All the Dead Lie Down

Chapter 1 THE MAN IN THE MOON LOOKED OUT OF THE MOON, LOOKED OUT OF THE MOON AND SAID, "TIS TIME FOR ALL CHILDREN ON THE EARTH TO THINK ABOUT GETTING TO BED!'' --MOTHER GOOSE Sarah Jane Hurley wakes with a wetness on her fingertips. She raises her hand to her eyes and tilts it to catch the narrow ribbon of moonlight shining through the slats of the deck above. Blood. Yes, it's blood. Fee, fi, fo, fum. On her fingertips and under her nails. Fresh blood, shiny and new. Her own blood. Must've been scratching her bites in her sleep. She's pulled some scabs off and they've bled again. It's happened so often she doesn't feel it anymore. It doesn't even hurt. She brings her hand closer to her face and studies the blood, surprised: it's so beautiful--bright and shiny as a brand-new red Crayola--the same as when she was a girl. Way back then, lying in the hammock in her gramma's backyard in Galveston, she'd hold very still and let a mosquito land on her arm. Barely breathing, she'd watch its stinger pierce her skin, her perfect, smooth ten-year-old skin--summer-tanned, stretched tight over thin arms. She'd hold her breath and watch the insect fatten itself. She'd wait until it was full, and then she'd raise a hand and slap down hard--splat. And, wonder of wonders, she would see her own bright blood smeared on her skin next to the squashed mosquito. Sarah Jane sticks her tongue out and touches it to a bloody fingertip. Salty, rusty taste. Just like back then. But it should taste different now. It should taste like cheap wine and stale cigarette smoke and day-old pizza scrounged from Dumpsters and cold, scummy coffee--all those snips and snails that make up her body now. But, somehow, she still has the same blood as that young girl in the hammock, that smooth-skinned, sugar-and-spice child. Even though now her skin is ruined--reddened and weathered, and even though she's covered with insect bites and scabs and scars and cuts and bruises she can't even remember how she got. Yes, her blood should look different. But it doesn't. It is still bright red and wet and hopeful. As though she might be the same inside--Sarah Jane Hurley, good girl. "There was a little girl who had a little curl,'' Gramma would say, stroking Sarah Jane's curly hair, "right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good.'' That was when Sarah Jane talked proper English and behaved in the ladylike way Gramma wanted her to. And when she held on to her temper and didn't let people make her mad all the time. Sarah Jane screws her face up in disgust. Ladylike? What a joke! If Gramma were alive now, she'd cross the street to avoid her, such a filthy, hopeless old hag she's become. "But when she was bad she was horrid.'' Gramma said that too--when Sarah Jane acted just like her no-good mother and got into all that trouble as a teenager. But even Gramma didn't imagine just how horrid Sarah Jane could be, that she would end up like this--a homeless old drunk. And that wasn't even the worst of it. She had far worse to account for than just ending up a bum. She shakes her head to stop this train of thought; she's letting herself get sucked into that old rearview-mirror trap. She won't think about what's done and can't be changed. She wipes her bloody fingers off on the dirty black and white coat that's wrapped around her and tries to go back to sleep. She is just drifting off when she hears noises--some sharp bangs and thuds above her. Thunder? No. Footsteps. Well, damn! There's not supposed to be anyone up there. At lunchtime, sure, they let people eat out there, but then the deck closes and it belongs to her. After dark, it's all hers. A bright light comes on, chasing away the moonlight. Sarah Jane looks up at the wooden deck, at the thin stripes of harsh floodlight between the slats. Carefully she turns over on herWalker, Mary Willis is the author of 'All the Dead Lie Down' with ISBN 9780553578225 and ISBN 0553578227.