By the Light of His Lantern

by Abe Moss

  A great commotion came from the back room then. This time it sounded as though many things had fallen over, as though someone had pulled an entire shelf down on top of themselves. Perhaps Karen interpreted it the same way, as she rushed the door again, cursing in a low voice.

  Perhaps, Lewis thought, it could be another wandering soul like his, merely in search of supplies. They might have thrown the rock through the front window as a distraction, then hurried around to the back where there might have been another window (and damn them all, Lewis thought, if there’d been another window in there the whole time!) and gotten inside to ransack them while they searched the front of the house to no avail…

  Karen entered the back room, and was only inside a matter of seconds before there came the sound of the door slamming behind her. Wood grated on wood, clunked and clattered as something was manipulated into place. Lewis recognized the sound. He’d heard it a couple times already.

  “Let me out!” Karen cried. She pounded on the barricaded door. “Goddamit. Grant! Grant!”

  There was a click on the other side of the room. The front door had just been locked. Despite Lewis’s terror at now being restrained with the new invader, his interest was mildly piqued at their ability to get from one side of the room to the next in the matter of an instant, and making less sound than a scurrying rodent, no less.

  Karen screamed and battered the door with her fists.

  Lewis gasped as he was touched by a hand. A very small one.

  A familiar voice whispered in his ear, “I’ll untie you under one condition.”

  He opened his mouth to speak and could only release a weary shudder.

  “You have to promise not to run away this time.”

  PART II

  The Truth

  Chapter Six

  Can’t Shake the Past

  She paused as she opened the small inner pocket of her purse. She stared at the cash inside, a couple fives and a few ones. Glancing up, she saw the cashier waiting patiently, eyes fixed on her in her search, and chose instead to use her card. She handed it over with a smile.

  “I’ll use my card, I guess,” she said.

  As Catherine left the supermarket, ferried her groceries through the sunbaked parking lot under the brim of her large floppy sunhat, she was marked by an unshakeable scowl, a stiffness in her gait. Something wasn’t right. There had been at least one twenty in her purse last she remembered. Maybe even a couple. The more she thought about it, the surer she became. She remembered distinctly having over fifty dollars in her purse, forty of it in twenties.

  But suddenly those twenties were missing.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Once home, Catherine quickly put things away in the kitchen, starting with the perishables in the refrigerator. She didn’t even finish putting away the rest before she hurried upstairs to the guest bedroom.

  She stood in the doorway. She scanned the room over several times, eyes flitted from one discarded clothes article to the next, across the floor, over the bedspread. She stepped inside. She went to Lara’s luggage bag, which was open. Its contents were draped over its sides, spilling out in a careless fashion. Lara would never notice if someone picked through it, it was so unorganized, Catherine thought. She plucked her daughter’s clothes up and out of the bag one at a time, peeking underneath, searching for…

  She didn’t know what she was searching for. Not really. She was kidding herself, she knew, if she thought she would find stolen money anywhere.

  She paused in her search, stood straight, hands on her hips.

  Do I really think my daughter stole from my purse?

  It certainly wasn’t out of the question. Lara had done such things before in high school. Not that long ago, either, Catherine remembered. Though it felt like forever ago now, as Catherine hardly saw her these days…

  Feeling a little ashamed, Catherine tried to place the clothes carefully back into the luggage case, dropping them ever so haphazardly to make them appear as messy and careless as they’d been before she’d started snooping. When she was satisfied, she stepped out of the bedroom and let her daughter’s possessions be.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lara came home later than expected. Catherine was in the kitchen getting things from the fridge to start dinner when the door opened.

  “Hello?” Lara called out.

  “I’m here, in the kitchen.”

  Lara walked it.

  “How was work?” Catherine asked.

  “It was fine. What are you making?”

  “I thought I would make some chicken alfredo. Does that sound good?”

  “Oh,” Lara said. “I was actually planning on going out with a couple friends tonight. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Oh! Of course that’s fine. You should.”

  “You haven’t gotten too far into it yet, have you?”

  “I only just started pulling things out. Haven’t started at all.” They stood looking at each other for a moment. Lara put on a lopsided half-smile to warm the pause.

  “Well, you should still cook it if that’s what you wanted.”

  “Oh, no, I’ll wait. I’m not all that hungry, to be honest. Probably make something lighter. Watching my figure, and all that.” She laughed. It was a nervous sound.

  “Cool. Well, I’m going to change and head out, then. I don’t know how late I’ll be.”

  “I’ll leave a light on for you.” Just as Lara turned to go, Catherine stopped her. “Lara?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I hope you know, if you ever need anything, you can always ask. For anything. You can come to me for anything.”

