I hadn’t yet asked Mom if I could stay. Stalling, I pressed my thumbnail to palm in rows of crescent moons, the sun fading to a shimmering yolk behind the trees. A gust of wind sent them swaying, cottonwoods leaning toward the sugar maples. Budding branches clinked together as if passing on a whisper.
As if sharing my secret.
Mom couldn’t see me parked by the hillside. The garage tucked into it concealed the gaping trunk, the shackling bungie cord, an old blanket threatening to unfurl like a lapping tongue and vomit all my belongings onto the driveway. The same spot where my high school boyfriend would park during after curfew visits.
The wind lifted the corner of a tarp spread out on the lower front yard. At first, I only saw the greyed, wooden siding of the sandbox Dad had made for me beneath.
It was large enough to lie in.
It never used to be covered.
My thumbnail dug deeper, palm irritated and hot. The tarp folded back exposing the sand. A white figure stuck out of it, luminous in the fading light.
I gripped the steering wheel. The faux leather cooled my fiery palm.
The figure twitched, legs squirmed. A human-like shriek cut through the cracked windows of my car.
Flipping on my headlights, I stepped out and waved my arms in the beams casting large, wing-like shadows over the creature, hoping to scare it away, hoping Mom hadn’t yet noticed me.
It didn’t move.
The familiar, half-buried state of the animal left me swaying as if perched on a branch blown by the wind.
It can’t be the same.
With an old, crusty towel from the back seat of my car, stood over the shivering thing, half-expecting Mom to call for dinner from the top of the steps. But, the only sound was the soft crinkle of last season’s leaves tumbling across the driveway. As I pulled it from the sand, a long shape emerged. The healed, half-circle bite of an ear tip. Its heart fluttered, breath heavy. Poor thing.
I almost dropped it when I saw the face. The odd shape to the lips, hairless and round, pursing as if about to speak. Wincing, I almost tossed it to the woods, left it for the raccoons, but the lips, the shape.
It would be safe in the garage.
As a child, I often found dead animals buried in my sandbox. Gifts from my dog Hector, who Mom brought home after Dad had left us. Hector was no longer with us, hadn’t been for years.
So what buried the rabbit?
The sun had dropped, the remaining blue in the sky fading. Darkness bled over the hole the rabbit left behind. A black spot, a void, static in my memory. Like the lingering dot following your sight after looking at a bright light, except this one had me sinking, my stomach dropping as if I tumbled endlessly down.
When I had found a squirrel, a vole, a weasel, or whatever else Hector had buried for me in the sandbox, I ran to Mom. Nothing paralyzed me more than the day I found a buck’s leg draped over the side, the body sprawled in the grass.
I screamed.
Crows shook down a flurry of yellow leaves as they took flight. Shortly after, someone climbed the steep, forested slope of the bluff. Rushed me with a gleaming bald head and wood chips dangling from a wool sweater. It wasn’t until I noticed the distant ever-present thunk of his axe had stopped, until the man had smiled with those patina-ed teeth that I knew it was our closest neighbor Todd.
The one Dad had told me not to talk to.
Dad was no longer here.
I kicked at the gravel driveway and pointed at the buck. One leg was hoof-less.
“Ope!” Todd examined the animal. Echoes of some Italian opera blasted through the open widows of his house at the base of the bluff. A trilling soprano crescendoed as he crouched low enough to lie next to it.
I stepped closer, braver with someone here. The buck took the shallowest breath.
“It’s alive?” I squeaked.
“Not for long.” Todd stood, lumbered over to stand between me and the animal, hands in pockets. “Hector . . . he, uh, did a number on this one.”
A prickle crept across the back of my neck— a sensation I later learned to ignore.
Did dogs even do that?
“But . . . ” I stepped forward.
Todd held out his palms. “Best to leave the dead animals to the woods. Go on now.”
I did as I was told.
After Dad had left, Todd often helped with the yard, taking care of fallen tree limbs, skin tan and heavily freckled from so much time in the sun. He and Mom would drink wine from the bottle around the bonfire. She’d whisper to him when she thought I couldn’t hear, “Am I really that old? Old enough for him to just leave me?” One day, he pulled out some thick, old book. They spent many nights passing it between them.
I learned to not question why Todd was around, to not show him any rudeness or the only sound at dinner would be the rhythmic thunk of his axe in the distance.
