The End of the Sentence by Maria Dahvana Headley, Kat Howard Read Free Book Online Page B

there was a monster, covered in blood, wailing, roaring, screaming. I could not say which.
    Nine days.

12.
     

    I woke that night from a deep and drunken sleep—the house had provided comfort of its kind—to light streaming in from beneath the bedroom door. Soft footsteps, Row up from a nightmare. I rolled over, hoping my wife would tend him, but no. I stretched out an arm to touch her shoulder and wake her, and felt a warmth where she’d been, smelled a sweetness like dead leaves in the woods. She must be up to get him already. Outside my bedroom door, the hall was full of feet, running through the house.
    I settled back into the bed, still half-sleeping, anticipating her return. She’d come back, warm and silky as a mountain lion, her smell of silver jewelry and cedar. She’d nestle into the bed beside me, her belly against my back, her thigh over mine, and her breath against my neck, her teeth—
    There was a sound like something peeling back, a scratching and an unsealing. I jolted up, my heart racing. No, that was a dream. The sound, the weight in the bed, the sharp teeth and—
    I turned my head. 
    There was light pouring in from beneath the door. Not the bedroom door. The painted door in the wall. I’d left the key on the dresser, and now it protruded from the plaster. 
    I stopped breathing. I’d painted over the red rectangle, and the new latex was still there, but light was beginning to come through it, all around its edges. Somewhere I heard sobbing, faint and desolate.
    Was I awake? The smell of silver and cedar, and that was real. The invisible door started to open, outward from the room, into nothing, the rectangle of white paint remaining, stretched across an emptiness. 
    As I watched, the paint moved, something pressing against it from behind. A female face began to appear, white and gleaming, lips and cheekbones, nose and eyelids, pushing toward me, into my room. I recognized it, or almost did. It was dark, but light poured out beneath the painted door, from somewhere I didn’t want to see. Beside the first face, another began to coalesce. Strong brows, this one, a beard. A sharp nose. 
    I watched as their bodies pressed into the thin screen of paint separating us, and as they raised their left arms, I steeled myself, clutching the bedside lamp, for the moment they discovered they could claw through the barrier and into the room. They didn’t move. Their arms ended in nothing. No hands. They stood, holding them up, as if to show me the absence. At last, slowly, they receded, as though they’d walked backward. The light faded. The key fell out of the lock that wasn’t, and clacked on the floor, jolting me into a frenzy of shaking and shuddering. 
    I heard hoofbeats. A horse, somewhere, galloping away. Or something else in horseshoes. 
    The smell of coffee brewing. The house wasn’t sleeping, and neither was I. 
    I looked at the pillow beside me and saw an indentation in it. A long black hair. Coarse, yet soft as raw silk. I coiled it up, into a knotted tangle.
    I got out of bed, my feet freezing on the floor, though I could feel the strange October heat pressing on the house already. I picked up the key, and the photograph of Row, and went downstairs, the hair in my hand to be thrown outside as soon as I could. 
    On my kitchen table, I wasn’t surprised to find the horseshoe, though I didn’t remember picking it up. In my hallway, I wasn’t surprised to find a new letter from Dusha Chuchonnyhoof. 
    In my hand, I wasn’t surprised to find the sledgehammer, heavy and perfectly weighted, the indentations in the handle sized to my grip. The end of the sentence was approaching, and there was work to be done. I had responsibilities.
    I would find a person (HER) (not her) whose hands could be bound in an anvil marriage, and then I’d…
    I’d turn the hands into horseshoes, blood and iron to bind to the feet of Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, someone else’s hands to keep his feet from touching the