All of the ownership disclaimers apply, of course, to this and all chapters.
Undead gratitude to the midwives of this story: averysubtlegift and geo3.
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The Monster in the Closet
Rosalie does not accost me until I have nearly reached the aspen grove at the far edge of our lawn.
"Where are you going, Edward?"
"Hunting."
"Horseshit."
I hate this; utterly hate it. Our entire conversation is clearly audible to every person back in the house. I'm surprised they haven't all trooped out together to bully me. But no, all of them are inside, still as statues. Esme and Carlisle are in the large leather wing chair in his study. She reclines in his embrace, with Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu in her hand, although she is not reading it. Carlisle's mind is reciting the Lord's Prayer. Does he think that will keep me from trespass? Jasper and Emmett are in the great room, with the old, three-dimensional chess set on the coffee table between them. Alice sits on the floor between Jasper's knees. Even from this distance I can feel the solace that he is tenderly offering her. No one is moving, or breathing; only listening. As if I were some kind of a time bomb.
Here, under the sky, the wet air hints of snow.
"Then why even ask, Rosalie?" I retort. Why even ask?
"Because we're family, Edward. We look out for one another." Even when some of us hardly deserve it.
Rosalie has but one memory of her human life – an act of unspeakable violence. Her human family were utter strangers to her when she visited them afterwards – first via newspaper clippings, and later, much later, from concealment and a safe distance. She knew in the abstract that she had been bound to the somber woman in black, her white-headed husband, and two gangling boys: by ties of consanguinity, and eighteen years of shared life. But she remembered none of it. Even now, as she says the word "family", that moment in the trees with Carlisle and Esme returns, like a picture post card of bewilderment, frustration, and grief.
I should feel sorry for her. I do feel sorry for her. Just as I have done every other time that tableau has claimed her mind. But, more than anything, I chafe, now, to LEAVE. Even though I know that I should stay. It doesn't matter. NOTHING matters to me now, except for Bella and her blood. And so, I am insolent, and insufferable.
"Does this mean you're coming with me, Rose?"
"Don't be an ass."
"What, then?"
"Stop being so damn selfish. Nobody's going to crucify you for taking her, just be smart about it. Abducting her from her room at night? Really, Edward."
But that's not what I was going there to do …
"You've held off this long; give her until Monday and she can drive off the road on her way home from school. That old truck of hers has a huge gas tank. Just be smart for Christ's sake! I'd help you."
The last is added softly, so softly that it can barely be heard over Alice's sharp gasp and silent wail of NO! No, no, no, no, no! … and the phantom roar of Bella's truck, engulfed in white hot flames, her emptied corpse blackening inside.
If I could run out of my skin, I would. Instead, I run down the mountain, toward the town. No one can catch me. It's useless to try.
If I had not, at least in some part of my wretched mind, considered Rosalie's offer, Alice's vision would never have sprung forth. But it wasn't my idea! If it weren't for them all distrusting me, worrying for me, suggesting their damn solutions …
I'm running too fast. I force myself to circle back in a great arc through the pitch-black woods. I need time to run it out, to calm myself with the jet stream of air on my skin and the tireless play of my limbs.
Angela was with her. I like spying through Angela. She looks at Bella's face. And so I had a full view of the sneeze – her eyes squeezing shut, her arm coming up to try to muffle it all in the crook of her elbow. The little sniffle that followed. And for the first time, the very first time, my own mind echoed the warning that Alice has been sounding all these weeks. "Not her!" But the year is 2007, not 1918. There is no little Spanish bird flying in at people's windows, stealing their lives away. Rosalie is right. I am being an ass.
My circle has looped back upon itself, and once again I am coursing like an arrow towards the police chief's house.
A mile from my goal, I catch the waft of cinnamon. I am not searching for the scent. Vampire senses are very keen. I slow my pace, to flit through the dark like a specter, and soon, the glimmer of her nightlight is visible through the trees. Far from keeping monsters at bay, that frail golden beam is the very beacon that guides me in.
