He sees the tombstone on his drive past the monument shop Wednesday afternoon, and by Friday, it leans against the garage wall. The April sun has strengthened overnight; it bakes his neck, while the shadow of the garage bay across his face feels like a hand dipped in snow. Nira stands beside him in her workout sweats, an earbud in each hand, frowning at it.
“Okay, but…” She shakes her head and her ponytail thrashes like it’s flicking flies. A little smile and a touch of side-eye. “There’s nothing you’re not telling me, right?”
“I just thought it looked nice. Figured, better to be prepared.” He holds up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Boy Scout.” Nira pops the white techno-baubles into her ears and frowns at the garage door. “Why won’t this close?”
“It’s broken. I’ve called the company.”
It’s not broken. She squints at him, then sighs and heads inside.
On the attic stairs, a pair of feet stand on the top step, hidden above the ankle. They makes him dizzy to look at, so he doesn’t.
There are four more tombstones propped up against the unfinished drywall by Thursday. One is rose quartz, carved to look like winkled fabric.
“Take it back,” Nira says, no smile in her eyes.
“I didn’t buy it. How can I take it back?”
Her lips pinch, nostrils flare. He wonders if she can smell the odor of moldering leaves and stale pond water emanating from her.
The feet have come down three steps, naked to the knee.
“What is wrong with you?” Nira’s voice comes through the bars of her fingers as she drags her hands over her face. “This isn’t normal.”
He’s sure he couldn’t move them, even if he wanted to. Each one has to be nearly five hundred pounds. Their weight presses down on his chest.
She flinches away from the headstones, rubbing her arms. Her fingernails are pale pink. Her hair is a loamy brown. He doesn’t say this.
“You’re freaking me out, Michael. Seriously,” she says, retreating inside.
The bare shins on the attic steps shifted their weight from foot to foot. The skin is pale, almost translucent. The soles are filthy.
“Go away,” he whispers.
The feet shift. A gurgling whimper, hollowed by the stairwell, makes his skin want to peel off and run away without him. He hurries back into the house.
He wakes up in bed on Monday, fully dressed, and covered in a powdering of dirt. It’s all over the sheets. It’s made a print of him on the flannel, down to the individual fingers of each hand, shadowed in dirt.
Nira isn’t there. He leaps up, tripping over the half-filled cardboard boxes littering the bedroom floor. He finds her downstairs, standing by the window, looking east into the sun. Her purple sweater and jeans cast stained glass shadows across the square of light on the floor.
“Something’s wrong,” she says. “Isn’t it?”
He flees upstairs to take a shower. The water turns grey with dirt. No matter how hard he scrubs, his skin is stained with soil. It’s part of him now.
There are ten headstones in his garage, filling both bays. Two sit in the front seats of Nira’s Toyota. The suspension has snapped; the frame droops over the deflated front tires. The entire hood is crumpled up. There’s a crack running the length of the windshield. The whole thing sits in a dark puddle of water.
The figure has come down four steps, exposing a neatly manicured bush of coiled copper. A shapely rear. The legs are runner’s legs, firm and toned. Not a strand of hair below the pubic area. Hands, with pale pink nails, pick at the skin of the thighs. The feet shift, restless, exposing their soiled soles.
Michael throws up all over the floor.
Tombstones spill out across the lawn, pile up on the roof. The house’s framing creaks, the wood beginning to splinter under all that stone, all that grief.
Nira stands over him as he bars the door to the garage with his body. The floor radiates cold into the back of his skull. He can tell she’s worried from the wrinkle at the bridge of her nose.
“I need to go,” she says, and the keys in her fist jingle like bells.
Inside the garage, dirty feet patter across the concrete, running in circles, frantic, trapped, scratching at the garage door.
“Please. Don’t.”
Nira stoops. Her hair, her clothes: she’s soaked. Water drips from her chin into his eyes. “Michael, it happens to everyone, eventually.”
“But not like this. Not so soon.” He claps his hands over his face. They’re covered in dirt. Mud runs down his cheeks.
“Michael,” she says again, this time from far away, an echo of an echo, a memory of a voice. “You can’t live like this.”
He doesn’t want to live. He wants to be in the ground, with her, snuggled close under earthen covers, his face nestled against the back of her neck.
The scuffling in the garage pauses as she steps over him, then pitter-patters right up to the other side of the door and stops, waiting. An odor seeps in under the doorframe: compost and shit. It claws up his nose hairs and burrows into his sinuses, stinging his eyes. His heart feels like it’s trying to implode. The house groans.
He tries to catch her as she steps through the door, but there’s nothing to catch. On the other side, he hears inhuman keening, shrill and frightened. Then her voice, hushing, soothing, followed by a rustling, desperate embrace. The garage door squeals as it opens. Then they’re gone.
He howls, and the house howls: wood shreds, windows shatter, and his life crashes down, burying him in grief.
| Maggie Slater‘s (she/her) speculative fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Metaphorosis, and Redivider, among other venues. She lives in an 1800s farmhouse in New England with two half-tamed boys, one half-trained dog, her husband, her parents, and at least one benign ghost. When she has an almost quiet moment, she enjoys indie horror films, sampling craft beer, and hoarding cheap notebooks. For more information about her and her current projects, visit her blog at maggieslater.com or find her on Instagram: @maggiedot_writes or on Bluesky: @maggiedotwrites. |  |