Chapter Text
Her eyes fly open. It’s storming out and that must be the reason as to why she wakes, as to why her heart thrills indignantly into the armature of her ribcage—to confirm her suspicions, a clap of thunder crests through her home like the spired shove of wave and her home pulsates with its sinew, and fear, almost mindless and sudden, glows brilliantly inside of her. She could never remember a point of time in her life where she’s been overwrought over some rain and thunder, even when she had been younger, naturally fearful of the unknown that unfolds before a child’s eyes in stripes of glistening golds and silvers; but now, in the deep night, dread is palpable, soupy, charged like the air outdoors.
She can see the sparkles of lightning beyond the gossamer curtains of her window, the sky molding into the murky color of wine, hewing the Earth into potholed halves, thirds, quarters, becoming nothing more than portioned off, mismatched inky branches—then, the thunder blends into the glittering seamlessly, and though thunder can’t be seen, it can be heard, felt. That’s almost worse to her, being submerged helplessly. Everything refastens back in the sky like an out-of-place joint, reverberant, mighty—all of the pitted pockets in the world, from the soil upwards into pygmy bird nests, into the cavities of old, serried trees and in thin, shallow creeks, core to ozone—is saturated thoroughly by its noise, drenched and overflowing by membranes of rain. And her home, her family home, an inheritance on her mother’s side, is victim to it; the floorboards moan, the panes on her windows hiss from the stress on the glass, the walls grumble, low.
Rich twinkles of light dazzle through her window, pinprick beams renting through her room. “Oh,” is all she can say into the night, throat tight and thick with a feeling unknown to her.
When sleep no longer dwells like honey in her system—though the barest trace of its somnolent, stygian tresses still unrelentingly tauten around her shoulders in a confining hug, unmalleable and pigheaded to all banishment—she climbs from the nest she’s borne on her bed and creeps to the closest window, not the one that overlooks the side of her neighbor’s house but the one that affords a cheap view of her meager backyard. She has to lean on her dresser so that she can pull some of the blinds down a little—after shoving the curtains aside, chiffony as they are—and there, she peers down on her yard.
Beyond, the world seems to tilt with the austere force of the storm. Smaller, skinnier trees flex and contort with the direction of the wind, their emaciated limbs hinting resignedly to severance; she finds herself briefly, distantly, in awe of seeing such resolute nature be bowed—even if she knows that these trees are weak, for she has climbed them many times, trying to swing from the topmost branches, to her mother’s dismay—and can only watch as the world she knows become waterlogged. Her tire swing which will have water stuck between its teeth. The grass, which will squelch beneath her feet, engulfed, leaving gaping piles of murk, hiding all sorts of bugs—though she pictures crabs or stingrays, which veil themselves beneath sand—deep enough that she’s sure she could drown if her face was held down.
She tries to look up into the sky to search for funnel clouds but it’s too dark for anything, the clouds an impervious mantle—even when an arc of lightning, as thin and long as an intricate hairpin, punctures from the heavens below, there is nothing tangible she can make out, just an unending ceiling of obscurity.
She could turn her radio on, maybe, if she turns the volume down low enough to not rouse anybody. If it really was a problem though, or if there was a tornado actively brewing, wouldn’t her mother have come in and woken her up by now? She wouldn’t be forgotten. But—maybe. With her brothers—
As she thinks, her eyes unconsciously center themselves to the biggest tree of her backyard, the sole defender and supplier of shade from a sanguinary sun and the foundation for her very own tree house, hand-built by her father, the master of the land. It’s a leviathan, an oak, the only that doesn’t weaken beneath the erosion of wind, rain, and snow; voluminous, with jagged, resupine, roots that remind her of bones, almost as if multiple elbows are fighting to surface to the world above, thirsty for air. She can’t imagine how her father had managed to climb high for the tree house and for the tire swing, but he did—of course he would for his first born, his little girl.
She’d like to climb it someday. Without her parents around, of course, if they caught even a glimmer of her trying to scale up, their combined wrath would be unlike anything she’s ever experienced.
Her treehouse is wide enough to snugly fit herself, a bookshelf, and dinky, knotted-pine desk, and a pink beanbag chair well worn from its months left outside. It’s fashioned in the same colors of her house, in greens and browns and cream, with a window on each side—adequate to eavesdrop—and a firm, unyielding roof. A ladder juts out from the platform, welcoming, even now. Her sanctuary away from home, her personal sanctum. With the addition of her twin brothers, both a surprise and much younger than her, the house’s silence has been ruptured by their appearances and since, daily, they’ve been forced upon her so she could play the role of a loving, dotty sister.