  Lara nodded slowly, an awkward smile. “Okay. Will do.”

  She turned to go one last time and Catherine called, “Have fun with your friends tonight!”

  Her daughter left upstairs to change. Ten minutes later, Catherine listened as she came down and the front door opened and shut. In the dead silence, her car engine fired up outside, and the tires bumped off the end of the driveway. Catherine let out a deep sigh.

  I should turn on some music…

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Catherine got out of bed so late the following morning she wasn’t sure if Lara ever came home that night or if she’d just already gone to work. But her bedroom door was open and the bed was unmade and clothes were all over the floor in mostly the same arrangement she remembered them the day before. Then she went downstairs and discovered the lamp next to the front door was still on as she’d left it. The house was untouched. Undisturbed.

  It was only Tuesday. She was an entire two days into her week-long vacation and she already felt lethargic and bored. She didn’t know how she could stand another three after this…

  She sat at the kitchen counter with her laptop at her fingertips, a glass of orange juice to her right. She sipped from it, only barely. It would be her breakfast, nothing else. Most of it was sugar anyway, she knew. Not the healthiest. She bought it for Lara. Lara didn’t eat much, either. She likely wouldn’t touch half the things Catherine had filled the refrigerator with, just for her. But that was okay. She hadn’t asked for any of it, after all. Catherine just got carried away sometimes…

  As she sipped her juice, she scoured the internet for anything she could find about curses. There were many sources of information. Many of them sounded halfway respectable, too, until she actually started reading them. Nearly everything she read stunk with absurdity. None of it was real.

  She also tried searching for Rosaline, typing her name into different search engines and social media databases. There was nothing. Rosaline Avila, the name on her business card, didn’t appear to exist in the real world, at least not in use by her. Perhaps it wasn’t her real name. That would make sense, given the work she was in.

  Catherine gave up. She shut her laptop and took her warmed glass of orange juice into the front room where she relaxed herself into the sofa under the window.

  She couldn’t take care of him forever, that was certain. E
ither she did as she was supposed to and let him die, trap him in whatever hell she’d sent him to for all eternity. Or…

  The only other option was to buy the antidote, or whatever spell that witchy bitch would sell her. She would probably take Catherine for everything she had. An impossible amount. Desperation sale, all items and services marked fifty percent up!

  Exhausted by the worry, the thoughts eventually melted away on their own and left Catherine with a catatonic glaze over her eyes. When she caught up to herself again, snapped back into the world of the living, she looked to her piano. She looked at the pictures on top, focusing especially on the one of her youngest daughter. Joy. Her name was almost a cruel joke anymore. She’d brought Catherine so much of it in the years of her short life, that was true. But everything after…

  She was at work when it happened, but didn’t learn of it until she’d gotten home. School let out, she stayed for a bit, grading this, planning that, getting her class ready for the following day. Joy was only still in elementary. Some days she took the bus home, other days she walked to a friend’s and played there until Catherine left the high school to come get her.

  The day she died was meant to be a bus-ride day.

  Catherine came home to find no one there. This didn’t immediately worry her. It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes Lara spontaneously decided she wanted to play at her friend’s after school and Catherine would receive a call at work to let her know just that. But there hadn’t been any call…

  It was just as Catherine finished checking the obvious places around the house and decided to see if she was at her friend’s that the phone rang. It was Mrs. Jenkins. Joy’s friend’s mother. She was bawling. Catherine found it hard to tell what she was saying. She asked Mrs. Jenkins to please calm down and speak slower. And then, even when she heard clearly what she said, she found it that much harder to understand.

  “There’s been an accident.”

  Joy was hurt. A car, Mrs. Jenkins explained. She told Catherine to hurry. The police were already notified. However—and Catherine partly knew this even as she hung up the phone—Mrs. Jenkins lied. Perhaps she thought it wrong to say over the phone. Maybe the lie was easier for her, the truth was so terrible she couldn’t spit it out. Or maybe she thought Catherine should find out when she got there because she might not be in a state to drive there at all if she knew her daughter wasn’t hurt and was actually dead.

  They said she died immediately. Under the car.

  Catherine caught herself staring blankly at the picture on top of the piano and stood immediately with her warm glass of orange juice. She took it to the kitchen and poured it down the sink.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  He wasn’t looking so good.

