Bones & All Read online

  Kerri-Ann climbed into her bed and pointed to a box on the floor by her desk. “The air mattress is in there. Lee, why don’t you set it up for yourself? It’s electric, so you don’t have to blow into it. Maren, I think you’ll be more comfortable on one of the couches in the common room down the hall. They’re comfy—I used to fall asleep on them watching movies all the time last year.”

  Lee gave me a doubtful look. “Here, why don’t I blow the air mattress up for Maren and—”

  “The air mattress has a hole in it,” Kerri-Ann said flatly. “Don’t you want Maren to get a good night’s sleep?”

  There was no other way to protest without making it into a thing. Kerri-Ann tossed me a tatty gray blanket. “We’ll see you in the morning,” she said.

  The light was off in the common room. From the street lamps I could make out a small kitchenette and refrigerator in one corner, a great hulking television set in another, and a bunch of couches scattered around the room. I chose one and settled in. The cushions smelled like beer and dirty socks.

  I pictured Kerri-Ann unbuttoning Lee’s shirt and casting it on the floor beside the deflated air mattress. I saw him running his fingers along her bare skin. You’re so good with your hands, Lee. I rolled my eyes at the dark and tried harder to think of nothing at all. When I fell asleep, I was back running in those zigzagging corridors as Kerri-Ann was losing her lead, stumbling over her pink stiletto heels.

  The next thing I knew, someone was shining a flashlight in my face. “You should not be here,” said a crisp but gentle voice. “The common room is closed. Are you a resident of this dormitory?”

  I held my hand up to my eyes, and the figure averted the flashlight a moment before the overhead lamp switched on. A security guard stood in the kitchenette area, tall and stocky, with a buzzed haircut. It took me a second to realize the guard wasn’t a man.

  “I’m a friend of Kerri-Ann Watt.” I almost choked on the word friend. “She lives in room two twenty-nine.”

  “Have you been signed in as an overnight guest?” She spoke with care; English wasn’t her first language.

  “Um … I didn’t know we were supposed to sign in.”

  “Gather your things, please. We will go to your friend’s room now.”

  I followed the guard down the hall, the blanket trailing behind me.

  She knocked sharply on Kerri-Ann’s door, waited, and knocked again. Finally we heard footsteps approach.

  Kerri-Ann opened the door. I glanced over her shoulder and saw her bed was empty. The air mattress lay in a puddle on the linoleum. “Yes?”

  “I found this young woman asleep in the common room. She says she is your friend.”

  Kerri-Ann looked me up and down with a blank expression. “No. Sorry. I don’t know her.”

  I opened my mouth to protest as the guard made her apologies and Kerri-Ann closed the door, flicking me a tiny glance of triumph behind the woman’s back.

  “It was not good to lie, miss. Now I must report you. You will receive a citation from the campus police.”

  “I wasn’t lying,” I said tiredly. “She’s lying because she wants my friend all to herself.” I should have used those nail scissors when I had the chance.

  The guard glanced back at Kerri-Ann’s door, then at me, as we went down the hall toward the bright red EXIT light, and I realized it wasn’t a matter of her not believing me. She didn’t care about any of this. She was just doing her job, and if I disappeared right now she’d just shrug and continue on her rounds like nothing had happened.

  “Now we will walk to the campus police station,” she said as we went down the stairs. “It is two blocks from here.”

  I followed her out the door at the bottom of the stairwell, but when she turned the corner on the building I ran the other way. I knew she wouldn’t follow me.

  I walked a few more blocks to the lake and sat down on a park bench overlooking the water. It wouldn’t be light for hours yet. My backpack was in Kerri-Ann’s room, I didn’t have anything with me but a raggedy old blanket, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I’d been homeless for months, but I’d never really felt like it until now.

  I must have nodded off, because it was suddenly light out and Lee was sitting next to me. A couple of early morning joggers hurried by, and I felt naked and ridiculous under the old blanket. My throat hurt. “Where were you?” I asked blearily. “You weren’t with her.”

  “I’m so sorry, Maren. I never should have let it go that far. She was a pest from the minute we met her, but I didn’t think she’d be like that.”

