Bargain

I didn’t know how to deal with loss. I’d never experienced loss like they had. The kind of loss that set families off-kilter and pounded cracks through them. I wasn’t prepared for the heavy quality of the air in the house, as if the loss of one person was the loss of a pillar under a ceiling that was constantly pressing down. I’d known people distantly who’d had deaths in the family, from illness or car accidents. But a family that had lost a child, and not lost a child in death, but lost them, to some place or even to some person, was entirely different. I expected they would be frantic, searching for answers, or upset that the police investigation had ended. Torn apart and looking like it.

They weren’t like that.

The first thing that struck me about Lisbeth’s family was how functional they seemed. No one looked ready to dissolve into a puddle of tears. I’d met her mother before, before Ariadne had gone missing, and she looked just as she had that day in the spring. She wore a cardigan and had her hair up in a very utilitarian bun. There were shadows under her eyes but they could have been from working late. Lisbeth had said that her mother was taking regular twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, on-call constantly and finding a reason to be out of the house. She stood there in the living room looking worn but not taut, not pulled to the end of her emotional tether as Lisbeth had when Ariadne had first gone missing.

Lisbeth was better now. Coping, as her mother obviously was. Sean didn’t look like he wanted to cope at all.

“Sean,” Lisbeth said when he didn’t get out of his chair to greet me. “Aren’t you going to say hello? Ella’s here.”

His complete lack of interest was the first thing that told me that he was dealing with Ariadne’s disappearance differently from his sister and mother. Sean was full of vitality, and his personality always had an edge to it, like he was an inch from bursting into laughter or shouting. It was intense, like the sharp and handsome features of his face. He usually said hello, looking either aggrieved to say it or genuinely glad to see me. There was nothing on his face now but a distant disdain, as if he were angry with something none of the rest of us could see.

“Sean?”

Sean pushed out of his chair and headed to the kitchen. He grabbed a glass bottle from the countertop and a bottle opener. Without answering, he headed toward the stairs, prying the top off the bottle. Listbeth muttered, “asshole,” under her breath as he stumbled on a step. Soda (it was too fizzy to be beer) sloshed over his hand. He grabbed for the banister and pulled himself up, not bothering about the fizzy mess on the floor. He stomped up the rest of the stairs.

At the top of them he turned so quickly the carpet under him slid and he almost slipped. I heard him going down the corridor above us too, and the crash of a door being flung open so hard it hit the wall beside it. Then another slam as it closed.

I didn’t say anything. Lisbeth might have been embarassed in another situation, but now she just looked furious. “He thinks this is all his tragedy,” she said. “Asshole.”

“He’s been having a hard time with the police and the inquiry,” Lisbeth’s mother said beside us. Her hands were twitching as she held them in front of her. The expression on her face was reassuring and brittle, so shiny that I knew there was something darker beneath it. I felt like I should say something about her daughter, but in doig so I might open up and bleed that darkness. “He doesn’t like the attention. He wanted to be alone for all of this. And it was a shock to all of us. He just doesn’t want to think about how we might have lost her. He’ll be embarrassed later. He’s just angry for now. We all have our ways.”

Lisbeth gave me a newspaper clipping in her room later and I read it while she painted her toes. It summed up the entire investigation, she told me, and I took this to mean that she did not want to explain it to me. I knew only bits and pieces, and after I read the article, what I knew was this: Ariadne, fourteen, disappeared three weeks prior. Went for a walk before dinner, never came home to dinner. The investigation started a couple hours later because she was a minor. It had been three weeks and there was no sign of her body, though the woods in the ravine by the house had been searched. There were no clues. The public searches had been called off.

I tried to recall Ariadne as I’d last seen her. The youngest of the family, Lisbeth’s small sister, who looked even smaller, who read books about mythology and loved the original fairy tales and spat at Disney adaptations. Lisbeth had once told me that Ariadne wanted to be a fairy hunter when she was older.

