The Ravenous, page 17
“I’m sorry,” she managed, her voice shaking. “I just... I don’t understand why it had to be Rita. She lives on post. We knew her. Rose knew her.”
“You were getting impatient about waiting,” Juliet answered, smugly. “Someone walked by and I got them. It just so happened to be Rita.”
The way she said it, like I dare you to challenge me on this, told Mona that nothing good could come from grilling Juliet about Rita.
“Oh, my god,” a voice said from somewhere behind them. Mona turned and saw Anya at the edge of the kitchen, her eyes wide, her mouth open. “Is that...is that Rita Stazenski?”
“Why the fuck are you downstairs?” Juliet turned away from Mona toward Anya, that same awful fire in her eyes, her chest still heaving from the murder. “Where is Rose?”
“She’s passed out,” Anya said, not tearing her eyes away from Rita. She took a step back, wrapped her arms around herself. “The roast wasn’t holding her over anymore. She was starting to act weird. I had to give her one of the sleeping pills...”
“Acting weird how?” Juliet said. Behind her, Taylor was standing still with her eyes closed.
“She was too hungry.” Anya looked at Mona, her expression bleak. “She was writhing on the bed and telling me to stay away from her.”
Mona wished she could tell Anya every single thing that had happened in this one glance: the stakeout, hiding Rita in the car, the lies Juliet told like it was second nature, the hammer coming through the curtain and cracking Rita’s head open like it was an eggshell. She remembered the documentary about the Bloody Benders, how after watching it she’d been so insistent that they were nothing like them, but now she could see that yes, yes, they very much were.
The Killer Canes.
“You did a really good job,” Juliet said to Taylor, turning on her heel and offering a thumbs-up. “From the beginning you knew how to go along with everything. Mona, not so much.” Now she swung back on the same heel, and her thumbs-up turned down like she was calling a gladiator match. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you started to chicken out in the car.”
“What happened?” Anya asked, her forehead shining with sweat, and she looked like she might throw up just like Mona did. “Did she tell anyone she was here? Did it... Did you kill her quickly? Make sure she didn’t go through any pain?”
Mona couldn’t help it, she let out another sob. How were they all capable of this? How did everything lead to the four of them, standing in the plastic-lined kitchen, the air thick and hot and smelling like the inside of a piggy bank? It was the most blood she’d ever seen, and she should have expected that. Head wounds bleed a lot, Juliet had told her once after she rode her bike off a curb and ate shit in the gravel when she was eight. One little nick, and it’s like a goddamn waterfall.
But she didn’t expect it, nobody could have expected the sound of the hammer or the smell of the blood or the way Rita tried to call out for her mother. Mona realized that she never fully believed they would carry out the murder, not in the deeper sense, anyway. They were supposed to get caught, or Mom was supposed to come home with answers, or they were supposed to chicken out and maybe, just maybe, Rose wouldn’t turn vicious if she got too hungry, maybe she would just lay down and go to sleep and die again.
Wouldn’t that have been better than what you just did?
“No,” Mona cried out loud, covered her hands with her face. Ever since she puked, she’d been grotesquely sober, painfully aware. She felt like she’d never eat again.
But Rose will...
There was a pair of cold, clammy hands on her bare arms, pulling up. Mona stood and registered that it was Anya. Her sister took her hand. If Mona wasn’t so out of her mind from the stress, she might be able to appreciate the gesture more. They hadn’t held hands in years. This is what it took, Mona thought wildly, madly. More tears fell.
“Jesus,” Juliet said in disgust. “Taylor’s been through the same thing and you don’t see her losing her shit, do you? You need to remind yourself why we did this, Mona. You need to think about Rose.”
Mona did think of Rose. She thought of how when Rose was almost two, she started doing this thing where she’d cup the face of whichever sister was closest and sigh, “Oh, I love you.” She thought of how Rose had bawled her eyes out after Dad missed her sixth birthday, how they’d all cried with her, even Juliet, how they promised her over and over again that they would never leave her. She thought of all the times Rose stopped the girls from fighting, with nothing more than a giggle and a suggestion to play a game. She remembered the New Sunday that Rose had so painstakingly set up the day before she died.
