Pretty Marys All in a Row Read online

  Blood. I’m already inside the mirror.

  Red wanders the dark space, spiraling the edges of the room.

  I smile and blink away last evening. “Hello again,” I say and entwine my fingers with hers. Her skin is cold and smells of roses.

  “Hello, Rhee.” She squeezes my hand, but her face is pale and strange. I pretend not to notice. This is right. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I’m here, and the party is about to begin.

  “What do we do now?” I ask her.

  She shrugs. “We wait. Hopefully, the twins will call to me.”

  “They’ll call,” I say.

  But I’m wrong. We wait for what feels like hours, the silence nearly deafening.

  “Go ahead,” Red says at last. “Gather everyone else. You can come back for me at the end.”

  I want to argue, I want to stay with her, but we don’t have enough time, so I cover my eyes and focus.

  Lew. I see Lew. Tenuously, I pull myself toward her, listening for the heartbeat she no longer has.

  When I look again, I’m standing next to her in a narrow kitchen. The walls are arrayed in garish green and orange flowers, and the entire place is ripe with jonquil and jasmine and stale air freshener.

  “Where are we?” I ask, still queasy from the trip.

  “In Des Moines,” Lew says.

  “Des Moines?” I hesitate. “You mean, at the house of that little old lady you scared half to death?”

  Lew stares at me defiantly, as if she was expecting this reaction.

  “Yeah, so? I like her. She’s nice,” Lew says, stroking that last word as softly as a beloved tabby. “She’s been trying to get me to bake cookies with her for years. She doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t hold a wooden spoon.”

  But the old lady doesn’t seem particularly nice tonight. All she can do is glare at me and shake her cane in my face.

  “You aren’t my Lew,” she says and braces herself against the stove. “Where is my Lew?”

  “She’s right here.” I motion next to me. It must look like blank air because the old lady grimaces.

  “Don’t get sassy with me, youngster,” she says. “I might not be so spry as you, but I haven’t gone soft in the head. Not yet anyway.”

  Lew rolls her eyes. “I don’t know how you’re going to convince her to go anywhere with you.”

  I sigh. “What’s her name?”

  “Gladys.”

  “Hello, Gladys.” I inch forward, half convinced she might really smack me with that cane. “You can’t see her, but I assure you that Lew’s here with me.”

  “Lew? Darling?” Gladys flails wildly at the air. “What did you do with her?”

  “Lew will tell you all about it soon. But first, I’d like to take you somewhere. If that’s okay with you.”

  “A trip?” Gladys eyes me up, one fright-white eyebrow curled in suspicion. “Will it be by motor coach?”

  I hesitate. “No, at least not the kind of motor coach you’re used to.”

  She purses her lips. “Will meals be included?”

  “Again,” I say, “not your sort of meals.”

  Gladys pauses, considering. “Will my Lew be there?”

  I perk up. “Yes,” I say.

  Gladys smiles. “Then let me get my purse.”

  After a moment, she returns, pocketbook and white gloves in hand, and stands next to me as though she’s waiting in line for the bus. I breathe in and close my eyes. I’ve never done this before, and I’m not even sure it will work. But if I can pull my sisters toward me, maybe I can haul others with us. Maybe. I imagine the space between here and there, and I imagine home. At once, a circle limned in onyx encompasses us, and we’re in free fall.

  “This better not ache my hip,” Gladys hollers as we spiral into darkness and crash-land as one on the back doorstep.

  I exhale, and my body is so light I nearly levitate off the earth.

  It worked. This really worked.

  Mack waits here for us, an eager emissary.

  “Wonderful to finally meet you, Gladys,” she says. “Lew has told me all about you.”

  Lew and Mack shepherd Gladys inside, our first guest of the evening, but I don’t have time to mingle. I close my eyes and materialize back in the mirror.

  Red still sits cross-legged and alone.

  “Are the twins here yet?”

  She shakes her head. “Go to David,” she says. “You can come back for me afterward.”

