[Excerpt] - Weird Girl (TCoM)

An excerpt from draft 5 of The Call of Mammitum, a fantasy/horror novel.

I received a generous comment from Brenda - A Voice that Wonders on a song I wrote for this story and had the debatably brilliant idea to post the chapter that inspired this song (and was in turn inspired by, it’s reflexive). I’ve gotten into this habit where I wrote lyrics to try and get at the emotional core of a scene or character relationship, often taking the perspective of one of the characters in the scene. Almost every song posted to this publication is related to a scene in The Call of Mammitum (I’m doing the same for The Girl with the Cybernetic Eye but that’s a very different story). The second scene in the chapter is really where the song fits, but I left the first scene in place for context.

Weird Girl

The Call of Mammitum: Ch. 12 (Draft 5 Updated)

I don’t have to remind Sarah the next morning—she stops me on my way in like it’s nothing. Voice level, face steady, she says the plan—out loud.

My stomach tightens, but the girls behind her don’t giggle—they stare, and I stare back.

Sarah says she’ll meet me after school at the front steps—so we can walk to the library together.

I nod—face tight—and say, “I look forward to it.”

Oh. But I dread it.

At lunch, I expect the boys to look pleased—until their eyes land on Sarah across the room and something in them goes off.

“So you got her, eh?” Jonah whispers while I poke at the limp beef on my tray.

I nod slow, but the way he says it crawls up my neck. “If you mean I begged her for help—yeah. She’s coming to the library after school.”

“That was almost too easy,” Tommy mutters.

My face flushes. “Too easy?” I snap, voice low. “I walked five miles up Arkham Boulevard, then down to the ruins of Ravenswood behind her house—and now I’ve got blisters all over my feet.”

Neither flinches at my blisters.

“Ravenswood?” Tommy says. “You mean Blackwood’s place?”

“Yeah. It’s just a broken old building. She walks through the maple wood around it.”

I glare at him. “What does it matter? She’s gonna help.”

“We still need to be careful,” Jonah mutters.

I shake my head; my hair swings into my eyes. I blink it away, brush it back, then stand and dump what’s left of my tray in the bin.

I march straight outside, into wind that hits my hot face under the sugar maple—away from their stupid comments and squinty eyes.

Too much.

---

After school, walking with Sarah is almost as nerve-wracking as lunch with the boys: then their words jabbed; now the silence does—each step louder than it should be.

The sky hangs low and gray, and the air tastes wet—like the clouds might break open any second—turning the red bricks brown in this light.

Sarah floats along the left edge of the walk, and I stick to the right—the space between us wide enough for a whole other person.

We don’t speak; the silence walks between us.

I steal glances when I think she won’t notice, but her face gives me nothing—no twitch, no crack—just forward, forward. She stares straight ahead with her arms folded over her books, tight, like she’s bracing for a fall.

It’s like I’m not even here.

She glides—so quiet. Her soft, custom-made shoes barely make a sound, and the velvet of her dress sways smooth—no swish over her long strides. All that tells me she’s really there is the whiff of lavender talc.

But the silence needles me—for once, I want to talk. I have things to say, and my fingers twitch on the strap across my books, fidgeting just to stay busy.

I run through half a dozen ice breakers in my head, but each one comes out wrong before I even open my mouth—not that I’m good at breaking ice anyway.

Oh—snag. My toe catches and my stomach drops as the sidewalk rushes up—my knees flaring hot, ready to kiss brick. Stumble step, stomp, roll back. I juggle my books and twist a look behind me: one brick sticks up like a tooth.

Heat crawls up my neck as I hustle to catch up. “So clumsy,” I mutter—lips barely moving.

Sarah heard me. “It’s your shoes,” she says—like it’s obvious.

I stop. “What?”

She keeps walking. I jog to catch up, trying to match her pace.

She doesn’t look at me, but she says, “The cobbler did a poor job—your new soles are uneven. The right one isn’t trimmed properly, so it catches on things… like desk legs.”

Her lips pinch. “I tried to tell you the other day—before you ran off.”

My face burns and my hands clench as shame punches through me—because she noticed, and I didn’t.

“Well, you and the other girls started giggling,” I snap. “I thought you were making fun of me.”

Sarah stops and turns, and I skid to a halt.

She lifts an eyebrow and looks down that sharp nose. “I don’t… giggle.”

The eyebrow drops; she turns back to the sidewalk. “And I don’t make fun.”

But… I never did hear her laugh. The others were—eyes cutting sideways—Oh. Not me. Her.

The desk leg screeched on the tile—then came a whisper: “Oh, what’s she gonna say?”

She asked about my shoes—voice flat, measured, exact, like always—and then they laughed: “How weird.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and jog up again.

“I’m sorry,” I call ahead. “I haven’t been very nice to you, have I? I just thought… well, I thought you hated me.”

