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CHAPTER 14: GRANDMOTHER WHILMA

I crawl out of the closet and rest on the cold ground for a moment. My beats like I am a mouse in a plastic bag and a child has raised a rock above my head before compassionately setting me free in his front yard. I don't know what it would have done to me or what, exactly, I feared. I just knew that dread filled my bones and now relief is flooding out of my body.

After a long moment of staring through the broken ceiling to the stars above, contemplating everything and nothing at all, I sit up. It's time to leave.

I try to stick to the walls, to the darkness, to the places where I won't be seen. I don't want anyone to find me.

I have to get out of here, but I'm not sure where I'm going. On the one hand, I know I need to go home or more punishment is imminent. On the other hand, I don't want to put my family in danger.

Home isn't an option. If the rabbitman thing is still out there, I don't want to bring it there with me.

What about the other cottage? It might be a longshot, but at least I won't freeze overnight.

Warm steam and smoke spiral from the chimney to the sky high above the trees, filling the world with the scent of wood and thyme. I breathe in the scent of it, surprisingly warm in the bitter cold all around me. I stand in the yellow light leaking from the windows.

If I stand still enough, I might be able to convince myself that the heat permeates my skin. I might be able to convince myself that I haven't doomed the entire world to an eternal winter by my disgusting doubt. In the cold that chaps my skin, I can create the illusion of warmth by wrapping my dirty sweater around my body.

I might be able to survive the night out here. Maybe I'll get used to the temperature.

That's stupid, though. In my head, I can hear myself scolding Maryanne for not wearing a coat. How many days ago was what? I have lost track. It was just before we left that first morning, the one before we got the letters, when she was singing at the high school and I was running barefoot in a cornfield.

It hasn't been that long. Or maybe it has. Time moves oddly when every day looks the same.

The point is, I would be hypocritical of me to not try my hardest to warm myself up. And who would I be, if I contradicted myself?

But, then, I am a mess of contradictions. Who am I without them? Who am I without that unreliability?

And who am I with it?

After a second of standing in the yellow light, breathing in air that smells like thyme and like the lake next to me, my shivering body takes over. There's no denying it. I knock on the door.

An older woman wrenches it open. Her black hair is short, curly, and quickly going gray. Her skin is more tan than is probably healthy, and she wears a sweater, capris, and slippers. With pity in her eyes, she takes in the state of me: the near-frozen sweat, the dirty sweater, the antler-bumps and extended ears bursting out of my head, the scratches from the bramble and brush I ran through, the dirt all over my body. She doesn't even ask questions. Hands outstretched, she welcomes me into the cottage like I'm a long-lost grandchild.

What's odd-- and what I only realize after staring at her for a moment-- is that she looks like my grandmother.

Between all the fretting, she spits out a few questions I am hesitant to answer. As a rule, I keep my story simple and easy to remember. I don't know why I'm lying to her, but I feel like I have to.

I don't need anyone to know what I have seen. I don't need this kind old woman to worry about my sanity because she let me into her home. It's easy to bite my tongue.

She sits me by the fireplace and wraps a dark orange and light-blue afghan around my shoulders, then sets to getting me something warm to eat. Her voice is soft like warm butter, like the way nostalgia feels. I want to sink my fingers into it. "How did you end up out here, young one?"

"I got lost," I say. I almost have to physically bite my tongue to keep myself from rambling on when given the opportunity. "I went for a walk in the woods and got turned around. Then it got dark. I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." She brings over a mug of tea and shoves it in my hands. "You don't need to apologize to me. Now, drink up. You can stay here until morning."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. You can sleep on my bed. Are you hungry?"

I don't want to admit it, but my stomach gives me away. It growls like it's going to start digesting me next.

The woman-- whose name I still do not know-- shakes her head knowingly at me. "Come on, young one. You're not fooling anyone. I'll get you some bread and soup. Sit tight."

While I eat the soups she gives me (in a wooden bowl, with a wooden spoon), she keeps talking.

Her name is Whilma. She tells me a story that I only half-listen to. It's about a fast, tricky hare who outsmarts a farmer; the farmer gives him cabbages. I don't know what it means.

