Page 34 of The Overnight Guest

She hurried down the ladder, pushed on the barn door, and for a moment, it didn’t move.Someone locked me in,was her first, panicked thought. Wylie threw her shoulder against the door and it groaned open a few inches. In the short time she’d been inside, the snow, gathered up by the wind, had blocked her exit.

Wylie pushed on the door until it opened far enough for her to sidle out of the barn. The blizzard whirled, and the wind blew fiercely into her face making her eyes water. Squinting through the storm, Wylie could see the figure still moving slowly toward the house.

Wylie fought the urge to sprint toward the woman, but they still needed wood for the fire. It would be crucial to get the woman warmed up after hours spent in snow and in the uninsulated garden shed. Wylie forced the barn door open as far it would go, stepped back inside, and pulled the sled, piled with wood, into the storm.

Wylie’s boots sank into the snow with each step, it was like slogging through mud but she was gaining on the woman. From the light of the headlamp, Wylie could see that it was the woman from the accident. She had Wylie’s hat atop her head and was wearing Wylie’s coat.

“Hey,” Wylie called out, but the woman didn’t pause, just kept lumbering forward.

As they came closer to the house, the boy’s face appeared in the window, a pale moon in the dark, and then it vanished. When the wind settled, there he was again. His hands were pressed against the glass, a look of fear stamped on his face. The stranger was almost to the door and Wylie was still thirty yards behind.

Wylie dropped the sled’s rope and started running toward the house. “Hey,” Wylie called out. “Lock the door!” But the boy just stood there, mesmerized by the shape moving toward him. The back door opened, and the woman slipped inside. Through the roar of the wind, Wylie thought she heard Tas’s frantic barks.

The wind lifted, bringing with it a billowing cloud of snow and obscuring the entire house. At that moment, not even the blaze from her headlamp could pierce the storm. Wylie pushed forward.

When she finally reached the back door, Wylie fumbled with the knob and twisted. The door didn’t open. It was locked. She thumped on the door with a fist.

“Hey,” she called out. “Open the door!” Wylie pressed her face to the window, her headlamp lighting up the mudroom.

Inside, Tas barking and dancing in excited circles around the woman who kicked out at the dog. Tas gave a sharp squeal of pain and slunk away.

The woman’s back was to Wylie, but she could clearly see the boy’s face. Tearstained and frightened. But it was what dangled from the woman’s hand that caused Wylie to gasp. A long smooth wooden shaft ending with a triangular wedge of steel that glinted in the glare of the headlamp—a hatchet.

The woman held the weapon in her hand and pulled the boy from the mudroom and into the shadows.

19

When the girl’s mother finally emerged from the bathroom she murmured, “It’s gone,” and moved as if in a daze toward the bed, leaving faint red footprints in her wake.

The girl ran into the bathroom. The floor was covered in towels soaked in blood. The girl understood. Her baby sister had died and was lying somewhere beneath one of the bloody towels. She gagged and quickly closed the door.

The heat in the basement was becoming unbearable. The air was heavy and wet and the hot sun killed the grass that tried to grow up around the window. Now it lay in limp, brown clumps. Once in a while, a bird with a bright yellow breast and black wings would land at the window to choose the perfect strand of dead grass for his nest. The girl and the bird would stare at each other through the filmy glass. The bird was always the first to look away. He had things to do, places to visit.

Her mother slept and cried. The girl had to go to the bathroom but couldn’t bring herself to open the bathroom door. She tried to distract herself by looking at books, by looking out the window for the yellow bird, by watching television, but the urgency became too much to bear.

The girl pushed open the door in hopes that, in some kind of miracle, the bloody towels had disappeared. They hadn’t. She tiptoed across the floor trying to avoid the red sticky spots to the toilet.

Her father would come soon, and what would he do when he saw the mess? He’d be angry. He’d swear and yell and then hurt her mother, who lay in the bed too weak to move, too sad to eat or drink. She wouldn’t be able to take it.

The girl found a black garbage bag and began to stuff it with the soiled towels. “Don’t think about it,” she told herself.

The girl used paper towels to scrub away the remaining blood and added them to the garbage bag until it bulged. “Don’t think about it,” she said over and over. When she finished, and all remnants of the baby were gone, she climbed into bed next to her mother and slept.

When her father finally came, he was carrying a shake for her mother. The overflowing garbage bag sat in the middle of the room. “What happened?” he asked.

“It’s gone,” her mother said from beneath the covers.

“Are you going to be okay?” her father asked, but her mother didn’t answer. “It was probably for the best,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and resting a hand on her mother’s hip. She rolled away from him.

“You cleaned this up?” her father asked the girl.

The girl nodded.

“Huh,” her father made the noise as if impressed. He went over to the garbage, peeked inside, tossed in the shake he brought for her mother to the mix, and carried the bloody bag from the room.

20

August 2000

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