The House at the End of Lacelean Street by Catherine McCarthy

Author:Catherine McCarthy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Matter Magazine
Published: 2024-04-02T18:19:53+00:00

Stacey

Stacey can read no further. It’s too distressing, and besides, the bugs are back. Beneath her jogging suit, they buzz and scarper, tease and bite until she peels off her clothes and scratches herself raw with what little nail remains after the woman cut them. The itch is unbearable, so she heads to the shower and lets the cool water douse her from head to toe. She dries her face and watches, mesmerized, as the black and red insects swirl down the plughole.

She thinks about the message on the blackboard. The words her own hand had written. When she looks at the hand now, she sees pale skin, bird-like bones, fingernails with fragments of black polish. It does not look capable of such an act. She cannot remember what she wrote, just the first bit:

You skewered Kevin’s windpipe with the flat head screwdriver…

The grin still quivers at her chin. Is the woman a murderer? If so, she does a pretty good job of disguising it. Stacey recalls the night the woman spent at her bedside. A mother in a stranger’s body. She tries to remember her real mother but fails. And Lisa. Who is she? She repeats the name again and again. Whispered syllables, a secret yet to be revealed.

Empty, both physically and mentally. Her body is being forced to purge itself beyond her will. It’s a remarkable thing, the body. The way in which it will rid itself of intruders and unwanted chemicals given half a chance. The index finger on her right hand points at her, willing herself to remember. A sliver of glass from a jam jar. It had buried itself beneath the skin for several weeks until eventually her body said, That’s enough! You don’t belong here! The sliver of glass had been ousted. Its head had poked through the skin, and she had plucked it from its bed with a tweezer. How can she remember this but not her own mother?

Her stomach growls, hungry, like a lion that has not fed all winter. She prowls the room, back and forth, back and forth, searching, though for what, she does not know. Whatever it is, she won’t find it here in this room.

Drawn toward the window by a scuffle in the courtyard, she opens the casement catch and leans out. The old man stands in front of the stables, talking to a horse. His face is in profile, as is the horse’s head. They nudge noses, as if they have known one another for a very long time. He seems more alive than he did previously, the man. Cleaner, more alert, posher.

He notices her watching and waves, but she does not wave back. He might call her down, and then what would she do? She’s curious, but not enough to take things further. Not yet, anyway. She’s lonely, not desperate. The scene has provided a temporary distraction from the internal itch that has overtaken the external one. The internal itch is far worse, far more difficult to scratch.

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