The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
The tiny hand let go.
Without its resistance, Dahlia toppled out of the tub facefirst onto the floor—and when she tried to push herself up, her palm slipped out from under her. She finished falling all the way, bouncing her forehead against the tiles.
“Dahl?” Gabe’s voice was at the door, staying obediently and modestly behind it. But there was fear in his voice. “You okay?”
“Yes,” she wheezed. It wasn’t true, but she said it again, regardless. “Yes, I’m fine. I slipped, baby. I’m fine. It’s wet in here, and I still … I forgot to go fetch a shower curtain. Is everything okay out there?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“All right, then give me another minute, just another minute or two. I’m almost finished.”
She climbed to her feet and planted her hands on the sides of the sink. She shook her head. It hurt, but she hadn’t broken anything. A check of the mirror told her nothing was bleeding, and she wouldn’t even get a goose egg for her troubles. It wasn’t so bad at all. There wasn’t anyone else in the room. No spectral little boys, no mud-and-blood-covered girls, and no soldiers.
She mouthed the words, “Fuck this, and fuck you,” into the glass and to the room at large—silently, and angrily. She grabbed her soap and climbed back in on the far end of the tub, where the jet of water hit below her crotch and the terrifying water hadn’t flashed her yet, because she wasn’t all the way in it and—
That’s right, something said again. The water.
She froze. It wasn’t the voice of the house, the one she’d heard on her first day at the estate. Not a girl’s voice, or a boy’s either. Was it a woman? Another thing entirely? She refused to close her eyes. She needed to see, if there was anything to be seen.
“What’s right?” she breathed, so soft the water would cover the sound of it.
It’s in the water. She’s trying to tell you.
“I have no idea what you’re—”
Something moved in the steam—the impression of something. Not even a real, solid something at all, except that it had arms and legs and a head, and then it wasn’t there. It ducked into the mist and was gone. It appeared in a corner, and vanished again. It slithered behind the sink, crouched beside the toilet, and melted away when the steam rolled past it in a frothy cloud.
Dahlia tracked it, squinting to make out any detail.
Whatever it was, it was too big to be a child. Too fast and smooth and ephemeral to be flesh and blood, much less alive. But it kept its distance so long as she kept her face out of the water. That was the trick, wasn’t it? It was something about the water on her face, on her head.
That’s how they hurt her. That’s how she hurt him.
Trembling, she lathered up and sloughed off as much of the mud as she could. Her legs shook and her eyes stung with the tap water spray, but she blinked them clear and monitored the steam. In it, she spied a glimpse of arm. The back of a leg. A flicker of hair. She knew it was not her imagination—not some trick of that fuzzy place where the brain seeks a pattern, and in the absence of one, creates its own.
“Got you…,” she said, still so very, very hushed—in order to keep Gabe from knowing.
She was lying. She didn’t have anything, except the certainty that she wasn’t alone. But the thing in the fog was leaving her be, so long as she didn’t duck under that stream from the shower head.
The temperature of the bathroom had hit sauna level, and that was fine. It was nice.
She closed her eyes in an act of faith. Shaking and covered in goose bumps, even in the tropical bathroom, she soaped up her face and ran the lather up behind her ears, into her hair. The soap bubbled up brown from the mud.
Gabe pressed himself against the door, trying to keep from closing it—or opening it, either. She heard him shuffle back and forth, and hold it steady by the knob. “Everything still okay in there?”
“Everything’s still okay,” she assured him. She sounded like she was telling the truth, this time. “Is everything cool out there?”
“Yes ma’am. Everything’s still good.”
She held out her hands, cupped together, and filled them with water. She splashed it on her face, then repeated the process a dozen times more to rinse off her head.
No shocks. No zapping buzz of current on each temple. Only the anxious bracing that was almost worse, every time the water hit her. It was self-torture, at that point. No one was hurting her; this was only the lingering terror of being touched.