If only they had her now, to step in and give out smiles and pour sugar all over everything, but she’d never even know what tonight happened. She’d never know what they’d all just gone through to keep her alive.
She’s going to eat Rita.
“Take her upstairs,” Juliet said to Anya, and walked over to the sheet, pulled it down. “She needs to go to sleep or something. Me and Taylor got this.”
Mona saw Taylor’s face as Anya pulled her away, and contrary to what Juliet just said, it would appear that she didn’t have her shit together at all. But that wasn’t for Mona to worry about, she was tired of existing in this now and desperately wanted to take a shower, to wash away the dirt and the night and the splatters of Rita’s blood on her neck.
Afterward, when she was clean and under the covers of her own bed, Mona listened to the sound of Rose breathing heavily in the bed across the room. There was no fear inside of her that Rose would wake up in the night and tear her teeth through Mona’s flesh. If that happened, it happened, and then she wouldn’t have to worry so constantly anymore, wouldn’t have to torture herself with her own thoughts, never-ending, a ring of endless shit. Maybe it’d be nice even, to have that sudden peace, no matter how painfully or violently it was brought about. Peace was peace in the end.
She listened for any sounds from downstairs, but it was quiet, which meant the body must have been in the basement by now. She imagined Juliet squatting over Rita’s naked corpse, using the breaking knife to saw away long strips of gristled muscle. In one of the episodes of the crime documentary show the girls had watched for research, a bit of footage had shown a bathtub strewn with an abundance of strange neon-yellow entrails, human fat from a body that was cut up in there. Was that what it looked like now, down there in the basement?
From the bed right beside her, Mona heard Anya sniffling. She was probably crying, but no matter how hard she tried Mona couldn’t move a muscle, couldn’t will herself to say are you okay or feel lucky you weren’t there or do you think we’ve made the worst mistake in the world? They were beyond the point of no return.
So instead, she went to sleep, dreamed that she was at a pizzeria with Rita and her sisters, and Rita was force-feeding her a soggy, dripping slice topped with pepperoni made from Rose.
“Eat it, you little bitch,” Rita snarled, blood pouring from behind her head, one of her eyes pointing straight down, one of them looking right into Mona’s soul. “It’s the only way, don’t you know? It’s the only way!”
When Mona woke up, Juliet and Taylor were standing in the doorway of the bedroom. Taylor looked rested enough, but Juliet’s skin was sunken and gray, Mona knew instantly that she hadn’t slept a wink.
“I have great news,” Juliet said, licking her cracked lips. “Mom finally called. She’ll be home in three days.”
“What?” Anya sat up and rubbed her eyes. “She really called?”
Mona realized that Anya probably assumed Mom had ditched them forever, just like she had. What else could excuse days without showing up or even calling? What else could excuse forcing them to murder somebody to keep Rose alive?
“She was doing another ritual with that Harlow woman in Danwin Cove,” Juliet said. “One that took a long time. She says there’s definitely a way to cure Rose. As in, zero percent chance of failure.”
Mona strained her ears. Surely she couldn’t have heard that right. The idea of a total cure, an actual end to the nightmare, it almost seemed unreal. Even when Rose was better, Mona would still live forever with the paranoia that someone would catch them for what they’d done, but deep down, she knew that they didn’t leave a trace of evidence. There was no way anyone would ever suspect them in Rita’s disappearance, just as long as Juliet could carry out the disposal of the body like she said she could.
According to her, it’d be the easy part.
“Thank Christ,” Anya said, and turned to look at Rose to see if she heard, but the youngest Cane was still deep in drug-induced sleep. “It’s over. It’s going to be over soon.”
“Yep,” Juliet said warily, and turned to go back out to the hallway. “I’ve got to go downstairs and cook Rose’s breakfast before she wakes up. She’ll be very hungry.”