“Mum cries all the time, now,” Lisbeth said. She tapped the wall behind her bed, between her and her mother’s room. It made a hollow sound; her nail scratched the wall paper as she slid it down. “Sometimes at night. Don’t worry. You’ve got your mp3 player, right? You can put it on if she does it tonight. I don’t think she knows that I can hear her.”

I looked outside at the ravine. It dipped into a green mess, filled with so much foliage that from this vantage there was nothing to see but the tops of trees. The ground under it, which I knew from experience was filled with rolling hills, some as high as if they hid houses under them, all covered with moss, was invisible. I imagined Ariadne in those woods and where she would have gone. A hand reaching out to grab her, from the roots of a tree. A tree swallowing her up.

I didn’t sleep well that night. I was used to waking a few times in a night, as if, no matter how deeply I fell into sleep, there was always something attached to me, something wound tightly around me, that was ready to bring me back with a small jerk. I was jerked back to wakefulness and Lisbeth’s long, slow, bragging breaths in the small hours of the morning. It was dark and cold, the wind biting at me where it crept under the windowsill. Lisbeth had opened it, likely, when I’d been asleep. She always complained about being a hot sleeper.

I was a cold sleeper, and now I was not a sleeper at all. I pushed my legs over the edge of the bed and looked for my jumper. I tugged it on, tucking it into my sweatpants. The floor was dark, but there was a prickle of moonlight that bled a line across the room, like a long blue light bulb hung above the bed. I crept out of the room and pulled the door shut behind me. In my socks I went to use the bathroom, blinking when the light seared my eyeballs, stumbling for a moment when I turned the light off again while the toilet flushed. Darkness always seemed darker when there’s been a reprieve from it.

I went back toward Lisbeth’s room, but didn’t go inside. There was a sound coming from inside, like she was scarping her nails against the wall again, but the light was off. I knew she must have been asleep, so I didn’t bother opening the door. I wasn’t going to go back to sleep if I lay next to her, if I lay down at all. Sleep was far away. I left the muffled noise along and continued. I padded past Sean’s room. The light wasn’t on either, and it was completely silent.

I went downstairs, as quietly as I could. Sean was there. I paused on the bottom step of the stairs, staring at the couch. It was easy to see him, with his wild dark hair and dark eyes, and his sharply-cut face and body. The moonlight lit the room like a sun under a silver veil. It flooded in through the glass doors that made up most of one wall and looked out into the small garden. The world outside was grey, dark, misty. I could see the grass just in front of the door, the shapes of trees not far away, but nothing else.

Sean was sprawled on the couch, his bare feet hanging over the edge of one arm. Under his heavy eyelids I saw a sliver of black. He was awake, drumming his fingers on one leg and on the couch cushions. He tilted his head toward me when I stepped off the stairs. “What are you doing up?” he asked.

“I don’t sleep well.” I came over and sat on the edge of the couch. He didn’t make room for me but he was lean enough that, propped up at this angle, he left enough room that I could perch on the cushion.

“So you came to invade the living room instead?” He sounded annoyed.

“I didn’t know you would be here. It isn’t your bedroom.” I crossed my arms. The cold air must have been coming in through another window. Gooseflesh rose on my arms. “Why aren’t you in you bedroom?”

“It’s my house,” Sean pointed out. “I couldn’t sleep.”

I tried to think of something to say to him. Sean and I had never had real conversations. I’d never had a real conversation with Ariadne, either. I had no idea what they meant to one another, or what to say to him. I tried to imagine was I would want to hear if someone I loved had vanished without warning and not come back. When people were suspecting the worst. I couldn’t think of anything except a question. “What do you think happened to her?”

Sean’s pointy face got pointier.

“I’ve heard people talk about all the things it could be,” I told him. “I don’t know what it’s like, obviously, but- It’s just, I know everyone says that they want to help and you can talk to them. But I’m actually good at listening. And not saying anything. So it’s almost like not talking to anyone, except I’ll actually hear. And I won’t give you advice. Or anything. So, if you want to talk…”

Sean’s narrowed eyes got a little wider. I could hardly see them in the hollows under his brow. “Congratulations for saying what almost everyone has said. With your own twist. I’ve never heard anyone say it so free of eloquence.”