Halfway across the driveway I stopped.
Todd dragged the buck toward the woods by the antlers.
I bolted up the stairs toward my house.
Mom always forgot to turn the outside lights on. The house was dark, lifeless except for the TV’s flickering glow through the living room windows. She hadn’t noticed me after all.
I climbed the stairs along the side of the garage with silent steps, like I had melded with the night, the wraith-like teen who used to hover in the liminal space between staying out past curfew and getting caught. The person I used to be, the one I had left behind already clawing at my insides.
The light switched on after I knocked.
“Kimberly!” Mom greeted me. We hugged.
To my surprise, I sank into her, took in her fresh scent, morning dew, like I was small again. It’d been too long.
Mom had never visited me when I attended college in Minneapolis, nor did she come to my apartment in Chicago. Said she couldn’t bear to leave the Driftless Region, to lose sight of the bluffs, the forests surrounding her home. It was up to me to see her. Guilt brought me home at first, but the visits grew infrequent with time. I hated returning to the life I left behind, the isolation. Now, I had no choice.
“What are you doing here?” She pulled back.
“Do I need a reason to visit my own mother?”
She smiled. “You finally got away from that job of yours.”
I looked to my feet.
Inside, she flipped on more lights. I hung my denim coat in the closet, set my shoes on the rack. Mom’s hair had grown long and was lighter than I remembered. A white blond which draped across her front, extending from her ears hidden beneath. Her usually thin arms exposed from her nightgown were toned and muscular, skin radiated a rosy glow.
“You look great, Mom. You working out or dying your hair or something?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?” She smirked.
I forced a smile, teeth clenched, not understanding her generation’s obsession with beauty secrets, of tinctures and creams in discrete packaging, her refusal of sugar, the strange facial exercises she’d do in the mirror. In the two years I’d been away, Mom should look older, not younger.
This wasn’t her only secret.
“No really, Mom, what have you been doing?”
She pursed her lips, forming a thin, pink ring. It tilted side-to-side as words struggled to form. Lips parted gently. “Oh, you know, same old stuff.”
I shifted my weight between my feet. I couldn’t ask Mom about moving in now, couldn’t tell her I had lost my apartment, my savings spent from a year of unemployment.
We had something else to talk about.
Mom and I had spent many vacation days following ancient deer trails through the forest to caves and waterfalls, listening for the thunk of Todd’s axe to find our way home.
Once, we were caught in a thunderstorm and waited under a limestone eave for it to pass. A creature squealed nearby. Mom stepped out into the rain, came back a few moments later cradling an animal in her jacket. White fur, a bloody paw, spilled out.
“We better run,” she said. “Todd will know what to do.”
She was always finding something in the woods.
Turns out, Todd had known what to do. A few days later, tossing the garbage out after dark, after Mom had gone to bed, a white rabbit scurried across the sandbox and into the forest, the back foot wrapped in a bandage.
We sat on the old sofa with two mugs of still-too-hot peppermint tea. I played with my teabag and asked Mom if she’d gotten another dog.
“A dog? Goodness no. Why do you ask?”
“Something was in the sandbox.” I stifled a cringe.
She stiffened, twitched her nose. “Not this again, Kimberly.”
By the time I’d run to Mom upset about the latest corpse I had dug up, shouting over her taped playback of The Young and Restless which blasted over the whirring exercise bike in the basement and pulled her outside, the evidence was gone. Hector must have gotten to it, she’d say. Stop overreacting.
“I understood those sandbox theatrics after your father left, but now . . . ” Mom brushed the brown fringe I kept long away from my eyes. “Have you been sleeping? You look so tired.”
I gripped the tea mug handle, thumbnail dug into fingertips. “But Hector—”
“But, what?” She chuckled. “I assumed you saw what happened in the half-hour you were sitting there.”
My cheeks warmed. “I-uh . . . ”
“I’m glad you finally decided to come up before I went to bed.”
“It’s not even eight o’clock. We need to talk.”
Mom eyed my backpack sagging in the corner. “Tomorrow. See you in the morning.”
She squeezed me in a stiff side hug and walked upstairs.
“Night.”
The brief warmth of her hug left me with a damp chill. The usual peachy tone of my palm had grown marred and splotchy.