  As I snap back to the highway—it’s my natural haunting place, so there’s no need to focus—I worry David won’t be there or that he’ll come too late.

  But he’s already waiting for me. And tonight, he’s alone. With my heart in my throat, I tell him about the party, about what we’re planning. As Lew predicted—oh-so-snidely—he consents without another thought.

  I shake my head. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

  He smiles, and the moonlight drapes over his face, fashioning him again into the young man I met back when we were both the same age. “I finally have a chance to go home with you, and you think I’d say no?”

  “And what if something happens?” I ask, the question as heavy as lead pellets in my belly. “What if I can’t get you back to Abby?”

  “You will,” he says. “I trust you, Rhee.”

  That makes one of us. But tonight is slipping away from us, and I don’t have time to force him to reconsider. I envision the circle around us, and we’re falling. David calls my name and I call his. I fear we might be torn from each other in the darkness, but before we can scream twice, we’re on the back step.

  “Wait here,” I say breathlessly and return to the mirror.

  Red is still alone.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she says. “Go home. Get started.”

  My muscles seize up, and for an instant, I don’t move or speak.

  “Not without you,” I say. “I won’t go back without you.”

  “Maybe this is best, Rhee.” She stares down, refusing to look at me. “Maybe I shouldn’t come with you. Or maybe we shouldn’t be doing this at all. We’re messing with something big here. I’m afraid it will mess back with us.”

  My throat constricts. What if she’s right? I part my lips, ready to confess what I’ve seen and heard and should have told her before now. About the voice. About the darkness. But I don’t have time. All around us, the inside of the mirror shakes.

  “Bloody Mary,” say two faraway voices.

  I look at Red, and she looks back at me.

  “Bloody Mary.” The twins are closer now.

  An invisible weight presses into my chest, and I say Red’s name, the name I gave her, the closest thing to a real name she has, but it’s too late for me to say any more.

  “Bloody Mary.” The voices are right on top of us and inside us and everywhere at once.

  The twins materialize in the glass, and because we don’t have time to do anything else, we tell them about tonight.

  “We can’t be sure it will even work,” Red says. Blood oozes down her fingertips and drips to the floor, the plunk-plunk rhythm as steady as a pulse. “Or if it will be safe for you.”

  Like David, the twins don’t listen to the warning. They just beam and nod their heads. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  My breath shaky, I gaze into the barrier that estranges us from the twins. I focus, and the mirror turns liquid.

  Grinning, the twins reach through and step inside to meet us.

  “It’s cold in here,” they say and shiver.

  “Do you want to go back?” Red asks, and they shake their heads. But I want to go back. I already want to rewind, so this whole night never happened. Dread churns inside me, and I feel so weak and disjointed that I’m not sure I can do it again. I’m not sure I can get us home.

  But Red knows me well, knows me like a real sister. She looks at me, and sensing my reluctance, she takes my hand. With her steady against me, we focus together. The ribbon of d
arkness encircles the four of us, and with my eyes squeezed closed, I pull us through the here and there, through something even colder, until we’re on the back step.

  But this didn’t work, not completely. The twins are right next to me. But Red is no longer holding my hand. She’s in my hands, still inside the mirror that I’m suddenly holding. My fingertips graze the glass. It’s solid again.

  “It’s fine,” she says, her dark eyes turning to gloss. “Go inside, and get started. We’re running out of time.”

  A knot ties tight in my throat, and I want to argue, but Lew appears in the doorway and takes the mirror from me. I follow her, and she fastens Red to the wall in the dining room.

  David is backed into the corner next to the sideboard, his eyes downcast on something in his hand. A blue matchbook for an Italian restaurant in Indiana. He turns it over and over, plucking out a match, lighting it, and pinching it out again, his hands nervous and occupied. I smile a little and wonder if it’s this ghostly house that’s making him panicky or the prospect of meeting my family over dinner—our dinner.

