The Neighbor
by Kimberly Tong
It was the last thing they expected to find in the kitchen.
“Hey kid, you put this here?” Natalie’s accusatory finger swiveled from the floor where the thing lay greeting her, to her brother’s lanky frame stepping through the door.
Noah scoffed, his brows furrowed. “Please lay-dee, why would I touch that thing? I bet even Mr. Harrington wouldn’t. And I told you not to call me that.”
It was a pillow of medium proportions, stuffed so generously as to be an accent piece rather than a comfortable back support. It was covered with once bright and attractive violet linen that over time had faded into a dusty purple. Aztec patterns were stitched on in alternating threads of yellow, orange and a most garish green. Its ugliest feature was the fringe on all four sides, fraying and matting together to form stale-smelling, slightly damp clumps. And those tassels. Surely, whoever owned it was in a hurry to get rid of it.
Natalie eyed the offending object lying on the floor, her nose turned up slightly as her eyes twitched. It smelled odd. She shrugged and turned to her twin. “Maybe mom was doing a load and dropped it. It could be the Brewster’s, or maybe the Smith’s. You know she does their laundry in the mornings if she has an afternoon shift.” Noah, who was too busy stuffing his head into the open fridge, replied with an unintelligible “mmh.”
“Where is mom, anyways?” Natalie asked. “It’s almost seven.”
“Dunno,” her brother replied with a shrug. “Maybe she took an extra shift. Rioting bus drivers again. Prince Charming finally showed up. Traffic, man. Hey, could cha do something ‘bout this… shmells funky.” Having successfully retrieved a day-old ham sandwich, Noah slouched against the sink chewing loudly, and gestured to the pillow with his free hand. Among the peeling, yellow wallpaper and the beige of their scratched kitchen tiles, the purple pillow seemed to absorb all the light from the dim fluorescent bulb dangling overhead. God, it sure was ugly. “Beatrice hasn’t chopped off your limbs yet, can’t you do it yourself?” Natalie rolled her eyes, but bent to pinch a few strands of the fringe together and chucked it onto the top of the large laundry basket sitting just inside their tiny storeroom within their kitchen.
“Oh, Beatrice off, Nat.”
It was customary for people in the surrounding neighborhoods to throw the name “Beatrice” around like a curse. It was rumored that the eponymous elderly lady lived alone because a decade ago, she had chopped her husband into pieces for forgetting to buy food for their cats. No one was certain who had started the rumor, or whether it was true, but it had spread among the various neighborhoods with rapid velocity, as moot speculations about other people often do. Even now, Jones the Butcher would greet customers with a hearty “How would you like your meat Beatriced?” In fact, just that year, a Thanksgiving Cook-Off had been held at the town’s City Hall to celebrate their very own Town Myth turning a decade old. The most pined-for award by a landslide, and the one that served as what Mayor Lemon had called a “fail-proof incentive” to encourage more sign-ups, was the “Best Beatrice-r” award, and it had been given to the fastest and most aggressive pumpkin chopper, Mother-Of-Three Amy Lee. The twins had gone as spectators in hopes that they would have some Thanksgiving food to take home and share with their mother, Sherry. They, too, indulged in day-to-day Beatrice-ing, but tended to do so only after cautious glances around. Because unfortunately for them, their myth lived right next door.
Beatrice Wells was the only other person too desperate, poor or crazy to live in such a desolate and godforsaken part of their town. This part of town, with its crumbling brick rooftops, dry, overgrown yards, rusted playground, barbed wire fences and blinking lampposts was not a place meant for living. It was a place meant for leaving. A place that meant multiple shifts at multiple jobs, multiple trips to the thrift store for back-to-school clothes, no parties or sleepovers or any friends coming over at all, and nights spent cutting out food coupons. It also meant that all hope rested on a football scholarship and an Ivy League acceptance letter. And right that moment it meant that dinner would consist of yet another bowl of leftovers.
Satisfied with her temporary solution for getting rid of the hideous pillow, Natalie dusted off her hands and sauntered towards their living room. “Heat up the pasta,” she called back to Noah. “I need to cleanse myself of all that mold.”
***
It was late. Way too late, and Sherry still was not home. The dining table had been cleared away, the leftovers once again placed in the fridge to be kept for the next day. “Try calling again,” Noah mumbled as he looked over at his sister on the other end of their couch. “I’ve called literally twenty times,” Natalie snapped, glaring back at him.