“You need to rest,” Taylor whined. “You’ve been up all night!”
“What, are you gonna do it?” Juliet snapped in reply. “She needs to eat, Taylor. Don’t be stupid.”
“Is it all gone?” Mona called after them, and she saw Juliet’s shadow pause in the hallway. “Is everything cleaned up?”
“Clean as a whistle,” Juliet answered, then continued on toward downstairs. “All the scraps are wrapped up nice and tight in my trunk. Plastic and duct tape, baby.”
Chapter 20
All the scraps.
Mona sat in art class later that week, staring at the painting in front of her.
Plastic and duct tape, baby.
The words repeated in her head over and over as she painted a long, dripping black strip across the huge square of clean watercolor paper. She didn’t blink as she watched the paint run down the length of the paper, slowly making its way to drip off the bottom onto the floor.
The old Mona had been sacrificed and spread to the wind like dust. There wasn’t a drop of blood in the kitchen anymore, but Mona still saw it, still felt it, still heard Rita’s last words echoing endlessly inside of her skull, even here, far away from the house.
Girls, Rita’s voice said gently in Mona’s mind again. You don’t look so good. You look...scared. Is everything o—
Crack. Crunch. Smack.
Deep down, Mona felt a heavy fear that they’d end up having to do it again somehow. Nothing had gone right up until then, why expect for things to go right ever again?
Although, hey, maybe not. Mom was coming home today. Finally, finally, the nightmare could come to an end, and Rose could get better, and they could get on with living their stupid little lives that they were never smart enough to be thankful for before. Before Rose’s death, the idea of living at home, wherever that would be, for three more years had been torture. Now it sounded like a goddamn cakewalk.
Well hey, looks like kidnapping and murdering someone was at least able to do that for you, Mona thought bitterly. How sweet. Her brain was full of all sorts of dark humor these days. It almost felt like a survival instinct, something to cling to desperately while everything else pulsated in chaos. When she stopped and thought about it for more than a second, forced herself to focus on exactly what the pulsating chaos was made out of, the white-hot fear that rose up as a result caused her face to tremble.
Rita’s disappearance was in the news already. Police had questioned everyone from her friends to her husband to the employees of the bar she was last seen in, with the only lead being the broken cell phone they found discarded on the street outside. Since there hadn’t been any activity on her credit cards, and since her car was still where she left it, the police were going forward as if Rita had been abducted.
The girls learned all of this from watching a news report a few days after the murder. Rose recognized Rita almost immediately, gasped dramatically while the other girls sat in eerie silence.
“That’s the lady from our post!” Rose said from where she sat cross-legged on the floor, making a pot holder with a square plastic frame and technicolor stretchy bands, back to full energy at last. “Remember seeing her at that barbecue? She was kind of rude.”
Mona had looked at her then, tried hard not to think about what Rose would say if she knew that the several pounds of green chile “shredded beef” she’d been consuming steadily over the previous forty hours or so had once been that woman who was rude at the barbecue. Their slow cooker had been running continuously, filling the house with a disgusting meaty smell that was like a rich pork roast, and even after the last batch was prepared and the slow cooker was cleaned and put back into the cupboard, Mona felt like the smell never really went away.
From the television screen, Rita Stazenski smiled at them all, positively beaming with her styled hair and expensive jacket.
It was like she was mocking them.
Now, Mona couldn’t wait for the school day to end. Every single moment here was about looking busy enough, and being quiet enough, to slither through and around the attention spans of her teachers until the bell rang, and that was about it. She just wanted to fast forward to the part where she got off the school bus and walked up to the house and saw Mom’s car parked outside the garage.
She realized that she was painting her own home, all in black, with its two stories and its shutters and its fenced yard. Mona didn’t stop painting as she played out a vivid fantasy in her head, lived through it:
* * *
Mom’s car is parked outside. I run the rest of the way in, and everyone is sitting on the couches waiting for me, their hands in their laps, smiles on their faces. Rose is Rose again, and that’s not to say that she isn’t Rose right now, but here I can tell instantly that Rose has been cured and everything is going to be okay again. Look at how her eyes are lit up. Look how she stands calmly instead of fidgeting until her fingertips are bloody and frayed.