Whilma's voice worms its way into my heart and keeps me in place. Like the blanket around my shoulders, it is a little too comfortable and a little too soft.

I would be lying if I said that I'm not falling for it. This doesn't seem like trickery to me; it seems like genuine compassion and generosity. If I'm a fool for trusting her, then I'm a fool.

As it turns out, I am.

"Where are you from?" I ask, my mouth finally empty of soul-nourishing food and my body finally warm.

"I have lived here all my life," Whilma replies. She has pulled out her knitting. Her current project seems to be a dark orange afghan. Needles clacking rhythmically, almost hypnotically, she asks, "And where are you from, Jackie?"

Some of my hairs stand on end, but only some. Did I tell her my name? Did it slip off of my tongue in my semi-frozen state? Or is it possible that I did not tell her at all, and that she just knew?

As the night goes on, things get worse and worse. She knows things about me, things I did not tell her and did not ever disclose. She calls me child, rather than daughter; she tells me she would love me if I were hers. (And don't I wish I were?)

I do not know how to comprehend how she knows these things about me or why she's so comfortable talking about these things like I'm the one who brought them up. Why would I want to talk about my father? About Maryanne? About what is happening to my body? Though I think of them often and nigh-obsessively, I normally know not to speak my mind.

There is something about Whilma Monroe, though, that pulls it all out of me.

"Monroe," I muse. "What a coincidence."

She doesn't say anything to that observation. She just keeps knitting.

When the moon is high in the sky, she kisses me on the head and directs me toward a bed in the corner. I don't want to go, but my body moves without my consent. It's fine, though. I'm tired anyway. All the hiking, running, and lack of sleep took it out of me.

I lay down on the cot. My mind screeches a high-pitched tone in protest. I ignore it and pull the covers up to my chin. Whilma leans down and kisses me on the forehead. I almost start crying. When was the last time my mother kissed me on the forehead and meant it?

"Thank you, Whilma," I whisper, not wanting to spoil the sweetness of the moment.

"Sweet dreams, young one."

I open my eyes for one second more, in the land between sleeping and awake.

When I look up at Whilma's face, it has changed for the worse. It's not that she's different. It's that she is disgusting.

Her face is twisted and goopy like a can of chili or ground hamburger meat that someone mixed with corn chips and dropped on the ground. It melts eternally, drips infinitesimally. Skin droops off her skull, waxy and plasticky and not quite human. A bit of it schlops off when she kisses me on the forehead a second time and tucks me in around the shoulders. It lands on me; it's partially on my neck and partially on the blue and orange afghan she has wrapped me in.

I can not scream. My mouth is shut tight, as if it has been sewn; my throat has been fused so as not to allow anything out of it. I can barely breathe.

And I lay there, with the light on, with the knowledge that I wasn't the only monstrous thing in the room, until I could no longer keep my eyes open, until I had to shut them, until my blinks became longer and longer and I couldn't stop myself from falling asleep.

Sometime in the night, I dream of blood and flames and things I can't help but be terrified of. As my rabbit's heart beats and my body lays under an afghan that isn't mine, I dream of flames and rabbits.

I am in a field of tall, overgrown grass that comes up to my knees. I stand there, with my eyes on a giant anthropomorphic rabbit. It's like the rabbit man from earlier, but more clean, more light-brown than dingy. Its fur is matted. But it is on fire.

I look into its eyes. I can't look away. It burns, and it burns, and it burns, and it feels like the whole world is an overexposed photograph on an old digital camera. The grass tickles me, and I can not look away from the rabbit's eyes.

And, as I stare into them, I know that some odd dream logic thing happens. One moment, I am looking into its eyes. The next, I am the rabbit. The flames lick at my body, and boy, do they burn.

I look into the eyes of a young woman with bright blue eyes and a crown of flowers on her head; she is wrapped in white fur. She is not me. She is not Maryanne. I have never seen her before.

But she stands there, across from me, watching me burn, and I feel an odd sense of religious melancholy. My skin turns to hamburger meat under all that fur.

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