  “Did she tell you what she did?”

  “She didn’t have to.”

  “I left my bag in her room. Do you think you could get it for me?”

  “You can get it yourself. But there’s no need for us to leave right away.” He let out a breath, and I smelled it then—the stench lurking under the mint. He’d probably used her toothbrush. “Now everything in that room belongs to you.”

  * * *

  I wore every article of black clothing Kerri-Ann had owned, even her underwear, and every day I used her ID card to get into the university library. No one ever checked to see if my face matched the photo on the card. I just flashed the ID to a bored-looking student behind the front desk and passed through the turnstile, into the biggest library I’d ever seen.

  After a couple hours of reading I would wander around in the stacks to stretch my legs, and there were always lots of books on the carts in need of reshelving. There never seemed to be anyone around to do it, so I started doing it myself. It soothed me to put somebody else’s books away.

  I didn’t see much of Lee during the day. Wherever he went and whatever he did, he always ended up at McDonald’s or Burger King, and he’d bring me a burger and a strawberry milkshake for dinner.

  I didn’t know how long we’d be able to go on like this, but I kept thinking the time was almost up just because I liked it here. I liked this town. I liked the campus. The cafeteria was all done up like a German hunting lodge or something, lots of dark wood and Gothic script, and when the weather was good you could take your tray out onto a terrace overlooking the lake.

  The people were friendly too, even if I couldn’t talk to them. A few times I saw three girls knitting together on the terrace, and one day one of them looked up and saw me watching her. She smiled and said, “Do you knit?”

  I shook my head. “I tried to learn, but I just couldn’t get the hang of it.”

  “Oh, everybody feels that way in the beginning.” The girl leaned over and patted the seat beside her. “Come sit down, and I’ll teach you so it sticks.”

  “Hah,” said one of her friends. They’d been knitting all through the conversation. “Sticks.”

  “I don’t have time right now,” I mumbled.

  “Oh, okay.” She seemed disappointed. “Well, we knit together a lot, so you can join us anytime.”

  “We’re not much of a circle,” said the third girl, “but we talk enough to make up for it.”

  “People think it’s something only grandmas do,” the first girl sighed. “So come next week, if you can. Bring your yarn and needles.” I nodded and tried to smile as I backed away from the table.

  I couldn’t believe it. They were so nice.

  * * *

  At bedtime Lee started off on the air mattress, but I’d wake up in the middle of the night and find it deflated again. Either he’d found a hiding spot in the common room, or he was sleeping in the backseat of Kerri-Ann’s car. Sometimes he was in the shower when I woke up and other times he was already gone. That night I’d offer him the bed again, but he wouldn’t take it. He’d pick up one of Kerri-Ann’s things, a hairbrush or a tank top, sigh, and say, “Somebody ought to gobble me up one of these days. It’d serve me right.”

  And I’d say, “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t I say it?”

  I didn’t answer. I could never think of a reason.

  * * *<
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  The next day, as usual, I set myself up at one of the library desks. I read and wrote for a couple of hours before taking a bathroom break.

  When I got back to my desk I found something lying in the gutter of my open textbook, and at first my brain refused to recognize it.

  A long white strip.

  Fluffy.

  Attached to something that looked like a charm bracelet.

  I picked it up because I still didn’t know what it was. The fur was clumped together with dried blood on one end where someone had severed it.

  Tail. Cat’s tail. Mrs. Harmon’s cat.

  Something tinkled faintly as the tail dropped to the floor, and I realized it wasn’t a bracelet, it was the collar. I went to one knee and slowly picked up the tag. PUSS, it said. And on the reverse: HARMON—217 SUGARBUSH AVE.—EDGARTOWN, PA. In an instant I was back in the Spare Oom, shutting the door on Mrs. Harmon’s beautiful white cat.

  I should have let him in.

  There were plenty of students in the library, and if they noticed something was wrong I couldn’t tell. The silence amplified itself. Everyone had turned into mannequins, but I could feel Sully’s eyes on my back. My stomach turned over, and my hands began to ring with the sickening thud of brass on skull.

  I could hide the cat’s tail and go on sitting there out in the open where he couldn’t touch me. But the library wouldn’t be open forever.

  I closed my books and left them on the table for once, picked up the cat’s tail, and quickly found the nearest trashcan. It was a perfect sunny afternoon, and all over the quad there were people playing Frisbee or sunning themselves. I didn’t turn to look behind me. I just kept walking back to the dorm.

  I went into the stairwell, climbed up to the second-floor landing, and sat on the step. Beyond the double doors the hallways were deserted. I waited for the sound of his boots on the stairs.

  The door at the bottom opened and shut, and there they were, slow and steady. I closed my eyes and listened as my hands hummed and my heart hammered. I’d bested him once, but old fear is harder to shake.

  When I opened my eyes again he was leering at me, and I couldn’t imagine how I had ever trusted him. His pocketknife glinted in his hand—that horrible hand, crusted blood ringing the fingernails. “Well, well. You know you been a bad girl, and it’s my job as your granddad to set you right. Eh, Missy?”

  I sighed. “You could have done it a month ago.”

  “Had to get my strength up. Besides, what’s that they say about a dish best served cold? C’mon and get up, now.” He jabbed his knife at the door behind me. “I’ve been through enough trouble without runnin’ into any more.”

  Sully followed me into Kerri-Ann’s room and turned the dead bolt. He pushed me toward the bed and I couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder, but it was no use. Lee wouldn’t be back for hours. The daylight was fading, and the room was thick with shadows.

  “Now you listen here. You so much as look at that door again and I’ll slit you open right down the middle. Got it?”

  I nodded. Why did he even use a knife? Saturn never needed one.

  Sully turned the desk chair to face me and sat himself down. With the knife he picked at his fingernails, flicking bits of dirt and dried blood onto the floor. “Second time your boyfriend ain’t swooped in to save you.” Sully smirked. “Some boyfriend he turned out to be.”

  “He’ll be back any minute,” I said.

  “Nah. I took care of him.”

  In that moment, I felt sorry for the man. It was like he hadn’t looked in a mirror in forty years. I thought, too, of how Mama had cared for me and protected me. Sully would never know what it felt like to be loved—or near enough to it.

  “You mean you killed him?” I asked.

  Sully laughed. “Slit his throat and had me an early supper.”

  He was lying. I didn’t have to hope.

  “Did you follow me back to Travis’s house? Were you watching me while I was cam—”

  “Now you just shut it, Missy. You ain’t got nothing to say to me besides beggin’ for mercy right before I stick you.” He winced as he rubbed at the back of his head. There was a nasty bruise, like a rotten spot on a peach, with a jagged line where the corner of the trophy had broken the flesh. He had less hair than he did a month ago. “You hit me hard, and I ain’t been right since. I don’t just forget things, I forget where I been and what I was doin’. Can’t see nothin’ sometimes. Can’t even go out in the daytime, makes my head hurt more than it already does.”

  “If you’d left me alone, I wouldn’t have had to do it.”

  He pointed the knife at me. “And if you’d just shut up and stopped your kickin’, you’d have saved us both a whole lot of trouble.”

  Well, that was true.

  Sully went back to picking at the filth under his nails. “Knew a man once,” he said, in this weirdly offhand way. “Ate his own mother. ’Course, he might’ve just said it hopin’ for a reaction. But I ain’t afraid of nobody or nothin’, not even a man that ate his own mama.”

  “Lee might have eaten his own dad,” I said. “He can definitely handle you.”

  My grandfather’s eyes glinted in the gloom. “Ain’t you been listenin’, Missy? Didn’t I tell you everybody does it?”

  I heard a door slam at the end of the corridor, and another set of heavy, steady footsteps approached. It was Lee. I was sure of it.

  “I wonder why you’d say that, when it isn’t true,” I said carefully. “You know what’s going to happen, Sully. You can go on and eat me, but then he’s just going to eat you. That’s what he does. He eats people the world is better off without.”

  A key turned in the lock. The door strained against the dead bolt. “Maren? Maren, are you in there?”