Not that she hates them, because she doesn’t—she does love them, really, she feels it embower her anytime she makes complete eye contact with them; it’s a muscular love, capable of chiseling granite, and there have been times she’s been brought to tears when they gaze up at her, so kindly and innocently, two sets of inquiring, curious eyes. But even then, there is a part of her that misses the quiet, a part of her that wishes she wouldn’t be bothered so much to be the entertainer for them—all they do is cry or stare, they don’t even play with her, what can she do with that? Her worlds are her own; nobody wants to share the vastness of their imagination, especially not to a crowd who can’t understand.
Her day before—or did it still count for now?—had been spent in her treehouse, actually, trying to perfect a drawing she worked on for days, weeks maybe, laboring obsessively over its every detail, erasing and correcting, growing equal parts discouraged and venerated of fallow improvements and colossal deteriorations. She knows she could be a great artist when she becomes older when she has more time—not stolen away by school and homework, or by her brothers and holidays—to dedicate herself to her artwork, she really could; and while she can spot mistakes with each glimpse, almost maddeningly so, she could get better, she can feel it inside, that passion, eager to go further. There is a solace it brings her, familiar, hearty.
She could work on it now, maybe, and hope that it could help pass the time until the storm finally vents away. It comes to her with a finality she simply accepts, twisting away from her window and turning on her lamp as quietly as she can, tiptoeing across the length of her room to her alcove. She flips through the papers strewn amongst the surface, a medley of schoolwork, some graded and not, then dives beneath to go through her notebooks as well—almost forming a mound of them, some of them noticeably thin from ripped pages, covers doodled on heavily, marked with stickers, pages bled through with markers, tacky with glue, glitter—and frowns eventually, deepset.
She always brings her things back into her room. She knows she brought her sketchpad back in because she always does, carefully climbing down from the treehouse with it tucked harshly underneath her armpit—or sometimes she hurls it down in bursts of anger after an unproductive session, lets it marinate down in dirt to satiate—because sometimes, like now, the inspiration can buffet into her aimlessly, fleetingly, excruciatingly. She pulls drawers out and nudges through the books and other pieces of junk she’s shoved in there haphazardly—bits of erasers, pencils, crayons, doll clothes—and feels a glare of pure relief when her hands brush onto its notable chunky rings, but when it’s yanked out, she sees its her old one, one that she already filled ages ago.
Frustration erupts in her like magic, hastily, and the urge to cry almost temporarily possesses her, her forehead feeling hot.
“Don’t cry, you’re too old for that,” she whispers softly to herself, sitting down harshly on her chair to try and straighten her thinking, with thoughts shooting out in multiple directions, vibrant and uncontrollable—but a part of her already feels a chasmic, frigid dread, one that sidles its way through her torso like medicine, stressed, and the more she tries to not pay attention to it, the gustier it becomes, unabating.
No, she didn’t bring it back. She remembers now, gradually, absently chewing on her hair. Her mother had been at the bottom of her ladder in a blink in the evening time, calling up for her, shattering her concentration into a sundry of ribbons—dinnertime, she had yelled, which she’s usually good at remembering and paying attention to, always sprucing up beforehands, but she had forgot then. Time had slipped from the clefts of her fingers, there one second and then gone the next; a habit of her childhood, she realizes. She didn’t grab it when she clambered down because her mother was right there, watching her closely, apprehensive, and for some reason—for something she could not name—she didn’t want her to ask about her drawings, or ask to see them. That’s her own private space.
It’s out there, she thinks, looking out her window from her spot, it’s getting wet, the water is going to destroy it. With the angle of the rain, it would be careering through the window. Right through it.
A thought blares into her mind then, full-throated and unashamed, so bold that it almost frightens her, its clearness like the musical voice of a trumpet. You could go out and grab it.
Which is true, truly. She could. She knows all the right places to step in her house, which floorboard creaks the most and where, she could deftly sneak out and then back in, undetected, it wouldn’t take but five minutes, maybe even less—she even could be a granule more braver in the noise she might create with all of the thunder rolling about, basking comfortably in its tumult. But it would be her luck, her bristly, unlevel luck, that somehow, someway, somebody would be able to discern her footsteps in the midst of the storm, would know solely that it was her. A lecture would be the mildest possible consequence she would receive, therefore the most unlikely, knowing the temper of her mother.
