Maddy was on her third cup of chamomile tea and page thirty-five of Thais of Athens when her daughter’s bedroom door groaned open and sleepy feet pattered out. Her teacup clinked against its saucer, crashingly loud in the quiet house, as Maddy cut a glance to the granddaddy clock:
3:43. She licked her thumb to turn the page.
“Muh -” There was the high, cottony sound of a little girl’s yawn from the hall. “Mom?” A tousled head poked into the den, dim and squinting. The woman smiled.
Theresa had taken mostly after her father, in looks and in mind and in temperament, something that Maddy found herself crushingly grateful for each and every day. Very dark, very sober features. No excess of warmth to be taken as gullible, no fluidity of expression to be seen as exploitable. Which was a blessing, in and of itself - the girl had inherited not a shred of her mother’s ruthlessness.
Maddy closed her book.
“What’re you doing up, sweetheart?”
The girl shoved a blunt fist around her eye. “‘m sorry,” she mumbled. “‘d I wake youup?”
“It’s alright, baby.” Maddy had not slept in years. “What’s wrong? You thirsty?”
Theresa shook her head, making a bleary beeline to her mother.
“Too hot? You know you can turn on the fan.”
She shook her head again, and made to climb into Maddy’s lap. Thais of Athens was forgotten and dropped alongside the chair as concern tickled the back of Maddy’s throat.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Theresa had never been the type to seek security this way. Not since she could talk, at least. “You can tell me.”
Theresa squirmed. She seemed uncomfortable with being comforted.
“The house wake you up? Hm? You know that it likes to move around, sometime. Remember that all you got to do is upturn the horseshoe we got over the door, to give the rascal a little rattle, and it’ll settle down pretty --”
“There’s a monster in my room.”
The grandaddy clock groaned, just once. It was a quarter to four.
Maddy frowned. “Oh, sweetie...” Imagination had never gotten the run of Theresa, even when she was small - it seemed strange for it to flare up only now. “Sounds like you had a bad dream.”
Theresa shook her head and grimaced, but said nothing.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened? Hm? You can tell me.”
The girl was busy shooting cold looks over her shoulder, at the innocent hallway. When she finally turned back Maddy’s breath caught at how much of her husband she saw. “I was at the lake again --”
-- at the lake again, with the cattails and the lilypads and the crumbled windmill and the telephone booth and the headless Nike of Samothrace, and other things, lots of things, lots of lots of other things that had been lost or left or taken, pieces of art and pieces of garbage and pieces of pieces of things, some floating in the water and some sitting on the shore and almost all of the lake covered in woolly fog except for the little bit where Theresa was standing.
She had taken off her shoes, if she had had them to begin with, and let just a littlelittlelittle bit of the water splash against her toes, and dreamygiggled at the maybe-there maybe-not feeling of it. Theresa knew this was a dream. And a good one, and why wouldn’t it be, because look how nice and quiet and calm it was, and look how many interesting things?
But she had made a strict rule for herself to stay out of the water. It was a very important rule. Theresa could hold her breath for a long time, and Theresa could swim like the sharpest shark, but she knewknewknew that this was not the type of water to do it in.
She was back on the shore and pulling and prodding at a glittering slot machine that was half-eaten by the soil (bar bar cherry) when she heard something warm and musical and beautiful, something alive and fresh and honeyed, somewhere out in the fog.
Theresa froze. There had never been music before. Had there been? She sat still and quiet and looked around to see if there was a musicbox or record player or radio.
And there were, there were a lot of them, but none that were on, and so the beautiful brassy daybreak sounds had to be coming from somewhere else.
Something moved - Theresa should have been nervous, she thought, maybe, but she wasn’t - and she saw that it was a chain, a very fine tiny little chain like the kind on a necklace. It wriggled just a little bit, like a worm, and Theresa smiled, because who had ever heard of a little bitty chain squiggling around on the ground? And without really thinking why, she reached for it.
The itty bitty necklace chain was an itty bitty necklace chain, but further down it was also a thicker chain like the kind that people hang pictures with, but further down it was also a thicker chain like the kind people walk their dogs on, but further down it was also a thicker chain like the kind people use to lock other people out, but further down it was a also thicker chain that Theresa couldn’t see much of because it was in the fog.
