CROWN OF TEETH

Illustration by Andy Paciorek

HONORABLE MENTION, FALL 2021
THE GHOST STORY SUPERNATURAL FICTION AWARD

BY ELIZABETH GARRARD

10 P.M.
The car radio crackles, the weather report phasing in and out in a haze of static.

I tap my fingers against the steering wheel. Outside, the wind picks up, sending ripples across the still water on either side of the road.

The hurricane hits at midnight. I drive on.

* * *
They had my bags ready for me when I came home from work this night.

The house was dark—it was always dark, long before I came home.

They sat at the kitchen table, the moonlight streaming through our small windows. The light shifted like sand as the trees bent down towards us, listening in.

My mother drummed her fingers on the kitchen table for a moment before gesturing to the two trash bags.

You need to leave, she told me, staring straight ahead. We packed for you.

I blinked at them, silent, and she tossed her head back, glaring at me with hard eyes. Beside her, my father lit a cigarette, illuminating his face in oranges and yellows.

You had to know this was coming. And no cryin’ about no place to go or what you’ll do.

The trees dappled her face with fractured shadows.

You’re seventeen, you should have planned for this. I won’t have you or your bullshit here any longer.

My father leaned back in his chair, relaxed, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She stilled, never taking her eyes off of me.

Just get out. We don’t want none of that here.

I turned around without taking anything, without saying a word. The trees around the house whispered as the wind started to pick up. None of that here.

10:30 P.M.
I stop at the last gas station I’ll see for a while.

Lucky you got here when you did, I’m done for the night. Nothin’ out there but gators and houses, says the old man behind the counter. Better turn back now ‘less you got a place to go.

Mmm, I say, distracted. I got one all right.

Careful out there, he says as I leave. Hurricane’s coming.

They’re always coming, I think to myself. Something’s always coming.

* * *
My grandmother died when I was still seven; when we had her funeral, three days later, I had already turned eight. Birthdays seemed like walls then, between younger and older, in the little years. Something impossible to understand at seven felt less like a wound and more like a scar at eight, sealed away by the year I put between three days. I loved her still, of course, but I left the grief to myself, at seven, and that was no longer me.

My parents didn’t take too kindly to this, no matter how much I tried to explain it to them on the back roads toward her house.

She’s your grandmother, my mother said, turning and staring directly into my eyes. If you can’t do this one thing for us, for her, then just stay out of the way.

Her hand tightened on her lap, bunching up her dress so that it rose above her knees and showed the small round scars that dotted her legs.

I looked away, and we drove on.

I stayed outside, during the funeral. Funeral parlors were few and far between in those days, in those places, and so the family gathered inside the house with the casket, their voices mixing like an ocean. I laid in the grass, listening to their voices melt together into one great wave. The grass moved around me like hands, reaching down to touch my face, the way my grandmother would have just three days ago.

If you ever need to find me, you only need to ask baby, were her frequent words of comfort as I begged to stay, not to leave her. You’ll find me in the littlest of ways.

Once again, I had left her, going on, here, as she slept in the coffin inside, surrounded by that ocean of warm grief.

If you’re here, I whispered, show me.

The wooden stilts that held the house up creaked, and I turned my head. An alligator, white like the clouds above us and a couple of feet long, peeked its head out from between the slats. We gaped at each other for a moment before it disappeared back under the house, and I leapt to my feet. I ran toward the open front door and burst into the room where my family stood.

She’s here! I cried, and for a moment I felt victorious, vindicated in my lack of grief. She’s here, under the house!

The ocean of warmth ran cold, and they turned to look at me.

They dragged it out by its tail, flashlights spinning as it turned to snap, defending itself. My mother gripped my arm with fierce strength and I was silent, listening to them yip like hunting dogs as they stood over it.

None of that here, they said, and raised their flashlights into the air, as high as they could reach.

They threw the carcass into the bayou.

My mother took me down to the riverbank and held my face close to the water, the browns and greens and blues as close as breath on my cheeks.

You were wrong. Those things aren’t right, they aren’t good, and they aren’t your grandmother. They’re monster—death omens—and we don’t want them here.

She pulled me back toward her by my hair and for a moment I thought she might push me away again, into the water, and I could swim away like the other unwanted things.

My cousins cast glances at me as we left, but their parents looked away. My parents pulled me to the car and out of sight.

We don’t tell their business and they don’t tell ours, my uncles and aunts would say to their children later. None of that here.

