Shower Wine

The first time Sully Joseph heard a voice coming from his shower drain, he blamed the Cabernet. He had consumed most of a bottle before getting into the shower, and the second was balanced on the little ceramic shelf.

Sully had standards about his wine. It had to be red, preferably Cabernet Sauvignon, and it had to come in a glass bottle. Boxed wine was for desperate people, and Sully Joseph, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, did not consider himself desperate.

He called his nightly ritual shower wine. He turned the water as hot as possible, stood beneath it with his bottle, and drank until either the wine or the hot water ran out. Sometimes he sang. Sometimes he cried. Occasionally, he fell asleep sitting against the fiberglass wall. It was the closest thing to happiness he had experienced in years.

His apartment occupied the second floor of a deteriorating three-decker on a side street in Gardner, Massachusetts. The building smelled of cigarette smoke, damp plaster, and whatever the downstairs tenants cooked on Sundays.

At 52, Sully looked closer to 70. His hands shook every morning until he swallowed enough alcohol to quiet them. His cheeks were perpetually swollen, his eyes yellowish, and his belly protruded above legs that had become alarmingly thin.

He had once made furniture in Gardner, the Chair City, as his father had for 34 years. Sully lasted 19. Then came the accident, the divorce, and the drinking. Not necessarily in that order. He had difficulty remembering.

On a Thursday in November, Sully was halfway through his second bottle when the voice spoke.

"Did you hear that?"

It sounded like a woman speaking from beneath the floor. Sully lowered the bottle.

"Hear what?"

The water continued pounding against his shoulders. He waited. Nothing.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered. He took another drink. Then the voice returned.

"Did you hear that?"

This time, it sounded closer. Sully pulled back the shower curtain. The bathroom was empty.

"Who's there?"

Nobody answered. He looked into the drain. Dark water swirled beneath the metal grate.

"Very fucking funny."

He finished the bottle, turned off the water, and stumbled into bed without drying himself. By morning, he had forgotten the voice.

By Friday evening, it had returned. He had eaten half a sandwich and vomited twice. His hands trembled so badly he could barely open the first bottle.

At 8:40pm, he entered the shower. He had barely swallowed his third mouthful when something tapped against the underside of the tub. Three distinct knocks. Sully looked down.

"Hello?"

Three more knocks. He turned off the water. Silence. He turned it back on.

"Did you hear that?"

The voice was unmistakably female. And familiar. Sully's stomach tightened.

"Who are you?"

A pause. Then a sound like someone dragging wet fingernails across the inside of the bathtub.

Sully climbed out so quickly that he slipped, struck his elbow against the toilet, and landed naked on the floor. The wine bottle shattered. For several minutes, he remained there, staring at the shower curtain. Nothing emerged. Eventually, he crawled into the bedroom, leaving bloody footprints across the linoleum. He drank whiskey until morning.

Saturday brought the first physical evidence. Sully woke with a splitting headache and discovered a wet handprint on the bedroom door. It was small. Too small for an adult. He stared at it for several seconds, then rubbed his eyes. The print remained.

"Condensation," he said.

The apartment was cold, but there was no reasonable explanation for condensation forming a single handprint four feet above the floor. Sully wiped it away with his sleeve. Then he went to the kitchen and poured vodka into a coffee mug.

He spent the afternoon trying to remember the voice. It reminded him of someone. Someone from years earlier. A woman who had spoken softly, even when frightened. By sunset, he had decided not to shower.

At 9:15pm, the pipes began knocking. Three times. Then three more. Sully turned up the television. At 9:40pm, water began running in the bathroom. He had not turned it on. He approached the doorway holding a kitchen knife. Steam curled beneath the door.

"Who's in there?"

The water stopped. Something moved behind the door. He heard bare feet slapping against wet porcelain. Then a little girl's voice said, "Mommy?"

Sully dropped the knife. He knew that voice. He had spent 16 years trying to forget it. Her name was Abigail. His daughter. She had been seven when she died.

