The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward (guided reading books .TXT) 📕

I am filled with bad ideas. Is she sick, or dead? The last thought brings horrible panic. I make myself breathe slowly. Relax. She’ll be hiding.

I lost days, this time. At a guess, three. I check the TV. Yes, almost noon. So three days, more or less.

I go through the house, making sure of padlocks on the cupboards and the freezer, checking everything. I did some damage while I was out. Scratched up the orange rug, broke Mommy’s Russian dolls into tiny shards. When I check my closet I find that some of my shoes are wet. Did it rain? Did I go through a river or something? Or a lake, my mind whispers. I shut that down real quick. I go to take a drink but apparently I broke the bourbon, too. Never mind. I get a fresh bottle and a pickle.

As I’m eating I drop the pickle. When I bend down to pick it up I see a gleam of white. There’s something under the refrigerator. I know what it is. It shouldn’t be down here.

Up in the attic there’s the sound of weeping. It’s the green boys. They’ve been quiet lately but now they’re kicking up a storm. ‘Shut up!’ I yell. ‘Shut up! I’m not scared of you!’ But I am. I have nightmares that one day I will wake up in the attic, surrounded by the green boys and their long fingers and that I will slowly disappear, fading into the green. I hook the white flip-flop out from under the refrigerator and throw it in the trash. It’s got bad memories all over it like fungus.

I don’t put the knife back in the high cupboard. Instead I bury it in the back yard under cover of dark. Isn’t that a wonderful expression? It makes the night sound like a warm blanket, littered with stars. I find a good place beneath a stand of blue elder.

I am still quite upset so I eat another pickle in front of the TV and slowly I calm down. I can’t stop now. Those women weren’t the right friends for me, I guess, but I’m not a quitter.

Olivia

Ted is gone again. Honestly, he is such a gadabout, these days.

The noise is very bad. Eeeeeeeeeeee. My head is a cavern of sound. I am in desperate need of guidance. I knock the Bible off the table with a paw. It falls open with a thump on the boards. I wait, eyes closed. When the crash comes it is so loud my ears want to burst. The house seems to tremble at its very foundations. There are great cracking sounds, as if the world or sky is breaking. It builds and builds to a scream and I think, Is this the end of everything? Horrible! Scary!

When at last it starts to die away I feel so relieved. I swear, I feel like a salt shaker that’s just been used too hard. I have to sit for a moment to let my tummy settle.

I lean in. The verse that meets my eye is:

And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.

Well, if the lord always made everything perfectly clear, there would be no point in faith, would there? The whining goes on and on. It almost sounds like a little bee, crying for help. The house feels wrong today, as if in the night someone moved everything an inch to the left for a prank.

Someone starts talking in the living room so I guess Ted left the TV on for me.

‘We should revisit trauma,’ the voice is saying. ‘You know what they say. The only way out is through. Childhood abuse must be excavated and brought into the light.’

Maybe the whining sound is coming from the TV. I have checked the TV before, oh, hundreds of times. But I have to do something. The big Russian doll stares at me from the mantelpiece with its blank face, its round body. It looks happier than ever to have prisoned its little friends inside it. The Parents stare down from their horrible frame above the fireplace. Go away, I whisper at them, but they never do.

When I see who’s on screen, I stop, ears flat. Him again. The round blue eyes stare out. He nods earnestly at some unheard question. The room is filled with that scent – spoiled milk and dust. I know he’s only a picture on a screen but it feels like he’s here, somehow. I sit down neatly and lick a paw. That always makes me feel better. I could do this show so much better than you, I tell him. You have no charisma.

He smiles as if in answer. I don’t feel like talking to him any more after that. I don’t know why – it’s not like the TV can hear me. Can it? The smell is so strong, though. It’s not like a ted smell, but like something left out of the refrigerator for too long.

And then, from the hall, I hear it. The tiny faint sounds of someone standing outside the front door. I pad over to it silently. I can sense someone behind. A male ted. He’s not knocking, he’s not ringing the doorbell. So what is he doing? And the reek is everywhere, seeping in around the door, invading my sensitive nose. It’s the same smell that came off the TV. Somehow, the ted from the TV is also outside my house. The show must be pre-recorded.

The ted breathes into the place between the door and the jamb. Long, delicate inhalations. He must have his face pushed right into the crack. It’s like he’s smelling the front door. Can he smell me? Ted has warned me over