UMA

Content warning: This story contains depictions of physical aggression and threats of violence.

We are doing better, I think. Him even agreeing to take a day off, just for me, after everything these last few months, evinces a promising level of commitment. He’s driving too fast though, thinks that because country roads lack traffic he can fly down a 45 like it’s an empty interstate. I’m the one who grew up around here; he doesn’t know you’re never truly alone on the roads, no matter how dark or quiet. There’s a reason every other bend has a wooden cross and plastic flowers sunk into the shoulder moat.

The wind sends a lock of hair into my mouth. I make a show of rolling my window up, hoping he’ll get the hint.

“The GPS says we’re here.” Now he slows down a bit.

“It’s not gonna know.” I point up the road. “You should go up that dirt path.”

He squints, pinches two fingers to zoom in and out of the map on the display. “That’s too far from where it says it is.”

I flop my arm half-assedly in the same direction. “The ad said it’s down a dirt path.”

He examines the map a few more times, blows a raspberry. “You never showed me the ad.” Rumbles the X5 over the rocky hill and onto the path.

Oaks lined with dying ash. The poor ash, pesky little beetle gutted them all from the inside out, but the shells stand as scraggly brown relics across the landscape, trying their best to stay upright a little longer. I know if I’d shown him the ad, he would’ve shot the idea down instantly. The place did not look modern and that fact alone would’ve turned him off. Figured “a little bed and breakfast near my hometown” was enough info for him to work off of. He probably assumed I meant an Airbnb but nobody from where I grew up would even know how to set up an account.

There are no other cars in the vicinity of the house. First time he’s driven safely all day, slow and reticent. “Are we the only ones here?”

“It was a romantic getaway package,” I shrug. Though I guess I assumed we’d be greeted by someone, like a property manager or something.

“And how much did we pay for that?” He puts the car in park but doesn’t get out.

I don’t know if he means That sounds expensive or This place is too shitty for whatever you paid. “Uh, same as what a hotel would’ve been.”

He opens his mouth, decidedly closes it. Tugs the keys out of ignition. I mentally tally this as another point in my favor: he had more to say, but chose not to.

With that, I get out of the car smiling. I take in the house; the idea that we will sleep in a bedroom tonight, walk up and down stairs that creak, reminding us of the space we’ve ephemerally earned, the luxury of a kitchen partitioned from the couch.

From out here, it actually seems like too much room though—I notice three stories, I thought I’d only seen two in the flyer photo—and this briefly feels overwhelming.

We’re just accustomed to a cramped apartment, I remind myself. Even one more extra room would’ve initially overwhelmed me. I turn to him with my smile still plastered on, admire his Andean side profile, rugged and decorous. “It’s so nice!”

“It is pretty cool. In, like, a weird way.” He nods at the house, then flashes an appreciative smile my way. “Thanks for bringing us here.”

Pride rushes through me: Country Girl is providing City Boy with a novel life experience. He has certainly never slept in a barnhouse as big and rickety and weird as this. A memory, a gift I created, proof of my sovereign love.

Another tally mark: he hands me my bag from the trunk. I grin every step I take on the slate stone path, the same kind that led to the entryway of my childhood home. Front door is unlocked. Very Upstate.

The negative space of the den is unsettlingly more robust than the furnishings, corroborating my concern with having too much room. Den is all wood and the size of a parking lot, only interrupted by a small square of rug mostly covered by a two-seater velvet couch. TV straight outta the 2000s, taking up its own modest square footage. Expansive staircase, all wood.

“Never mind," he says. "This is fucking weird.”

I laugh for some reason. “Right?”

Despite the muggy swamp outside and clear lack of AC inside, it’s so cool and dry in here I’ve got goosebumps. I drop my bag on the floor to fish out the thoughtless sweatshirt I packed. The thud echoes and makes him jump. I say sorry.

He cracks his back, roves appraisingly to the kitchen. Now that we’re here, I actually don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to do with ourselves. Do you want a glass of wine? comes out way more high-pitched than I’d like to think I naturally am. I yank the hoodie over my head, evidently not thick enough to keep me warm, and dig to the bottom of my duffel for the pinot I smuggled.

“No. Thanks.” His head’s still on a swivel.

I muscle down my disappointment, calculate how hard he’ll judge me if I drink by myself. I find something to investigate—the stairs, I guess—and slowly unscrew the top, take a subdued sip.