I tried to finish my tea, to relax back into the couch and brush off her behavior as being upset at my absence, but I was restless. Before I knew it, I had slipped on my shoes and stepped back out the door.
The way to the tavern on the ridge was through a winding tunnel of trees. Headlights weakly lit the road. Open windows let in the crisp air, cooling my fuming body.
My theatrics? What about hers?
The tavern wasn’t close, but familiar. We’d visit it on Friday nights when Dad was still around. I’d sip kiddie cocktails at the bar top while Mom hung on Dad’s shoulders between rounds of pool, eating popcorn for dinner like it was the best thing in the world. I hadn’t been there since Dad’s memorial several years ago. It was the only place I could think of.
I fiddled with the radio knob for a clearer signal when something stepped into the road around the bend. Startled, I spun the dial to static, slammed my brakes.
With its broad, six pointed antlers, a buck stared at me. Hot breath escaped his mouth in white puffs. One leg was injured, skin and hair peeled back. A patch of white at the hoof.
It walked on bone.
I shivered.
Clack, clack, clack, scrape, its hooves sounded over the pavement.
Closing the windows, I hoped the static would muffle the sound, would ease the nagging sense of familiarity.
Clack, clack, clack, scrape.
The buck stared at me until it cleared the road, the scrape of its hoof-less leg faded into the woods. I whipped the car around, returning home, desperate to get off the road and huddle beneath my bedsheets.
Parking the same as before, my headlights illuminated a giant mound of sand piled in the sandbox, the tarp crumpled to the side.
I flattened the raised hairs on my neck with my hand, stilling the sensation like I’ve done many times before. Approaching the mound, I nearly tripped over the sandbox siding. I couldn’t take my eyes off the woods, I could still hear the bone scrape across the road in my head.
Stop it. There’s nothing there.
The hole in the sandbox was deep, black earth at its center. But as I leaned closer, pulling out my phone for a flashlight, there was a frantic scratching, like Hector used to do at the door waiting to be let inside. This came from the garage.
An icy trickle crept across my skin as I crossed the driveway. I opened the garage side door. In a flash, the white rabbit bolted out and ran to the forest.
One night, having woken from a nightmare and finding Mom wasn’t in bed, I floated downstairs, groggy, a murmur drifting through the walls. Faint light shone through the slats of the folding door to the living room.
Two voices spoke:
Will it work? Will it satisfy?
With time.
And I’ll be . . .
All you once were.
Will it be okay?
Promise your whole self to it and together you will be better. We will be better. Neither of us needs to feel so alone anymore.
Will it hurt?
I peered in the crack of the door.
Mom was hunched over the charcoal carpet, back to me, holding something in her lap. Sand dusted the folds of her bathrobe.
Todd wrapped an arm around her.
I wrung my hands together. He hadn’t been in our house before.
“Only a little poke.” Todd stood, digging in his pocket.
Mom readied her hand.
From a small case, Todd pulled out a needle. He stretched Mom’s index finger long before pushing the needle in. He released her hand and she moved it out of view.
Todd crouched next to Mom and read from an old, leather bound book, “In the shadows dark and deep. Tether bound you will keep.”
The baritone to his voice rattled my chest. I steadied it with my hand, leaned closer, pushed the door open a sliver more.
A brief, foul gurgle came from somewhere in the room.
I flinched, knuckle knocked the door.
Todd’s dark eyes locked on mine. His voice dropped to a whisper.
Mom craned her neck, kept her lap hidden. Eyes large and round, unfamiliar. “Yes, Kimberly?”
“I had a nightmare,” I croaked. Pushing open the door, I clung to the frame.
“Oh,” Mom wheezed. “Go back to bed, I’ll be there in a minute, okay? I have to see Todd out.”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Her shoulder twitched.
“But I heard—“
“Todd helped change a few lightbulbs, is all.”
“Can’t I wait with you? I’m scared.”
Todd stood.
“He’s leaving right now, dear. Turn on all the lights. I’ll only be a moment.”
I obeyed, swaying up the steps through a dreamy haze, waking in the morning with all the lights still on.
“Morning.” I opened the pantry with a yawn. The image of the limping buck had visited my dreams. Mom’s eyes were more shadowed than mine. Her skin pale and chalky, mouth drooped. “I’m guessing you didn’t get any sleep either?”
