disappeared. So did the house, with its broken picket fence. In the picture, tiny red ants crawled across the baby’s skin.
Finish the door, Audrey, so we can always be together. The vibrations murmured through the floors, caressing her hands and knees like a warm blanket, while against the door, Betty’s image was mute. Only her eyes moved. They followed Audrey like a Cheshire Cat clock.
The worm gnawed on her organs, tiny little bites. “You’re not my mother. Betty’s gone. She abandoned me,” Audrey sniffled.
You forgot your promise, but I didn’t. I kept that second-grade picture. You and me, forever. You betrayed me, Lamb. You left me alone in that terrible place. But I forgive you. Finish the door, Betty answered.
The hall light flickered, then went out. Everything got dark, except for the image of Betty holding a baby. The camera zoomed closer. Pretty dimples, vacant smile. Audrey remembered the CAT scan, and the black wings, and that red-ant day in Hinton, when her whole life changed.
“It was your madness chasing us. It was never after me, Momma, because I’m not crazy,” Audrey whispered.
It was you, Audrey, the walls echoed with Betty’s voice.
She remembered that day twenty years ago. There was more to the story than she’d always allowed herself to believe.
Betty’s knife against her throat. Beads of blood. “Shhhh, Momma,” drunken young Audrey had whispered, when she’d finally mustered the courage to speak. “Shhhhh. It’s your Audrey.”
Betty had lowered the knife a little, but not far enough. So Audrey had put her fingers between the blade and her skin, then eased down until she’d knelt over the broken floor. “I’ll help, Momma,” she’d said. “Look. We’ll work together.” And so, she’d lifted a clump of dirt. She’d put holes in her own house, just to pacify her maniac mother.
“Look! There’s the monster!” Betty had cried twenty years ago, only it hadn’t been a monster—but an ant hive, from which an angry swarm had risen. Biting. Biting. They’d flooded the white tiles. Audrey had stamped her feet until the floor was red while Betty had fled. When it was over, the floor was a mess of gore, as if Audrey had done murder.
The cop that showed up hadn’t just told her to wear turtlenecks, either. He’d written down the number for a children’s shelter. But like always, she’d stayed, and cleaned up the mess, and when Betty returned six weeks later sporting an oozing Playboy Bunny tattooed to her shoulder and a bad case of hep C in the making, she’d cleaned that up, too.
“That’s why we always ran, Momma. The ants were always chasing your holes. It had nothing to do with me,” Audrey now said as she changed direction, and crawled knee over knee back into the den. Betty’s Cheshire eyes went left, then right. Left, then right.
I miss you baby, the walls answered in Betty’s voice as the camera zoomed closer. From the bottom of the black and white image tiny insects began to crawl. The baby squealed.
“You were sick, Momma. You were no good to me or anybody else,” she said, because she wished she’d said it back then instead of always playing along to keep the peace. Always pretending things were okay, even while her wrists had made a bathtub pink.
The ants covered the baby’s swollen face as it raged. The image was still, but the sound carried through the floors and walls. A weeping, furious wail.
We’re trapped in here, Lamb. Get us out, Betty said as the image zoomed, and the baby disappeared. If you build the door, we’ll go back to Wilmette, before the red ants came. Just you and me. We’ll live there forever, and you can always be my baby. Build the door.
Sobbing, Audrey covered her ears. The camera zoomed closer. Now it was only Betty, thirty-four years ago. Pretty, with the world at her feet. Against the still frame, an ant darted across the white of her eye, and her skin wriggled.
Audrey touched the image against cardboard. It was soft, like her mother’s skin. With her free hand, she lifted the rebar. A steel pole wrapped inside tense, sharp wire. Its opposite end was clogged with fleshy chunks of what looked like rust.
Nobody loves you like we do. Nobody ever will. They’ll leave you, everyone one of them. Saraub. Jill. Even Jayne is already gone. But we’re here, Lamb of mine.
If she smashed the rebar against the piano, she could use the wood to build a sturdy frame. But they’d known