Mara was thirteen the first time she whispered her hatred into the ground, her fingers earth-stained as she tore a squirming, pink worm into smaller and smaller pieces.
“I want her to hurt,” she said and then dug until her fingernails cracked, the delicate skin beneath raw and bleeding, before dropping the pieces into the hole one by one. “I want her to hurt.” Again and again, she said it until the words felt like honey on her tongue. Like a balm for all her mother’s barbed words. Those false promises.
Whatever slept beneath her feet shifted and opened its maw. Gobbled down her insubstantial offering and watched as Mara trudged back to that shitty house with the overgrown yard and nicotine-stained walls and the never-ending bleating of the television and her mother’s voice. Always her mother’s voice gobbling up the silence she so desperately wanted.
“I told you I needed you to watch Bethie.” Her mother exhaled a stream of smoke as she squinted at Mara. “I got to go to the store.”
“So take her with you,” Mara said, barely a stream of breath, barely a sound, but still her mother heard, her hand darting out so quickly Mara only had time to blink before the slap landed across her cheek.
“Who you think puts those clothes on your back? I’m out there working myself to death day and night, and you sit up here like a damn princess, always running outside to wherever the hell it is you go to do nothing. Watch her,” she said and slung her pocketbook over her shoulder.
Outside, their car rattled to life, gravel crunching under the tires, and Bethie toddled over to Mara, her hair a carroty tangle, her face sticky with apple juice and dirt.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, lifting Bethie in her arms as the television blared that stupid fucking purple dinosaur singing about happy families or some shit. She snorted and turned it off instead of driving her fist through the glass.
Bethie whined as Mara passed a damp washcloth over her face, and then fully screamed, her face going red when Mara tried to comb her hair.
“Fine,” she said, setting Bethie back on the floor, where she immediately found something to shove in her mouth. When Mara tried to fish it out, Bethie bit down. Mara swore as she rubbed at the imprint of Bethie’s four tiny milk teeth and then closed her eyes and told herself she loved her sister. Even with the dream she couldn’t stop having. Even with the sensation of dirt still on her skin as she scooped handful after handful over her mother and Bethie’s still, pale faces.
There were dishes in the sink. Crusted plates, smudged glasses, a mug with a cigarette butt floating in the coffee her mother hadn’t finished that morning. She knew that later her mother would yell at her for not cleaning the kitchen. It was her responsibility. The only thing she asked Mara to do for fuck’s sake.
Bethie clawed at her legs as Mara washed the dishes, and she gazed out the window, her vision blurring. She drifted, verdant smears transforming into dark earth, until Bethie’s voice was far away, and the water flowing over her hands felt cold as if it flowed from some subterranean place rather than from the rusted tap. Outside, the trees bent toward her, the branches reaching as if they could pierce through the walls like paper and reach into the thin shell of her chest and draw out her heart. She leaned forward, her breath fogging the glass, her body aching with the need to offer herself to this thing that called to her, and there, amid the shadows, she imagined she saw a hand emerge from the earth.
Behind her, there was a sudden crash, and she whirled, the vision broken as Bethie let out a wail. She’d hauled herself onto one of the kitchen chairs and fallen.
“Where does it hurt?” Mara said, her fingers frantically poking and prodding at the soft bits of Bethie’s body that could be so easily broken. The girl offered up her left arm, her sobs hitching as Mara examined it.
“You’re fine, baby. I think it scared you more than anything else.” She hoisted Bethie onto her hip, and the girl immediately nestled into her. She carried her to the couch, Mara humming as she ran a hand over that tangle of hair until Bethie’s breathing grew deeper, her arms going slack as she fell asleep.
Mara eased her onto the couch, surrounding her with cushions so she wouldn’t fall off the edge.
Later, when Bethie woke, Mara fed her, let herself be led around the house by a finger as Bethie pointed out the small things that made up their world. Bed. Clock. Stove. TV. Round and round they went until the afternoon went golden, the sunlight streaking through the windows and turning Bethie’s hair into flame.
And then night fell, and she curled herself into Bethie, sharing her tiny bed rather than risk waking Bethie by going to her own, and tried not to listen as her mother’s car finally pulled into the driveway, the door slamming open as her mother tumbled inside.
“Shit!” Her mother’s voice was slurred, and Mara squeezed her eyes closed. At least she was alone. Most nights there was another voice—yet another man her mother had found at the bar.
Too many times, Mara had woken to heavy breathing and the fecund scent of sex, the sensation of someone sitting on the end of her mattress. She’d keep her eyes squeezed closed, praying he wouldn’t touch her, that he wouldn’t force her body still with his own, that he wouldn’t go to Bethie’s bed instead.
