Delicate Monsters Read online

  After seeing what he’d done with that frog, Sadie had invited him down with her and she’d shown him her collection of dead animals. Nothing she’d killed herself—Roman had been wrong about that. She might be a General Zaroff at heart, but not literally. The animals were mostly things she found while out exploring. She kept them hidden down in that dank room, to use when needed, like the time she’d dumped a handful of decomposing field mice into her uncle’s custom leather riding boots after he told her parents she was an “insolent brat.”

  Pretty soon Sadie found out Emerson liked dead things, too, but for a very different reason. She didn’t care much about his reasons; he could do what he wanted. But it was the last time she’d gone down there with him that she’d finally gotten to see a real penis and the things he could do with it.

  “Aren’t you supposed to look at naked ladies when you do that?” she’d asked from where she sat, legs dangling, on the marble-topped work slab that had once been used for corking. But Emerson wasn’t looking at naked ladies. He wasn’t even looking at her. In the dim glow of the bare lightbulb that hung and swayed from the dirt ceiling, he was doing what he was doing while staring down at the lifeless body of a small black cat he’d kept in his backpack all day before bringing it over after school. He told Sadie he’d found it already dead on the roadside, but she had her doubts. There were no tire marks on it or anything. The cat was just dead.

  Dead. Dead. Dead.

  And that’s what he was looking at.

  “I’ve never seen a naked lady,” he grunted, before scrunching his face up in a funny way.

  “Hmmph,” said Sadie, as he made more faces. Later, in the privacy of her own room, she would touch herself once or twice after seeing what he did and how much he liked it, but nothing mind-blowing would happen, much to Sadie’s bitter resentment. Not until she was older, at least. And then, it wasn’t like what you read about in books or saw in movies; Sadie’s body didn’t blossom or awaken or come of age so much as it became aware. It wasn’t all that different from learning how to wiggle her ears or getting her first period. She simply woke up one morning in her thirteenth year with a newfound sentience that taught her that this was what it was like to have fire in her veins, and this was how to bring her body alive with twisting want using the force of her own hand.

  Dead cats weren’t what she thought of then.

  She glanced over toward where she knew the cellar lay. It was a spot that had been overrun with weeds and trash over the years, but she could usually make out the shape of the cement structure that had been poured into the earth to hold the double doors to the cellar.

  Then Sadie frowned.

  Because both the cellar doors were open.

  Slowly, very slowly, the champagne bottle slipped from Sadie’s armpit to smash onto the ground. Glass sprayed everywhere, across her feet, the dirt.

  She barely noticed. She was already marching forward on tense legs, heading straight for the patch of overgrown grass and grubby weeds that sat in the shadow of the old press, and nothing felt right, not after finding the bottle in a place and a position it shouldn’t have been, and now this.

  The air hung in clumps all around her, small pockets of heat that she had to push through. It was an effort moving in such conditions, but she was determined to find out who was screwing around in a place no one should be. Sadie’s dad had chained those cellar doors up years ago, just days before Emerson’s mom was dismissed from her nursing job and Sadie’s grandfather was transferred to a care hospital. He’d lingered there another month before falling out of bed and dying alone on the floor in the middle of the night.

  When she was five yards from the cellar entrance, Sadie’s phone chirped and all of her muscles loosened with relief. It was Roman, no doubt, and remembering what she’d asked him made her feel good again. It reminded her that she knew how to work people and get what she wanted out of them.

  It was a reminder she seriously needed at the moment.

  Sadie pulled her phone from her pocket, curious about his answer to her nosy question and wondering which way he would play it: seizing opportunity and demonstrating newfound bravado by telling her his dick was way bigger than she gave him credit for or maintaining his meekness, his gloomy honesty that was so Roman and so pathetic, because it seemed he hadn’t yet realized that everyone lied about things like dick size and intelligence and their concern for others. So which would it be?

  Had he changed at all?

  Sadie looked down at what he’d written:

  *

  That’s none of your business.

  *

  chapter thirty-four

  “Mom.” Emerson shook her shoulder. “Mom, wake up.”

  She was asleep on the couch again with the television on, although instead of housewives, it was tuned to the news, that endless loop of tragedy and suffering.

  “Mom,” he said again, eyeing the sleeping pills on the coffee table with no small amount of alarm.

  She sat up finally, letting the quilt slip from her shoulders and pushing her pale hair out of her face.

  “Miles?” she said.

  “No, Mom. It’s Emerson. There’s nothing new about Miles right now.” He sank deep in the couch cushions beside her and hoped the breath mints he’d been sucking on would give a convincing impression of sobriety. “I just got home. I wanted to talk. Can we do that?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Four thirty.”

  “In the afternoon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” She went to get up. “I should be getting ready for work.”

  He pulled her back. “No. You’re not working today. Miles is missing, remember?”

  She blinked. Looked confused. Then the tears came.