The chain went tight in her hand, and Theresa wondered why, and then Theresa panicked because she dreamyrealized that her arm had started pulling all by itself. It had started pulling and she saw the the chain got thicker and bigger and meaner and the wonderful beautiful sounds were getting closer, but she dreamyrealized that there was something scary about it too, and now she was pulling the chain with both arms and her legs were walking her closer to the fog and the chain dreamyfelt greasy and strange and it was wriggling again and she kept pulling and pulling and the sounds were so loud, because the fog could only cover up so much, and then it covered up even less, because Theresa could see a head coming closer to her while she was pulling and then she saw a face, too, one that was almost a face but too big and too heavy on the bottom and she looked for a body, too, but she couldn’t see one, maybe because it was still too foggy or maybe it was under the big bumpy lump that was moving, too, and then the music stopped and something rushed up and pushed a windy bundle of air in her eyes and something went cli-chunk! and Theresa --
“-- and then I woke up,” she finished, muffled by the crook of Maddy’s neck.
The deeper Theresa had gone into recounting the nightmare, the further she had curled into her mother’s lap, and the more anxiously Maddy had tried comforting her. She was rubbing circles on the girl’s back, even - Theresa had not tolerated such treatment in years.
“Oh, sweetheart. That sounds like a terrible dream.” Would she be okay sleeping out here, in the den? Maddy was certain she could make one of the armchairs comfortable enough. There was a lovely quilt in the closet, assuming the house had not moved it. “But it was just a dream... okay? Lots of people have bad dreams, baby. It’s okay. You just have to--”
“It’s in my room,” Theresa whispered. The cold certainty in her voice pulled down hard on Maddy’s frown. “I could hear it, a little.”
“Baby... listen.” Maddy hugged her daughter closer. How to explain it? “Sometimes our minds pull up scary things, while we’re sleeping. And they can be very, very scary to us. But it can’t hurt us any. Cause it’s just our minds being restless, and just for a little b --”
There was a little unk sound as Maddy’s throat cinched up into nothing, and she stared down at her daughter. The cuffs of Theresa’s pajamas had been bitten off.
“... m?”
Theresa was still so young. Too young.
“Mom?”
She blinked, and looked hard at her daughter. First in the left eye, then the right. Theresa quailed at the intensity and Maddy looked away and inwardly scolded herself.
“Baby -” She gave Theresa a peck on the forehead and nudged her back to the floor, easily. Then steered the girl’s shoulders to level eyes with her again. Much more gently. “You remember that big thing mama used on those pests, awhile back?”
“The...” She bit her own mouth - pulled the insides of her lips between her teeth and pressed down. Names were hard, for her. “... the ox?”
“Mm-hm, the Ax, baby. I’m gonna need it. Can you find it for me?”
The girl’s eyes slid sideways as her face stiffened, lips moving silently. Maddy watched her, smiling faintly and patiently, but each inch and every shred of her nerves and her ears and her mind was crosshaired onto the hall, onto her daughter’s bedroom.
“Broom closet,” the girl blurted. She blinked, and looked surprised. “It’s on the top shelf, in the broom closet.”
Maddy smiled, inwardly terrified. So fast. When had she gotten that fast? “You’re so good at that, now. What a sharp little girl I got.”
Theresa giggled, bouncing on her heels.
A floorboard somewhere creaked.
“Now, then...” Maddy rose slowly and stretched. “You do your mama a favor, and keep her seat warm. And don't let my tea go to waste. I’ll be right back.”
The hinges of the broom closet chirped as Maddy pulled it open. There it was, the sturdy thing: right where she hadn’t left it. She would have to talk with someone about the house and its mischief.
“Um... back from what?”
Maddy’s hand closed hungrily around the familiar haft, and her lips pulled upward at the wonderful weight, and her heart swelled at the growl of steel on wood.
“From getting rid of bad dreams, sunshine.”
(man I can’t wait to be a mom and make my kids find all my murder weapons for me)
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