I want her to hurt.
Outside, in the earth, something stirred.
At sixteen, Mara fell in love. She met Ryan at the Quickie Lube while she was waiting for her mother to get her oil changed. His hands were stained and callused, but they looked gentle. He’d smiled at her, a chip missing from his right incisor, and her heart had ached with the effort of looking at him.
She’d buried so many parts of herself underground. Three years of holes filled with her rage and desperation, with her wish that she’d come home and her mother would be someone else. Every one of her mother’s indiscretions whispered into the dirt and filled with whatever carcass or bone she could find. Worms. Birds. Deer. To speak death into the ground required an offering—a reclamation of what death had already taken. There were so many places where her hands had torn at the soil, hoping for an end. But now there was Ryan and looking at him felt like finding something precious amid the dead leaves and dirt.
It didn’t matter that he was twenty, and she was still in high school. That she’d been fired from the two jobs she’d managed to land because her mother had stuck her with Bethie, promising she’d be home in time for Mara’s shift, only to appear hours later, drunk and angry, and there were only so many times a person could be understanding. But it didn’t matter anymore. She could drop out, get her Good Enough Degree, apply to beauty school, and they’d get married and live somewhere that wasn’t where they were from.
For a long time after she met him, she was able to put her mother into a faraway place that couldn’t touch her. She didn’t go to the woods, didn’t press her lips to the earth as her anger poured out of her, a curse wrapped in soil. Her body was fire and water, air and sky. It did not need earth and the dead things gone to ground. Not anymore.
She didn’t invite him out to the house. Didn’t want to risk her mother coming home, her smile gone predatory as she took in Ryan’s broad chest, the dark hair curling at his neck.
Instead, there were stolen afternoons in the bed of his truck, the oil on his hands marking her hips, her arms, her neck, but it was never enough. His was a feather touch when she wanted teeth and claws.
Two weeks after their first time, she put his hands around her throat and leaned into him, breathed into the cup of his ear. “I want it to hurt,” she said, and he froze, his hands dropping as he blinked at her.
“The fuck?”
She lifted herself off him and tugged her skirt down, her cheeks heating. As if he hadn’t already seen every part of her. As if she hadn’t placed herself before him like an offering. A thing to be devoured.
“Sorry,” she whispered. He stared into the distance, and she watched him, wishing she could crack open his skull, turn the slick parts of him over in her hands until she understood why he didn’t want her in that way. Why she wasn’t good enough.
“I ain’t into that weird shit, if that’s what you want.” She didn’t respond, and he slid away from her. “You should get on home now.”
He left her sitting in the truck bed, her knees tucked under her chin, and when she didn’t follow, he started the truck up anyway and drove her back to the house where her mother waited.
“Mara,” he said when he pulled up to the house, but she didn’t respond and tumbled out of the truck, her vision already blurred with the tears she refused to let fall.
“Aw, fuck this,” he said, and he revved the engine, the gravel scattering as he threw the truck into reverse. Mara didn’t look back and let herself inside.
Her mother and Bethie were sitting in front of the TV, their gazes vacant.
“You keep runnin’ around like a whore, and you’ll end up just like your Mama,” she said and then bared her teeth at the tears Mara couldn’t blink away. “Or maybe he couldn’t get it up. God knows I could teach that boy a thing or two.”
“Fuck you.”
Her mother cackled. “Looks like I’m the only one gettin’ fucked round here.”
Mara spun back to the door, her knee catching against the frame before she fell through it, her hands scraping against the gravel as small dots of blood appeared on her palms. Her breath caught painfully in her lungs, but she pushed herself upright and ran and ran until the fire in her chest felt as if it would consume her.
Once she could no longer see the house, she slowed, the trees a blurred canopy above her. She imagined the sky beyond as a foreign, unseeable blank. That whatever existed there had turned its eyes away, and she knelt, her palms stinging as she drew up handful after handful of soil.
It was like filling her lungs with breath after centuries. Like sun after so long in the dark. The scrapes on her hands opened further, and her words came choking out of her, a long, garbled string of regret and shame and the anger she’d buried under what she’d thought was love.
Her slumbering creation woke, tasted the blood Mara did not realize was a prayer. A seed planted deep. If Mara had dug further, she would have seen the faint gleam of teeth—a mouth widening in hunger, in a smile. It had waited so long for her to open herself fully, for her offering to be of her own body, her own blood.
