THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

18_rot_

I take the bus, in the end. I can't face going underground after reading the story Megan gave me. The machinery of my mind has jammed, I can't think right. And my stomach is churning. All I can picture is a nest of hair there, a boiling eyeball nestled in the middle of it like an egg. I feel like she's inside me and it's all I can do to stop myself clawing my own skin away and hurling it into the night.

When I reach my house I don't go in. I stand outside it for ten minutes, looking at every inch of it, at every brick and windowpane and tile. It looks the same as it always has, but it looks different too. I can't even explain how. I know that it is not my house, not really. I know that this is not my world any more. Something has shifted, I am on the outside of it.

It's quiet when I walk through the front door, but it's past ten so Donnie will be asleep and mom will be in bed, probably furious that I've been gone all day without so much as a text. I wait in the hallway for a moment, I wait for the squeak of flesh in the bath, but there's nothing.

I head upstairs, creeping into the twilight dark of the landing. My door's closed, although I don't remember doing it. Donnie's is too and for once he's turned off his Xbox. Mom's door's open and when I peek inside I see her shape beneath the covers, the steady rise and fall of her chest. I want to crawl beneath the quilt with her the way I did when I was younger, the way I did when I had the witch dreams. And I might still, only I reek of sweat and vomit and I'm still shivering hard.

The bathroom's been cleaned. I don't know why, because mom hardly ever does it. She's missed a strand of hair dangling from the faucet, though, and the sight of it hanging there is almost enough to make me vomit again. I pee, then strip, washing my face in warm water, brushing my teeth for what has to be ten full minutes. Even then I've still got the taste of meat on my tongue.

I seem to have shrunk. It's a stupid thing to say but that's the first thing I think when I look at myself in the mirror, when I really look at myself. I seem smaller, like somebody has folded in the corners. I'm not even sure—

There's a rasping squeak of skin behind me, a giant splash. I jump so hard I think I've pulled my flesh off my bones and I turn to see nothing there, absolutely nothing, except that little dangling thread of black hair is sliding back up the faucet, getting smaller, smaller, until the last of it disappears. The bath is just a bath is just a bath is just a bath and I'm repeating it to myself as I back out of the bathroom and close the door behind me.

I don't want to know what I will see if I open my bedroom door. I literally cannot force myself to do it. I grab mom's bath robe from the back of her door and walk back downstairs, and it's only when I reach for the kitchen door that I hear a voice inside. It's light in there—had they been on when I came home?—it's pooling on the floor in front of the door, but it's not open enough for me to see all the way in. I'm torn between the urge to throw myself through to see who's there, and the need to get the hell out of this house as fast as possible so I never have to know. I wonder how long I can keep walking before I just can't walk any more.

"... he's here for you..."

The voice is louder now, and I recognize it.

It's mom.

"... so slow, she won't be..."

I push the door, watch it swing open, see the kitchen unfold before me like a book. It is mom, she's standing by the island and she's completely naked, apart from a towel wrapped around her head. Strands of hair hang down from it, water dripping down the fleshy skin of her back. She's cupping her hand over the counter, collecting breadcrumbs, and I can't see who she's talking to because the far side of the room is drenched in darkness.