The Accidental Siren

8.6 The Zombie-Ferrets Strike Back

I was supposed to be editing.

Outside my window, the moon hung like a Christmas ornament behind the branches of a dead tree, painting my tapes, TV, and the tangle of cords in soft white light.

Editing was already a tedious process: studying the shot log, loading the corresponding tape, fast-forwarding to the moment of the first cut, pressing “play” on the camera and “record” on the VCR, watching the same take for the hundredth time, and pressing “stop” on both machines with careful timing. If I made a mistake, I had to rewind the VHS to the end of the previous shot, rewind the camera to the beginning of the botched shot, and start the process over again.

Thanks to Ryan Brosh, my mind had its own thirteen-inch TV, tangle of wires, and spastic rewind button as I processed both conversations again and again and again.

Liar. Perverts. Ferrets. Diary. She knew! What would she say?

Oddly, the bit of dialogue that bothered me most was Ryan's fascination with Mara's artwork. Although it was brief, Ryan had glimpsed a part of Mara that I had never seen before. His advantage was frustrating... but maybe I could level the playing field.

I waited until the parlor light vanished from the crack beneath my door, then tugged my nightshirt to cover my undies and abandoned my work in the moonlit room.

The basement was black. Something jabbed the arch of my foot and I swore. It was a Lego--a relic from the twins--and I swept it beneath the couch with my heel.

I tiptoed past the dumbwaiter and exercise equipment to the unfinished guest room. There wasn't a door, only brass hinges and a burgundy curtain left over from the Red Room scene. Inside, a potpourri of cat turds and citrus spray tickled my nose. I found the pull-string, jerked it, and a twenty-five-watt bulb barely illuminated the white brick walls, concrete floor, and stack of moldy ceiling panels in the far corner. The burgundy curtain was actually a bed sheet we stapled to the rafters. It covered the door frame and half the guest-room wall. A bucket of crayons provided a welcome burst of color. Ten years old at least, their paper sheaths had been stripped by a hundred tiny hands; their brilliant colors defiled by specks of other hues.

Dorothy's litter box was on the opposite side of the room. Beside it: a naked green cot with Mara's artwork piled neatly in the center.

I snatched the pages. On top was a drawing of the hill. I flipped to the next page and there it was again, picture after picture of the ominous mound that I first discovered polluting Mara's diary.

The curtain shifted and Dorothy slunk in. She meandered to the box, squatted, and watched me while she peed.

Some of the drawings depicted a stick figure beside the water tower. Sometimes there were two figures, a boy and a girl, arms reaching toward a blue line at the top of the page that represented sky. (Ryan told Mara the drawings were good. Either he was lying, or beauty was truly in the eye of the beholder.) In one picture, a flying saucer hovered above the hill. In another, an angel.

I was moderately shocked by the repetition of the drawings and Mara's inherent obsession, though the concept was nothing new. Whit and I rented The Shining last year and covered our eyes as Mrs. Torrance scanned her husband's repetitive novel, and Close Encounters was one of my all-time-favorite flicks. But there was darker than obsession in Mara’s drawings. For the first time, I realized the disconnect between the girl's cheery personality and her inner turmoil. I missed it when I read her diary. I missed it when she so easily accepted the news of her parents death. But I saw it now--repressed outrage--evident in the hard-pressed lines of colorful wax.

Dorothy crossed the room, collar jingling with every off-beat step of her mangled paw, and rubbed her side against the curtain. As she pranced away, the hem of the fabric clung to a tuft of fur and revealed--for a split second--crayon on the hidden wall.