The juice hits my warm empty stomach instantly and confirms this was the right decision. I mime evaluation, looking and not looking at the photographs hung from the stairwell. The frames are dusty and ornately foiled, so I was sorta expecting creepy old stone-faced family photos or something, but these are all landscapes from the area, no people in them. They’re boring, if anything. The only one that catches my buzzed eye is the empty swing set. It looks like the same backyard, but when I saunter over to the kitchen window facing it, I see no swing set there. Four little filled-in holes of earth where its posts likely stood. Maybe that’s why they kept the picture, as a relic.

Footsteps on the tile. I jump, but it’s just him. “Jesus,” I breathe. “You scared me. Creeper.”

“Sorry.” Glances out the window I was just looking through. Combs fingers through dark hair. “I dunno about this place, Uma.” I wait for him to say more, but he just stares. He looks just like the dark and broody cartoon characters I had crushes on growing up, like Danny Phantom.

“I’ll go if you want to go.”

“Do you want to go?”

“I’ll do whatever you want to do.”

He blinks, long and hard. When he opens his eyes again, they land on the wine bottle dangling from my hand like an appendage. “This is what I’ve been talking about. Can you just make a fucking decision?”

“I don’t want to make you do something you don’t wanna do.” Subconsciously I swing the bottle behind my leg, tap my fleshy thigh with the glass. “And I made the decision to come here. That should count as a decision.”

I follow him out to the cavernous den. He sits on the couch, picks up the remote and tries to turn the old TV on. “When you tell me what you want to do, that’s what we’ll do.”

The decision is incapacitating, because I don’t know which one is worse. Admit I fucked this up, can’t even plan a proper nice weekend for us, wasted our money and PTO. I envision a tortuously silent car, the remainder of the weekend one our relationship barely survives, fighting about this house and not this house. Or, stay here, in the creepy decisionless purgatory, because I cannot pull the trigger, deciding by not deciding. I sit ramrod straight as he clicks through fuzzy cable channels, laughter and police sirens and moaning and laughter. He lands on The Office and we watch the rest of the rerun. I stare at him but he doesn’t look at me but does, like a cat’s side eye. I drink more from the bottle, viscous and bitter. It stops the voices in my head arguing over the Right Decision. I start to get tired after an episode and half the bottle.

The sound of laughter, and I wake up alone on the couch. It’s one of those series marathons on a Nothing Channel, and considering they’ve reached the seasons lacking Michael, it must be pretty late at night. TV is the only source of light on the whole floor and I feel instant panic. Where did he go? Did he leave? Did he leave me? Fuck. No. Please.

I stand but instantly regret the vulnerability, feel tingles on my exposed back. Like a child I face the wall so my back is protected against the warm box of the TV, breathing fast.

I have to see if the car is still in the driveway. C’mon. Don’t be a pussy. Anyone could walk that far and be calm. Five feet? Ten? A little moonlight enshrines the window. I tell myself the light means it’s safe. Floor is lava. Come on. Sprint to the window. Dwight spouts nonsense from the TV. Beet farm shit. I hate farms. I hate being from here. He probably hates that I’m from here too. Country hick. Come on, hick. Get to the window. GET TO THE WINDOW HICK

I sprint and my bare feet thump against the hardwood, donkdonkdonk. I grasp the frame and, in an instant, see that the car is still in the driveway, then sprint back to the feigned safety of the TV’s sovereign glow. I backwards-hug the thing, breathing harder. Okay, still here. The kitchen lights are off, so he must be upstairs. He’s just upstairs! Up the very dark, scary, creepy stairs.

I shudder an inhale, exhale. If he’s up there, it must be safe. I just have to get through the scary dark. I can do this. No, I can’t. Well, you have to. Unless you wanna be alone down here, all vulnerable. Fuck. Okay. Come on. Ready, set,

I careen across the den, donkdonkdonk, squeal with fear as I sprint up the stairs, loud and fast pounding steps. I round a corner and the hallway is pitch black so I keep running don’t know to where I slam into something I scream curdling my voice something clutches me holy shit it’s him it’s him it’s him. “Jesus fucking Christ, Uma,” he says. I’m scared but it’s going away thank God. “Sorry, I—” heaving “I was really scared. You scared me, sorry.”

He’s silent, I’d rather him not be, and I still can’t really see him, just the outline of his figure. His hand pulls me through the dark to a bedroom, slightly glowing with moonlight. “Sleep.”

I nod, embarrassed. I train my breathing to lower my heart rate. He gets into bed a moment after I do.

Daytime. The bedroom feels off still, despite the sun wash. But when I slink downstairs, the den is so spacious and placidly lit, at least, that some of the house’s edges are smoothed.

I make us breakfast quickly—him, eggs we brought, scrambled; me, bread that I found unexpired in the fridge, toasted—in hopes of getting us out the door as nimbly as possible, sweep last night’s foibles under the rug. Thank God I’d planned the hike in advance, already pinned the kitschy diner from which we could order breakfast-for-dinner afterward. The less time spent here the better, treat this unsettling place as a pied-à-terre, out of sight out of mind.