“Well, call again. Lucky twenty one.”
Natalie stood up. “This isn’t funny. Stop shaking your knee! Do you need to be told twenty one times?” With each word she emphasized, Natalie stomped forward, making her way over to the nearest window to yank the curtains together even tighter. She hated it when there was even a slight gap in the curtains, never knowing who might be out in the dark, peeking in. As hard as she tried to find perks of living in this part of town, she could never come up with a single one. She hated that the walls creaked on hot nights as the cheap plaster expanded and shrank. Hated that the heating always failed them on cold ones. She especially hated that on blustery nights, she could her the rusted swing sets and merry-go-rounds nearby groaning as they were coaxed to life by the wind. Sometimes, if she forgot to latch the windows, the gusts of wind would blow the curtains open, and she’d swear she would see the outline of a small, dark, hunched figure standing at the edge of their yard, concealed in the shadows and staring into their home.
Satisfied that all the windows were locked and the curtains gap-free, Natalie plunked back down onto the couch and gently placed her battered laptop on her lap once more. Noah looked over at the clock on the wall, his drumming fingers now carrying on the rhythm his knees had given up.
Tick, tock.
11:41.
Tick, tock.
11:42.
Tick–
“Should we call her workplace? Or Aunt Lucinda?”
Natalie released a jagged breath and shook her head, her fingers pausing mid-word but her eyes remained on the screen. “All calls are directed to management, remember? I don’t want to get mom in trouble. And it’s late. We’ll call Aunty if mom’s not home by the time we leave for school tomorrow. Who knows,” she finally looked up and gave Noah a sideways glance. “Maybe mom’s celebrating a promotion. It’s about time something good happened to her.”
***
By the time Natalie came out of the shower the next day, Sherry was still nowhere to be seen. When she entered the kitchen, she saw a pacing Noah, football clutched tightly between both of his large hands, fingertips white and the muscle in his jaw ticking. He turned when he heard her light steps.
“I’ve made you breakfast, being the nice brother I am and all,” he rushed out. “Hurry up and eat it. If we leave now we can head over to Beatrice’s. She could have seen something. Or the police. I know it’s been less than forty eight hours but whatever man. ”
But Natalie wasn’t listening. She sniffed the air and her faced scrunched up. “Ugh, what is that smell?” Noah groaned, but ignoring his protests, she continued sniffing the air. “Oh God, it’s definitely coming from in here. Did you spill something?” she demanded. Noah looked at her sullenly. “No.”
Striding over to the storeroom, Natalie yanked open the door. Her eyes grew wide and her jaw slackened.”Oh my god, ew! Gross gross gross! Noah!” she hollered, backing away. With blood roaring in his ears, Noah bounded over, his lanky frame colliding with his sister’s retreating back. “Whatisit? Oh! Ew, what on earth…”
The pillow they had chucked into the laundry basket was crawling with ants and wriggly, worm-like critters, and smelled worse than the day before – now a strong stench similar to rotten eggs wafted from it. “Throw it out, hurry!” Noah winced at the shrillness of Natalie’s voice. Grimacing, he picked the pillow up by the corner and hurried to the front door, yanking it open before hurling the pillow onto the tiny patch of dried grass they called their yard. He rubbed his hands vigorously on his jeans and immediately regretted it, realizing they were a fresh pair. Shuddering, Noah looked up.
His eyes narrowed. “Hey Nat… come ‘ere,” he called back through the door. A slightly more composed Natalie appeared by Noah’s side, shouldering her backpack and tucking loose strands of brown hair behind her ear. With an ever so slight chin tilt from her brother, she glanced at their sole neighbor’s house, noticing bony fingers and a wrinkled wrist protruding out of a pink sleeve, barely visible in the shadows. The frail hand was pulling back velvet maroon curtains (“The blood of her murdered husband,” Noah had once delcared with a wicked grin) by just an inch, and she could barely make out the silhouette of hunched shoulders and a hair bun. “Beatrice.” she confirmed, nodding her head as the old woman let the curtain drop back down, making it impossible to pry through any of her windows.
