Slow River

Chapter 6

Lore is nearly seven and a half. The family is staying with friends in Venezuela for a month or so over Christmas. Greta is there, too.

The only image Lore really has of her half sister, Greta, is grayness: gray hair, gray eyes, and a gray kind of attitude to life. She is almost always away somewhere looking after the family interests. She is much older, of course—twenty-five now—and Lore tends to treat her more like an aunt than a sister, partly because Greta, even when she’s around, seems so distant, withdrawn. Not unkind, just preoccupied with whatever it is that always makes her look stooped and check around corners before turning them. Lore has never seen her laugh, though sometimes she does smile. At those times Lore thinks she looks beautiful: her face stretches sideways a little, shortening it, taking away the grooves and hollows and shadows, changing it from gray to gold.

Lore’s most vivid memory of Greta has to do with the Dream Monster.

Lore is asleep on her stomach with the covers thrown off the bed—how she always sleeps in a hot climate—when suddenly she is woken up by the monster. It has her pinned down and is breathing hot fire on her neck and groaning like a beast. She shrieks, and pushes, and doors bang open down the corridor, lights come on, and she must have blanked out for a minute or two, or maybe she really was dreaming, because then Katerine is sitting next to her on the bed, still dressed, and Greta is in the doorway, with Oster pulling on pajama trousers.

“A dream,” Katerine is saying to Lore. She turns to Greta and Oster. “Just a dream.”

But Lore is still shaking and realizes she is crying.

“What is it?” Oster says, and kneels by the bed. He takes her hand. “If you tell me what you’re afraid of, we’ll fix it.”

“Wasn’t a dream,” she hiccoughs. She has to make them understand. “It was a monster.”

“Of course it was a dream, love,” Katerine says with a smile. “How could it have got in?”

“Through the door.”

Oster makes a shushing gesture at his wife. “A monster? Well, I don’t much like the idea of a monster being loose when we’re all trying to sleep, so you tell me all about him, and then we can keep a look out.” He ruffles her hair, which she carefully smooths down.

She knows he is humoring her, but it doesn’t matter, because at least he will listen. “It was big and heavy, only not heavy like a rock, heavy like…” She doesn’t know how to describe it. Heavy like the end of everything. “Very heavy, anyway. It made monster noises. And breathed hot air.” She shudders. That air had felt so bad, like the breath of something dead.

“Well, the solution seems easy enough. If it came through the door, we’ll give you a lock. A special lock that monsters can’t open. Only people. Will that do?”

She considers it, then nods. By this time, Katerine is looking at the time display on the ceiling. “It can wait until tomorrow. It’s past three already and I have that net conference at nine.”

Lore is not sure whether her mother is talking to Oster, or to Greta who is still and silent by the door, or to her. She turns a mute look of appeal to her father.

He sighs. “I’ll deal with it, Kat. You and Greta get to bed.” They do. “I think we’ll be lucky to find a lock at this hour. But there might be a place… Will you be all right on your own for half an hour?”

In answer Lore climbs down from the bed, puts on her slippers, and tucks her hand into his. He looks at her, then smiles. “Together it is, then.”

In the end, they take the lock from the pantry door. It is an old-fashioned thing, attached by magnet to jamb and door, the mechanism a crude combination lock. But when they get it onto her bedroom door, and Lore wraps the combination cylinder with her hand so that even Oster can’t see what number she chooses, she feels better. Oster tucks her up, kisses her forehead, and when the door closes behind him, she hears the satisfying click that means no one can ever come in here again until she rolls each of the white counters to its proper number.

She is getting dressed the next morning when Greta knocks at the door. She opens it proudly. Greta seems awkward. “Did you sleep better, later?”

Lore nods, then shows Greta her lock. Greta frowns. “This isn’t good enough.”

“But—”

“No, it’s not good enough. Lock the door behind me and watch.”

Lore, mystified as usual by Greta and her ways, does so. Twenty seconds later, the lock clicks back and the door swings open. Lore is suddenly terrified. She doesn’t care that it is Greta who went out of the door, she is sure it is the monster coming back in. She runs to the bed intending to climb under it, forgetting that it is a futon and not her own, high bed in Amsterdam. The door closes again and Lore opens her mouth to scream.

“It’s just me,” Greta says. But she seems distracted. “We’re going to do something about that lock.” And she sits down on the futon right there and starts contacting people on her slate. “There. Now let’s go eat breakfast.”

They are the only ones at breakfast and though the maid drops Greta’s croissant, Greta does not seem to notice. Lore nibbles at her own food and watches her sister surreptitiously over the rim of her juice glass. Where does she go all the time? she wonders. Wherever it is, it does not seem very pleasant.

The locksmith arrives only forty minutes later, and the three of them troop upstairs, again in silence. Greta simply points at the door and the locksmith nods.

It takes five minutes. Lore watches, fascinated, as the old lock is removed with something that looks like a cooking spatula, and a creamy ceramic square with a glossy black face replaces it. Lore thinks he has finished until he fishes a second from his pocket and fits it over the door and jamb on the hinge side. He doesn’t look Venezuelan. When the locksmith is finished, he pulls out a white key remote the size of a rabbit’s foot. He presses a button, and the black face turns to deep blue. “All yours.” He starts to hand the key to Greta but she nods in Lore’s direction and he gives it to her instead. He leaves.

“It’s a special lock system,” Greta says. “No one, and I mean no one, will ever be able to get through that lock. And because there are two, they can’t just take the door off its hinges, or knock it down They’d have to cut a hole through the middle. And the monster can’t do that.”

Lore looks down at the fat white key in her hand and wonders about monsters in the Netherlands.

“You can remove the locks and take them with you, wherever you go. I’ll download all the operating instructions to your slate later. You’d better choose the code when I’m gone. Anything you like. You can even make them different for each side. And you can use algorithms to make sure it’s never the same twice.” She taps the key in Lore’s hand. “Don’t lose that.”

After she goes, Lore sits on her bed, turning the locks on and off, listening to them thunk competently open and closed;

Greta leaves again the next day, and Lore develops a habit of reaching into her pocket to check she has her key whenever she is nervous.