Harmony House - Nic Sheff Page 0,14

just that,” he says, clasping both his hands around mine. “I need you to understand.”

He looks into my eyes and I look away.

“Your mother and I,” he says. “We weren’t on the righteous path. She was a sinner. She squandered the many gifts God gave her. She brought us down. She would have pulled us both into the pit of hell. Now we have this chance and . . . I need to take advantage of it. I need you to take advantage of it, too. We’re so fortunate to have it—”

I pull my hand free of his.

My jaw sets tight and I speak through gritted teeth.

“Fortunate. We’re fortunate.”

“Yes, don’t you see? God’s given us this opportunity to repent.”

I stare hard at him.

We are fortunate, he says, that my mother is dead.

We are fortunate, he says, and he means it.

I want to scream. I want to scream at him and hit him. I want to wake him the fuck up.

The sickness is back in my stomach. The heat rises inside of me.

The yellow kitchen walls and framed black-and-white photographs of lighthouses spin around me.

“We have a responsibility,” he says. “To practice His principles day in and day out. Your mother wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t listen to anybody. But I won’t let that happen to you. Your soul’s salvation is my responsibility.”

I stand, clenching my fists, and breathe in. The heat flushes my cheeks and for just a moment my whole body seems as though it’s on fire.

A loud crash sounds just behind me.

My father gasps and shields his face.

The heat drains as quickly as it came. I turn, startled.

“What was that?”

“Careful,” my dad says. “You’re not wearing any shoes.”

A glass bowl has broken into tiny pieces all across the linoleum. It is so thoroughly shattered, it looks like spilled granules of sugar.

“Careful,” my dad says again.

The wave of anger is gone, replaced by a deep weariness. I am so tired I just want to curl up in a corner somewhere and disappear.

“I’m not feeling well,” I tell him. “I’m going to bed.”

He looks distractedly at me and then back at the puzzle of broken glass.

“What? Yeah, okay.”

I walk out into the hallway. The smell of mold is dank and cloying beneath the shadowed stairwell. A cold shiver runs through me and I wrap my arms tightly around myself.

Then a sharp pain cuts into the center of my forehead.

I squeeze my eyes shut against it.

When I open my eyes again, a flash of movement makes me turn.

In the very corner of my vision there is a figure in white. A girl in a flowing dress.

She glides across the floor as though floating back and forth, back and forth, to a gentle rhythm.

Her long black hair hangs down, contrasted starkly with the white of her dress and her pale skin.

I move my lips to call for help.

But the words won’t come.

And then I see a rope, caked with dirt and blood, around her throat. It extends up, to a railing above us.

Her eyes are bloodshot and bulging—her tongue protruding blue. Her neck elongated.

I blink and stumble backward. When I turn to look again, the girl’s body is gone. There is nothing in front of me but empty space.

I shiver all over, wondering—was I asleep?

Was I dreaming?

I start up the many flights of stairs, back to the upstairs bathroom—trying to forget whatever the hell that just was.

Inside the bathroom there is a separate walk-in shower and a deep claw-foot tub. I scrub my face at the sink and pick at a couple zits on my forehead and brush my teeth.

Behind me, I can see in the mirror’s reflection, a framed woodblock print of a sperm whale—like from the cover of Moby Dick. There’s also a horizontal, rectangular triptych of different sailboats and another frame with mounted pieces of rope tied in various sailing knots—each knot with its own handwritten label beneath it. I study them absently—the bolan, the double half hitch, the hangman’s knot.

Tomorrow, I tell myself, I will go down to the beach.

I spit the foaming toothpaste in the sink and drink some water straight from the faucet—cool and clean-tasting.

I put on some lip gloss.

And then I remember the little hardbound book in my pocket. I take it out and squint to read the faded markings engraved in the cover. Devotions of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Inside, the first pages contain the prayer my father has drilled into my head a million times:

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace

Where there