  Emerson hugged her. He gave her tissues.

  “I want to talk,” he said again.

  “That girl called, you know.” She sniffled.

  “What girl?”

  “Margaret Bowman. She was pushy with me, Em.”

  Emerson frowned. “Why did May call you?”

  “You left your phone. I answered it. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Well, what did she want?”

  “I don’t know. She wants to see you. I told her you were busy, but she said she’s coming over at six. Pushy, like I said.”

  “I want to see her, too, Mom.”

  She made a sound of disapproval. “You don’t need to get involved with all that. Especially not right now.”

  All that. Emerson sighed. “Both her parents have Ph.D.’s, you know.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that I like her, and we’re already involved. So if this is about you being bigoted or close-minded or whatever it is you always do, just drop it. God knows our family isn’t anything to aspire to.”

  His mother burst into tears again, worse than before. Big wracking sobs shook her body.

  Emerson wanted to die, right there on the spot. “Oh God, no, no, stop. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Don’t do that. Come on. I love you. You know that.”

  She kept crying. Blew her nose loudly.

  “I went and saw Brewster today,” he said, after a moment.

  She looked up. “You saw Paul?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to find out more about Dad. About why he did what he did.”

  His mother nodded, and with her thin shoulders and wet cheeks, she looked so vulnerable, like a piece of crystal balanced on the very edge of a high shelf, that Emerson almost didn’t ask his next question. He didn’t want to be the one to tip her over.

  But he had to.

  “Mom, is it weird I don’t remember you telling me Dad killed himself?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Brewster said you told me. Or that he and Uncle Petey did. But in seventh grade I heard a girl talking about it, and I swear, it was the first time I knew about it. I always thought he’d had a heart
attack in his car or something. I didn’t know he’d actually—”

  She grabbed his arm. “I can’t talk about your father right now.”

  Emerson paused. “Well, did you tell me or not?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We told you. Of course we did.”

  “Then why didn’t I know?”

  “I don’t know if we should get into all this.”

  “We should definitely get into this. How could I forget something like that?”

  “Maybe you forgot because you didn’t want to remember.”

  “What?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “I forgot?”

  “It was for the best,” she said. “Kids don’t need to know about things like that. Poor choices and sick minds. That’s grown-up stuff.”

  “So Dad was sick?”

  “He was definitely something.”

  “I don’t remember him being sick. I don’t remember anything like that.”

  “That’s good, Emerson. Remember him good and loving. That’s what he would’ve wanted.”

  “But I don’t understand. Did you let me forget?”

  “Is that worse than not telling you the truth in the first place?”

  Emerson faltered. “No. But I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be honest with me.”

  She reached out and stroked his hair. “It had nothing to do with me, baby. It was you. All you. You were so mad about your dad. For good reason, but your anger … it was scary. There was nothing I could do. So maybe sometimes I told you what you wanted to hear. That your daddy didn’t choose to leave us. That his heart just gave up one night. It’s almost true, if you think about it. I just wanted you to be happy. Don’t you remember that?”

  Emerson shook his head. What did he remember? He recalled flashes of his father’s wake. Of wearing good shoes that were too small and getting blisters on the bottoms of his feet. Of looking at his mother’s wall calendar to see his father’s death date scribbled out in Sharpie, the whole thing a furious black square. He remembered returning to school a few days after the funeral and kicking a teacher in the stomach for saying he wasn’t paying attention. He’d called the teacher a name, too, a really bad one, and he’d told his mom what it was when he’d gotten sent home.

  “You had every reason to be furious,” she’d hissed in his ear as she held him in her arms. “That woman was a real bitch to treat you like that. She deserved worse than what you did. Don’t you dare let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  And wasn’t that how it’d gone for years? Every time he was angry or acted out or got into trouble, she comforted him and let him know his feelings were valid. That’s what a mother did. She took care of him even in her own pain. And when the bad stuff with Miles went down a few years later, no one was quicker to stand up for her than Emerson. She’d never hurt her kids. She loved them too much.

  They were all she had.

  chapter thirty-five

  The cellar doors lay flung open, splayed out like airplane wings. Combined with the mystery of the gravity-defying champagne bottle, as well as the champagne itself, the whole thing appeared to be some sort of strange invitation.

  Come on down, Sadie, the doors said.

  We’ll tell you our secrets.

  We promise.

  Just come to us.

  She crept closer. Sweat dripped down her forehead. The batten doors themselves were falling apart, on their last legs. Sadie could only see the bottoms of them, but the bare plywood that was visible was splintered and torn. Shredded, really, like someone or something had been trying very hard to get out.

  Sadie stood on the edge of the cement staircase and stared into the gloomy descent. Hesitation was for cowards. Either she went down or she didn’t. If some creepy serial killer was lurking around in there, waiting for the perfect moment to jump out and murder her, so be it. The way she figured, it was far more likely that whoever had cut the chain and opened the doors was up here, hiding in the trees or prowling among the grapevines. Because whoever it was had to be the same person who’d moved the champagne bottle and lured her in this direction. And now that someone wanted her to go into the cellar.