More than just being a hallmark of the town, Beatrice was infamous among the surrounding neighborhoods for being a little off her rocker. Every evening at 4.43pm, she emerged from her two-room house dressed in her wooly, faded pink bathrobe and matching bedroom slippers, coarse grey hair piled onto the top of her head in a sloppy bun that resembled the whole tray of merengues Natalie had accidentally smushed when she worked at Betty’s Bakery the year before, before Bitter Betty had fired her. Beatrice would hold onto eight brown leashes with her obese cats clipped on at the ends and in this manner, under-dressed and over-cat-ted, she would drag her cats to the nearest grocery store and return at exactly 5.02pm with a single plastic bag of cat food. When they moved next door to her six years ago, the twins were fascinated by Beatrice. For an entire week, they would sit out on their small yard at 5pm in the evening, pretending to be engrossed in pulling out the dead grass, while glancing every few moments at their flimsy plastic watches, waiting for it to turn 5.02pm. And without fail, Beatrice would show up, her cats a little out of breath but she as calm as ever, carrying her bag of cat food, oblivious to the stares and rude looks thrown at her from passersby. The twins never saw her return home with anything else. She was the cherry on top of all the other factors that made this neighborhood a place meant for leaving.
“We’re late. Let’s go. We’ll call Aunt Lucinda on the way.” Natalie made to step back into their house, but Noah grabbed her by her elbow. “It won’t hurt to ask. Maybe she saw something during one of her peep-fests.” It took him five steps to be at her front door, knocking on it urgently.
Five seconds. Ten seconds.
“Mrs Wells, open up please!” Knock-knock-knock.
Fifteen seconds.
“Mrs Wells!”
Twenty seconds.
“Noah, let’s go! I have a test first period okay!”
Noah whipped his head towards Natalie and shot her a glare. “I’m worried. This is mom we’re talking about. She always calls us if she’s working late, no matter what. Always.” Natalie glared back and flung an arm out towards the ramshackle maroon door. “And this is Beatrice Wells we’re talking about,” she said in a low voice, between clenched teeth. “You think I’m not worried? I barely slept a wink last night. I even opened the damn curtains to look out for mom every hour! But there’s not much we can do now. I’ll get Anna to drive me to the police station after school. Go home after practice and see if mom’s here by then. But for god’s sake, do not even think about talking to Beatrice. Because if I find out you did, I’ll chop you up myself before she does. Now let’s go. We really need to leave. Now.” Turning, she stalked towards the street and with a petulant huff, Noah stomped after her, glowering at the back of her head all the way to the bus stop.
***
By the time Noah got home, the sun was an orange ball of fire dipping just below the derelict rooftops of the deserted houses surrounding theirs. His worn sneakers squelched in the mud of their tiny, barren yard as he trudged, droopy-eyed, towards the front door. Exhausted from all the heavy, worried thoughts raging in his mind throughout school and during football practice, Noah let a loud yawn escape and took a deep breath in as he reached for the rusty copper doorknob.
He paused.
Taking a step back, he slowly turned his head to the left, his eyes slightly unfocused as he stared blankly at the dirty purple pillow lying harmlessly at the edge of their yard, not fully processing what he was looking at. The fabric was now almost entirely covered with insects and was emitting a nauseating smell that yanked him out of his sleepy stupor and made him retch.
“Right… Let’s get this over with,” Noah muttered under his breath, and cautiously approached the pillow. Squatting down but ensuring he wasn’t touching the pillow in any way, he turned to retrieve his replica Swiss army knife from his backpack. Angling the blunt blade just right, he made an incision at the corner and sliced open one end of the pillow.
The stench was unbearable. But the sight of the pillow’s contents was even worse. Ants and worms had managed to breach the thick outer case and crawl into the layers of wool, and they now wriggled out and fell onto the dry grass as the thick clumps of wool tumbled out. Noah groaned loudly, pinching his nose and squinting, using one foot to shift the wool around as he searched for… what was he searching for?
And then he froze, all the air rushing out of him.
Right in the middle of all that wool, staining the surrounding clumps a dark crimson, was a finger.
Severed at the base knuckle and crusty with dried blood, white maggots had already consumed the flesh and wiggled their way from one opening to the other, and the fingernail hung onto the cuticle like a door unhinged. Upon closer inspection, what appeared to be a layer of dried blood coating the fingernail was in fact red nail varnish. In a shade Noah knew all too well.