In a trice, I have scaled the tree outside her bedroom window, and cling to its trunk at a level with the transparent panes. Where God should have placed an angel with a flaming sword, there is only a pair of flimsy curtains with fading flower print.
I can smell her, and I can hear her, but I cannot see her. She is burrowed under the two threadbare quilts, completely hidden except for a few stray locks of brown hair, falling across the pillow.
What is wrong with her father? Doesn't he know that his daughter needs good, thick, feather comforters to keep her warm? Preferably several of them, just to be sure. She came here from a hot and sunny place.
I hang like a moth against the glass.
What am I doing?
…
I have told myself that I am making amends. For insulting her so needlessly. For acting so ungentlemanly toward her.
For being this creature that I am.
But now, with this medicine that she has taken, we are quits, she and I. I have paid the debt that I made. Once she regains her health – which surely she will – there will be no further need for me to come to her window.
…
…
Even I know what a lie that is.
The path to this place has been blazed. It has become, in just two short nights, a path of least resistance. I know that I will endanger her again … and again, and again, and again.
Why didn't Alice stop me?
…
…
The night wind runs chill, stirring the trees. Beside me, a spray of branch tips scrapes at the casement.
I am fairly certain that Bella's fever has broken, and she has 'turned the corner'. Her heart rhythm is even and slow, as it should be in sleep: steady, and stronger than it had been last night.
Enough. There's no need to do more.
Time for me to leave.
The aromas of cinnamon, ginger, licorice and peony root are strongest here. Has she stored the herbs in her room? Even without breathing, I can taste her blood and her flesh as well – all the sweetly mingled scents – seeping delicately out through the window seams.
Go. Don't stay. Not here.
Go!
Levering the window open with barely a sound, I cross the threshold, and go into her room.
Stop.
Stop!
I stop at the head of her bed. I can see her better, now. Her body is curled into a "C", the top of her head and one cheek just showing above the bedclothes that wrap her. Her hair is dry. Her breathing is even and unimpeded. Her eyelids do not even flutter.
My hand hovers over her barely exposed face. Less than an inch of air separates my skin from hers.
She has no fever. None at all.
I cannot move.
I have never been this close to her since that horrible day in Biology class. But this is a thousand times worse. The air in her room is saturated with her. She surrounds me, seeps into my every pore. I wonder if I am going to die, right here and right now. Burned at the stake. Even as I drink down every red, living drop of her.
A creak on the stair startles me.
How had I not taken her father into account? His muttered thoughts precede him, guilty at having spent the evening drinking beer and watching television in the dark, while his daughter sleeps upstairs.
He ascends with a heavy tread to the second floor, and steps into the bathroom.
Already I have disappeared into Bella's closet. My stupidest idea yet. She does not have many clothes, but they hang on either side of me. Touching me. It is all I can do not to bite her clothing, shred and swallow it for her scent.
The loud, rank stream of her father urinating into the toilet bowl is a sharp, if utterly mortifying, salvation. I focus on the smell and the sound, and his thoughts, wishing once more that I could crawl out of my skin. But it is better than skinning his daughter alive. Or eating all the clothes in her closet.
His thoughts are muddy, half-formed.
Horse piss in, horse piss out.
The toilet paper roll spins briefly, every sound magnified by the way I have pinned my attention there, rather than here.
When Billy's over, alright. But no more of this drinkin' during the week stuff. Not while Bella's here. Not while she's here.
The man sighs heavily, and I slump against the back of Bella's closet, sink to a pathetic huddle between her suitcases on the floor. The movement is not silent, and I freeze in panic. If I had a heart that could move, it would be racing, now, as I strain every sense to find out if her father has heard me.
His thoughts remain unfocused, but his step is leaving the bathroom, and approaching the bedroom door. Wedged between Bella's up-ended suitcases, I am half-hidden by her hanging clothes. But I don't feel safe at all. If he should open the closet, what will I do?
