We Are Always Watching

by Hunter Shea

  But he would see who did it.

  “Isn’t that what the police should be doing?” West asked.

  “I doubt they’ll come out here for a welcome home note.” He stared into the distance, hand reaching for West’s shoulder to keep steady.

  West was pretty sure the notes constituted a threat. Didn’t cops give restraining orders for this kind of stuff?

  “We can at least show them the notes.”

  Hard swallowing sounds told West that his father’s breakfast was in danger of making a reappearance. His fingers dug into West’s collarbone.

  “You want me to help you inside?”

  He hoped he didn’t barf on his sneakers again.

  “Yes. Please.”

  The next five minutes were spent getting his father to the couch and settled in with a warm ginger ale, a waste bucket with a new plastic bag just in case, and one of his pills.

  “You go out,” his father said, squeezing his eyes shut. “No need to babysit me.”

  “Will you at least think about calling the cops later?”

  He shook his head. “Yeah. Sure. I just need to settle my head down first.”

  West left him in the living room, turning on the TV so he had some company. On the way outside, he stopped to stare at the brick that’d held the note.

  Where were the Guardians now?

  Were they out there in the tall grass, watching… guarding?

  WE SEE YOU

  Maybe they were night owls. It was easier to do sneaky things under the cover of darkness.

  Or, was this something Grandpa Abraham left before taking off in his truck this morning?

  West shivered. None of the possibilities made him feel any better.

  With each step in the field, he wondered if the Guardians were close by, taking note of his every move.

  Only the irrefutable magnetism of Faith could get him back out there in the middle of an overgrown nowhere, alone and exposed.

  Chapter Ten

  West’s disappointment at not seeing Faith clung to him for the rest of the day. He waited in her spot for hours, reading and re-reading his magazine until he couldn’t take the punishing sun anymore.

  Several times he stared at the cornrows, feeling like he should give it a shot and try to find her house.

  Thankfully, he never got up the nerve to do it.

  With his luck, he’d end up hopelessly lost, wandering into the night, hollering for someone to save him.

  Jesus, he missed her, the lone bright spot in his very dark existence.

  And missing her made Anthony’s absence in his life that much heavier. They’d been inseparable. The divide between them never seemed larger. Shit, he didn’t even have a cell phone he could use to call or text him.

  Every fucking thing sucked out here.

  West headed back to Grandpa Abraham’s home. It would never be his home. Ever.

  His father was asleep, zonked by the pill he’d taken earlier. Grandpa Abraham was still out.

  There were no new Guardian notes, thank God. He wished he could go back to just thinking the house was haunted. Sure, he’d acted like a pussy when push came to shove, but ghosts couldn’t hurt you.

  Or maybe this place was a double whammy – a refuge for the souls of departed Ridleys and living lunatics.

  West was too hot and tired to get worked up right now.

  “Now what do I do?”

  At least back home in New York, he’d had his own TV. It was now in storage, since Grandpa Abraham wasn’t going to extend cable to the upstairs.

  In his room, he looked at all the books that he’d read and decided he wasn’t in the mood. Sweat dripped from his hairline. Crescent moons bloomed under his armpits.

  His mother had the only computer, so he couldn’t go down a YouTube rabbit hole right now.

  His frustrated eyes settled on the old steamer trunk by his bed.

  Now there was something to do. Yippee.

  Taking off his sneakers, he quietly went downstairs, finding a pair of scissors and a thick butter knife. One of them should be enough to pry the trunk open. He also grabbed a cold bottle of Pepsi from the fridge, rubbing it against his forehead.

  His father snored with his mouth wide open, one hand on his chest, the other dangling over the edge of the grungy couch. There was a time he wouldn’t hesitate to wake him up so they could do a little treasure hunting together. West wasn’t too old to remember that bond and the warm comfort it brought him.

  Now, just getting his father upstairs would cast a pall over the whole thing.

  I’ll wake him up if I find anything cool. Maybe the trunk is locked because it contains all the good memories in this place. God knows, Grandpa Abraham wouldn’t want that to get around.

  The locks on the trunk were old. He could feel how fragile they were just by running his hands over the cool metal. Opening the scissors, he wedged one of the blades in the lock’s gap. Pressing down, it snapped open with a slight pop. The second one was a little more stubborn, but it was no match for modern tempered steel.

  There could be anything in here.

  He’d watched enough Antiques Roadshow and Storage Wars with his mother to know that valuable stuff – things that looked like junk to him - were often found in trunks just like this.

  Maybe, just maybe, there was something in there that could get them the hell out of this place.

  That is, if Grandpa Abraham didn’t snatch it back and stuff it in the trunk again.

  Okay… whatever I find, I won’t tell him about it. If it looks like something worth money, I’ll hide it and find one of those antique stores in Stroudsburg when I get a chance. That town looks like it would eat up collectible stuff.

  And if he did come into a landslide of money – how would he explain how he’d gotten it?

  Fuck it, West thought. I can figure that out later.

  He took a swig of the Pepsi.