  So she did.

  She took the first step down the crumbling staircase, then the second, keeping her hand gripped tightly around the railing as she moved. The deeper she got, the better the cool air felt on her damp skin, but everything smelled stuffy, stale, and also sweet, like old fruit. She cupped her free hand over her mouth and nose.

  She kept walking.

  Down, down, down.

  Sadie paused on the bottom step. Sunlight warmed a small patch of the dirt floor, but everything else was cloaked in blackness. The cellar stretched a good fifty feet in every direction, rows of wine barrels and shelving that ran right to the rafters, heaps of old tools and maintenance equipment that lay beneath canvas tarps, and set against the western wall was the old corking station. Sadie took a deep breath, then rose on her toes and reached for the dangling chain of the room’s bare bulb socket. She pulled it.

  Nothing happened.

  Well, damn. The only other light source she knew of was a hand-crank lantern that was stored beneath one of the tarps. Or at least that’s where it’d been the last time she’d come down here, years ago. Sadie stepped onto the dirt floor and out of the patch of sunlight.

  She couldn’t see anything.

  She inched forward, small shuffling steps, until her feet made contact with canvas. Then she dropped to her knees and thrust one hand out, feeling all over for the lantern, ready to raise hell if anything living ran up her arm. Her fingers closed around the metal handle. She drew the lantern to her chest and turned the crank as fast as she could.

  The whir of the motor filled the air and without warning, the light came on, warming the dark space with its glow.

  Sadie stood up and turned around, holding the lantern out in front of her to see the rest of the space.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed. “Oh, Jesus.”

  chapter thirty-six

  He and May stood in the middle of his bedroom with the door closed. Emerson felt out of control. Like he was losing his mind. Like he didn’t know who he was anymore.

  She reached up, kissed his cheek, his forehead, the side of his neck. “What are you saying?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  “You think your mom lied to you about your dad?”

  “Shh! Keep your voice down!”

  She whispered, “Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t know. Sort of. More, like, she let me lie to myself.”

  May pulled him toward her. Her hands were on his hips, gripping the belt loops of his pants. “Come on. You were just a kid, Em.”

  “So?”

  “Kids repress bad stuff all the time. It’s normal.”

  “It is?”

  She nodded. “Your mom probably should’ve taken you to a therapist or something.”

  “Maybe. We didn’t have money for things like that. We still don’t.”

  “Oh.”

  Emerson felt the back of his neck go warm. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I saw a school counselor in fifth grade.”

  “You did?”

  “Just once. She tried to talk to me about my dad, but I told her she’d be better off talking to kids who really needed her help, like those retards and idiots who can’t look you in the eye without stuttering.”

  May’s eyes went wide. “Wait. You seriously said that? Em, that’s awful.”

  “I didn’t mean it! I was pissed. I didn’t want to talk about my feelings and cry in front of her, and I knew that’s what she wanted me to do.”

  She softened. “Sounds like it was an emotional time.”

  Emerson shook his head. He never thought about it that way. Emotional. Those years were nothing but a black cloud in his mind, a swirling storm of loss and anger. But it was also a time of newfound vastness, of possibility. “Oh hell, I don’t know. I mean, I was kind of a
shitty kid back then, but we did okay, considering. Then Miles got sick and my mom had to deal with that. She got arrested, you know. Because of Trish Reed’s dad.”

  “Your mom was arrested?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom doesn’t like me.”

  “It’s not that,” he said weakly. “She just doesn’t understand some things.”

  May pressed her lips together. “Well, why’d she get arrested?”

  “The court said she was making Miles sick on purpose. It’s some sort of mental thing. Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Mothers make their kids sick so they can take them to the hospital and get all this attention.”

  “She did that to him?”

  “No! But Miles was in the hospital so much, people thought she did.”

  “Poor Miles,” she said.

  “I guess.”

  “Why would they think something like that if she wasn’t doing it?”

  “Who knows? She was always working anyway, so she couldn’t have done it. That’s what I told the judge, and they let her go.” Emerson gave a laugh. “If anything, I hurt him more than she did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Once I put some window cleaner in a drink as a joke and gave it to him. He got so sick he puked blood. Had to go to the ER and everything.”

  May dropped her jaw. “That’s horrible.”

  “Nah, he was fine. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Sounds like a big deal to me. You could’ve killed him.”

  “No way. Brothers do crap like that all the time. It’s guy stuff.”

  May didn’t answer, but her hands were at her sides. She wasn’t touching him anymore.

  Emerson bent his knees. Wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close. “Don’t think bad of me, May. Please? It was dumb. I was just a kid.”

  She paused. “I know.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Really?”

  She nodded again.

  “Good,” he said, smiling.