She climbed out of the tub to turn off the water, feeling something akin to victory when the flow ceased and she was still standing—and standing alone, with nothing in the mirror to threaten or warn her.
“Gabe? I’m finished in here, and I’ll be fine now. Go ahead and take off, and shut the bedroom door behind you. I forgot to bring any clean clothes in here with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m damn sure, honey. Thank you for waiting around and keeping watch. I appreciated it.”
“No worries, so long as you’ll do the same for me.”
“You got it,” she promised. “Give me five minutes to throw on something clean, and the water closet’s all yours.”
The bedroom door shut and the old knob squeaked, clinked, and fastened into place behind Gabe. When Dahlia was certain that he was gone, she flung the bathroom door open wide—letting all the steam loose, and banishing whatever had been inside there with her. At least that’s what she wanted to think, as she stood there wearing a towel and a thin layer of soap, because hard water never rinses everything away, no matter how long you stand there and let it hit you.
Her feet left moist spots on the wood, and picked up old dust when she walked to her bags. She pulled out a pair of fleece pajamas and pulled them on, then sat on the window seat to add some socks and sneakers. She wasn’t going to bed right away, and the floors were covered in splinters, dirt, and everything else that falls when there’s no one to clean up for years and years. She didn’t care how silly it looked.
From her spot at the window, she had a direct line of sight into the bathroom. She watched that wet pink room, still suspicious … and with a dawning sense of confusion, she saw that steam was still billowing forth.
It shouldn’t be. Not anymore, since the water was off and the room was so chilly … and that wasn’t normal, was it?
She didn’t realize she’d stopped tying her laces, or that she was barely breathing while she watched that bathroom doorway that should’ve been empty, but gusted clouds like a fog machine was running full force in there; she knew because she’d used a fog machine once, when she and Bobby and Andy had worked a haunted cave just before Halloween. Right about this time of year, a whole decade ago.
What a crazy thing to think about, sitting on the window seat, watching the bathroom fill with white mist as thick as cotton. What a stupid moment to wish Andy was there to flip the switch and turn it off, or even just hang out beside her so she could tell him what was going on. He probably wouldn’t believe her, but he’d lie all the same if that’s what she wanted. He’d always lie to make her feel better. He’d always lied to hide things, good or bad. It had been all the same to him.
She stood up, trying to step away from the spiral of confusion and fog in her own head, never mind the one in the bathroom. She had to do something. She had to open the bathroom window first, and let it all spill down the side of the house and roll off into the woods.
Something moved. In the bathroom, behind the fog.
Something shaped like a woman—she saw it clearly enough, this time. It was shaped like a woman, yes, but it didn’t move like one. It moved like a spider, something with a fiddle or a bowtie on its back. But not an hourglass. An hourglass shows time moving, one direction or another. Whatever this was, it was stuck in time, if not in place. It was venomous. It was coming.
The thing darted, corner to corner, just like in the bathroom. Only now it was here—in the bedroom where there wasn’t any water, and the rul
She might’ve screamed, but the shadow charged her and she ducked out of the way.
It backed up, and gathered itself. It took the shape of a girl wearing a smock that had been rent into rags. The girl was covered in mud, in blood, and in the stink of death. Only for a moment. She barely took shape long enough to say she’d been there at all. Half a blink, and Dahlia would’ve missed her.
The girl dissolved into the white smoke again, so that meant she was coming again—hiding before revealing herself in these violent fits and spurts. “Abigail?” Dahlia gasped. “Is that you?”
The wet-haired, mud-faced, bloody-handed dead girl hardened. Step by step, she came forward. There was nowhere for Dahlia to run. She was cornered, and the exit was on the other side of this phantom with murder in its eyes.
No.
That voice again. A woman’s, yes. But not this woman, with the boneless hands and the body made of mist.
No, the other voice said again. Leave her alone.