The punishment wouldn’t be worth it.
But the time and the exertion she had poured into her work was immeasurable, and even picturing her sketchpad a pulpous swath of paper narrowly held together only by metal prongs, colors and pencil lines successively evaporating and running off into off-kilter streams, made her stomach hurt impetuously, in exquisite plunges. Savagely, almost, even though she knew it was her own fault for neglecting it, for misrecollecting her own responsibility—and that alone, the echo of her mother admonishing her, dispassionate to her dilemma, does make her cry for a second. Tears burn down her face, routes of fire, of shame. I’m so stupid, you stupid, stupid girl.
There’s no reason to cry. The thought speaks more directly to her, unswervingly, close to her, compassionate. It can be saved, you can’t waste your time.
“But the storm, it’s—it’s been going for hours, it’s—”
Shh. You can’t wake your family.
She tries to belt the weight of her emotions then, but it feels like a baseball fastened in her throat, enough to make her feel suffocated, swallowing in moderate gulps of air for relief. You’re right, she tells herself again, trying to be firm, in a tone reminiscent of her mother, her grandmother, every stern figure in her life.
It’ll be quick. She knows the right steps. Outside, that’ll be a different circumstance altogether—but not it’s impossible, not if she maneuvers correctly, conscientiously. With utmost concentration, quickly, like the prowl of a street cat. She’ll throw on her galoshes over her slippers—which she does now, her ears focalizing on any noise in the house, all creaks and shifting—and raincoat and take a meticulous care in curving around the deepest puddles so that nothing can splatter on her clothes and therefore, nothing could tattle on her. It’s so smart, she’s almost delighted by the swiftness of her thinking.
Bundled up in her raincoat, she tells her stuffed lamb goodbye, to wait patiently for her, and starts to open the door of her room, inchmeal, praying with a fervor that the door won’t moan as it swings out. Thankfully, it doesn’t, its movement downier and softer than she’s ever seen it before—none of its usual rebuff where she has to push on it and hold the doorknob to angle it up to get it to go. In the tenebrosity of her everlasting hallway, she pauses, listening to the occupants of her home dream away, contently, separated from her; beside her, her parents are mute; in a room just a few paces down from hers, she could hear the gentle chime of their crib mobiles, dangling foxes and clouds, their lights a silken yellow.
All is good, so she goes on, her hands held out to not brush into any piece of furniture. Eventually, her eyes accustom themselves to the blackness that circuits her like a blanket, the very same darkness that thrums, like a living creature, amongst the zenith of the storm; but then, she can’t see much in front of her, just far away. She avoids a table barely, side-stepping last second, only for her feet to stumble over themselves and she almost falls—if not for her hand bracing herself against the wall, an inaudible thud.
Be careful, are they listening? Her thoughts fly like a frenzy, her head turning into the direction of her parents room.
Nothing.
When she reaches the staircase, she descends with a list to the right to avoid the loudest of the floorboards, her face set with determination. She does a dance at the bottom—one that extends from there to the back door—to continue her dedication of being as unpronounced and inconspicuous as a mouse, or even a cat, faltering periodically to cock an ear, trying to detect any noises above for somebody stirring.
It’s when she’s deliberately and tardily unlocking the door, tongue stuck out, that suddenly, cleaving the air in a fractured detonation, her brother starts to cry. It’s shrieking and whistling, permeating, utterly panicked, and it freezes her to her very core, her feet feeling leaden and welded to the wood below. It would be just like him! It’d only be time before the other would join and then they’d be a united chorus of riotousness, and her parents would be conjured from their sleep to aid them. They would know, somehow, that she wouldn’t be up in her room, they would sense it in their bones—or, more unluckily, one of them would shuffle down to seek out a cup of water or a snack, and they would catch her in the process.
Did she close her door? A snowy throb of realization expels up her spine and her blood beats in her ears, and claminess befalls her instantaneously. There’s no way she didn’t, she was too absorbed in getting downstairs that she never even—
No, it’s too late. If she sneaks back up now, she’ll be caught. She has to go through with what she came to do, wait for the crying and intervention to stop—and if not that, then she’ll create an excuse for her being downstairs, but that will be broached when the time approaches—so that she can skulk back up and return to her room as if nothing happened.
