“We’ll be together forever now,” he told Bee as he held her down on the dusty floor and let it crawl inside her.

When it was over, her heart quiet in her chest, Bee couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t stop screaming, couldn’t stop threatening to tell the world what he’d done to her. That was when Rochester accused her of being a madwoman.

“So ungrateful,” he growled, and left her in the attic, forgotten like a crate of moth-eaten clothes, while he went and wooed Jane. After all, he needed someone who would appreciate him.

A shadow in the doorway, and Jane’s suddenly with us. “Are you all right?” she says, rushing to Bee’s side, embracing her. That’s when I see it.

Her arms, crawling and restless. The same thing that’s in Bee is inside her.

Jane buries her face against Bee, hiding like a child. “We’ll never escape him, will we?”

Bee gazes upward, a steel resolve budding in her eyes. “Not unless we do something,” she says. “Not unless we stop him ourselves.”

The house goes quiet, and I’m suddenly chilled. This is the first time she’s ever said anything like that.

“How?” Jane asks, her voice no more than a wisp.

“I don’t know yet,” Bee says, and pulls Jane closer, their limbs in a tangle, everything about them looking so comfortable, so intimate. Standing here, I feel like a prying little sister, so without a word, I slip out into the long hallway.

Back in my room, the rot is waiting, wriggling in my presence. It seems almost happy to see me. I sprawl out on the floor and whisper to it, making it flick this way and that. On the carpet, on the walls, across the threadbare comforter on my bed.

“You’re mine,” I say, and the cobwebs on the ceiling dance in refrain.

It’s almost night again, the urns chattering in their hiding places, when Bee knocks on my door.

“We should go out,” she says. “All three of us.”

I’m ready to tell her no, to stay here commanding the decay in the dark, when she adds, “To the drive-in, maybe?”

My hunger stirring within me, I glance up at her and smile.

Tonight’s a double feature of The Dirty Dozen and an early screening of Roger Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, both of them bloody spectacles, which isn’t even fair. Why do the movies always have to remind me of what I’m missing?

My stomach somersaults, and I gaze at the lobby. I pretend I don’t care if Michael’s working tonight. I pretend he isn’t the whole reason why I’m here.