Glossy red fingertips, running over his head and ruffling his hair. Gripping onto a pen, signing a form for school. Cutting the last slices of Betty’s leftover cake that Natalie had brought home to celebrate their birthday, and handing one each to him and Natalie, melodious laughter bubbling forth as they tried to give her back a slice.
Noah paled. His eyes widened in realization and horror. Opening his mouth, he gulped mouthfuls of air reeking of rot, and started choking on the malodor. He bent over and spewed his lunch out onto the brown grass. And then he screamed. Screamed so loud, he thought the windows might shatter. He even saw Beatrice’s maroon curtains shift.
Beatrice.
Delirious and frantic, Noah pushed off from the ground. He stumbled over to his neighbor’s house and pounded on the door hard enough to break it down. “Mrs Wells! Help me! He-help! Please please please please! Shit! Ohmygodohmygod! Shit! Shit! Oh my god!”
The door swung open, and Noah, pushing up against it, fell forward and into the dark house, landing on his face with a loud thump. Pushing himself upright, he moaned as he looked up at the dark silhouette of Beatrice, who was carrying two of her cats, her wide eyes gleaming in the dim room.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Mrs Wells, you have no idea, I don’t know what to do you need to help me, my m-mom…” Noah gasped out, sobbing and whimpering as he clutched at the moldy grey carpet, desperately pulling at it like it was dead grass from their yard. His eyes roved around the hallway, barely seeing, ears ringing. In that moment, the only sound he could produce was an unintelligible cry.
Beatrice’s expression soured. She gently placed her cats on the ground, and shooed them away with a flick of her bony wrist. Putting her hands on her hips, she clicked her tongue, forehead creasing as she frowned at the blubbering child on the ground, contaminating her floor with the mud on his shoes. He’d been such a bother all day, almost breaking down her door in the morning to get to her cats. Just like his mother, visiting the day before, pretending to offer laundry services. She saw the way that Sherry woman had eyed her cats when she sat in her kitchen. To think that she had even offered Sherry her precious cat food pie. They all just wanted to take her cats, the lot of them. “Over their dead body,” she thought to herself.
Collecting herself, Beatrice cleared her throat. “There there, if you don’t stop crying honey, my cats might get upset too,” she sang. “And then… I’ll have to punish you.”
“Wh…what?”
Noah’s sobs halted, and he looked over his shoulder at Beatrice, who had shuffled past him and was slowly closing the door. Confused, he turned his head to look down the dingy hallway. As the last rays of the sun shone through the small gap in the door, it illuminated the colorful couch that was peeking right around the corner of the hallway, in the main living room. It was a couch of medium proportions, stuffed so generously as to be a decorative piece of furniture, rather than to bring comfort. It was covered with violet linen, once bright but now faded into a dusty purple with age. The only pillow resting on it was of a matching fabric, with Aztec patterns stitched on in alternating threads of yellow, orange and a most garish green. The ugliest feature of the pillow by far would be the fringe surrounding all four sides, fraying and matting together. Even from where he crouched, Noah could see the tassels.
The door lock clicked into place. Noah swung his head around to look up at Beatrice, looming over him. Slowly, almost robotically, her head, too, lowered to look at Noah.
She smiled.
***
The house was quiet and completely dark when Natalie stepped through the doorway. The squealing of tires as Anna drove off was amplified like thunder in the silence. Natalie’s hesitant and slow footsteps echoed as she made her way through the living room. Goose bumps ran up and down her arms as she tried to block out the image she had just seen, of worms and ants crawling all over her yard. The pillow was gone though, thank god for that. Noah must have gotten rid of it.
Exhausted from arguing with the police all evening, she sighed heavily and dropped her bag on the couch, then made her way to the back of the house. The policemen had sniggered at her claims that something bad had happened to Sherry. “What, she been Beatrice-d?” they had scoffed as they sucked powdered sugar off their greasy, fat fingers. Damn those men and their stupid box of donuts. She needed some sugar herself. Reaching the kitchen, she flipped on the light switch.
Her skin crawled.
It was the last thing she expected to find in the kitchen. The familiar faded purple case, Aztec pattern, fringe and tassels mocking her as it lay on the ground.
It didn’t smell odd though. No, not yet.