The Girl Who Wasn't There Read online

  She lifts her head and looks to see if the creature is still here. It is. Standing in the doorway. And through the blurry haze, she sees its face in the light of the cigar, and she is almost certain she sees a smile on its lips as it whispers: “Sleep tight, Alice.” Then it closes the door and leaves Rebecca to the silence.

  She feels like crying. She decided a while back that she wouldn’t cry anymore, that she wouldn’t give in to it, that she would act brave; but she’s not brave, not at all. She misses her family so much and she’s scared. Scared of the creature, scared that she’ll never be found, scared that she’ll eventually forget her name.

  She gets up, wipes the tears from her still stinging eyes and wobbles to the table with small gasps of pain with every step. She can feel the burn wounds bleeding, but she doesn’t care; she’s so used to the pain by now, she hardly registers it.

  The table is stuffed with pieces of paper, drawings of birds, mostly lapwings but also other kinds. She found the pencil and the paper in a drawer downstairs, and the creature apparently didn’t mind her bringing it to her room.

  She grabs the pencil and a blank piece of paper and writes in big, bold letters:

  REBECCA WISLER

  She stares at the name, then writes it again. And again. Smaller and smaller as she runs out of blank space. Writing her name alleviates some of the fear.

  Afterwards, she looks at the paper and realizes it’s no good having it around. The creature will not stand for it. It will confiscate it as soon as it finds it—and it will find it, no matter where she hides it. It searches the room now and then, and if it finds something it doesn’t like, it’ll punish her with an extra-long and drawn-out round of feet-burning.

  Like the time she had written a letter for help which she planned on taping to the back of the van, in the hope that the creature wouldn’t notice it the next time it went for a drive.

  Or when she stole a knife from the kitchen, planning to cut the creature as it came up to say good night. She wasn’t sure she could really go through with it, but she was so pissed off that day, she was willing to try.

  She never got the chance, though, because right on that same day—just like on the day she had written the letter and hidden it under the carpet—the creature came to search the room and found her secret.

  Because it knows. Somehow, it always knows if Rebecca has done something she shouldn’t have.

  Writing her real name all over a piece of paper will almost certainly spark its fury.

  But I need to write it down somewhere, Rebecca thinks to herself, looking around the room. Or I might forget it.

  She limps to the window, bends down and examines the windowsill. The lower part protrudes a few inches from the wall. There is just enough space for her to write on.

  She glances at the door, then kneels down and writes her full name on the underside of the windowsill. She writes it again and again, tracing the letters and pushing the pencil harder each time, until there’s a slight crevice in the board and the tip of the pencil is worn flat.

  She looks at the name, feeling better now.

  Back in the beginning, Rebecca had hoped the cigars would kill off the creature. Mom often told her how smoking is bad for you and can cause a lot of diseases. Lung cancer, for instance.

  When Rebecca sometimes lies awake at night, thinking about her family, fighting the tears, she desperately hopes for the creature to fall ill and die. If that happens, she will leave the house, unlock the gate and run down the gravel road as fast as she can, not looking back and not stopping until she reaches another house or meets a passing car.

  Unfortunately, the creature doesn’t seem ill in anyway. And Rebecca has long since rejected the hope that she will outlive it.

  “My name is not Alice,” she whispers as she goes to the desk and picks up the paper. “My name is Rebecca, and I’ll never forget it.”

  She tears up the paper into tiny pieces.

  That night, somewhere around midnight, Rebecca wakes up and notices the light. It’s coming from the closet; a thin, white strip streaming out from the crack in the door.

  The closet across from the bed is built into the wall. The door is made of dark wood with a cut-out ornament which makes Rebecca think of leaves and butterflies.

  At first, Rebecca is confused as to what causes the light, and she even suspects this might be a dream. But no, she feels awake.

  She pushes the blanket aside, waking up Boris, who looks at her from the foot-end of the bed with sleepy eyes. Rebecca gets out and slips over to the closet. She places her hand in the stream of light, as though to check it’s real. She lets her fingers play with the tiny, fine flecks of dust in the air. Then, she carefully opens the closet door.

