I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House Page #2

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- No.

Yes.

Do you know anything

about anyone named Polly?

Polly? Polly who?

Ms. Blum insists on calling me Polly.

She never calls me anything else.

Of course, it's a natural thing

for someone with her condition.

It's just that a confusion like that

is usually with the memory

of someone significant.

Not just a no one.

Well, there is Polly

from Ms. Blum's novel,

The Lady in the Walls.

Easily her best known.

You haven't read it.

Heavens to Betsy, no, I haven't.

No, um, I scare too easily. I...

Yes, that's right.

Well, there is a not-very-good movie,

if you prefer.

No. No.

That would be much, much worse.

I'd likely run down to the road screaming.

And who'd look after Miss Blum?

That particular novel was most notable

for Ms. Blum's deliberate choice...

to leave off

the presumably horrific ending.

Though she always insisted

it wasn't a choice at all,

but rather an obligation.

An obligation to be true to the subject.

To Polly.

I don't understand.

Well, I don't want to give it away.

But, Mr. Waxcap, I...

I'll never read it.

I'd hate to keep you.

The house was built in 1812

by the two bare hands of a local man,

as a gift to his new bride.

The couple was last seen

taking their marriage vows

in the center of town.

And the very next day, they were gone...

disappearing before placing

a single piece of furniture.

The townspeople shook their heads

and clucked their tongues.

"Some people," they'd say,

"just get spooked."

Well, well.

You're not so big and tough.

The pretty thing

you are looking at now is me.

My name is Polly Parsons

and I came into the world

just as I left it.

I'm not more than a few minutes old

and my mother is already dead,

her forehead slick with sweat,

and cool with the pallor

of icebox butter.

I am tied to my mother's body

by a terrible rope

that is a shiny, twisted

midnight blue-black.

The doctor is holding me up to the light.

But now I am dead.

And yes, I left the world

just as I came into it.

I am wearing nothing but blood.

No.

Nuts.

Polly!

I am as white as a sail.

I tell this often to myself.

I tell myself that nothing gets on me.

But it does me little good.

The words pour right through.

I am too full of holes.

Grow up, you dumb old scaredy-cat.

It's just a bunch of silly old

make-believe typed words on paper.

"Dear Reader,

You should know that the true account

that follows in this book

was told to me directly by Polly Parsons,

the young woman who lived it

but, alas, did not survive it.

True to our heroine, my heroine,

I have written down

all that she cared to reveal.

All but the very ending,

which she was either unable

or unwilling to tell me herself.

Or maybe

she just couldn't see it anymore."

"And even if I was fiendishly tempted,

I have refrained

from pressing the subject with her.

Though it seems safe to assume

that, as endings go,

Polly's was not an especially pretty one.

But Polly wouldn't tell me herself,

and I couldn't have gone

and simply made something up.

So I have left it off altogether.

Out of respect for the dead,

you understand.

Because yes, dear reader,

Polly Parsons, the subject of this book,

is quite dead indeed.

Quite dead but not quite buried.

Carelessly concealed in a grave

too shallow to be rightly called

a grave at all.

Better to call it a... hiding place.

But I've said too much already,

and now will leave the rest

to Polly herself,

as was my intention in the first place.

Iris Blum,

Braintree, Massachusetts, 1960."

You silly Billy.

You silly Billy.

The walls and windows

are as thin as bones.

A person could walk right through them.

Just up and leave this old house.

No whammies, no whammies,

no whammies. Stop.

No whammies, no whammies,

no whammies. Stop.

No whammies, no whammies,

no whammies. Stop.

No whammies, no whammies,

no whammies. Stop.

This is how you rot.

It's safe, though?

I mean, nothing is gonna fall down?

And when do you think

you can come to do that?

To open it up? To...

open up the wall, I mean.

Yeah, Monday is okay.

Any day is okay. I'm not going anywhere.

I haven't really looked. I...

I kind of hate the sight of it.

But okay.

I can.

I will.

Okay. Thanks.

"I now believe Polly entirely

when she insists

that she does not remember

what happened to her in the end.

I can sometimes see her struggle

with the shape of it,

more as if trying to remember

a song she once heard,

and not as she might remember an event.

How does one forget

something as essential as that?

How does one forget a death?

Maybe it is the body that remembers.

And without the body,

there is nothing to hold to."

"We make our own ghosts by looking,

but pretending not to see...

and then forgetting ourselves altogether.

It is a terrible thing to look at oneself

and to all the while see nothing.

Surely this is how we make our own ghosts.

We make them out of ourselves."

I took one of your books

off the shelf in your study.

I hope that's all right.

The Lady in the Walls.

Had to put it down, though.

Too scary for me.

You know that one, don't you?

Where did you go, Polly?

I didn't go anywhere, Ms. Blum.

I'm here with you,

same as I have always been.

The same Lily Saylor

of 43 Hoover Road, Altoona...

Pennsylvania.

At your service.

You had so much to say

in those first years.

When you lived here with me.

Enough to fill a book.

And then...

nothing.

You turned your back.

You turned your back,

and you turned your back

so many times...

that soon your feet

were facing the wrong way altogether.

And I had to watch you come into a room...

back to front.

I did nothing but sit and listen.

I made no noises.

I welcomed no visitors.

And here, now, you've come back.

But only to hurt me,

only to show yourself,

- but not to let me see.

- No.

You hardly resemble yourself.

Ms. Blum... please.

You poor, pretty things

whose prettiness

holds only one guarantee.

Learn to see yourself as the rest

of the world does, and you'll keep.

But left alone, with only your

own eyes looking back at you,

and even the prettiest things rot.

You fall apart like flowers.

The pretty thing

you are looking at is me.

But it is me that still cannot see

any of what is coming.

Me that doesn't even know where to look.

Me that can see

only the drawer that opens

and the claw that closes.

The bell that rings

and the spots that spread.

The holes that pour through

and the cord that stretches.

The hammer and the pliers.

And the terrible book.

And the face of the woman

who wrote it all down.

The me that can see only the name.

Only her name.

But the rest of what is coming

cannot be seen

even as I look right at it.

It is a terrible thing

to look at oneself

and all the while see nothing.

Hello?

I had arrived

in the first few days of August,

hired to care for Ms. Blum.

The winter of that year

proved to be unseasonably warm,

and by February,

all that was left of the snow

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