  It felt like the temperature in the room had risen ten degrees. The cicadas stepped up their racket outside. He looked at the pictures on his wall, then at Ash Costello on his ceiling, his mind superimposing Faith’s face over hers.

  All right, enough tension building.

  The hinges on the lid made a perfect, haunted house creak as he lifted it oh-so-carefully. A heavy, moldy odor puffed from the open chest like a long-held breath. He cringed, coughing into his hand.

  Peering inside the chest, the first thing he noticed was a neatly folded square of white linen and lace. At least it must have been white at one time. Now, it was the color of old bones.

  He reached inside, picking up the fabric. It unfolded as he lifted it from the chest.

  “It’s a dress.”

  It looked like one of those special white dresses little girls wore to their First Communion. A mothball the size of a marble fell from the folds, rolling across the floor.

  West laid the dress on his bed.

  I’m not gonna get rich with a dress. Hope there’s something better under it.

  There were two boxes of puzzles, both with images of flitting butterflies. The corners of the boxes were worn. He opened one, saw that many of the puzzle edges were ragged or torn. This was a puzzle that saw a lot of playtime. He didn’t bother opening the other, just shook it to confirm that it was full.

  Next was a laminated placemat. On one side was a map of the world. West turned it over. The other had a list of all the presidents, ending with Jimmy Carter.

  There was a tin box of hair barrettes, bows, and other stuff West couldn’t name but knew they belonged in a girl’s hair.

  “This must be Stella’s stuff.”

  Now that he said it out loud, he felt a little ghoulish. Here he was looking for lost treasure and he was actually up to his elbows in a dead girl’s things. He plucked his arms out for a moment and considered closing the lid.

  Maybe I should just put it all back. Grandpa or Grandma locked this up for a reason. If he found out I was going through it, he’ll lose his shit.
r />   He hoped there was a way to fit the locks back together, if not securely, at least in appearance.

  He was about to put the placemat back when curiosity nudged him further.

  It’s open now. There isn’t much left anyway. Might as well see what else they stored away. This is probably the closest I’ll ever come to knowing about Stella. Dad was so young when she died. I wonder if he’s ever even seen this stuff.

  He set a couple of Judy Blume books aside, revealing a small stack of report cards, bound with a red string.

  Mrs. Ketih – Buttermilk Creek Elementary – Grade 2 Final Report Card

  He slipped the heavy card stock reports from under the string, looking at her grades – all Bs and Cs – and comments from her teachers.

  ‘Stella showed improvement this year. Keep working hard.’

  ‘Work on those addition and subtraction tables over the summer.’

  ‘Very good effort, despite numerous absences.’

  He scanned down to the absentee line. She’d missed school twenty-seven times! West would have killed to have missed that much school, especially in second grade. He hated Ms. Kaplan, an old crone who embarrassed him at the chalkboard at least twice a week.

  A special note from Principal Martle caught his attention.

  ‘Stella’s social skills improved this year, but there is still much work to be done. She must learn to control her anger and keep her hands to herself when agitated. I highly suggest further evaluation over the summer. We should meet before the start of the new year to determine a course of action.’

  There weren’t many report cards. Unfortunately, she hadn’t lived long enough to amass the stack he was sure his mother kept of his own somewhere. But there was a noticeable trend – she was an average student, obviously sickly, with a temper that warranted the school asking for her to be evaluated, most likely by some psychiatrist.

  West wondered if she had a bit of autism. Did people understand autism back then? His school had several kids with varying degrees of diagnosed autism. Scholastically, some of them were brilliant. In almost all, there were very clear signs of socialization issues, some more obvious than others.

  The rest of the chest held a box of crayons, the 64 box with the crayon sharpener on the side. He’d always wanted that, but his parents wouldn’t pass the 24 mark.

  He found an instruction book for a Holly Hobbie Oven and other loose papers.

  Oh well, nothing very exciting, or of monetary value, but he did get a little insight to the relative he’d never get a chance to meet.

  He was careful to put things back in the same order they’d been. Plucking the Judy Blume books, several papers slipped out from the well-thumbed pages. One of them opened on the trunk’s bottom. The handwriting was eerily familiar.

  WE WATCHED YOU, MONSTER. WE KNOW. AND WE ARE ANGRY.

  West jumped back from the chest as if a cobra had sprung from the weathered trunk.

  “Oh no, no…”

  He pushed himself to open the other slip of paper. It was fragile and faded, with the folds dull as a spoon’s edge, the blue ink paling from time.

  Reading it made him queasy.

  I WATCHED HER DIE, GUARDING HER SOUL, USHERING HER ON TO THE NEXT RESTFUL PLANE. SHE WAS EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL IN DEATH THAN SHE WAS IN LIFE. YOU WERE TRULY BLESSED AND TOO BLIND TO REALIZE IT.

  He ran downstairs, holding the papers with his thumb and forefinger as if they were made of toxic material. Stumbling on the last step, he caromed into the wall, shouting for his father.

  ***

  “Where did you find this?”

  For a moment, Matt thought maybe his father wasn’t kidding and there was a ghost in the house. West sure looked as if he’d seen one.