“Oh, thank you.” The chair makes an awkward scrape when he takes his seat. “You’re just having bread?” Into his mouth he shimmies wobbly forks of egg.

“And coffee.” I’m vegetarian, a fact we both hate. “And I have a bar in the car.”

Since I can navigate us to the nature preserve pretty much analog, I drive. I deliberately do not peel out of the gravel driveway, because I know somehow that to admit to the house that I am scared of it would only give it more tangible power. Its unshuttered windows, like it wants you to see whatever’s in there; its splintery wood door; its palpable darkness at night...

Only when he asks “Are you okay?” do I realize how intently I’ve been thinking about the place. When I flex my fingers over the wheel, they reveal tiny pools of sweat on the black plastic. I wipe my palms on my tee shirt, one after the other.

He suggests a game to pass the time. Even lets me win. And it’s fun. By the time we start on up the trail, we’re laughing. Would You Rather and The Alphabet Game and Trivia. We take turns leading the way under bushy pines and elegant oaks. Light trickles through the overstory, illuminating the green canopy. Miles of iterative nature, monotony neither rote nor passive, but peaceful and evergreen. We’re laughing a lot, actually. When there is silence, it is only that. I love him, and he loves me.

That rotting stump looks familiar. So does that big fallen tree limb. The car is a few paces away, I realize, and momentary panic spikes my blood. Then, relief, when I remember we’re still going to get dinner. Don’t have to go back just yet.

“I cannot wait to eat,” he breathes, flops into the driver’s seat.

“Me neither.”

Gloaming settles over the forest, and he drives us into town.

The silence when we slide into the diner booth is much more gravid than our forest silence.

We just hiked ten miles. I am ravenous. It took all day. I am so tired. He is so tired.

But come on, you gotta say something. Unless the magic is really gone. You have nothing to say to each other, because not only has he lost interest in you, but you’ve lost interest in him, haven’t you? If not, you’d be able to say something. I am so exhausted, I can’t think.

You’re thinking now, though. So you can probably say something, if you actually love each other. People in love never truly tire of hearing each other’s voices, their thoughts, their inner monologues and machinations, their existence—

“Wanna play Would You Rather?”

“Uh.” His hand cups his cheek, propping up his lolling head. “Alright. You go.”

Yes. Good. So hungry. “Would you rather…” God, I can’t think of a good one. Other than, like, a dumb sex one. But c’mon, read the room. I’m gonna have to start eating my hand if they don’t bring out this goddamn veggie burger. “...kill another cat to save Benny? Or let him die?”

He’s looking out the window, at the parking lot. “Kill another cat,” he sighs.

“No, but you have to, like, kill it. Not some removed pressing of a button.” I would hate to be on the receiving end of my own questions; I wouldn’t be able to answer. Perhaps that’s why I ask. “They’ve got too strong of a hold on each other. You have to rip the cat off of Benny and snap its neck.”

I couldn’t snap anything’s neck, even to save baby Benny, alley cat we took in because he was clearly losing whatever real street fights he’d been getting into.

“Whatever I gotta fucking do, Uma.”

I make a face, but he’s not looking. “Haha, okay.” There’s a lull, and something screams internally. “Your turn.” Your turn your turn yourturn “You go” you go yougo speak I love you.

Out of my periphery, our waitress bursts through the silver doors in the back, wielding two thick white dishes. But I keep my gaze on him, pleading smile, he doesn’t know he’s about to be relieved by the burgers’ arrival. Go on, prove you love me. He stares into my eyes, I bore into his, coffee brown and big black pupils.

He blinks. Frowns. “Flight or invisibility?”

“Okay, who got the veggie burger?”

In my head, I replay his mouthful of meat and gnashing teeth the whole drive back. Subconsciously I must find this image more comforting than the prospect of the house, in a vicarious sorta way.

I hesitate opening the parked car door. Backlit by dark dusky clouds and ambient sky, the house seems to loom over the landscape, cantilever back and forth.

He’s already out of the car. Cranes his head down, looks in at me from the passenger side. “Is there any wine left?”

His voice startles me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Brown eyes disappear. His torso sighs, “It means I wanted to have a glass of wine with you.”

“Oh.” I step out of the car, asinine. “Yeah, there’s a little left in the fridge.”

Each stone gets one foot placement, slow hopscotch. We could keep playing games inside, maybe. I can make up for my annoying, misinterpretive remark. And with a little wine, we’ll be tipsy and goofy and have fun again and love each other. Modge podge smile.

