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Lilah

Lilah staggered backwards, dropping all the sheets and blankets on the floor. The skeleton grinned up at her with its wide toothy mouth. It had its head on a pillow, as if it had been sleeping, but its eye sockets were open and black and empty. Its fleshless hands lay folded on its alabaster rib cage.

There was a round hole in its forehead, more or less right between where the eyebrows would have been.

“What’s wrong?” Marina came up next to her. “Oh my God.”

Lilah’s legs wouldn’t hold her anymore. She sat down abruptly on the dusty Turkish carpet, her teeth clicking together with the impact and cutting off her scream.

And all at once she was sick of this. She had had enough. She was up to the back teeth with discovering bodies and screaming and fainting.

“I would like this to stop now, please,” she said, quite calmly. “I would like people to stop dying.”

Meanwhile, Marina and Opal were gazing down at the skeleton.

“He’s wearing a bow tie,” said Opal.

“Is it real?”

“The bow tie? I should think so.” Opal lifted one of the skeleton’s hands by the wrist. “He’s fully articulated. See? All held together with wire and metal pins. Like the ones that used to be used in medical labs to teach anatomy.”

Marina let out a shaky laugh. “A fully furnished secret room with a skeleton in it is exactly my grandmother’s sense of humor.”

“So it’s a fake?” Lilah got up, more curious than frightened now.

“I think it’s real,” said Opal. “It’s legal enough to own them. I’m pretty sure you can buy them on the internet.”

“Is that a bullet hole between its eyes?”

In response to Lilah’s question, Opal lifted the skull off the pillow enough to reveal a larger hole in the back of the skull.

“Exit wound,” she said.

“So this is a murder victim ?”

“Nana Sylvia liked target shooting,” said Marina. “Usually she used clay pigeons. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she thought it was funny to use a skeleton.”

“You have a very disturbing family,” said Lilah.

“She was wonderful.” Marina began wrapping the skeleton up in the sheet that it was lying on. “She was the best person I knew and I miss her every day. And you’re in her house, so I’d thank you not to insult her.”

“You’re the one who invited us here.”

“Actually, I invited Opal.”

The other two watched as Marina trussed up the skeleton like a mummy and removed the bundle from the bed.

“I said that the two of you should stop being scared and apologizing, but I hoped the outcome would be more interesting than petty bickering,” Opal commented.

“Just make the bed before he wakes up.” Marina deposited the shrouded skeleton in the armchair and began noisily Dustbusting.

Lilah began making the bed until Opal, behind her, huffed in exasperation and took over. “You would never pass nursing school,” she said, briskly forming hospital corners on the sheets.

“I have a master’s in library science,” retorted Lilah.

“Hooray for you.” Opal pulled the sheet so taut that it looked painful. “If we need to alphabetize anything, that’ll come in handy.”

A groan from the other part of the cellar, louder than before, definitely loud enough to be heard over the mini vacuum cleaner.

“Listen,” said Lilah. “Let’s stop arguing, okay? We can untie Zachary, and take him to a hospital, and—”

“No,” said Opal and Marina together.

“But we are going to let him go eventually, right? We’re not going to keep him here until there’s another skeleton in that bed.”

“Of course not. We’ll just keep him here until we can get my kids out of the house, and we can work out a way to make him promise not to victimize women anymore.”

“Or, we could just let him—”

“When are you going to stop letting people walk all over you?” snapped Opal. “You’re an intelligent woman, obviously, and you’d be attractive with a little work. You need to find some self-esteem. You deserve better than him.”

“Please,” said Marina. “Please, let’s carry him in here now. Please, before he wakes up and unties himself. I worry that he might be angry and try to hurt us.”

She looked terrified. And that, weirdly, was what decided Lilah. Because hadn’t she decided just a few minutes ago that she was done with being scared?

“Okay,” said Lilah. The three of them went back to where Zachary was lying on the floor. Thankfully, his eyes were still closed. She didn’t think she could pick him up and move him around like a trussed chicken if he were awake and looking at her.

The Peppa Pig Band-Aids on his forehead were in exactly the same place that the bullet hole had been in the skull.

“You two take his legs,” ordered Opal. “I’ll take his shoulders. Lift when I say ‘go.’ And use your legs to lift, not your back.”

Zachary was tall, but he kept fit and slim, so Lilah didn’t think he would be too heavy. But he was dead weight. Marina lifted his bound feet, Lilah held up his legs, and Opal had a good grip under his shoulders, but his rear end still scraped on the floor as she and Marina walked backwards towards the bomb shelter.

“We’re going to need to turn around,” said Opal. “The two of you aren’t going to fit through the door side by side.” She looked more or less at ease carrying a 170-pound grown man, but Lilah had already started sweating. She and Marina shuffled to the side so that Opal could aim herself at the entrance.

By the time they got into the room, even Opal was beginning to grit her teeth and breathe hard. They maneuvered him towards the bed. “Okay, we’ll have to swing him on,” said Opal, but it was then that his legs started thrashing. Marina shook her head and put his feet down. “I can’t,” she gasped.

“Me neither,” said Lilah, with considerable relief. Opal shrugged and lay Zachary down on the floor. At least here, there was a carpet for him to lie on. He kicked and struggled, though his eyes were still closed.

Opal bent and pulled the ends of the duct tape around Zachary’s wrists and ankles loose, but not off. Marina took a white object out of a box and put it on a shelf. Lilah took the Dustbuster. Then they all quickly retreated out of the room. Marina shut and locked the door behind them.

“He wasn’t that heavy,” Opal said. “I can bench press more than that.”

“Hooray for you,” said Lilah. “If we need to lift any more unconscious men, that’ll come in handy.” She wiped sweat off her upper lip, remembered her juice box, and retrieved it from the shelf where she’d left it.

“Did we do the right thing?” Marina whispered. In the dim light her face was dead pale, even her lips.

Again, seeing Marina’s fear had the odd effect of making Lilah less distressed. She punched her straw through the juice box, making a perfectly round hole.

“No, we didn’t,” Lilah said. “But we’re all in this together, now.”