“Not a wink.” She checked her appearance in the coffee maker’s steel surface before pouring a cup and taking it to the table.
The pantry contained a single box of pasta and browning bananas. The fridge wasn’t any better.
The kitchen hadn’t been this bare before, its supply in a steady dwindle after Dad had left. Yet, she wasn’t the same person lingering at the barren shelves, her body cocooning around her stomach as if the pain could transform her.
I sighed. A pang of guilt sunk my stomach to my knees.
I shouldn’t have left her for so long. But I’ll make it up to her.
“Coffee, dear?” Mom asked.
“Sure, thanks.” I poured a cup, and joined her.
Mom held the mug close to her face, legs squeezed together at a perfect right angle as if she kept herself from hopping out of her seat.
There was no good time for it.
I cleared my throat. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Mom peered in the mirror behind me and pushed at her cheeks. Her nails were dirty.
Uncrossing my legs, my foot brushed something gritty on the beige porcelain tile. The folding door to the living room was open, nothing within but darkness.
“I, uh . . . ”
Mom tapped her dirty nail on the mug.
The rabbit, the buck. I squeezed my legs together like Mom’s.
“Why didn’t Dad let me talk to Todd?” I blurted.
Her eyes snapped to mine, the whites red, wrinkles creased her skin. “Todd?”
“Yes, Todd.”
She pinched her neck. “Your father didn’t understand Todd. They had some silly misunderstanding is all.”
“What was he doing in our house that night?”
“He’s always around, helping. It’s not easy for me living here all alone.”
“But that night in the living room, he pricked your finger.”
“What?”
“There was this book, this . . . gurgling.”
“That’s enough.” Mom crossed her arms.
“He took that buck dying at the sandbox. And last night, I saw it on the road.”
“Stop it!” She stood, palms firm on the table, spilling coffee from her mug. Stepping away she muttered, “Not my Kimberly. Not my Kimberly at all.”
I searched for a change of clothing in my car’s overstuffed trunk. Even though Mom seemed in a better mood a few minutes ago, kindly telling me to leave the kitchen, so she could make me dinner with the groceries I had ordered, I still hadn’t asked if I could stay. First, I needed some answers.
Gravel crunched on the driveway. I held closed the trunk resting my elbows on it.
Todd approached. He waved. I waved back.
“Hiya Kimmy!” His teeth flashed in yellowed smile.
“Hi, Todd.”
“When did you get in town?”
“Last night.”
He eyed the sandbox, covered with the tarp again, and removed his faded, Milwaukee Brewers ball cap, revealing a shock of chestnut hair.
I tried not to gape. “Your hair—“
Todd wiped his brow. “Yeah, yeah. Your ma around?”
“Inside.”
Gravel scattered as he walked toward the house.
Returning to my trunk, I pulled out a duffle bag and worked to shut the trunk without the bungie cords, fussing with everything so as not to think about Todd’s new hair, the sandbox covered again.
The screen door creaked. Shortly after Todd shuffled passed.
“See ya later, kiddo.” He hurried across the lower front yard to cut home through the woods. His speed showed a limp.
What was that?
A short while after he disappeared down the hill, a distant thunk sliced through the air, sounding above the treetops. In steady succession, more followed.
Before Dad left, Todd had been nothing more than the red-roofed house I spotted through the bare trees in winter, the clusters of black, funnel-like mushrooms rising from the growing pile of woodchips, pages of a black tome left on the porch flipping in the breeze when dared a peek. I held my breath if I spotted him, as if it would make me invisible. Stranger now was the tarp, the sandy kitchen floor, Mom’s dirty nails, and the bone chilling ache that Todd had something to do with it.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. Mom texted.
At first I read it as: You’re being ridiculous right now.
But she actually texted: Dinner’s ready.
Maybe I was being ridiculous. The story of me and my wild imagination. But this imagination hadn’t followed me when I moved away. All I knew was asking hadn’t given me any answers. This was going to need a different approach.
With a heave, my trunk clicked shut. I climbed the stairs to the house.
After a dinner of polite conversation, holding back all the questions and accusations I had with a forced smile, I headed to my room early. Out my bedroom window, I watched the full moon rise.