The official story was that Abigail had drowned during a family vacation near Cape Cod. Sully had told the story so many times that the details had acquired the smoothness of a rehearsed speech. She had wandered into the water. Nobody had noticed. By the time they found her, it was too late.

His wife, Rebecca, had never forgiven him. They divorced the following year, and she moved west and remarried. Now he had heard their daughter's voice coming from his bathroom. He backed into the living room and remained awake until sunrise.

On Sunday, he bought four bottles of wine, a fifth of whiskey, and a rubber drain stopper.

That evening, he pushed the stopper into the shower drain, covered it with a washcloth, and placed a heavy shampoo bottle on top. Then he turned on the water.

For the first 10 minutes, nothing happened. Sully began to relax. He opened his second bottle.

"See?" he told the drain. "Problem solved."

Something struck the underside of the tub. The shampoo bottle toppled. The washcloth lifted. The rubber stopper rose slowly from the drain, as though pushed by a finger. Then it popped free. A thin stream of black water emerged. Sully stared. The water thickened. It spread across the fiberglass, flowing against the slope toward his feet. And from the drain came Rebecca's voice.

"Did you hear that?"

Sully began screaming. He scrambled backward, tangled himself in the curtain, and tore the entire rod from the wall. He landed hard on his hip. The black water disappeared. For a moment, the bathroom was silent except for the running shower.

Then a child's hand emerged from the drain. It was impossibly small and pale, with fingernails that had turned dark blue. The fingers opened. Closed. And reached toward him.

Sully fled the apartment wearing nothing but a towel. He spent the night in his car on West Broadway.

By morning, he had convinced himself it was alcohol withdrawal. He knew hallucinations were possible when his blood alcohol level dropped. He had experienced them before: Insects crawling beneath wallpaper, shadowy figures standing in corners, his dead father sitting silently at the kitchen table.

What he did not understand was why the hallucinations had become so specific. Why Abigail? Why Rebecca? And why the shower?

He drove to Heywood Hospital and sat in the parking lot for nearly an hour. Twice, he reached for the door handle. Twice, he changed his mind. He imagined explaining that his dead daughter was climbing out of his plumbing. They would admit him. They would take away his alcohol. And then the shaking would begin. He drove home instead.

The apartment smelled of mildew. Written across the bathroom mirror in a child's finger marks were four words.

YOU HEARD HER TOO.

Sully stared at them. A memory surfaced. Rebecca standing in a bathroom doorway. Abigail crying. A bottle rolling across the floor. Then the memory vanished. He went to the kitchen, opened a bottle, and drank until he could no longer stand.

Monday morning, Sully found Rebecca's number in an old address book and called. To his surprise, she answered.

"Hello?"

He almost hung up. "Becky?"

A long silence. "Sullivan?"

Nobody had called him Sullivan in years. "Yeah."

"What do you want?"

He swallowed. "I've been thinking about Abby."

The silence deepened. "Don't."

"I've been hearing things."

"Then stop drinking."

"It's her voice."

Rebecca exhaled sharply. "Sully, I'm not doing this."

"She keeps asking if I heard something."

For several seconds, there was nothing on the line. "What did you say?"

"She asks me if I heard something."

Her breathing changed. "Exactly what does she say?"

"Did you hear that?"

Rebecca made a small sound. Not quite a gasp. Not quite a sob. "Jesus Christ."

"Becky?"

"You really don't remember?"

Sully gripped the telephone. "Remember what?"

She began crying, and it was the sound of someone discovering that an old wound had never healed.

"She said that to me," Rebecca whispered.

"When?"

"The night she died."

Sully closed his eyes. "At the beach?"

Another silence. Then Rebecca said something that seemed to empty the room of air. "We weren't at the beach, Sully."

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

"We hadn't gone to the Cape that summer. You told everyone that because you couldn't stand what really happened."

"That's not true."

"She died in our house."

Sully looked toward the bathroom. The shower was running. He had not turned it on.

"You were drunk. You'd been drinking all afternoon. She wanted you to help her with her bath, but you were angry because she'd spilled something on your chair."