“Please. Both of them,” she said, and it was enough. The earth fed on her, knew the violence wrapped in her skin. There was no need for anything else. Her body. Her blood. An unholy Eucharist spoken into the land Eve had liberated from the impossible good.
Beneath her, the earth trembled, and she pressed her body to it, writhing as her hands did what Ryan would not, the skin on her throat parting beneath her nails as she gasped, her mouth coated in grit as she screamed and screamed and screamed.
The house was silent when she returned. No pale blue flicker from the television. No light in the windows.
She drifted inside. Bethie was already asleep, her mouth open slightly, the thin blanket crumpled at her feet. Mara passed a hand over her sister’s face, marking her with an earth-dark smear.
“Not her,” she said.
She lay atop her own bed, not bothering to take off her dirt-smeared clothes, and let herself drift into sleep. She dreamed of blood. Of bone. It was beautiful.
When she woke, it was still dark, but the air had gone warm and damp. As if the door had been left open, and the night had crept inside. In the hallway, something drew a single breath.
She would keep still. Would let it pass over them. But she would watch. Her eyes strained with the effort of looking through the dark, every part of her attuned to what she’d made. What she’d commanded.
The click of a door opening, and keep still. Her eyes watered, but she did not blink, and then a single footstep echoed through the house. Another. Beyond the doorway, the darkness seemed to gather, and she stared into it. Stared as a form moved into view and then paused, the head turning, and it would see her watching. Her heart stuttered, the blood surging to her face, her neck, as those eyes took her in, and then turned away.
Her breath streamed out of her. Her mother. It had only been her mother. Mara could make out the faded robe she always wore, the way her shoulders curved, the shadow of her hair tumbling down her back.
She curled her fingers against the damp of her palms and let herself blink. Only a second. Her mother was still in the doorway, already moving past to go take a piss or smoke a cigarette, her back the only thing still visible, when there was another movement. Another body.
Mara’s skin went cold. It was her mother. Another mother. Something wearing her mother’s same robe. Something wearing an approximation of her mother’s body. A doppelgänger made imperfectly. The head sat slightly too low on the shoulders. One arm grew too long, the fingertips sweeping the floor as it walked—the gait too oiled, too smooth to be human. The eyes were a rind of white on a face that had no mouth, only a row of sharpened teeth. It smiled at her, this thing she’d made of earth and hate and lack and want.
From her bed, Mara smiled back. Then she rose and followed them into the kitchen.
Her mother did not scream when the second mother peeled back her skin. She only stared at Mara, her mouth opening and closing as if she could somehow finally speak into life the remorse she’d never had, and then the second mother slipped inside her, sighing as this new skin settled over her. She reached for Mara, beckoned to her new daughter, and together, they lapped at the spilled blood from that false mother, and it burned, it burned, but it was sacrament, and outside, the sun rose for what Mara hoped was the very last time. It was more lovely to move through the dark, through the earth that wrapped over you and held you like a womb.
“Darling girl,” the new mother said, and pressed a bloodied hand to Mara’s cheek. “You called for me, and I came. To make them hurt. To take their place.”
Mara sat still as the new mother licked her clean.
“Mama.”
“I won’t leave you. Never again.”
They buried what remained of the false mother deep. Sacrilege to do anything other than feed her to the earth she’d spent so long defiling. There would be no rebirth from the ash of what they’d scourged.
Hand in hand, they walked back to the house where Bethie still slept, her damp hair spread over the pillow. There would be a new home under the earth for them all, a crown of bones placed on her head, but there were still things to finish. Promises to keep. If Mara had learned anything at all from her false mother, it was the importance of keeping a promise.
They made breakfast with what there was. Stale cereal. Milk mixed with water so they could each have a small bowl. Bethie watched them, her small hands fisted on the table.
“TV,” she said and pushed the bowl away. Milk and water sloshed, and the new mother tutted as she sopped it up with a paper towel.
“Not today,” the new mother said, and Bethie’s eyes narrowed. This was not her mother. Her mother did not sit at the table, did not have breakfast. Only coffee and a cigarette as she flicked on the television for Bethie who could pour her own cereal.
“TV,” she said again, her voice pitching higher, and the new mother leaned across the table and grasped Bethie’s lips between her fingers and squeezed. The girl’s eyes went large and damp at the corners, her chest hitching. Mara shifted toward them. Licked her lips.
“Mama loves you, darling.” Bethie whimpered as the fingers pinched tighter. “Someone should have cared for you. I will care for you now, yes?”
