I found more candles burning, this time in the bathroom, lighting up my face in the mirror, the little flames merry and just so almost touching the bottom of the towel. It would have been almost cheerful, like dinner parties in the bathtub, except it wasn’t and though I blew them out quick, the candles, I knew that it was too late and that the thing was inside with me anyway already. The shadow, the toad, whatever it was, hopped and crouched and sniffed at this at that. It was moving through the rooms looking for me. I could feel it, could see it slipping in and out of the corners of my eyes. I had used too much bleach in the cleaning water and my hands were speckled with raw patches on them and stung like anything but I couldn’t stop dipping my hands into the cleaning bucket and wiping down the kitchen counter because otherwise it would surely find me. I told myself, licking the sweat off the top of my lip, to lie down, still in the tall grass. The thing, the terrible thing, it hadn’t happened yet. I was still, thank god and goodness, in the time before.

Something banged against the shutters in the bedroom. It came again. Bang. It could have been a bottle or a ball or a fist pounding the metal slats. Bang. Bang. Bang. The noise woke E and she sat up and cried out for me and I couldn’t move until I was sure the thing in the apartment was gone and I was alone again and safe. I dumped the bucket of bleach and water down the sink and rinsed out the little towel and wrapped my hands, because they were bleeding now from the bleach and all the washing, in more towels so they wouldn’t stain the rental-company sheets and then I ran to E and kissed her and tucked myself in with her and slept and slept.

16

When I woke, the bed was washed in weak shuttered-up sunlight. My hands had escaped from the towels and found their way into E’s hair. There wasn’t much of a mess because the raw spots from the bleach had scabbed over which was a relief considering the sheets.

It was morning or afternoon, daytime anyway. M could have been anywhere and we were here. I threw myself at the window and managed to get the shutters up and the window open but it was hard going and I almost couldn’t do it. Opening it left me sweating and dizzy and I leaned back against the window frame and really knew, in that moment, that it was time to run. The window was open beside me. It was right there. But how could I have done a thing like that?

There were yellow shoes under the window, lying in the grass. They were perfectly arranged and waiting, calm yellow shoes, as if the person wearing them had, woosh, been lifted up out of them and carted off. The grass around the shoes was trampled down in all directions.