  Maybe this will be okay, I tell myself. Maybe we’ll get through the night.

  David glances up and smiles back. Like some old-timey gentleman, he bows and steps forward to meet me. With hope packed heavy in my chest, I reach toward him. But we can’t touch. And it’s so much worse than usual. Instead of his hand slipping through mine, I slip through him. I’m solid and real, and he’s the one as thin as a midnight breeze.

  “That’s so cool,” the twins whisper, disappearing their own hands through me and through Lew and Mistress, testing their own bodies. “We’re the ghosts here.”

  My stomach curls. What if they’re like us now, all of them dead, because we brought them here? Because I brought them here?

  This isn’t what we wanted. I look to Red in the mirror, and from her dark expression, she’s thinking the same thing that I am.

  What have we done?

  But no one else seems worried. Lew tosses her head back and laughs as Gladys thrashes, spearing her noncorporeal cane through Lew.

  “At least now I know what the afterlife feels like,” Gladys says. “A preview of coming attractions.”

  Mistress, however, won’t waste time on frivolities. “Thank you all for joining us this evening,” she says. “For this special . . . party.”

  Gladys coos. “I always love me a party,” she says, clapping her liver-speckled hands. “Will there be punch and petit fours? The best parties always have punch and petit fours.”

  Lew grins. “Maybe afterward.”

  “But for now, we want to give you a very exclusive performance,” Mistress says. “Is everyone ready?”

  The twins flip their long hair and arrange the veils over their faces. “We’re ready,” they whisper.

  Lew gathers her soon-to-be-dripping face. “You ready, Gladys?”

  Gladys nods. “Whenever you are, Lew.”

  David steps forward and smiles again at me. I want to stop this, but it’s too late to back away now. Everyone is here, and there’s no way my famished sisters will disappoint our guests.

  Hand in hand, the Marys and I unite as one. On the end, I interlace Mack’s fingers with my right hand and hold out my other palm to the glass—to Red. Inside the mirror, she presses both hands onto mine, and I wish so badly I could feel her there, that she could be with us.

  But she’s not here, and this will have to suffice. The room goes gray around us—dim but not entirely dark. We have to ensure our guests see what we do next.

  Through cobwebs draped thick and lustrous, the walls tremble and begin to crawl. The venomous flowers Mistress arranged on the table and sideboard bloom in tandem, their petals twisting and growing and becoming sentient. Blood leaks from the cracks in the ceiling, and an old Glenn Miller tune lilts from a nonexistent Victrola. Every note plays backward, a beautiful yet uncanny melody that creeps into our ears and takes hold of our souls.

  And then our bodies, the bodies of the Marys, contort at our own will, dripping and bubbling and boiling. Our bones jut out from one angle, our blood drips from another, the sinews and muscles and little wiggly viscera exposed like the most beautiful Christmas tinsel you’ve ever seen.

  And from the lips of our guests come delighted screams as the smoke rises and mushrooms and swallows us up. Blue tendrils, and green and red, every color drifting and twirling and free-form.

  I smile. It’s working. This is working. The fear swells toward us, and we release our hands and turn our palms upward to devour it. My eyes water, and I can’t see my sisters next to me. I can’t see anything, not Red on the wall, not David across from me, not even my own hands, although I know my body is still here because it’s filling up with the smoke.

  But somehow, this isn’t right. The five of us are no longer united. In this moment, we’ve opened ourselves up, like carving into a vein. We’ve never been this powerful.

  Or this vulnerable.

  A laugh blisters in my ears, and with dread choking me, I realize we’ve miscalculated. Oh god, we miscalculated everything.

  “Stop,” I say, but my voice dissolves, a soap bubble in the air. No one hears me. I hardly hear myself. I want to scream, but it’s too late for that.

  The smoke dissipates, not much, just enough to cut a space next to me. There’s Mack. Sweet, baby Mack, too willowy and trusting for her own good.

  Pretty Mary. For once, the voice isn’t speaking to me. Come to me, pretty one.