An hour passed before there was pattering downstairs. The front door opened and shut quietly. Mom’s nightgown fluttered under the moonlight as she crossed to the sandbox and dug in the sand.
My breath caught. Hector hadn’t buried anything in the sandbox. It was never my imagination.
I slipped outside sticking to the dark side of the garage. Skin electric with anticipation. By the time rounded to the sandbox, Mom was gone.
“Mom?” I stepped into the light. “Mom?”
Shadows rustled behind me. I turned on my phone light and caught a flash of white at the forest’s edge.
“Mom, wait.”
The flicker of white disappeared into the woods.
I only caught glimpses of Mom’s nightgown at the edge of the light. She was quick, moving with what I imagined were willowy barefooted leaps, hardly making a sound. It was difficult to keep up.
Then, I lost her.
Around and around I shined my light, afraid to move, to miss the rustle of the underbrush, cursing my heart for pounding too loudly in my ears.
A whine to my right, the low, drawn out squeak of grinding teeth. I ran towards the sound. A rotting tree stump glistened with three drops of blood.
“Mom!” My voice cracked.
A cackling barred owl mocked me in the distance.
Blood trailed ahead, even further something brighter, white. I grabbed the pearlescent thing. Small, long, flat. A tooth. Gagging, I dropped it, wiped my hands on my sweatpants. Chunks of white fur dotted the ground. Moaning ahead.
I ran toward it with a hollow boned speed, swooped through the forest, sprinted past whatever glimmered on the ground, not wanting to think about why there were teeth in the grass.
Two shadow figures stood under the moonlight in a clearing. One tall and broad, the other hunched on the ground. Approaching, I shined my light on them. The tall one turned with a hoof-less limp, antlers slicing through the air. It grunted and bleated, revealing yellow, patina-ed teeth.
“Todd?” His name escaped in a choking heave.
My knees wanted to buckle, but the adrenaline kept me moving.
The other figure groaned.
“Mom!” I ran toward her.
She sniffed the air. Eyes danced at the edge of darkness as the light shifted with my movement. Once I was close, she stared with wide, red eyes, hair tucked behind long ears, the cartilage of one missing, a half-circle bite. Her lips pursed round, yet the top was split, chin caked in sand. Blood crusted the corners of her mouth. There’s sucking before the lips moved, a chatter of teeth as she said, “Kim-ber-ly.”
Todd-the buck snorted, nudged Mom with his snout.
“W-what happened to you?” My voice trilled.
Pearly, elongated teeth glistened in a lip-curled smile. She snatched my hand, smooshed her face into my palm, licked my finger, nipped the tip.
Yanking my away, I scrambled backward, turned over nearly retching.
The teeth in the grass, too small to be human.
Unsteadily, I stood, pulse fluttering as the truth dawned on me. What I had chased through the forest, what had nibbled my finger, what was now circling my feet, had the same ring like mouth, the white-blonde hair. But it wasn’t Mom. It wasn’t her at all.
My legs no longer shook with fear, but tensed with purpose.
I knew where to find her.
A pale hand stuck out of the sand, palm skyward, thin fingers curling, grasping the early morning fog. Sand embedded underneath my nails, stinging as I dug out Mom’s face, arms, and torso. She appeared somewhere between sleep and death, groaning and stirring, labored breath.
“I’ve got you.” I pulled her close. Tears pooled in my eyes.
I brushed sand from the deep wrinkles on her face. She had aged more since dinner.
Continuing to dig, I cursed myself for not coming home sooner, for not catching what Todd was doing to her. But she also lied to me, blaming my imagination, blaming Hector.
My arms grew heavy, shoulders drooped, head buzzed with divided thoughts.
I leave her buried with her lies.
She only lied because of Todd.
She made me feel so lonely.
They way he loomed. He forced her to do it.
I gripped my hair at the temples, stilling my racing mind.
It doesn’t matter now. Mom needs me. I can’t abandon her again.
Freeing her legs, I pulled Mom out. She was dazed but otherwise okay, able to stand. Sand rained down with every step toward the car.
“We’re leaving.” I opened the passenger door and helped her in.
She ground her teeth together, grasped her ear under her long, sand encrusted hair.
The other at the clearing, the rabbit, the half-circle bite.
Was it the same?
Shouting echoed across the yard.
I shut the door.