Sully's hands began shaking. "Stop."

"You put her in the bathtub."

"Stop it."

"You turned on the water and left her there."

Something tapped beneath the bathroom floor. Three times.

Rebecca's voice broke. "I came home from work and found her."

Sully remembered. Not everything. Just fragments. Abigail in her pink pajamas. A broken drinking glass. Wine spreading across the kitchen floor. His daughter apologizing. Then a bathtub filling.

He pressed the phone against his ear. "I didn't mean to."

Rebecca was silent.

"I swear to God, Becky. I didn't mean to."

"You never even told me what happened."

"I don't remember."

"That's what you always said."

The shower stopped. From inside the bathroom came a wet, dragging sound.

Rebecca whispered, "She wasn't drowned when I found her, Sully."

He stopped breathing. "What?"

"She was unconscious. She'd inhaled water, but she still had a pulse. The doctors said she might have survived if she'd gotten help sooner."

Sully sank into a chair. "I called an ambulance."

"Eventually."

The word struck him harder than anything else.

Rebecca began crying again. "You were afraid they'd know you were drunk. You spent almost 20 minutes cleaning up the bathroom before you called."

The telephone slipped from Sully's hand. He remembered kneeling beside the bathtub. Abigail lying on the floor. Her lips blue. His own hands trembling as he wiped wine from the sink. The bottle hidden beneath towels. The bathroom door closed. And a faint voice from the floor.

"Did you hear that?"

He had heard her. His daughter had been alive. He had heard her whispering. And he had kept cleaning.

Rebecca's voice came from the telephone on the carpet. "Sully? Are you there?"

He couldn't answer.

The bathroom door opened. Abigail stood in the doorway. She wore the pink pajamas he remembered, soaked and clinging to her narrow body. Water dripped from her hair. Her skin had the grayish translucence of something preserved too long beneath the surface of a pond. Her eyes were open, the same blue eyes she had inherited from Rebecca.

"Daddy?"

Sully began sobbing. "I'm sorry, baby."

She tilted her head. "Did you hear me?"

He nodded. "I'm sorry."

"Did you hear me asking for help?"

He covered his face. "Yes."

The little girl took a step forward. Water spread across the carpet beneath her feet. "Then why didn't you come?"

Sully had no answer.

Abigail moved closer. He could smell the strawberry-scented bath soap Rebecca used to buy. "Why didn't you come, Daddy?"

"I was scared."

"Of what?"

He looked at her. "Of going to jail."

Abigail considered this. Then she smiled. It was not a child's smile. It was something far older, something that had learned the shape of a smile by watching human beings. "You're still scared."

She opened her mouth. Water poured out. Sully screamed and stumbled backward. Abigail advanced. Her jaw stretched impossibly wide. Black water spilled across the floor, carrying clumps of hair, dead insects, and little white objects that looked like teeth.

He ran for the front door. The hallway beyond was dark. At the bottom of the stairs, he could hear someone climbing. Wet footsteps. Small feet. A child's voice humming. He slammed the door and turned the deadbolt.

Behind him, Abigail was gone. The carpet was dry. The bathroom door was closed. And the telephone was still connected.

"Sully? Sully, answer me."

He picked it up. "Becky, she's here."

Rebecca said nothing.

"Abby. She's in my apartment."

"Sully, listen carefully."

"She's dead, Becky. She's dead, but she's here."

"Abigail didn't die in the bathtub."

He stared at the telephone. "You just said..."

"I said she was still alive when I found her."

The room seemed to tilt. "She died at the hospital two days later."

Sully closed his eyes. He remembered the hospital. The machines. Rebecca sitting beside the bed. Abigail's little hand resting on a white blanket. He had not been allowed into the room until he sobered up.

"She never regained consciousness," Rebecca whispered.

Sully looked toward the bathroom. "Then how did she ask me for help?"

Rebecca was quiet for a long time. "She didn't."

Something moved inside the shower. A low, scraping sound.

"Becky?"