  On the shelves, her clothes—white pants and yellow shirts—are neatly folded up, just like Mom taught her. Rebecca washes her clothes in the sink and hangs them out to dry on the line in the garden, so they don’t get to stink.

  The light is coming from the top of the closet. There’s a crack in the boards, and this is where the light comes in.

  Rebecca reaches up. She can’t quite reach the opening, but she can feel the cool breeze coming in.

  And she realizes the crack is a hole in the roof, and that the light is moonlight.

  Why haven’t I seen this before? Why doesn’t the sun shine in through here too?

  The answer is obvious, of course. In the day, everything is bright, and the stream of light wouldn’t be visible. But now, when the room is completely dark, the strip of moonlight is free to show itself off.

  Rebecca closes the closet and goes to the window. She leans against the glass and can just make out the moon high above. It’s only one-third full, but its white light shines down over the house and the garden.

  For some reason, Rebecca thinks of Andy. She imagines him sitting in his room, looking out the window and up at the moon, just like she is now.

  Could he be thinking about her? Is he wondering where she might be? Or did he forget about her? Do they all assume she’s dead? Maybe Mom and Dad even decided to have another child. If it’s a girl, it can have Rebecca’s room.

  The thought makes her so sad she begins to sob quietly. She sits there for a long time, crying by the window, bathed in the moonlight, thinking about her family, wondering if she will ever see them again.

  DAY 89

  One morning, as Rebecca wakes up and gets out of bed, Boris doesn’t jump to the floor as he usually does, eager for Rebecca to let him out for his morning pee, then feed him breakfast. Instead, he just stays snuggled up at the bottom of the bed.

  “Hey, sleepy head,” Rebecca yawns, nudging him gently. “It’s morning. Time to wake up now.”

  The dog doesn’t react at all. Rebecca knows he’s pretty old and doesn’t always hear too well, but him sleeping this heavily is quite unusual.

  “Boris? Wakey-wakey.”

  She strokes the back of his neck, surprised to feel how cold he is. She nudges him harder. Still no reaction.

  “Oh, no,” Rebecca whispers, as she realizes with a sinking feeling what’s wrong. “Boris!”

  She grabs him and shakes him, but he’s all limp, his eyes are closed and his mouth open. She lets go of him again with a gasp, and he just slumps back down onto the bed.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Rebecca whimpers, putting both hands to her mouth. The shock is overwhelming; Boris had shown no signs of illness, so how can he just have died overnight? The thought of losing her last friend is too much to bear, and Rebecca buries her face in her hands and starts crying loudly.

  A moment later, she senses the smell and looks up. Through tears she sees the creature standing in the open door.

  “He’s … he’s dead,” she sobs. “Boris is dead.”

  The creature comes into the room and stops by the foot of the bed. Rebecca just looks at Boris and sniffles. The creature picks up the dog, gently, then carries it out of the room. She hears it go downstairs, and a minute later, the sound of the front
door.

  For a minute or so, Rebecca hopes that the creature will fix Boris. Maybe he wasn’t really dead after all. Maybe the creature has some sort of supernatural power which can bring him back. She almost begins to hope.

  Then something draws her attention towards the window. She gets up and goes to it. Down in the garden, she sees the creature walking with Boris under one arm and the shovel under the other. It goes behind the hedge at the place where Alice is buried.

  Rebecca starts crying again and throws herself onto the bed.

  She stays in the room for the rest of the day and the days to come.

  It feels like she lost more than just a good friend. It feels like she’s lost everyone and is left completely alone in the world. She misses Boris badly, particularly in the morning when she wakes up and finds the foot of the bed empty. The only sound in the house that could make her happy was the low ringing of the bell in Boris’s collar, telling her the dog was somewhere nearby, and that she wasn’t alone with the creature. But now there is only the silence and that damned grandfather clock and the creaks from the floorboards as the creature moves around.