Sarah whips around; I check myself hard and almost slam into her.

Her brows knit deep. “Never,” she snaps.

Then she straightens and hugs her books to her chest like a shield, and whatever flashed in her eyes goes blank again.

“You… taught me how to fish,” she says with a nod like punctuation.

A laugh jumps out before I can stop it. “What?”

It’s a nervous laugh—a surprised laugh. Oh. I really wish I hadn’t.

Her brow tightens; her eyes narrow. “Fourth grade. Spring.”

Her voice goes sharper—still not cruel, just… exact.

“I saw you sitting alone on the stoop by the door, with your hands out in the air, while all the other children played out in the yard.”

She breathes. “But you looked... happy.”

Her gaze slips somewhere past me as she continues, voice soft—words placed like pins. “I asked what you were doing, and you told me you were fishing. I said that was silly, but you invited me to join. You handed me an invisible rod and showed me how to hold it.”

She shakes her head a little. “I don’t like pretending—never liked playing that way—but I sat there with you, holding out my hands like you showed me. I felt foolish, but then you told me all about fishing in the cove with your father.”

Her eyes brighten, just a little. “And without warning, you jumped up, shouting you’d caught ‘a big one’. I didn’t know what was happening. But there I was, helping you reel in an invisible striped bass.”

Her lip curls gently, and her shoulders settle. “It was so… fun.”

But her voice drops—almost a whisper. “When school started again that Fall, I looked for you. I hoped we could play again. But you were… sad. They told me your father died, and they said I should just leave you alone.”

She looks away. “I didn’t… understand. So I did as they said.”

“And I never saw you fishing on that stoop again.”

My chest tightens until it aches. I shake my head, slow. “I don’t… How do you remember that?”

“I remember everything,” she says.

And just like that—she’s walking again.

But I’m stuck, and her words—sewn like seeds—sprout slow… then bloom all at once.

I did that. I used to play all by myself, pretending the days Papa took me and Marcus out on the little boat—blue, like Mama’s eyes, he said.

Floating in the inlet cove by the harbor, where the water’s calm and the bass bite anything that dangles.

That was our feast for the weekend. I even caught a few myself. Marcus helped me reel them in.

Laughter—mine.

And the yellow-haired girl in the velvet dress—skeptical about my game. Did I even know her name then? She tried to explain there was no water, so no fish. I thought it was funny. I insisted she try.

Laughter—ours.

Then came Summer—that visit from the captain—and Fall turned blurry. People were blurry. Everyone gave me space—distance.

I was ten. Space didn’t help—it just made the rooms feel empty, like being punished and wishing someone would open the door. And I didn’t know how to ask.

No laughter.

I surge up beside Sarah and blurt, “I wish you hadn’t.”

A breath. “Left me alone, I mean.”

She doesn’t answer—and I don’t think she’s going to—but she nods slow, toward the walk ahead.

“Yesterday,” she says, “you walked up a very tall hill, through a very wealthy neighborhood, in very poor shoes—just to find me. You even convinced our housekeeper to show you where I like to… think.”

She swallows. “No one’s ever tried that hard just to talk to me. I didn’t expect it.”

She glances over at me.

“When I saw it was you by the ruins, I was... glad.”

My eyes go hot, but I smile and nod anyway as the knot under my ribs loosens—warm, almost floaty. Maybe we could be friends. Maybe we already were.

Maybe I just forgot how to play with other people.

“So,” I say, nudging her elbow with mine, “any ideas how to fix my shoes?”

“Find a better cobbler.” Dry. But not flat.

“Barring that,” she adds, “have Jonah take a look. He likes to whittle—keeps a knife in his right back pocket.”

“How do you know that?”

“Calluses,” she says. “Upper palm, fore and middle fingers of his right hand. So he does it a lot.”

I grin. “You sound like Sherlock Holmes.”

“You’ve read Doyle?” She lifts an eyebrow at me.

I shrug. “A couple stories from The Memoirs. My aunt’s got it. What about the knife though?”

Sarah’s eyes gleam. “Jonah is fond of tweed and suspenders. He’s worn the same duck-tail trousers for years and—if you hadn’t noticed—” she hooks an eyebrow downward, “they’ve gotten quite... snug.”

Oh—my jaw drops. I clap a hand over my mouth, but a snort still escapes. Heat floods my face.

I have to stop—folded over, one hand on my knee—laughing too hard to breathe; my books slip, and I catch them against my hip.

Breathe. “Ha—oh.” Breathe.

Yes, I have, in fact, noticed.

I catch up again, grinning now—open and toothy. I don’t care; I beam it at the side of her face.

She doesn’t look back, but I catch a tiny curl at the corner of her mouth.

We don’t talk anymore, but the quiet doesn’t bite—and once or twice, velvet grazes my shoulder as we walk side by side, with no gap between us.