Kill them both?
I don't want to. I don't want to.
I smell old sweat, beer, leather, and gun oil. Good God, is he wearing his sidearm? Here in the house?
Chief Swan steps into his daughter's room.
My eyes are squeezed shut. As if that would keep him from discovering me! I watch through his eyes. I had forgotten how dim human vision is. The room is dark for him – even with the nightlight – and everything is washed down to greys and blacks.
Swan stands near the foot of his daughter's bed. He is gazing at her. I hear him forming the thought to pull the covers closer around her, but she is already wrapped snug as a little bug in there. That's because she's still cold. She will need to drink more of the medicine. I hope she follows the directions I wrote for her.
An image overtakes the Chief's mind. A smiling woman, pretty, and very young, with golden brown hair caught loosely in a cotton kerchief. She is wearing a red and black check flannel shirt that comes almost to her knees, and stands bare-legged and barefoot, with a dark-haired toddler on her hip. Behind her is a dim kitchen, with drop-cloths and buckets on the floor, and bright, newly painted cabinets.
The wispy-haired little girl looks up and smiles gaily. "Mommy's painting! And I helped!" She holds out her hands, both palms slick and damp, the color of canary feathers. There are smudges of the same color on her clothing, and on her mother's face as well. The cabinets glow like sunshine.
The woman laughs, in a voice very much like the child's, "If you'll do rubber duck duty, I'll get cleaned up down here."
And then I feel, I feel, the warm little body clamped around my midsection, the soft, sweet-smelling child hair under my nose. "I'm a big girl now! I helped Mommy!"
My eyes fly open, and I find that my fist is in my teeth. Her scent, God, her scent! Swan has moved to the head of his daughter's bed. He does what I never can: brushing the hair from her face with his hand. I see her as he does, a dim form in a darkened room, and a flash of a very small yellow handprint on a curling edge of linoleum downstairs.
Where did the years go?
The stinging in my eyes, the ache under my ribs, these are his, not mine. I have no right to them, none at all. Just as I will never smell of sweat, or piss … or beer, for that matter. Never need to shave. And still I gather it all to myself, like a wound.
The man sighs heavily again, and leaves the room as quietly as he can.
I need stillness, and strangely, this house provides it. The Chief's thoughts as he puts himself to bed are blunted and blurred, easy to block out. Bella's mind is, of course, as silent as the night. I remain in the closet, in a kind of stasis, my arms around my knees, head bowed against my forearms, so that I have a cage of my own flesh and scent around my face. It helps, a little. Enough that I can remain, unthinking, in the dark, quiet space.
When Chief Swan is also asleep, I leave. I can't go home yet. I run aimlessly through the national forest. Something has become lodged in my throat. A knot of pine. A peach pit. A fish bone: that can neither be swallowed down nor retched back up.
A/N: Well, I confess that now I am officially quaking in my boots. I'm running out of already written chapters! I had hoped to maintain a bit of a buffer, so that I could continue to update on a fairly predictable schedule. (I'm a reader, too, I know how crazy-making it is to have long hiatus between chapters.) But it looks like best laid plans are not going to work. There are two more chapters pretty much in final draft form, and then, dang, I'll be laying down track right in front of the train as I go. I can promise a few things:
(1) The entire story is fully outlined in my head and on paper. I can see and feel practically every scene in my head. But it is somewhat shifting and mutable, as if seen through water, and so the actual WRITING remains to be done
(2) I am working on this story in pretty much all of my unallocated waking and sleeping hours. (My family thinks I am batshit crazy.) I think I would even be working on it when I am dead. No matter how long it may be between chapters, I will not abandon it.
So, if you are enjoying the story, please bear with me. And if anyone has any magic potions for unblocking the channel from visions to words, please send some over! (I'll be checking my front stoop for brown paper bags ... )
Thanks!