I keep It like a secret. Close. I can feel Its hearts beating through my shirt, fast and terrified. It nuzzles into me, as if It could burrow into my chest and create a cave for itself.
It has claws. It could.
I hold it away from me until it calms, then I bring it back into my embrace. This time, it was the doorbell. Last time, it was the honk of a car passing by outside. I'm never sure what will spark one of its seizures.
I shush it and replace It gently in the shoebox beneath my bed.
Then I come out of my room and join the rest of the family, stretching a wide smile over my face as I do.
The party is for my Aunt Nadine, who is some number of years old. She smokes too many cigarettes. One of her fingers ends in a swollen nub, where she lost the tip of it in a factory accident as a teenager. Her cackle sounds like a Gatling gun, and she's starting to stoop.
I try multiple times during the party to retreat back to my room, so I can feed It and make sure It doesn't need anything, but I get collared by one relative or another to tell them all about how school is. The mundanities of real life. How big I've grown.
I don't really get along with my family. Least of all, Aunt Nadine. She smells bad. I don't mean like stale cigarettes—though she does—I mean something worse.
"My favorite nephew!" I hear a shriek and cringe, but I don't know where it's coming from, and by the time I figure it out, it's too late. Aunt Nadine is upon me. She's wearing a black jacket with a long fringe today, and she's tottering on strappy heels that are too high for her. Her face looks like raw dough, except for in the places where she's applied far too much makeup. One eye wears enough mascara that it looks like she's been punched in the face.
She envelops me in a hug, and I feel like an emaciated bat has descended from the heavens to wrap me in its leathery wings. All I can smell is rotting and old cigarette smoke, and I gag, my eyes tearing up as we disengage.
"Don't tell me. You're . . . fourteen, now?"
"Fifteen," I grit out, wiping at my eyes. "I'll be sixteen in twenty-two days."
The Gatling gun comes out, sprays the ceiling with its laughter bullets. "Down to the day, he knows it," Nadine crows.
"I'm counting down," I say, embarrassed for some reason.
"Sixteen's a big age," she says, crouching down. Her breath is what smells, I realize—like she's been chewing on roadkill. Her many necklaces and beaded pendants swing and clatter together. One is a cross, I notice, another is a dreamcatcher, complete with miniature feathers hanging from it.
"You know what happens when you turn sixteen in this family?" she asks me, and her face has gone serious.
"No," I admit, unsure what she means.
"You start to see the ghosts."
An awkward silence wedges itself between us, and for a moment it feels like we are the only two people in the room.
Then the machine-gun laughter again, peppering the room, riddling it with her laughter. One of her puffy eyes closes at me in what I imagine to be a wink. A bony elbow catches me in the ribs, and I gasp with the intrusion.
"I'm just joshin' with you," she says. "Though your mom did see a ghost once. You should ask her about it."
"I will," I say. I strain to get away from Aunt Nadine's prowling eyes. Her ensemble beneath the leather jacket is a leopard-print blouse and tight black pants. Not only is there that rotting smell, there's also a healthy cloud of perfume that I can't name, but which is overwhelming.
My nostrils twitch. I sneeze. I sneeze again, and again, and again, little explosions. By the tenth time, I've started faking it, backing up slowly through the assembled crowd, waving my hand in front of my face to pardon my rudeness.
Finally, I've moved far enough away from everyone that I can dash into my room and ease the door shut behind me. It creaks in sabotage, but the noise of the party in the living room is enough to cover it.
Hurriedly, I tease out the shoebox from under the bed and lift the lid. Inside, It is making Its small noises of contentment. It needs nothing from me, not right now.
Later, It will be hungry.
I smooth Its scruff with the backs of my knuckles, lightly, and It stirs in Its sleep, growling throatily.
I put the lid back on the box and slide it carefully back beneath the bed, then sigh and return to the party.
Later, after the guests are gone and Mom is cleaning up the dishes, I ask her.
"Aunt Nadine told me you saw a ghost once. Did you?"
Mom laughs, her arms half-way to the elbow in soapy water. "Oh, that old story. Well, I'm still not exactly sure what I saw. It was a very long time ago. I was about your age, actually."
It’s hard to imagine Mom as my age, but I try anyway. "What did you see?"
"Well, it was night time, and so I was never really sure, but whatever it was looked right at me. I felt its eyes on me. The local legend said that the woods were haunted, but I never believed in any of that stuff. It could've been a ghost, I don't know, it could've even just been another person out there in the dark. All I know is that someone was watching me. And I kept feeling it, too, after I left the woods that night."
"That doesn't sound like a ghost," I scoff. "That doesn't even sound scary."
"Well, imagine someone else just looking at you for a really long time, without blinking, no matter where you go. And no matter what you do, you can't shake the feeling."
That does sound scary, but I don’t want to admit it, so I just shrug it off. "Everyone's always looking at me all the time anyway," I said. "Like I'm some kind of freak or something."
"You're not a freak," Mom says, but she doesn’t turn around, and continues plunging her hands into the dishwater. "You're just special. My special boy."
"Yeah, well, the kids at school don't know how to tell the difference between 'special' and 'freakish', okay?"
"They're just kids. If they jumped off a bridge, would you?"
"No. Well...I guess it depends on the bridge."
Mom chuckles, but looks tired. "Will you take the trash out for me, hon?"
I nod. Sure I will. I just have to go to the bathroom first.
On my way to the bathroom, I duck into my room. Sure enough, the shoebox is rattling a bit. Inside, It snuffles and makes little hungry yips. I draw It out and smuggle It down into my hooded sweatshirt, then hurry past Mom to grab the trash bags by its strings and head out the back door.
Outside, the night is crisp and chilly. I feel It curl in on Itself inside my shirt—It likes the heat, not the cold. The instant we got down the steps, It uncoils and leaps out of my hoodie in a long fluid motion, then is gone, arrowing off into the woods behind our house.
I hum a little song to myself as I deposit the trash bag in the bin. There is just the porch light, and it quavers a bit. My breath unfurls from me in plumes, and I jam my hands into my hoodie pockets, leaning against the side of the house.
In the woods, rustling sounds. A branch snaps, loudly, and more underbrush shifts. A high-pitched scream, not unlike a woman in a horror movie, shoots out of the forest.
In time, the sharp, coppery reek of spilled blood reaches my nostrils, and I smile.
It has begun to feed.
I turn around and go back inside, knowing Its pattern. It will return to me when it is sated. I will leave my window open just a crack, so It can slither in. It will curl up with me under the sheets.
When I wake up in the morning, it isn't Mom's hand that did the waking. It was the draft from the window I'd left open. I shiver, then instinctively looked down, for Its presence. Usually, It was a warm lump alongside me, but this morning, It is missing.
A soft knock at my bedroom door. I rustle in my sheets, jolted by the sound.
Mom comes in, startled to find me awake. "Did you have a nightmare?"
I rub at my eyes. "No," I say. "I just...I left the window open before bed, and it was cold."
As soon as she is gone, after she shut the window and returned to the warmth of the house, I bolt out of bed, throw back the sheets. Nothing. I yank the shoebox out from under, throw open the lid. Empty.
I start getting nervous. This is the first time it hasn't come back after feeding.
What if something had happened to It?