eros and enchantment. I know it's a ghastly thing to do, but so is going steady. And I'm not exactly a wall-scratching poltergeist out in the wilderness of the American History books when I protect my dominion. I'm polite. "Hey. Studying here," is all I have to say, and it is like a magical phrase that banishes the Steady Eddies and their Real Swell Gal Pals. Where they go I don't know and I don't care.
The other day I caught a ride with mother into town at four o'clock in the afternoon. I wanted to retrace old steps but I told mother that I was going to meet some girls from school at the malt shop to study for an upcoming mathematics test. I told her I would get a ride home and to please keep my dinner warm. "I'm glad to see you trying to get out there and engage with the world again," she said. "I know it can't be easy, and probably never will." I said with my sweetest smile, "Why mother, whatever do you mean? Really. What are you talking about? What won't get easy and never will?" She had no reply.
I found myself wandering the aisles of Schneider's Food and Drug. I don't know how I got there. I had lost track of a small chunk time but the clock said it was only half past five. I decided to be constructive and began looking for something to steal. Candles seemed to call to me. Yes. That was it. I would steal a candle and when I got home I would close my door and turn out the lights and light the candle for Hilda. And it would be like old times to walk out of the store with a secret, however small. It would be a cinch to pull off such a very small heist, right there in the hardware and housewares aisle.
Just as I savored the singular moment of joy to be had before slipping the candle into my coat pocket Mr. Schneider's mother stepped from what seemed to be out of nowhere, but was really the bread aisle. Which is kind of funny because I have always believed that the bread aisle is the most boring corridor in any given store. I mean, bread is bread, right? Well, Old Mrs. Schneider shook her head so vigorously that her peasant scarf began to unknot itself, and then she angrily shook her knitting needles at me and said, "You live, to shoplift after Hilda's gone? Your lesson to study: accept her gone!"
I was stunned for just a moment. But only just. I said, "Why you backwards beast. Really, you're just a filthy old hag. See if I or my family or anybody else I talk to ever shops here again. I mean, really. What ghastly things to say to a young girl."
R.M. Morrow has worked as a cemetery groundskeeper, an assistant editor at Weird Tales magazine, and a night clerk at an old hotel. You can follow him on twitter @Frankenstein007.
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