Out in the room—no, in the bathroom behind her—she heard a scraping noise, and then the soft crack of glass that wasn’t ready to move. It was the light, popping noise of a windowpane splitting, but not shattering. Then she heard the scrape of a frame that’s been nearly painted shut, and doesn’t want to give way.
It did anyway. It opened.
The dragging, yanking sound echoed on the pink tiles, and the steam, or fog, or whatever it was … it withdrew, as if someone had pulled the plug on a drain—and it all sucked back into the bathroom.
The suite was filled with the sharp, high howl of a tea kettle ready to pop, or wind cutting through a cave. The noise left through that bathroom window, and the shadow of a woman who moved like a spider left with it, drawn backward, drawn away (if not out).
Dahlia leaned against the wall. It was either that, or fall flat on her ass.
She clutched her chest. It was rising and falling too hard, with leftover panic, but that was a comfort to her. The sound of her own breath gasping in and out of her lungs, the rumble of her heart in her ears, the patter of the rain outside … there was a rhythm to these things, and they calmed her, until the voice came again, from everywhere and nowhere.
She doesn’t listen.
“Who?” Dahlia asked, blurting out the word before the speaker had finished. “Who are you? Who was that? Was that Abigail?” She looked around, and the room was still empty and shut, sealed up except for the open window in the bathroom.
But from the bay window, a reflection watched. It wasn’t Dahlia’s own, or Abigail’s, either—not the young woman in the dress, nor the poltergeist in mud and blood, if they were one and the same in some warped recollection of death.
This was a woman, to be sure. A calm woman, old enough to be Dahlia’s mother. Her hair was salt and pepper, curled into a halo; she wore pants and a fitted jacket with 1970s lapels.
Dahlia whispered, “If I turn around, you won’t be there, will you?”
I’m not behind you.
She checked anyway. She saw nothing, so she watched the reflection instead. “Should I be afraid?”
You are afraid.
“Of Abigail? Was that her? The devil took her, that’s what Augusta said.”
The devil did take her, but it took him awhile. She was sent away, first.
Dahlia felt a flash of memory that belonged to someone else. It flickered across the glass, lit up by the light she’d left on the nightstand. She saw walls covered in tile, but not pink tile. There were showers and sponges, and straps. Tubs full of water and ice.
“She was sent to a sanitarium?” she guessed.
She’s taken a liking to you. She thinks you understand.
“This is how she treats the people she likes?”
A loud knock on the door. Too loud.
So much louder than the woman with the vintage jacket.
Dahlia jumped. Her heart leaped into her throat again, and trembled there. She looked back at the door, and then back to the window—but the older woman was gone. The steam was gone. The creature was gone. And Bobby was at the door, hollering for her to answer him.
“What’s going on in there? Who are you talking to? Dolly, you okay? Open the door, would you?”
“It’s open,” she barked. Her voice was raw. Her throat grated every word into dust.
“Nope.” He wiggled the knob back and forth. “You locked yourself inside.”
She stepped away from the wall, swayed, and steadied herself. Deep breath. Another one. More of them. They seemed to help. She went to the door and turned the knob herself. It spun the ordinary way and the door swung open on hinges that weren’t happy about it, squeaking to let her know.
She poked her face around the side, and hoped she didn’t look too crazy. “I don’t think it does lock. This thing’s been broken longer than I’ve been alive.” She drew the door back all the way, so he could see for himself.
He eyed her, up and down—wild wet hair, pajamas, sneakers half untied. He looked past her, into the room that looked like it’d always looked. “What’s going on in here?”
She leaned against the door, but it was shit for balance, so she changed her mind and leaned against the frame instead. Exhausted from fear, but still afraid, she told him, “Goddamn, Bobby. I don’t even know. I saw something, and it didn’t like me. And I fell…,” she oversimplified.
“Is that what happened to your forehead?”