“I try,” I said, even though I didn’t.

“I can tell,” he said. After a long moment, when he wasn’t looking at me, he said, “Thanks.”

We stayed on the couch, and Sean moved over just a few inches, enough that I could relax the leg that had previously been holding half of me up, and I could slide fully onto the cushions.

Something hit the glass door. It was a clear sound, like a nail tapping a crystal glass. Sean’s eyes went so wide they looked like tunnels. He didn’t turn toward the doors but reached a hand forward, spreading it across my knee. It gave me a jolt but only because I could his fingers were shaking. “Ella, are you looking at the door?”

“Yes,” I said, as there was another tapping sound. I recognized it. Someone or something had thrown a rock at the door. Whatever it was, I couldn’t see it through the grey. There were squirrels near my house, resting in all the trees that surrounded it, and acorns were constantly dropping on the roof. These taps were from objects hurtled horizontally, though. “Why?”

Sean ducked his head as another tap came. He didn’t answer as there was a fourth. This one was aggressive, the small pebble ricocheting off the glass with the force of a bullet. Whatever was throwing it was strong.

“Are you still watching?” Sean whispered. He was so quiet. I could tell he was trying to breathe softly, trying not to disturb the silence. “Is there anything there? Do you see anything?”

I shook my head. His quiet was contagious. I had the sudden desire to stay silent too, soundless, though I couldn’t tell why.

“Pretend you don’t see anything. Pretend you don’t hear anything. Ella-” he breathed. His hand on my knee reached for my wrist. He pulled me down on the couch, rolled me so I faced him, my legs lining up with his. His pupils were blown wide, his breath puffing on my cheek. I could feel his pulse in his wrist. He was blinking fast, as if with each blink he could see the world more clearly.

“Ella. Don’t move at all,” he whispered. “Don’t say anything.”

Two hands hit the glass door.

Their fingers lingered as the palms pulled way, then they retreated back into the mist.

“Sean,” I whispered. My voice felt like I was speaking around cotton. My pulse was dangerously quick. “What was that?”

The scent of mist and moss was pervasive, as if we’d opened the doors, and every window.

The mist hissed, like the wind through the trees. But a wind would have pushed the mist away. The sound slithered in the air, in the space between my heartbeats. It was several sighs at once. “Sean. Sean. Come out. Come out, Sean. We want you.”

“What is that?” I said again. I couldn’t take my eyes from the place where the hands had been. The prints were still there, clear in the condensation.

“Ella, you have to go back upstairs,” Sean said. “Come on, go. I’ve got to go.”

“What? Where?”

Sean pushed himself up on his elbow. I was on the outside of the couch, trapping him in. He looked down at me. “I’m going outside. I’ve got to see them. I don’t want them to come inside. I don’t want them to come after Lisbeth too. That’s not fucking happening.”

“Too? What do you mean too? What are-”

“I have a feeling,” Sean said, pushing himself up the rest of the way, knocking my feet out of the way so he could stand on his.

I wasn’t nearly brave enough to go up the dark staircase on my own. But I was brave enough to stand next to dark-coloured Sean as he walked to the back door. I said, “I’m coming.”

The mist swirled around our feet as we walked down the steeply sloped side of the ravine. Sean had let go of my wrist but sometimes I wanted him to take it again. We were walking close enough that we wouldn’t lose one another in the mist, but the possibility still made my stomach twist. It was probably a good thing that he didn’t. I would have crushed his fingers.

My socks were soaked through when we got to the bottom. The springy moss felt as wet as if I’d walked through a stream. There was dew on the trees. The boughs were a complicated, blurry spider web above us. Occasionally we heard sighs, from far away, then so close that I spun in the mist, not wanting to see the source of them, unable to stop searching.

We found a clearing. There was a stream running through it, slowed to a trickle. Sean grabbed the edge of my shirt to pull me to a stop. It was cold as winter here, as if we’d climbed into a dark hole. Sean stood in the moss, squinting into the mist.