  “In that old trunk in my room. It was in this kid’s book underneath toys and a dress.” West’s throat was so dry, it clicked when he tried to swallow. Matt had never seen him so scared.

  “A dress?”

  “Yeah, a small white one.”

  That must be one of the places they put Stella’s stuff, Matt thought. I know Mom stashed as much as she could all over the house before Dad could throw it out after that first year.

  His father said one year of grieving was enough, and thought getting Stella’s things out of the house would help her overcome her grief. Would it have hurt to let his mother keep the parts of Stella she wanted? How could he erase her like that? If only he knew how much she cried before he came home from work. Matt knew she had boxes of Stella’s effects tucked away in the attic and basement. He’d seen her weeping over those open boxes.

  “Were there any others?” he asked West. His son paced around the room, chewing at his nails.

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t see any more. Dad, are the Guardians talking about your sister?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt said, running his hands through his unruly hair. West’s cries had woken him from a deep, narcotized sleep. Now he was sitting up on the couch, still dazed, the room wavering on the periphery of his vision.

  The truth was, he did know. He may have never seen these particular notes before, but even West, who hadn’t been here back then, knew. The only question was, why did his mother save them? She’d been terrified of the Guardians, throwing away notes as soon as she found them, sometimes even burning them on the stovetop. Did she hold on to these particular notes to show the police? Something like this would have gotten them out in force. Or did his father stuff them in one of Stella’s books?

  He patted the couch, motioning for West to sit beside him.

  “Look, I need you to settle down. These notes are almost forty years old. There’s nothing you need to worry yourself about.”

  West slumped onto the couch, an explosion of dust and skin flakes swirling in a corona around him. “Yeah, those are old, but there are new notes. If they’re about Stella, they say the Guardians were there when she died. If they didn’t kill her, they at least didn’t do anything to help her. That’s sick. Like, psycho killer sick.”

  “Nobody killed Stella.”

  He sighed. There was so much he wished he knew about his sister. His mother had always been reluctant to talk, but that didn’t stop him from pestering her with questions.

  What he did know was that she wasn’t like other kids her age. She had some kind of glandular issue that caused her to grow quickly. Even in first grade, his mother said she was taller than the biggest fourth grader. But there were other problems. Behavioral issues that his parents were ill equipped to deal with. Even the school had a hard time knowing how to help her.

  Matt stared at the open notes on his lap.

  He felt so small, so helpless.

  West was scared, and he had every right to be. If Matt were a whole man, he’d be able to comfort him, save him from their predicament. He could take West and Debi and storm the hell out of here and never look back.

  No matter how much he wanted to do just that, he simply couldn’t. It was because of him they were here. Because he was a crippled fuck, his family had to go through the same bullshit he’d had to endure.

  The spins. Always the spins. And when they weren’t twisting his head around, they were close, waiting to pounce. He couldn’t save a cat from a low-hanging branch, much less his family. He was a dependent, even to his son who had to help him get around and clean up his vomit and fetch his meds.

  We all would have been better off if that drunk bitch had just finished the job.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought. Hell, it wasn’t even close to being the thousandth. He had a pretty good life insurance policy back then, when he was able to make the payments. What good was it, and he, to them now?

  “I’ll talk to your grandfather about it when he gets home.”

  God that sounds lame.

  “Where is he?”

  “Probably at the Post.”

  “What’s the Post?”

  “It’s a place where military veterans hang out, usually to have a few drinks, play
cards, watch TV. It’s where he’s always spent most of his time.”

  West tapped the notes. “Maybe we can show these to the police. There’s no statute of limitations for murder, right?”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “I watch those real crime shows sometimes. Since the Guardians are still around, if we show the cops these notes, that could give them probable cause to catch them and prosecute them for Stella’s murder.”

  Matt’s stomach went sideways. He burped into his hand, biting his lip until things settled down.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said. “Your Aunt Stella wasn’t murdered. She drowned. My mother was hanging up the laundry outside and she wandered off. Stella had never been taught how to swim because there wasn’t any call for it. Not out here.”

  West looked puzzled. “So where did she drown?”

  “There was a little watering hole we called a pond, but it was more like a deep puddle. It was in a depression in the field. At most, it was two feet deep. After the accident, my father drained it completely. My mother had asked him to do it a hundred times before, and when he finally did, it was too late.”

  West collapsed onto one of the loveseats.

  “How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?”

  Matt gripped West’s shoulders, those same narrow shoulders he’d leaned on to get in and out of bed, chairs, and the car. “Not one more minute than we have to. I promise you that. Let me hang onto these notes and I’ll have a talk with your grandfather the moment he gets home.”

  West left without saying another word. He went upstairs, then came back down, Matt assumed with one of those horror books in hand, and went out the front door.

  He stared at the open notes in his lap, fighting the gorge roiling in his gut, burning his esophagus.

  Maybe, just maybe, his anger could overshadow his inadequacy.

  The Guardians had hung over his childhood like a gray cloud, always threatening rain but never unleashing its horrid potential. It had worn him down, as it had his mother. This fear, and Stella’s death, had taken her life decades before she drew her last breath.