Harmony House by Nic Sheff Page A

dense covering of trees. The boy laughs and calls out, “I’ll get it.” Then he trudges through the wet leaves and ferns, searching for the missing ball.
    He walks deeper into the forest, following a shallow creek bed until he sees another sister in a habit. She stands next to a thickset man with a shapeless fedora and a wool flannel shirt and mud-caked work boots. The man leans his weight on a wood-handled shovel. His hands are giant, with wide tobacco-stained fingernails. The sister holds a bundle covered in coarse-looking cloth, her head bowed. The man and sister talk quietly back and forth. And the boy walks slowly forward—the ball now forgotten.
    As the darkness of the forest envelops the boy more and more he hesitates, then stops, then looks behind him. The young, pretty sister is there now, holding her arm out to him.
    â€œCome on,” she says, her eyes wide—her hands trembling. “Come away from here.”
    The boy turns back to the man and the sister with the bundle. He takes another step forward.
    â€œCome on, now,” the young sister says. “Let’s go. We can go to the moon.”
    The boy steps forward again.
    The sister with the bundle turns toward the boy now. The coarse-looking cloth is pulled back to show the body of an infant, its face swollen and icy blue. The sister holds it in her arms. She sees the boy watching. She sees the young, pretty sister.
    â€œSister Margaret,” the older nun snaps. “Get that child out of here.”
    The nun turns again toward the grave.
    â€œSister Margaret,” the little boy cries.
    He bursts into tears.
    The name echoes through the cavernous woods.
    â€œSister Margaret, Sister Margaret.”
    She crouches in the ferns and wet leaves. The boy runs to her. She takes him up in her arms. And they emerge together—back out into the bright midday sun.
    And then like all the visions before it, this one fades to nothing.
    I shake my head.
    I press the palms of my hands in to my temples.
    â€œWhat the hell is wrong with you?” I say out loud.
    It’s like I’m having seizures.
    Or like I’m falling asleep where I stand.
    Am I some kind of narcoleptic?
    Or is it the pills I’m taking?
    I go on to do my chores.
    Because thinking about it doesn’t do a fuckin’ thing.
    So I walk through the house, and in the shafts of pale white pearly sunlight, I can see a thick layer of dust along the banister. It covers every doorframe and painting and ornamental table and lamp and bookshelf andchest of drawers. The dust seems to have rained down in the night—as though someone came and deliberately coated each and every surface.
    It wasn’t like this yesterday, I think. But, again, that doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
    Looking up as I make my way down the stairs, I see the beams of the house and crisscrossed rafters and detailed edges and ornamental fixtures all seeming to point in slightly different directions. I think back on what Colin told me—that every line of the house, every angle, was built just the littlest bit off, so nothing connects the way it should—or the way you’d expect it to—giving the impression that it’s moving constantly, shifting, expanding and contracting like lungs breathing in and out.
    It does almost feel like the house is alive. Not a conscious being, exactly. Like an amoeba—a single-celled organism.
    Still dusting and straightening as I go, I walk through the cluttered living room—past the armoire I crashed into last night—and as I do, I feel the life in the house traveling from corner to corner, following me from room to room, watching me wherever I go. I turn a corner, clicking off the last room’s light.
    At the end of the hall the locked room is standing open. There’s no key in the lock, but the door is thrown wide.
    â€œDad, are you in there?”
    I shiver, stepping inside, my hand still covering my nose,