“Do you see them?” he said-

-just as they came out from behind the trees. The water at our feet shivered. The trees seemed to bough. The mist rolled at our ankles like a tide pushed up onto a beach. I watched the hands curl around the trees, the delicate bony feet stepping out, the faces appearing. I could not tell if they were girls or boys, they were androgynous, like children whose faces had not had time to mature. But their features were sharp, sharper than Sean’s. Their skin was poreless, as soft and fine as porcelain, their hair shining, drifting about them like seaweed in water. They were naked, but they had nothing to identity their gender, their bodies smooth, without crevices. I tried to summon a word for them, for the entities, but I could come up with nothing that did not sound impossible.

“Oh, Sean,” they sighed. Their voices came from all around us, like they were the air itself. “Sean, you brought company. You came for us.”

I counted them, the things that came from behind the trees. I got to seven, all in front or beside us. There might have been one behind us, or a few, but I didn’t look. I saw that one of them held something in its hands, a lump of fur that wasn’t moving. Another smiled with a cluster of teeth that was not perfect, but thin and sharp. There was something about it that was so other. I tried to reason that what looked bad, or cruel, wasn’t always so. But it was everything humanity was not and something deep inside of me recoiled from it.

Sean looked at them with empty eyes. He released the hem of my shirt and spoke to me without turning his head. “They- I don’t know what they are. But Ariadne… she…” his voice caught and he stopped trying to speak, but I knew what he wanted to say.

The creatures came a little closer, but not within touching distance. Some of them were smiling, or making an approximation of it. Nothing on their faces could convey actual joy. Their features moved like some moldable mask, but there was nothing human under them. They reached forward with long, long fingers. Every one had an extra knuckle.

“Sean, what do they-” I began, but I stopped. Because all of their gazes had turned to me, as though they hadn’t noticed me before. Seven pairs of green eyes, seven toxic green gazes, settled on me. They were eyes you didn’t want to see in the forest at night, eyes that cut through mist and the dark.

I remembered something I’d once heard from Ariadne. When she’d tried explaining that people were wrong about fairytales, that the real enemies weren’t just humans. That in other parts of the world there were myths about creatures, creatures with long fingers that reached into cradles, or beckoned from beneath waves. Horses with teeth or seals with human legs under their skins.

I saw a face in the mist. It was quick, like a coalescence of shadows and moonlight. It might have been a trick, of the light, or my eyes betraying me, but my throat burned anyway. The face had Lisbeth’s amused mouth add Sean’s strong eyebrows. “Sean.”

“It’s her,” he said. His voice was as violent as the look he’d given me when I first saw him the day before. “I know. But I don’t know how to-”

The creatures must have seen me looking. They gave me those imitation smiles again. They faded in and out of the mist. In. Out. In. Out. Then in again, much closer to the both of us. I almost stumbled back.

“Pretty,” one of them crooned, reaching a hand forward like she meant to touch my hair. I felt a whisper on my scalp, as cold as if dew had fallen on my head, rolling over my crown, toward my ear.

Sean, jostled me, throwing out an arm. “Don’t touch her.”

“He likes her,” they sighed, together. Sean went still. My fingers felt numb. My face was prickling. “How much? How much?”

I took a step back then, quickly. I could still see half of Sean’s face, hardening, his eyes darkening. “Sean. How do we leave?”

“Bargain,” one of the creatures shrilled, and the rest shrieked with delight. The sound was a death knell, high and keening like the howl of a hyena.

“Sean…” I began.

“For what? What do you want for Ariadne?” Sean said.

Something came back to me. I recalled passing Lisbeth’s room, the scraping sound, as if she were dragging a hand across the wall, or the floor. The cold air in her room of the window I no longer believed she’d left open. “Oh, Sean,” I said, before they could. He looked at me. I didn’t want to say it. But it wasn’t my choice. He had to make it. “Lisbeth. Would you rather have Lisbeth or Ariadne?”

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay