We Ate the Dark

by Mallory Pearson

Show her you’ve discovered all her holy spots and watch her try to find another, deeper forest. Everything she’s kept from you is yours now: these frilly private things, this tiny book of screams. Possession, Martha Rhodes

The fractured foundation bows, a slumped animal, a hunted thing caught with an arrow in its back.

Could a house hold that? It was all just energy—clinging, sticky, material. Could the shape of

a structure remember the hurt administered within it?

That’s what Frankie’s mother told her, at least, and she had only been wrong a few times. The faults could be forgiven.

In Frankie’s traitorous memory, the empty space her sister took up blinked open and caught her watching.

And with Marya there—at least there was someone to witness her, a place to put the frustration.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to go anywhere but home.

The sheriff held his hat and bowed his head. The shock of his intrusion was overwhelming. Every thought she’d had of home and safety was suddenly violated.

It was almost as if, just by standing in her doorway, the sheriff was implicit in every aspect of the horror yet to come.

Maybe I will never cry again, not for as long as I live.

In her mind, the edge of the lake lapped gritty red clay. She was, of course, wrong.

She could recharge and piece herself back together before the day demanded her presence, be in and out before Loring could remember it had once raised her.