The Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics Page A

been bothering me.
    That first time Margaret and I went to the woods—she walked through the forest as though she knew exactly where she was going. How had she known where to go like that? At the time I figured she must have been there before, but then I saw how she’d reacted when we reached the tomb. She clearly was not expecting those graves. Who had told her where to go?
    Certainly not a ghost , I think in an attempt to calm my nerves. There’s a valid explanation here, you just don’t know it.
    Just like there has to be a valid explanation for the crying you can hear now, right?
    I don’t open my eyes to see if I am dreaming or not. To do so would mean that I’m entertaining the idea that something unnatural is happening. I need to stop thinking, stop dreading tomorrow, stop dreading the rest of my life, however long that may be. I need the memory of Margaret running past me to get to the window, her hair flying behind her, still smelling of pine from the forest, to stop replaying in my head.
    I read once that scientists don’t really know why we physically require sleep besides the fact that we just get tired. I’m starting to believe that we simply wouldn’t be able to survive if we weren’t able to turn off for hours at a time, the screen black, our bodies nothing more than idling vehicles released from the weight of simply living.
    I have the same dream all night, a nightmare in which I can hear Margaret’s voice chiding me in the dark of my bedroom. “How could you do this to me?” she weeps from under my bed, her cries muffled as though she’s somehow pressing her face against the bottom of the mattress. “How could you let me die even after I asked for help?”

I SLEEP FOR nearly two full days, only leaving the warmth of the blankets when I have to get up and use the restroom. Nobody comes to bother me. I’m glad that my father knows to stay away. I haven’t heard any sounds to indicate that Margaret’s bedroom was being cleaned out, either.
    Eventually, the bed stops comforting me and starts suffocating me, with its sheets clinging to my clammy skin and tangling themselves around the bottoms of my ankles like hands. I try to kick them off, grunting in frustration when I only succeed in tangling them further.
    When I stand, I feel thick in the head. The aftermath of witnessing Margaret’s death has settled into my body like an especially wicked hangover. The temperature is near frigid, as I haven’t been keeping up with my fireplace. I walk in a big circle around my room, hugging myself as I carefully take in what everything looks like in this strange new world I live in, the world without Penelope or Margaret.
    Out the window, the sun is blocked by a thick array of dark gray clouds. I step up to the glass and glance sharply to the right, where I can see the black iron fence that surrounds the garden. My cousin’s body is gone. The cobblestone and fence have been cleaned of her blood, and the patch of grass that was puddled with it has been cut out, the dark soil striking against the green.
    I wonder where her body is, and when the funeral will be.
    I shiver as I turn away from the window and get myself dressed as quickly as possible. Afterward, I make my way through the empty dining room and into the kitchen to grab something from the bread shelf for breakfast. I don’t see any sign of Miranda or Vanessa anywhere and wonder briefly if it’s possible that they quit, or if Vanessa did, at least. The girl thought my cousin and I were fucked up before one of us babbled about a ghost and killed herself.
    The thought is only a dismal reminder that I have no idea why Margaret did what she did. The circumstances are too extreme to let them be swept under the rug, which I know is the direction my father will go as far as moving on from this. Something strange is happening and there has to be an answer, or at least part of one,