The backdoor pivots open and she’s brought into the belly of the beast. The world that she encroaches onto is a maelstrom; every fiber of the earth roars, pelting and jerking and heaving at her with its tenacity and ivories, gnashing, shearing at her environment, uprooting and knocking over plant pots, bending gates, hurling balls, toys. Her once unsullied backyard is now flooded, asphyxiating the grass beneath, all of the anthills and burrows for rollie-pollies, worms, snakes; she shuts the door behind her quietly, eyes squinting against the onslaught.
She has to be quick, there can’t be any playing or waiting or watching. So, gallantly, she flies from her patio and down into the murky pool, gasping at the water that immediately bathes her feet and realizes that galoshes weren’t the best idea—what she needed was her rain boots, which remain rammed crudely in her closet somewhere, taunting, and now her galoshes are ruined and her slippers and socks, but she pushes forwards, even as the feeling of mud seeps between layers.
Halfway across, a flash as bright as a camera bulb overwhelms the world and she flinches, speedily wheeling around to seek out where the lightning was and how close, but it’s too late—the thunder billows afterwards, spreading like poison, feeling it founder in every atom or her being, her teeth chattering from that same fear that surfaced earlier and of the coldness that gumshoes into her system.
“Keep going, you can’t turn around now,” she whispers to herself, alertly steering around and on the roots of the old oak, slipping more than once—the second it happens, she’s able to snag her fingers onto the railing of the ladder for her treehouse, breathing hard and loud in her own ears. Hoisting herself up, slowly, she ascends heedfully, noting how slippery each rung has become—don’t slip, don’t slip, don’t slip—and it feels like decades swim before her eyes before she reaches the landing of her treehouse, barreling inside for the slightest protection against the rain. The height makes her dizzy.
It’s as she predicted—though not everything inside is tainted by the storm, mostly everything is. Her chair is drenched to even the most subdued touch and will reek for months to come, and her little rug that her grandmother had bought for her during one Christmas, and maybe even some of the books and—her sketchpad! There it is, left open, bared, on her desk, marked by meager, lissome fingers of rain; she rushes to it desperately, and finds that while some of the pages are damp, it’s not at all unsaveable or destroyed, not even partially ruined. Gratitude awashes her merrily, and a smile breaks across her face; relief dulls the prickly ends of her nerves, massages the worry, the anxiety, from her stature.
“Thank you, oh my God, thank you,” she says to no one in particular.
There’s a respite after her retrieval where she flips through each page, determining each drawings status, pleased, and the thought—one that does not belong to her, for she knows her own voice—comes to her as if in reply, uncannily benign and deep, as if manufactured in her father’s tone, decibel. Fear bursts across her explosively like the skin of a grape lacerating beneath a hungry bite and she goes rigid with it, apprehension curling up her spine like the graze of fingernails. Goosebumps crest her arms and legs.
You’re welcome.
It’s the darkness, she says to herself in a hot hysteria after her mind recovers from its blinding shock, blinking fast, afraid to look even slightly in one direction, afraid of what she could find besides her in her oasis, her private, untouched hideaway. It’s dark. It’s the dark, nobody is there, nobody is here with me. I’m the only one out here. The only one.
She looks around finally, ultimately, her bravery feeling concocted, as if to prove her point, peering beyond the unfurled lengths of each of her neighbor’s backyards. Barbecue grills and outdoor furniture pieces are just disfigured, troubling slabs in the night; but there’s nothing to be witnessed, no animals, no people, no men. Not out there, nor in here. No girls, nothing but her, she supposes, for miles to come—she’s playing tricks on herself, cruelly, mindlessly. What she needs to do is go, leave, and fly back inside and clean herself, leave this night far behind her.
No, there! Somewhere in the Moore’s yard across from her, she sees something! But when the dazzle of lightning emblazes the sky and thus the world below that it inhabits, it’s nothing, just a waterlogged wicker chair left by its lonesome in the middle of their yard, besides a rusted firepit. How could she have ever mistaken a chair for the silhouette of a man? She’s only thinking like that because she thought she heard one. If she’s out here for any longer, she’ll only be a victim of her thirsty imagination, one that’ll rake her away in its trajectory.
Just move, move and get back inside. Tearing her observations from one of the windows, she returns it back to her sketchpad, wiping droplets free from its cover, almost adoringly, lovingly. “I need to remember to not leave my stuff out here,” she speaks absently to herself, face crinkled, coiling away from the indoors of the treehouse to the outside of it, nestling her work beneath her arm for its own security.