  Sully glared at me. He ran his hand over what was left of his hair.

  “Should I tell him you’re here?” I asked. It felt strange to be so calm, when I knew he might lunge and stab me. Lee was trying something else with the door. I could hear the rubber treads on his boots squeaking as he worked the lock, metal clicking on metal. “He’s going to open it,” I said. “He knows how to pick all kinds of locks.”

  Now or never, then. Sully came at me, and I was ready. I got a firm hold on his right arm, and I watched with that detached feeling as he adjusted his grip on the knife in hopes of sticking me in the hand.

  “I’m coming, Maren!”

  I let go of Sully’s hand at the last minute, and he tumbled forward onto the bed, plunging his knife into the pillow. I scrambled on top of his back and grabbed his knife hand from behind, just as the dead bolt yielded and the door swung open. Sully turned to Lee with a startled, almost frightened look on his face, and in that moment he seemed impossibly frail for someone who’d spent the past month hunting me down.

  Lee hardly even glanced at me; he just took Sully by the arm as the door slammed shut. I let go. “Wait in the bathroom,” he said.

  I ran to the door and turned the bolt again as Sully said, “Now just hold on a minute, there, son.…”

  And Lee said: “Don’t call me son.”

  I climbed into the bathtub, drew the curtain, and pressed my palms against my eyes ’til I saw comets. Seven minutes, give or take. I was safe now. I was very nearly safe.

  Finally Lee knocked on the bathroom door. “Can I come in?” I didn’t answer, but he came in anyway. He knelt by the tub and pulled back the shower curtain. “Are you okay?” He put his arm around me, breathed on me. I wanted to throw up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll brush my teeth.”

  “He said he’d taken care of you.”

  “If that guy told the truth once in his whole life, I’d be surprised.”

  I looked up. “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.” He took my hand and tugged gently. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of the bathtub.”

  Lee washed his face and hands and used Kerri-Ann’s toothbrush while I went back into the room. It had nev
er been particularly homey, but now it was even less so, although Lee had already stripped the sheets and laid Kerri-Ann’s clean Laura Ashley duvet over the bare mattress. I curled myself up as tight as I could at the foot of the bed. I did see, out of the corner of my eye, a yellow plastic grocery bag on the floor by the door, the handles double knotted over a bulging mass of human scraps. Not that my grandfather had ever been much of a human.

  Lee came out, sat down in the desk chair, and rubbed at his eyes. “I can’t believe how close I came to losing you,” he said.

  “Why did you come back early?”

  He shrugged. “I just felt like I should.”

  Something trailed out of the open closet door in the corner. Something ropelike. So Sully had stashed his rucksack in the room before he’d gone to hunt me at the library.

  Lee followed my eye and got up to investigate. He opened the closet door wide and picked up the rope of hair. “What the hell…?” As he pulled and the rope came out, and out, and out, Lee had this look on his face—like he’d discovered a severed finger in the salad bar, like he wasn’t an eater himself.

  The rope formed coil after coil on the linoleum as Lee drew it out of the bag. It was so long it was hard to believe Sully had managed to fit anything else in the rucksack. “Sick,” Lee muttered. “Like a Frankenstein zombie Rapunzel.” I laughed then, in spite of everything.

  When he finally got to the other end he looked up at me, his face bright with that mix of fascination and disgust I’d felt that night at Mrs. Harmon’s house. “You saw this before?”

  I nodded. “That’s her hair there, near the end.” Still, the weaving was a few feet longer than the last time I’d seen it. Seeing the whole thing for the first time, it occurred to me that if Sully had only eaten people who were already dead, then there would have been a whole lot more gray, white, and silver along the rope.

  Lee kicked it away and sat in the desk chair staring at it. “That is the most repulsive thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Somehow I doubt that,” I said. In silence we looked at the rucksack, as if another nasty surprise could come slithering out at any moment.

  Then, all at once, I couldn’t wait to be rid of it. I jumped up and stuffed the rope of hair back inside the bag, grabbed the strap, and dragged it across the floor.