I kick my hiking boots off, the fascia relief instant, as he heads to the kitchen. I focus on rubbing my feet. Tender, orgasmic relief.

Glass shatters.

I jolt. Whip my head around, he’s standing in the door frame. Hands cupped around the stem of glasses that now litter his feet, stain the hardwood deep red.

“What?”

“Uma. Be quiet.”

“Wh—”

“Shut up! Don’t fucking move.”

I freeze mid-stretch. Slowly trace his frenetic gaze, to the center of the den.

Small, but her presence is plangent. Sunken, sallow eyes look unblinking at the television. Long, black nails that look like rotting driftwood. Wan skin. Stringy, unkempt hair. As soon as the screams erupt from my body, her neck cocks preternatural. Limpid, crepuscular eyes wrest uncontrollable cries from my throat. He screams Nonononono shut up shut up shut UP but I am frozen in terror. This is the entity I felt in the dark. This is what he was with last night upstairs.

The fact that he sounds scared, a knowing fear, aggrandizes my own. Her eyes stay on me as she walks backwards, jerking her childlike limbs up the stairs quick and efficient like an insect. I am faint from screaming. He stumbles after her, crying to himself, Please no please stop it, tripping on his own feet like he is drunk, or being dragged. COME BACK why is he DON’T going up there BABY DON’T to her PLEASE I black out.

Sun. Acerbic. I blink, suddenly conscious. If I don’t move, perhaps nothing will realize I am awake. But I know she knows somehow. Cortisol undulates through my frozen body.

Muttering, maybe a gnawing, echoes lightly through the den. I turn my head conservatively to my side, holding my breath, facing the TV.

In the corner of the room, where the light beaming in from the window cannot reach, he sits. A ball, rocking back and forth, repeating some incantation. He did not sleep, I know. His eyes look like hers now, sallow and vulpine. I love him. I don’t want him to see me. His head turns. He stops muttering, slowly rises.

“Baby? What happened?” I repeat myself as he approaches, sit upright on the couch. Staring at me, dead glossy eyes, tired. “I think we should go. I want to go.”

I want him to scream NO SHIT I HATE YOU because that is corroborative in nature. “I think we should stay,” he says instead. “She wants us to stay.”

Tears well up. I didn’t know you could be so frightened that you cry. “No, baby. Can we please go?” He always thinks he’s right he’s not this time what did she do to him with him? “Can we go?”

At night I don’t see her. He goes upstairs to her and I don’t know what happens. He tells me Sleep and I do, sedated. When I awake he is downstairs in the fetal position again. I loathe this, I constantly beg for us to go home, to leave this place, but I can’t bring myself to leave him alone with the monster.

On the third day, when I wake up, he is already sitting next to me, smiling ear to ear, eyes cavernous and inhuman. I jolt. “What?”

He opens his mouth, black and capacious, Muppet-like thing of gnashing teeth. He pins my arms in place. I scream to stop and he says she wants this, he loves her. I’m crying, begging, pleading. His corporeal self has not eaten in days so I am able to push him off. The door is unlocked.

He watches me peel out of the driveway from the door frame, incarcerated by a force I don’t understand. Possession, it must be. I think of the horror movies he’s described to me that I’m too pussy to watch. That bit from a comedian I don’t remember about how society only keeps Catholic priests around for one important reason.

Fuck. I’m not religious. I have a general idea of where that church is though, the town over. It is day, and the roads are legible. I look at my crotch and realize I am sopping wet. I weep.

“I’m a preacher, not a priest,” the man says, upstate drawl. I’m surprised by how young he is. Cherubic face, curly mop like one of those teddy bear dogs. “So I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“Can you try?” I blow my nose into the Kleenex wad he’d given me upon arrival.

“Well, sure. Just don’t have any idea what we do when it doesn’t work, miss.” When, not if. Miss, not ma’am. Can’t decide which is better. I nod blankly at the table, finger the moist tissue. “And if this is some sorta demon child,” he adds, “one of us is gonna have to stab it in the heart. Kill the source.”

My head droops. After a beat, “And if I’m with your…”

“I know,” I say. “Just—”

“Hey, I get it.” I look up, penitent. Preacher’s smile is practiced, but calming nonetheless. “I get it.”

My returning smile is unfamiliar.

The plan is developed on the short ride over. The preacher keeps telling me to be brave and to remember that this has to be done. “Just think, how badass will it be to say you’ve slain a demon?”

“I thought preachers weren’t allowed to curse.”

“You won’t tell, will ya?”

A grin I can’t help.

The house snaps it out of me.