It’s when she glimpses down from her spot above that she hears, softly, the creak of movement from inside, directly behind her. Not like bare feet on wood, how it would be cushioned and nearly noiseless altogether, but of a heavy shoe—like her father’s workboots—fluctuating into one direction like he’s turning. She stills once more, her arms tightly holding her sketchpad to her chest in an insulating embrace now rather than in the crook of her arm and doesn’t dare turn around, refinedly petrified of what she might find. A squirrel—could it be that, just a mere family of them seeking out shelter? A raccoon, a possum?
The wood gives gingerly, as if somebody—or something—leans forward unhurriedly, and the hair on the nape of her neck stands in sharp attention, her eyes feeling hot and dry in their sockets. Her heart isn’t in her chest anymore, she realizes with a twitch, it’s extricated itself tempestuously from the imprisonment of her ribcage, slithering up, up, up, leaving cold pockets in its wake that mushroom further than its reach could go, a disquiet so deep it depresses into her marrow. It lodges into her throat, drumming eccentrically against the column of her neck but no amount of deep exhaling could mollify its unrest.
What could it be? Her mind is helpless to the images that materialize in her mind, exacerbating with each flick; misty phantoms, pretzeled scarecrows, the undead—and that’s what she concludes to, panic soaring powerlessly in her mind, photos of something she could never properly grasp summoning behind her and fitting, crooked, beneath the roof of her treehouse, there, with her. Photos of a man once trapped deep beneath the pulsing world come to her, skin blistering and waxen, crumbling in increments on its bones, and—
She wobbles, taken aback by the ferocity of the wind, and her hands juggle with the book in her hands and finally, urgently, she grasps on the railing of her platform for balance, turning her back to the treehouse. Fear expands then, touching corners of her that she couldn’t have possibly imagined before, intrenched and profound, and breathing seems to become a chore for her—it comes and goes in short, broken pulls, like whistling in her own ears. There’s nothing in there, she reminds herself, her mental voice spiraling, but I need to go, I need to go, there is something in there, I can feel it, there, and she has to tell her knees to work again, to unlock themselves from their position but no movement comes from her. She feels stiff, her fingers numb, and wishes that she never left her bed—she should’ve stayed in there, swaddled in its safety and heat. She could’ve taken the destruction of her sketchpad on the chin, saved herself from the scorn of her mother and father, and safeguarded herself from—from—
Go down the ladder now but be careful, it’s slippery, and she forces herself to move but only makes it about a centimeter forwards.
“Don’t fall,” the voice whispers again just behind her, barren of inflection and affectivity, of sentiments, rippleless like the cavernous mouth of an inexhaustible ocean. It’s not in her mind now, it’s crushed the fence that kept the two places seperate—she feels it breathing down her neck, basking, lazy and yet flexed, impliable, potent.
She moves too fast, too eager, feeling invisible fingers helix apathetically around her biceps, on her ankles, that she doesn’t remember her earlier caution—or, a murkier quarter of her brain murmurs, you’re flying now, he’s pushed you, use your wings, little ladybug—and her foot slips harshly, suddenly, and it’s too late for her hands to hold onto anything, it glides between her fingertips. Weightlessness seizes her just for a moment, a heartbeat, and terror corrals her in a permanent hug.
The ladder gushes nauseatingly past her shoulder—one rung, two, three—then gone, a sound streaming from her, something that sounds high and unearthly and synthetic. The sight of the wet bark of the tree streaks beside her, slick and dark as oil, while rain needles into her eyes, her mouth, her ears; she tastes metal—maybe it’s the lightning from the storm invading her tastebuds, or maybe it’s something she’s bitten through without knowing, her tongue torn to shreds. Her sketchpad tears loose from her clinch, pages fanning open midair like a flock of doves startled into flight, bleached and agitated, then consumed whole by the night.
Her arms reach for something that isn’t there; the railing, the ladder, the edge of the platform—that is now long past her, she thinks—anything, something, but her fingers close on nothing, and clench, open, clench again, useless, distressed. Can her mother hear her in the storm, or her father? Can anybody hear her?
I can hear you.
The roots of the tree comes up to meet her, inviting their body with their gnarled, balled knuckles—roots and wells of water—and before she crashes into the earth, she hears the last of the voice, mockingly; a polar, affectless laugh bellows from the core of her purloined salvation, gushing across her yard loudly, proudly, pervading the thunder and the lightning and the buckets of the rain, silencing it all to a dull drone beneath the pressure of his amusement.