“I found the cure!” Mom cries happily, standing alongside Harlow. Their arms are wrapped around each others’ waists. I’ve forgotten how much I liked Mom’s old best friend before. She wasn’t so bad, not really, not compared to others in the world. “Harlow forgot to tell me about one silly little thing for the ritual,” Mom goes on, “but it’s taken care of now. It’s done.”
“That awful hunger from before is gone, Mona,” Rose says, smiling, relaxed, whole. “I feel so much better now.” She pauses, casting a sly glance at Mom. “Although, I do kind of feel like I could go for some enchiladas right about now.”
Everybody laughs, Harlow, Mom, my sisters. We release all the tension, all the fear, invite our second chance with open arms and open hearts. Rita Stazenski washes down the drain like a long string of hair, slowly eases her way out of my mind forever and ever.
* * *
Now, outside of the daydream, Mona Cane shed a tear, quickly wiping it away with the back of her hand before getting up and leaving the dripping black painting of her house for somebody else to clean up. She took her backpack from where it hung on a hook by the door and slipped out the instant the bell rang. She skipped going to her locker to drop off the four textbooks, causing her shoulders to scream from beneath the straps of her backpack, willing her body to hurt, to be punished.
Mona didn’t talk to a single person at the bus stop. She sat alone in the front, looking out the window with a straight back and a straight face. The bus stopped, went again, stopped, went. Finally it pulled into post, through the fence and toward the housing. At the end of her street, the bus stopped, and Mona rose and exited.
The driveway in front of the garage was empty.
She struggled to breathe calmly, scolded herself for overreacting before she knew the full situation. The car could be in the garage. Mom could simply not be home yet. How exactly she couldn’t manage to be home yet, the rage inside Mona refused to dwell on without boiling out of control.
Inside, Rose played video games on a console hooked up to the television. Juliet and Taylor stood around quietly in the kitchen, leaning against things and taking turns letting out exasperated sighs as Juliet peered through the kitchen window toward the street, to look for Mom no doubt. There was an open bag of chips in front of them, a bowl of salsa beside it, a dollop of red on the counter that made Mona’s stomach turn.
Upstairs, Anya was reading in bed, headphones in, the room hazy and smelling like skunks.
So Mona drank Mom’s gin straight from the bottle, hiding carelessly in Mom’s closet instead of in the locked bathroom. She hardly cared about hiding this irrelevant habit from her sisters anymore, didn’t understand how it could possibly hold enough water to outweigh everything else they were dealing with, couldn’t imagine any of them giving a solid fuck. She remembered with a pained half grin how upset she’d gotten at the idea of Rose tattling on her before about the booze, how positively fearful she’d been.
What did I know of fear then?
When she was through with the gin, Mona lay in bed and waited for Mom to come home, or for Rose to come up to change into her pajamas, or for Juliet to call her down for dinner, anything, but nothing happened. Anya had since abandoned her book, leaving it open and facedown on her bed. She must have been downstairs with the others. First it got brighter in the room, a nasty, eyeball-piercing shade of late afternoon orange and red, and then it got darker.
Mom still wasn’t home. She promised she’d be home by now and she wasn’t. Everything was not going to be okay. Nothing was alright.
Mona’s drunkenness was thicker than usual, heavier, and it made it hard to do much more than blink her eyes and swing her face gently from side to side. On the nightstand beside her, her cell phone vibrated loudly, causing her mind to jump while her body stayed slack. After a moment, she lifted a hand and dropped it over the phone, curling her fingers around it to bring it up to her face. The notification told her it was a text message from Lexa. Somehow, some way, after all of the bullshit, Lexa hadn’t forgotten about Mona, hadn’t deemed her worthy to get thrown out like the weekly trash.