Cannot linger in the limina; we spring out of the car at once. The door is unlocked. Preacher goes right to where he is crouching in the corner, rocking and muttering. In the kitchen is an array of knives stuck in a wooden block, and I surprise myself with a bout of internal laughter after I shrug and grab the biggest one.

I storm through the den, glance at the wrastling duo in the corner. While the preacher shouts all the profferable I command thee’s and demon-banishing phrases, he counters with unearthly roars of I love her I love her I love her. Pierces my core, gutting, hollowing, because I hope he means me.

Sweat is slicking the plastic handle already. I adjust my grip to no assurance, the weapon growing more slippery and insecure. The reality hits me as I walk up the stairs: I won’t be able to do this. I know myself enough.

Wobbly hands tuck the knife behind my back. I step into the hallway, and I know she is in the bedroom. I know she was sleeping, but awoke as soon as I entered her domain, registered my presence. There is no element of surprise at my disposal. I won’t be able to kill her. Panic washes over me, my beloved’s cries wailing from the floor below.

I consider jumping, but just step into the bedroom. Admittedly. Exposed.

She is sitting straight up in the bed, only her head swiveled toward me like an owl. My breath catches. I grip my greasy knife tight against my back. “Hi.”

She stares.

“I’m Uma,” I decide to say. “What’s your name?”

Guttural tenor, Mongolian throat singer, groans ooooooo-maaaaaaaa, with a smile that reveals her black, molten teeth. Voice and mouth of tar.

“Oh.” Shiver. One step forward. “Well, then, hello Uma.” Kill her kill her kill it kill “I have to admit, I’m a little scared. My boyfriend isn’t doing well.”

Stares.

I force an inhale. One more step on the exhale. The preacher shouts KILL THE THING from downstairs. Another step, gripping the knife. I register her nightgown. Cotton with redolent pink roses. It makes me say “Why?”

Garbled, alien sounds. “I love him.”

My mouth opens, dagger to my heart. “Oh.” I stagger backward, then right myself, breathe. “Unfortunately, I love him too.” She stares. But I’m closer to her now, can see her eyes a little better. “I don’t blame you, actually,” I laugh. I even mean it. Who didn’t have a crush on Danny Phantom? I can’t kill this thing. Stupid little girl.

I discreetly holster the knife into my jean pocket. “I’m not mad at ya,” I say, keep my voice soft. Somehow, I sit on her bed, take in the thing’s skeletal figure, black splintered fingernails. She looks at me, and I force myself to smile how I think a mother would. “But if we love him, we can’t let him suffer like that. Don’t you think?”

Stares.

“I need you to stop doing whatever you’re doing, Uma,” I ask. “Release whatever hold you have on him. Please.”

Then the girl frowns, oblong and exaggerated. “I am not doing anything to him.”

My eyes widen.

“WE GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE,” screams the preacher. “CALL CPS. WE GOTTA GO.”

I jerk my body off the bed, realize what a fucking idiot I am. Of course he’s not possessed. Of course she is not a demon. I brought a fucking preacher here. Instead of just goddamn—

I dash down the stairs, screaming I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, yank the preacher by the collar off my love’s writhing body, and drag us into the car. The door is unlocked.

Annabel Gregg is a runner, bureaucrat, and writer from New York. Her fiction, CNF, and opinion have been published in Eclectica Magazine, Sporty Sexy Smart, The Bookends Review, and The Times Union, among other publications. She is a staff writer at Gut Instinct Media Company, exploring modern morality through running, neuroses, and culture. Learn more about Annabel here.

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Editor's Note:

Thank you for reading Annabel Gregg’s “UMA.”

Loneliness can be at its most severe when you're being loved by someone whose affection you feel compelled to verify. Their little silence becomes a little evidence. A small kindness becomes a temporary reprieve. Even happiness requires constant vigilance, since its disappearance might reveal something horrific about the relationship.

In “UMA,” this vigilance is a haunting. Gregg’s narrator is forever interpreting her boyfriend’s gestures, measuring his patience, searching for reassurance in the tiniest exchanges. Her anxious interior monologue gives the story its nervous, sometimes painfully funny rhythm. So when something monstrous actually does appear in the house, the reader recognizes it immediately. They've already been inside a mind accustomed to anticipating catastrophe.

What makes the story especially unnerving, though, is the ease with which fear supplies an explanation for what the narrator can't bear to understand. The supernatural offers a strangely comforting possibility, that the person we love has been taken from us by some external force. And that removing it might restore the relationship we remember.

Devotion can, in many ways, become a defense against knowledge. The horror resides in that desperate wish to believe love has been stolen, because the alternative would require us to reconsider whom we've been loving in the first place.—Jon Negroni

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