"When I came home, you were sitting beside the bathtub. You kept saying someone was talking to you."

Sully's mouth went dry.

"You told me Abigail had asked if you heard something."

He remembered another voice. Not Abigail's. A woman's. Coming from the drain.

Did you hear that?

Rebecca was crying again. "You said there was somebody under the house."

The bathroom light flickered.

"You said it wanted to come upstairs."

Sully lowered the telephone. The shower curtain moved. Something large pressed against it from the other side. A shape too tall for the bathroom, its head bent sideways beneath the ceiling.

Rebecca's voice sounded distant. "Sully, what happened that night?"

He remembered the broken glass. The spilled wine. Abigail standing in the doorway. And himself kneeling beside the drain. He had heard something beneath the bathtub. Something whispering. Something that promised him he would never have to feel guilty again.

He remembered opening the drain cover. Remembered pouring wine into the darkness. Remembered the voice telling him to bring the child closer.

His daughter hadn't drowned because he had forgotten her. He had placed her in the bathtub because something beneath the house wanted her. And when it had finished, it had taken his memory as payment.

For 16 years, Sully had kept drinking. Every evening, he stood beneath hot water and poured wine into his mouth. Some of it always spilled. Some of it always disappeared down the drain. He had been feeding the thing without knowing it. Or perhaps he had known. Perhaps that was why he had never been able to stop.

The shower curtain tore from its hooks. A long, pale arm emerged. The thing behind the curtain unfolded itself, rising from a space that could not possibly contain it. Its face resembled Abigail's. Then Rebecca's. Then Sully's own. Its mouth opened vertically, dividing the face from forehead to chin. Inside were hundreds of tiny hands. Each one reaching. Each one begging.

"Did you hear that?" it whispered.

Sully backed against the wall. The thing extended one enormous finger toward the wine bottle on the kitchen counter. He understood. It wanted another drink. He looked at the bottle. Then at the creature.

And for the first time in 16 years, Sully Joseph made a decision while completely sober. He picked up the bottle. The creature leaned closer. Its mouth opened wider. Sully smashed the glass against the countertop. Wine splashed across the cabinets. He held the broken neck in his trembling hand.

"You can go to hell."

The creature stopped moving. Then it laughed. The sound came from every drain in the apartment. From the kitchen sink. From the toilet. From the pipes inside the walls. And from Sully's own throat.

His mouth opened against his will. His jaw stretched. His tongue curled backward. He felt something moving inside his stomach. Something cold. Something that had been growing there for years. He dropped the broken bottle.

The thing in the bathroom whispered, "You already brought me home."

Sully fell to his knees. His abdomen swelled. His skin tightened until he could see the outlines of small fingers pressing outward from beneath it. He screamed. Something answered from inside him. A little girl's voice.

"Daddy?"

The last thing Sully Joseph saw was the creature bending over him, its impossible mouth widening in anticipation. Then the bathroom floor collapsed beneath his knees. He fell into darkness.

Police entered the apartment three days later, after Rebecca called Gardner authorities. There was no sign of Sully. The bathroom floor was intact, the shower dry. They found empty wine bottles in the kitchen, a telephone beside the couch, and nothing suspicious beyond the usual evidence of severe alcoholism. Sully Joseph was entered into the missing persons database.

His landlord replaced the shower curtain and rented the apartment to a young couple the following month.

On their first evening, the woman took a shower while her husband unpacked dishes in the kitchen. She had just finished washing her hair when she heard a faint tapping beneath the bathtub. Three knocks. Then three more. She turned off the water.

"Honey?"

Her husband called from the kitchen. "Yeah?"

"Did you hear that?"

Beneath the drain, something stirred. A man's voice answered. "Please don't open it."

The woman stared at the little metal grate. "Who's there?"

The voice began crying. "Please. I'm still down here."

She bent closer. Something knocked three more times. Then another voice spoke. A little girl's voice. Soft. Patient. Almost cheerful.

"That's okay, Daddy."

A tiny finger appeared between the holes in the drain.

"We're not alone."