  Mack frowns and drifts toward the sound. The others can’t see her leave our side. They can’t see through the smoke and the shadows like I can. The darkness wants me to witness this. It wants me to see what it’s about to do to her.

  In the corner, Mack steps toward her coffin, the one she toiled for a lifetime to build with her own hands.

  The one that’s finished now and ready for an occupant.

  I call her name and surge forward, my arms fumbling through the fog. The voice laughs again, a hideous noise like a kettle that won’t stop screaming even once the burner is cold. At once, the thick walls of the coffin shiver as though they’re flesh, and we’re not the ones making them move. Mack instinctively knows this—she understands it too late—and though she turns to run, the coffin is eager for the chase. Mack manages only a single step before the pine rises up and tumbles over her, closing her up inside.

  She screams once—the baying of a fawn abandoned in a clearing—and pure electricity quakes through my body, the shocks firing up my spine until I wish I could tear out my own bones and never feel anything again. The smokes clears, and the other Marys and all our guests gape at me and gape at the empty space in the room. Without a word, the party is over.

  And Mary Mack is gone.

  chapter six

  The house explodes with noise and bewilderment. My sisters shift one way in the dining room and then another, and our guests follow their lead as if this is an arcane dance and they’re trying to learn the correct steps. I stand in the center of it all, the silent eye of a storm. Everything around me is a blur of movement with no purpose or direction. We don’t know what to do next because we’ve never dealt with this before.

  We’ve never lost one of our own.

  “Mack!” Lew won’t stop screaming, as though Mack took a wrong turn down a hallway and needs someone to guide her back to us again. As though it could be so simple.

  Through the picture window, the horizon has turned purple and gold. My throat closes up. Dawn is almost here, and our guests can’t stay much longer. We’ve already pushed this too far. With their bodies as soft as smoke, they’re hardly here at all. If they linger into the morning, they might not be guests at our home. They might become permanent residents.

  “I need to get them back,” I say and move toward the twins who are closest to me, the pair of them colluding in the corner.

  Lew catches my arm. “You need to help us find Mack.”

  She glares into me, blaming me, hating me. This party was a
ll my idea, after all. I grit my teeth and blame myself too.

  “Go ahead, Rhee,” Red says softly, her reflection in the mirror gauzy and distant. “Get the twins home. David and Gladys too.”

  But Lew only grips my arm tighter. “You have to help Mack.”

  “I’ll help when I return,” I say. “They can’t stay, Lew. We don’t know what will happen to them.”

  Or how many days will pass if we keep them until tomorrow night. Abby could be grown by the time I get David back. She could be old and withered or interred in the ground. The thought shudders inside me.

  Lew glances up at Gladys who shakes her cane at the ceiling and calls out for Mack.

  “Fine,” she says and releases me. “But come back. Right back.”

  I move for the twins, and with them at my side, I focus. The house falls away, and we plunge into the darkness and back into the mirror where Red is waiting for us.

  “Are you okay?” I ask the twins.

  They look down at themselves, at each other, and back at me. “Yup,” they chirp.

  I fixate on the mirror and turn it liquid. It’s ready for them to pass through, but they’re not ready for it.

  “What can we do?” The twins quiver on the threshold of our world and theirs, and the walls tremble in reply. On the other side of the glass, their ceremonial candles from earlier tonight have burned down to the wicks. “Tell us how to help.”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Red says. “Go home. And be safe.”

  “Besides,” I say, “I’m not sure you can help.”

  I’m not sure any of us can.

  But the twins are too stubborn to budge. “Maybe we can find out something.”

  I shake my head. “I’ve tried.”

  “But we haven’t,” they say. “What do you remember, Rhee? About yourself?”

  Though I don’t have time for this, I know they won’t go until I try.

  I sigh and close my eyes. “Engines overhead.”

  “An airport,” they say.

  I look at them again, but I see somewhere else, the place I’m from. “Sunrise through a cracked, front window.”