  Rebecca can’t bring herself to leave the room; she’s too depressed. The creature brings her food while she sleeps. Rebecca has hardly any appetite and struggles to eat.

  The only consolation is that the creature stops burning her feet and dripping her eyes for a few days. Yet Rebecca doesn’t really care. She would have almost welcomed the pain. Anything would be better than the emptiness left by Boris.

  She’s never felt this lonely in her life.

  DAY 91

  One evening, as Rebecca leaves her room and goes to pee, she suddenly hears a sound from downstairs.

  It’s the ringing of Boris’s bell.

  She feels her heart open like a flower, and for a moment she imagines Boris has returned, that he wasn’t really dead after all, that the creature didn’t really burry him, but instead took him to the vet who has now fixed him. But of course, it’s a silly thought.

  Then what’s making the ringing?

  Rebecca goes downstairs and peeks into the living room. Her eyes are a little better because the creature hasn’t given her the liquid for almost a week, and she immediately sees the puppy sitting on the floor, playing with a sock. It’s a dachshund, the exact same color as Boris, and it’s wearing Boris’s collar, even though it’s too big for the tiny neck.

  The sight of the puppy is so unreal, Rebecca feels like she’s looking at Boris reincarnated. She steps into the room.

  The puppy looks up and sees her. It yelps happily and runs to greet her on its stumpy legs. It jumps up and down in front her, whining impatiently as the bell rings.

  Rebecca kneels down and picks it up. The puppy licks her chin and bites her hair. Rebecca can’t help but snigger.

  “Who are you?” she asks, holding out the puppy to study it. It just looks back at her with a silly expression, mouth open and the pink tongue hanging out.

  Rebecca checks the name tag on the collar. It still says BORIS.

  “Oh, so your name is Boris too,” she smiles, rubbing her nose against the puppy’s snout, then laughing as it tries to lick her nostrils. “Are you going to live here now?”

  The puppy yelps again, squirming joyfully in her hands, and Rebecca feels her heart beating warmly in her chest.

  She has been so taken in by the puppy that she hasn’t noticed the creature until now. It’s sitting in the armchair over at the corner, halfway hidden in shadow, only its skinny legs visible, and of course the orange glow from the cigar. It’s been sitting completely quiet, watching her.

  Rebecca feels a cold shiver run down her back. She doesn’t like how the creature saw her reaction to the puppy, saw her laughing happily. It’s almost like she’s been exposed. She quickly puts down the puppy, then rushes out of the room and back upstairs.

  Later, as she lies in bed, trying to sleep, she can’t stop thinking about the puppy downstairs. Once or twice she hears it yelp. She wishes now that she had brought it up with her.

  She awakens during the night because she dreams Boris is licking her cheek. The sensation is so real, she can even smell his fur, and she smiles dreamily.

  As she becomes more awake, she blinks and rubs her eyes, and the warm feeling from the dream turns into sadness when she remembers once more that Boris is dead and gone.

  But then she hears someone breathing right next to the pillow, and she turns her head. The puppy is looking at her with small, sleepy eyes, before licking her cheek one last time, then lying down with a sigh.

  Rebecca stares at the door. It’s closed. Which means the puppy can’t have ventured in here on its own. Besides, how would it have climbed the stairs? Old Boris could only just manage the steps, and he was three times as big. That can only mean …

  Rebecca doesn’t care at all for the thought that the creature has been in here while she slept—she hates when it does that. But she is happy that New Boris is here. She places her hand on its back, feeling its rapid breathing and tiny heartbeat.

  She falls asleep and sleeps well the rest of the night.

  DAY 97

  Rebecca instantly becomes best friends with New Boris. He sleeps in her bed every night—not by her feet, like Old Boris would, but right up against her pillow.

