The Sullivan Sisters - Kathryn Ormsbee Page 0,56

looked to the bag Murphy had dropped, then to the spit-out pile of chocolate. It was difficult to see in the dim light, but not impossible. There was movement in the chocolate. Small, white movement. Crawling. Squirming.

Maggots.

Then Claire felt them—slight little shiftings in her mouth.

She spewed out the chocolate onto Eileen’s boots.

“FUCK,” Eileen shrieked, running from the room and then yelling from the parlor, “I DON’T WANT TO KNOW.”

“Move, move!” Claire shoved Murphy from the sink, angling her mouth beneath the faucet, filling it with water and spitting out. Filling, then spitting. Stumbling back, she raked her fingers across her tongue.

She was almost sure the maggots were gone, but the shifting sensation remained, a memory that made Claire heave out clear, sticky liquid into the sink.

Murphy was sitting on the floor crying, snot flowing from her nose.

“Ewww,” she wailed. “Ewww. It serves us right, eating a dead guy’s stuff!”

Claire couldn’t be sure if Murphy was joking, but laughing felt better than retching, so she laughed. She wiped her stinging eyes and slumped down to the floor beside Murphy.

“W-we’re okay,” she told her. “Murph, it’s fine.”

“Speak for yourself,” Murphy cried, wearing a strange, hysterical smile.

How absurd was this? Sitting in their dead uncle’s kitchen, spitting out maggots on Christmas Eve. Claire cried a little and laughed a little and dragged her molars across her tongue, while Murphy made snuffling, spitting sounds.

Moments later, Eileen appeared at the door.

“Much good you are!” Murphy shouted, pointing an accusing finger.

Eileen shrugged. “What could I do about it?”

“I dunno,” Murphy conceded. Then she said, softer, “If Uncle Patrick’s a ghost, I tell you what: He’s mad at us.”

* * *

“Sure you don’t want one?”

“Leenie, for the last time.”

“What? You gotta be hungry.”

Claire stared at Eileen in disbelief. After several additional rounds of mouth-washing and retches, she’d managed to leave the kitchen with some dignity intact. Now she and Murphy sat with Eileen in front of a rekindled fire as Eileen chomped merrily on salt and vinegar Pringles. It didn’t matter that Eileen claimed the can was well sealed, or that there was no trace of infestation on those chips. Claire’s appetite had been ruined. She didn’t know if she’d ever eat chocolate again. One thing was for sure: She wasn’t touching another item that came out of the pantry.

Murphy, it seemed, was of the same opinion. She lay on the couch, hands clenched over her gut, a martyr’s expression drawn over her face. She was dramatic, that one, but she was also paler than usual beneath the freckles. Claire didn’t blame her. For once, for maybe the first time, she completely understood Murphy’s position. Like Claire, she refused Eileen’s offerings.

“Your loss,” Eileen concluded, chomping into four layered chips. “Hope it doesn’t bother you.”

Claire didn’t know what to say to that. At the moment, food in general bothered her, as did the fact that they were stuck in this house, held captive by a winter storm. Ravenous wind drove into the walls, and vertical rivers ran down the windows.

“This is one messed up Christmas,” Claire said, looking into the fire.

She was going to indulge in as much pessimism as her heart desired, Exceller status be damned.

“That’s what I was saying the other day,” Murphy offered from the couch.

“Aren’t all our Christmases kind of messed up?” Eileen said, crunching into a chip.

Claire reflected on this. If a good Christmas meant snuggling with your family and opening nice gifts and drinking eggnog by the fire, then yes, comparatively, every Sullivan Christmas had been messed up. Mom tried to make things nice, but half the time she burned dinner or forgot about the stockings, and when she remembered, she filled them with junk from the Dollar Tree: off-brand antibacterial gel and cheap boxed candies. Christmas in the Sullivan home was a parody.

Then again … there had been those few years when the sisters had exchanged gifts inside the castle. Their own private ritual, on the twenty-first. Claire couldn’t forget Eileen’s gift that one year: the secondhand iPhone, an answer to Claire’s prayers. That had been the second-to-last Christmas they’d been okay, the two of them. And then Eileen had moved from their room, and a month before Christmas announced they wouldn’t be exchanging gifts. Claire had hidden away the set of paints she’d bought for Eileen—a hard-to-find brand she’d only been able to track down at a craft store in Eugene.

Yes, Claire reflected. Most Christmases of theirs had been messed up.

“You gotta admit, though,” said Murphy, “this one’s, like, extra