Bethie nodded, and the new mother released her and traced a crimson-stained finger over her lips. The pink tip of Bethie’s tongue darted out and lapped at the blood the new mother had given her. “Sweet girl. My two sweet girls,” she said.
“Mara and I have a last thing to do, and then we can all be together. I promise.” The new mother cupped Bethie’s cheek, and that word, that promise, filled Mara up until she thought she would stop breathing.
The new mother shooed Bethie outside, and then led Mara into the bathroom. With careful fingers, she washed Mara’s hair and brushed it in slow, smooth strokes. She painted her lips a dark pink, trailed a line of perfume over her neck. An unspoken ritual between mother and daughter Mara would have never had. Mara did not bother to hide the tears that fell down her cheeks.
“They should have seen you. That boy. Your mother. How lovely you are,” the new mother said, and Mara heard the teeth in her words. The blood. How Mara’s body ached for it.
They drove in silence, the windows down so they might smell the earth, feel the dust on their arms, their faces, their hands twined together, the air heavy with the threat of rain.
The lot was empty as they pulled in, the engine bays abandoned in favor of the shitty television and vending machine inside the office. Mara could see Ryan alone at the desk, his feet propped up, a can of Dr. Pepper beside him. She waited for the heat to surge between her legs, for her heart to expand painfully in her chest, but she was empty. She’d given all of herself for too long now. Always hoping, always longing for someone to want her for something other than what she could give them. Wishing that even in the giving, they would want what it was she’d offered.
“But he didn’t,” the new mother said, her eyes the color of pastures, of leaves in the height of summer, of moss as she looked inside Mara and saw. All the things she’d been denied.
“No. He didn’t,” Mara said.
“You opened yourself. Spoke what you wanted into the earth, and I came for you. He won’t dismiss you again,” the new mother said.
Ryan barely looked up when they entered. “Help you?” he asked.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . . ” Mara trailed off as he snapped his gaze to her, taking in the lipstick, the dress that was too short, too tight. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, and she pictured ripping it from his throat with her teeth. She bit down on her tongue so she would not laugh.
“You look nice,” he said, and she smiled, perfectly contrite.
She glanced over her shoulder, and the new mother stepped forward. “This is my mama. I wanted you to meet her.”
“A pleasure,” she said and trailed a finger over her throat, her collarbone. Ryan’s gaze followed the movement. “You were right about him, Mara. So handsome.” Her painted mouth stretched into a smile—a bloodied streak of skin against white teeth—as she reached out a hand.
He stood then, his hands brushing through his hair, against the permanent stains on his shirt as if he could wipe away how small he was. How insignificant. He took the new mother’s hand and lifted it to his lips.
“And a gentleman,” she cooed and took a step closer. The snake in the garden. Temptation wrapped in earth and flesh. She cupped his flushed cheek and leaned into him. “We were thinking . . . ” She scratched a fingernail down his neck. “That maybe we could show you what it feels like to be bad.”
Already, he was fumbling with the buttons on his shirt; already, he was hard. Mara sneered as she took her place beside the new mother, her hand winding through his hair as she tugged it backward to expose that pulsing vein in his throat.
“I should lock the door,” he said.
“What would be the fun in that?” Mara said, her tongue already painted in the salt of him.
“Keep still,” the new mother hissed. He let out a nervous laugh as her fingers reached into his mouth, her knuckles scraping past his teeth.
“You don’t want it to hurt, do you?” Mara said, and then he was gagging, his eyes going wide as he tried to pull away.
“Mmm. What will you taste like when we pull you open?” the new mother said. He clawed at her arms, but she only reached deeper into the core of him. The ruined shell of his body arched, a thin scream working up and out of him.
Beside them, Mara waited. A good, dutiful daughter. She hoped he would taste of rain. Of earth. Of the nocturnal places where her new mother had slept before Mara had spoken her into life.
It was a relief when he finally went quiet, when his body parted beneath their hands, those soft, animal parts of him laid bare.
Her mother placed small pieces on Mara’s tongue; fed her as the false mother had never done. In the corners, flies droned, not daring to approach the blood smeared on the linoleum. It was not meant for them. Not yet.
They left him on the floor—a carrion offering. They went back to Bethie, fed her with the velvet of their mouths. Maiden, mother, and crone painted in blood and moonlight as they walked together into the forest.
“Look,” the new mother said as the earth opened itself for them, as it reached to reclaim what it had lost.
Mara stepped down, Bethie’s hand closed in her own.
“It won’t hurt,” she said. “It won’t.”
Originally published in Screams From the Dark, edited by Ellen Datlow.