She gently touched the place where she’d struck the bathroom floor. “Bathrooms are slippery when wet. It’s not bleeding. It’s not even swelling. Hardly,” she amended, feeling the start of a lump.
He shook his head, then gave the wall an openhanded smack that was heavy nonetheless. “This place is fucked up, Dolly. We should pack up what we’ve got, and leave tonight.”
“You know we can’t do that, and you know why.” She walked away from him, and didn’t chase him out when he followed her into the bedroom.
Bobby sat down on the window seat, next to Dahlia’s sleeping bag. He rubbed his eyes. He’d been drinking again, but that was all right. Dahlia was the one who’d told him where the bottle was. “I stand by my assessment. You swear you’re not really hurt?”
“I swear I’m not really hurt. Ghosts can’t hurt you; everybody knows that. All they can do is scare you, and we only need to hold out for another couple of days.” She sat down over by her stuff, on the window seat. “We can suck it up for a couple of days. Tomorrow, though … if it stops raining, we really do have to get that body squared away before anybody wanders by and sees it. We’ll look like crooks, and Dad will go broke, and we’ll all be out on the streets.”
Bobby sat down on the ledge beside her. His voice got quiet. “Tomorrow, yeah. We’ll cover him back up again, don’t worry. But listen, I’ve got an idea.”
“God help us,” she said, but she didn’t stop him.
“Yeah, yeah. I know, but hear me out before you shut me down.” Then he got all earnest on her, which almost worried her. Bobby didn’t do “earnest” very often. “While I was out there, I got a look at the stones—and I believe what Withrow told you. None of them matched, and none of them were for any family members. But we found somebody anyway … so what do you think that means? What if he’s not the only one buried there?”
She thought of the bathroom, the fog, and the ghost who climbed walls. She considered the woman in the seventies lapels, reflected in the glass but never standing behind her.
Bobby continued. “I’m saying: What a great place to hide bodies—in a cemetery that everyone knows is just pretend. What if someone’s been stashing murder victims there for years and years? Could be, Grandpa Withrow had a secret and a long game.”
“Or,” she stopped him right there, “it could’ve been an honest mistake. He could’ve been put there by someone who believed it was a real cemetery.”
“That’s just crazy talk.”
??
Bobby patted her on the knee. “It’s been a crazy night. But maybe, on our way out the door come Friday, we should mention to someone that we accidentally found a body in that fake cemetery—maybe say we ran over it. Truck got stuck in the mud, spun a wheel, and we saw something poking out of the dirt. I don’t know. Something like that.”
“Plausible deniability. One of my favorite kinds of denial.” She turned to him with something like optimism. “Hey, you think if they find more bodies, they won’t tear down the house for a while?”
“No idea,” he said with a shake of his head. “But all I’m saying is, if we’ve just tripped over a hundred-year-old murder conspiracy, that’d be cool as shit. We might make the papers. Free advertising!”
She laughed in spite of herself, and in spite of him, too. “Sure, Bobby. Free advertising. Way to polish this turd of a week.”
“I’m here to help!”
For a minute, they sat there in silence—staring straight ahead instead of at each other, like they used to do on their grandmother’s porch swing, come holidays when the cousins were all together. The kids always ran around outside, while the adults drank and smoked inside, and someone had to keep an eye on the little ones. Dahlia and Bobby were oldest of the seven, so that was their job when all the grown-ups were lit.
For old time’s sake, or maybe just because there wasn’t anybody else to tell it to, she confessed to Bobby: “I don’t know what to do. It’s not safe here, and I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to … to Gabe, or Brad.”
“And me?”
“You? I’ve worried about you for so long, I haven’t got the energy for it anymore.”
He took it in stride, or at least had the decency to pretend he did. “I don’t need anyone worrying after me. Anyhow, salvage is a risky gig for everybody, especially new guys like them two downstairs. Every job is different, right? Every job is dangerous in its own way, that’s what Uncle Chuck says. So this one has ghosts.”