The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

emerging from the shadows by the stairs, she was a short and scrawny thing with no visible faults. As pale as the mother, with the same dark hair, but her face might almost have been pretty. If it weren’t for her slack, open mouth and the vacant stare in her blue eyes. The hanging arms and slow, strained walk.

“Sleepwalker,” the woman said sharply. The girl stopped dragging her feet forward at the sound of her voice. She blinked, once, before her head slumped forward. “Disease. Called something, can’t remember what. Now you know. Don’t disturb, don’t talk to her. Makes her upset.”

“She can hear you,” he said. It troubled him how the girl’s flat, unwashed hair hid her face. “How?”

The woman shrugged. The movement seemed to pass through her body like slow, dark water. “Go back upstairs,” she commanded, then scratched at a large red mark on her neck as the girl turned around. “Is sad,” she muttered over the sound of arduous walking. “She used to be like you and me.”

He nodded. “I should go see the room.”

She pointed to a closed door with her alabaster hand. “Basement stairs. There’s a bathroom down there, towels, linen. Goodnight.”

Rubbing a droplet of water from the tip of his nose, he thought of asking her how old the girl was. But her eyes barked at him, tired of questions. He went down the steep basement stairs and found a square, brick-walled room lit by a naked bulb. The bed was narrow and there was a crack in the bathroom mirror. It was perfect.

Whiny house sounds tore up his dreams. Sounds he wasn’t used to and didn’t like, but he didn’t like his dreams either. They made him sweat. He sat, eyes shut as he inhaled his own stink. There was an air vent somewhere, making a noise like a choir of insects screeching. Maybe he could talk to the woman about that in the morning.

It took him a while to discern the other noise. The creak-pause-creak. Opening his eyes, he felt for his glasses on the nightstand. The room wasn’t completely dark—there were two narrow windows high up on the wall, twin slits allowing the moon-glow inside. He pushed the glasses against the point between his eyes, counting quietly. Creak, pause, creak. Someone was walking through the hall upstairs. Someone was coming.

The insect noise sank to the floor and died when the basement door opened. The stairs were concrete; they swallowed the footsteps without chewing. He watched the end of the stairs, expecting the alabaster woman—but it was the sleepwalking girl. Except she was awake.

“Mister, you have to help me!” She pattered over to the bed, barefoot, polka dot pajama sleeves covering her hands. “She’s sleeping now. Finally.”

He pulled his knees up as she sat down on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were like marbles, too pale for real life. “I thought you couldn’t talk,” he said.

“It’s only because…” She sighed. “You are not her friend, are you?”

“No.” He liked how small the girl was. Her voice was small too, breaking here and there as if she didn’t trust it. She was like one of those tiny glass animals his grandmother had collected, the cats and does and velvet-eyed horses. Kept high up on a shelf where he couldn’t reach.

“You can’t become her friend,” the girl said. “She’s evil.”

“Then I won’t.”

She gnawed at her bottom lip, wine-colored like his mother’s roses. Her skin made him think of chalk. “Why did you come?” she asked, her fingertips slipping out of the long sleeves to press against each other.

“I had to go somewhere.”

“I suppose.” She didn’t sound interested. He didn’t mind. Her fingers moved like earthworms writhing on a wet road. “But you can’t stay here long. It’s a bad house. It steals your dreams.” Her milky eyes prodded his own, as loud as her voice was quiet. Her eyes screamed.

“It can have mine.” He laughed at the image of a house with a sour, sagging face. The girl gasped, motioning for him to be quiet.

“You don’t understand! She…she doesn’t like laughing. That was why she started punishing me in the first place.”

He remembered what she was like in the hall. A broken toy. “How does she punish you?”

“You know.” She shook her head with unnaturally large movements. “I’m only myself at night…like in a fairy tale. It’s horrible. She’s horrible.”

“Is she your mother?”

The girl started crying. She didn’t bother to wipe the tears away. “You have to help me. Please. You have to do something.”

He lifted his arm but wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. When he woke up in the morning he couldn’t remember more than that. His lifted hand, and her distorted face stitching itself into his memory.

Breakfast was bitter tea and a hard-boiled egg with toast. He ate fast as usual, alone at the kitchen table while the woman stood with her back to him, doing dishes. She looked the same as the night before. Sturdy black dress, dark slippers. As if she hadn’t gone to bed at all. He hadn’t seen the girl, and the woman hadn’t mentioned her. She had only spoken to him to ask how he preferred his egg.

“It’s a good house,” he said, trying not to think about what the girl had told him last night. “I slept well.”

“No talking.” She didn’t turn to him. “Is unnecessary.”

Her back was a square of resentment and stiff muscles. Had she fed the girl some drug? She looked like a poisoner, though he’d never met one before. She had those dog-bite eyes he didn’t like. When he was done eating he went downstairs, wishing he still had his notebook. There were plenty of empty pages left when he lost it. White as chalk.

The girl returned to him that night. He woke from one of the angel dreams and she stood there by the bed, hand waving. He sat up, thinking about poison.

“I had to see you,” the girl said.