11:00 P.M.
I curse as I swerve, a flash of lightning illuminating dark shapes on the asphalt. My car skids to a stop and I slam my hand down on the steering wheel, catching the horn with my palm.

The car horn blares out into the empty night, and an alligator, still dripping from the water, turns towards the sound.

Its eyes flash, illuminated.

The other bodies on the road also turn, alligators half-gone, half-crushed, half-torn. They turn to look at me, welcoming me.

I drive on, almost home.

* * *
One night, not long before I left, we talked. My mother leaned against the doorframe, casting a long shadow across my bed.

He doesn’t mean it in a bad way, she said, pointing to the fresh burn on my arm. That’s how his father did it, and my father too. You’ll forgive him, one day.

She traced the circles on her own thigh, fingers skimming against them gently.

I need to tell you about somethin’, she said.

And so, she did.

Her father would drive them home on those endless roads back home, pitch black snakes with the bayou on either side. In the city, he would have ordered old fashioneds at dinner, one after the other, the smell lingering on his breath in the long hours back. The car tires on the asphalt were like his steps—swaying, woozy.

She would tap the window three times whenever the headlights illuminated an alligator, their heads or bodies crushed by the cars that came before them. Her mother would sit quietly, hands in her lap, staring out into the dark at them. Her father would swerve to avoid them, never fully missing as the car fell half off the asphalt and onto the riverbank with a crunch.

I knew that one day, I would have to make a choice, she said. One day he would crash into the water, and I would have to choose between drownin’ and bein’ eaten alive.

Her fingers tapped against her leg. She didn’t help us, in the end. She wasn’t strong enough to take the wheel herself until he was gone.

I closed my eyes, thinking of my grandmother, how proud she stood, upright and strong.

I didn’t understand then, either. But marriage makes you understand what has to be done.

She tilted her head, waiting for an answer to the unspoken question.

I said nothing.

She sighed, turning away from me and back toward the rest of the house. It’s just how things are done. You’ll understand one day once you get your own man. She paused, her hand on the doorframe, tightening slightly. Or he gets you, I suppose.

11:30 P.M.
I pull into the driveway.

The incoming storm has made the bayou swollen, water lapping at the stilts of the house. The lightning comes faster now, illuminating the debris scattered around the yard. As the sky lights up, I kick at a clump of dirt, watching it break apart as a swarm of ants emerges. They turn on each other, the injured and broken ones torn apart and carried away by the whole.

* * *
The house shifts, as if listening to my breath in the dark.

I wanted it, once, this place for all the unwanted things of our family.

Once a death omen shows up, they all said, shaking their heads, you don’t want that place. Not if you can help it.

An aunt lived here for a while. She had no husband, no children, and that summer I stayed with her, running through the long grass every day.

I had never felt so free.

When the body of that white alligator washed up with the next flood, she threw it under the porch, shaking her head.

Should’ve never killed it, she said in a low voice. Dead things don’t stay dead out here, ‘less they want to.

When my mother came to pick me up at the end of summer, I pressed my face against the car window, looking back at my aunt. She sat on the front porch, waving as the car pulled away.

I never saw her again. When I asked, my mother’s face went white.

Crazy old bitch, she muttered when I pressed her further. They found her halfway under the porch, like she was tryin’ to get at somethin’ underneath. She got stuck there, and the bayou rose. Half-eaten, half-drowned. That’s what they said.

12:00 A.M.
Knees in the mud, I look under the house. It’s black in there, and the low heat in my stomach roils toward a roar, fear making my breath shudder.

The wind around me is wailing, the trees creaking as it speeds through them with a vengeance. Give me a sign, I whisper. I’m here.

My eyes begin to adjust as I pull myself forward, disappearing underneath. My shoulders scrape rough boards as I move farther inside.

Like an angel, she sits, clad in white, her tail curled around her like a loving embrace. She has only to part her jaws, to open her home to me, and I will understand all I need to know.

I crawl to her and she sighs, her mouth opening as she basks in her own reincarnation, her gaping jaws welcoming me as I begin to crawl up and over the white spikes of her teeth, begging as I go, let me in let me in let me in let me in let me in let me in letmeinletmeinletmein until finally I am home behind her teeth like stilts of a house, and until I am one in her and whole, and until I am crying, because she was proud and strong, and she is here.

A hand reaches up through her throat, from her stomach, to hold me, to wipe the tears from my cheeks. I will not drown. I will not die.

I will not be another body, half-drowned, half-eaten.

I am wanted, with her.

No need to cry baby. None of that here, she says, and her jaws close around me at last.
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