  In the daytime, they play in the room or out in the garden when the sun is shining. Rebecca feeds him twice a day like she did with Old Boris, taking the food from the bag in the scullery. She’s not entirely sure how much food the puppy needs, so she gives him plenty. After all, he needs to grow.

  Rebecca doesn’t feel quite as sad about Old Boris being dead anymore. She has a new friend now. And yet something about the thought of Old Boris keeps nagging her whenever she remembers him. She’s not quite sure what it is, though.

  One day, Rebecca realizes the puppy is actually a she. She has brought it out into the garden to pee—she’s seen it pee many times, but watching it now, it suddenly occurs to her that it doesn’t pee quite like Old Boris did. Whereas Old Boris would raise one hindleg up high, New Boris simply bends both hindlegs.

  Rebecca picks up the puppy and turns it over to make sure. It checks out. New Boris is definitely a she.

  That same evening, after mulling it over, Rebecca decides to make it right.

  She brings the puppy down to the kitchen, where the creature is sitting by the table, reading the newspaper and smoking. Even though its back is turned, it apparently senses Rebecca standing there, because it stops reading and turns around on the chair. It doesn’t say anything, just looks in her direction, as though waiting for her to speak.

  “You need to buy a new name tag,” Rebecca says. “It can’t be called Boris. It’s a girl.”

  The puppy yaps in agreement.

  The creature, however, shakes its head slowly and says simply: “Boris.”

  “No, she can’t be named Boris,” Rebecca says patiently. “Boris is a boy’s name.”

  “Boris,” the creature repeats, still shaking its head.

  “She’s a girl,” Rebecca persists, stepping a little closer. “Look. She doesn’t have a—”

  The creature slams both hands onto the table with in a sudden ferocity and bellows: “BORIS!”

  Rebecca staggers backwards, almost dropping the puppy, who jerks and begins whimpering in her arms. Rebecca turns and flees upstairs.

  As she closes the door to the room and clutches the puppy to her chest, she can’t really tell if it’s her own or the dog’s heart that’s beating faster.

  That evening, for the first time since Old Boris died, the creature begins burning her feet and giving her the eye-liquid again.

  Later on, as she lies in bed with the puppy snoring softly next to the pillow, Rebecca can’t fall asleep. She just stares up into the blurry ceiling, as thoughts keep going around her head, and her feet throb painfully under the fresh bandages.

  Rebecca turns her head sideways and strokes the puppy’s back as she broods. No
w she understands what was bugging her about the thought of Old Boris.

  As she lies in bed now, in the dark room, it all comes into place in her mind, and she finally realizes no one will come for her. It’s been way too long now.

  In fact, she has known it for a while, she just didn’t want to face it. But losing Old Boris somehow brought it to the surface.

  The truth is, if she wants to get away from this place, she needs to do it herself. Or else she will spend the rest of her life here, without ever seeing her family or even another human being again. And one day, if she turns fatefully ill or the creature grows tired of her and decides to kill her, she will end up in a hole in the ground out behind the hedge next to the bones of Alice, and the creature will go on to find a replacement, just like it did with Boris.

  The thought makes her both angry and very sad. The creature tries to forget that Old Boris is dead, that he was even really here. But he was. Rebecca remembers him, and she always will.

  “Your name isn’t Boris,” she whispers to the puppy. “From now on, your name is … Doris.”

  Rebecca smiles and breathes deeply through her nose. Something has changed within her. Something has been brought back to life. Something which had almost gone away forever.

  She’s scared at the thought of fleeing—terrified, actually—but somehow, weirdly, she also feels relief. Even if it should fail and the creature catches her and punishes her, the punishment can’t be worse than staying here, waiting to die.

  “I’m going to try,” she tells the sleeping puppy. “I really am. And I’m bringing you with me, Doris.”

  Rebecca closes her eyes then and falls asleep with surprising ease.

  And for the first time in a long time, she dreams about Andy and the rest of her family waiting for her back home.

  DAY 98

  Rebecca spends an hour the next day, when the creature is out, going around the house, looking in every room, thinking.