“Kimmy, stop!” Todd emerged in the dissipating fog. Dawn casted a golden haze around him. Wood chips dangled from his clothes. “You can’t take her. It’s dangerous.”
I stepped around the car. “It’s dangerous if she stays.”
He blocked the driver’s side door. “You don’t understand, she . . . she’s not all there.”
“Move out of my way.” I stepped closer.
He braced against the car. “She asked for this.”
“Bullshit. You killed those animals. Took them away when I wasn’t looking. What kind of sick fuck does that and spies on a little girl?”
“Those animals were already injured, took off on their own after the ritual failed.”
“What?”
The passenger door swung open. Mom tumbled out.
Before I could reach her, she ran on all fours to the sandbox, clacking her teeth together. I followed. She snarled and swiped when I pulled her arm, scratching my shoulder. Blood beaded at the site.
“What’s wrong with her?” I stumbled back, holding my shoulder, sand stung the wound.
Mom buried her feet.
Todd limped over. “She’s trying to mend the split, to heal, but not everything can be healed.”
“Split? W-what did you do to her?” Dizzy and breathless, skin slick with sweat, I dove at the sand and freed her legs. Sand clumped to my skin. This time, Mom didn’t fight it.
“She asked for it when she found out about your pa’s affair.” Todd brushed the wood chips off his head. “A shared life is a long life, a youthful life.”
I lurched like something rammed into my stomach, knocking the air from my lungs.
He was telling the truth.
How much had my Dad known?
“Was Hector—“
“Just a dog, a good cover.”
A twig snapped behind me. I flinched, craned my neck. Crouching beneath a bush was the other twitching, white figure. Nose sniffed the air.
“Get away!” I threw a stick at it. My aim was off.
“She’s your ma, too.” Todd crept toward me.
“That is not my mom.” I helped Mom stand.
“Do you see the way she’s looks at you.”
“Let’s go.” I took Mom to the car. She sat inside.
“Kimmy, please, put her back.”
“I’m not burying my mom!” I slammed the door shut.
“She won’t be the same.”
Mom pawed at the car window. Not-Mom groomed her hair with her paw-like fingers, the contours of her face a chilling likeness.
Todd limped forward.
A shared life, shared features.
“Why is she split?” My voice was hoarse.
“The rabbit wasn’t in the sand. They’re not supposed to be awake at the same time.”
I swallowed hard.
This is all my fault. I moved away, left Mom all alone, woke the rabbit, kept it from the sand. I messed it up.
I nodded to Not-Mom who dug in the sand. “Don’t you have a way to change it back?”
Todd shrugged. “Not if you leave. Your ma is in both of them now.”
“She’s split.” I stepped back, braced myself against the hood of my car.
“Yes.”
It isn’t so bad. We could start over together.
There was a freedom I felt when I had left the first time, leaving behind that timid, obedient, lonely little girl. Maybe Mom would be free too.
I slid to the driver’s side and got in.
Todd rushed forward. “She won’t be the same! They’ve shared blood!”
The same lonely woman trapped in this house, distant and sharp, enduring a secret life.
I locked the doors.
Todd pounded on the window, eyes wide, mouth gaping, yellow teeth clacking. “Kimmy, you don’t know what you’re doing!”
She could leave this all behind.
I started the car, buckled Mom’s seat belt, shifted to drive.
Not-mom hopped toward us. Todd’s fists continued to thud.
My stomach churned as I drove away from it all.
Descending the bluff, the treetops swayed, whispering secrets again of mother and daughter reunited, the pieces of them left behind.
Ahead, a flash of white. Not-Mom stood on its haunches at the side of the road, eyes like saucers, lips curled back at the split exposing long teeth. Mom opened the window, whimpered as we passed.
Todd-the-buck bounded beside in his awkward gait, snorting, grunting, coming too close, crossing in the headlights and making me swerve.
As he trailed behind, the wind blew Mom’s hair about, revealing the bite at her ear.
My hand went to flatten the hairs on my neck, but Mom grabbed it, nuzzled it, sniffed my palm, velvet tongue licked. I shuddered, couldn’t pull away.
Through the window, I heard the trees and their whispers, the buck’s distant bleats, Not-mom’s wheezes, my own Mom’s purrs. Ignoring them, I continued on, fleeing the forest, and together they called after, “What have you done? What have you done?”