  Catherine finished feeding him his daily smoothie and set the empty bottle on the ground next to her. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his skin was paler than usual. A sickly sheen. What could be wrong, she thought? She fed him better than she fed herself, all the nutritious garbage she made into his smoothies. Sure, she was glad she wasn’t drinking them herself, they tasted awful. But they were healthy. He got plenty of water. She was even getting used to changing him, in the short time she’d been doing it. It wasn’t much different than changing a baby. Except that wasn’t true. It was horrific. She dreaded it every time. Why she didn’t just let him waste away…

  Upstairs, the front door slammed shut. Catherine jolted. Feet kicked shoes onto the floor. Footsteps creaked the floorboards over her head, which she followed with her eyes to the ceiling, frozen in place. Lara called out to her.

  Catherine stood, grabbed the empty smoothie bottle from the ground. At the bottom of the stairs she paused, then set the bottle down on one of the shelves there, and continued up. When she reached the doorway Lara was coming toward her through the front room.

  “You’re home early! What is it, noon?” Catherine said with a smile as she stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind her. Her hands went to her pocket for the key and she hesitated. She dropped her hands at her sides. Lara looked her over skeptically.

  “It was a slow day…”

  Before Lara could ask, or even wonder, Catherine said, “I was just downstairs looking through some old boxes. I know I’ve got a couple full of your old things from school. I thought you might like them.”

  “Oh, that’s okay.” Lara sighed. “To be honest I don’t really care to hold on to anything like that.”

  “All right. I just figured you’d like looking through them again at least. Brings back memories. But none of that matters, I couldn’t find the boxes.”

  They stood facing one another while Lara only nodded, waiting to be released to do anything but what they were currently doing. Catherine decided to release her.

  “There’s leftovers in the fridge. I’ll be upstairs in my room if you need anything.”

  Without pause, Lara left with a murmur, something that sounded like thank you. When Catherine heard the sounds of rummaging in the fridge, she quickly removed her keys from her pocket and locked the basement door.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sometime after two her phone rang. It was Beth. She wanted to do lunch. Impulsively Catherine refused, tried to tell her she was busy with errands and an assortment of other important things to which Beth called bullshit and said ‘what errands?’ which Catherine didn’t have an actual answer for. She’d already cancelled their previous dinner, Beth reminded.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked her over the phone. “You’re not hiding yourself away all day, are you?”

  Finally Catherine agreed to meet her. Beth picked the place, some Korean BBQ restaurant Catherine thought sounded rather disgusting but felt too defeated and tired to negotiate anything else. When she got dressed and dumped herself behind the wheel of her car, however, she felt rather glad to be leaving.

  When she parked and stepped out of her car, Beth greeted her with open arms, face beaming, voice shrill with excitement, and Catherine couldn’t help smiling a little herself.

  “One of these days you’ll realize how lucky you are to have me,” Beth said. “I know you didn’t sound too enthusiastic about this place, but at the very least I’m forcing you to actually get dressed for the day.”

  “Wha—”

  “Yeah. You answered the phone in your pajamas. I know. You had your pajama voice on, don’t think I couldn’t hear it.”

  They walked through the parking lot together. Beth wore heels, and they clicked and clacked and grated on the pebbly asphalt. She spoke a hundred miles a minute. Catherine didn’t listen to everything she said, but a part of her felt relieved to have her friendly chatter.

  They stood inside for a few minutes before they were seated. Catherine looked over the menu with disinterested eyes.

  “What are you getting?” she asked Beth.

  “My usual.”

  Catherine looked everything over and couldn’t spot anything that sounded remotely appetizing. She didn’t even feel very hungry. Almost not hungry at all, like a numb emptiness. She knew she could eat, but did she want to?

  “I don’t know what anything on this menu is.”

  “Cathy, there are descriptions under each name, you know.”

  Catherine eventually settled on something. A soup of some kind. When she ordered Beth only watched her quietly with smiling eyes.

  “Are you not hungry?”

  “Not very.”

  “Well I’m glad you chose to come anyway.”

  Catherine sipped from her water, scanned the restaurant and its other customers over the rim of her glass. When she brought her eyes back to their own table, Beth was still looking at her with that amused, oddly observant stare.

  “You make me feel like a charity case or something,” Catherine said. “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “I’m just glad you agreed to have lunch with me.”

  “Well stop it.”

  “I can’t pretend not to know what you must be going through rig
ht now.”

  There was a momentary flutter in her stomach, where she thought “what am I going through right now?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t want to ruin lunch or make you uncomfortable. Just know I’m here for you if you need me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.” She paused and they stared at one another. “It’s been a year. Almost exactly, hasn’t it?”

  Catherine sighed.

  “Yes.”

  After a quiet moment looking around themselves, giving their conversation room to breathe, Beth said, “Has it been hard for you?”

  “I…” Catherine paused. She wanted to tell Beth what a stupid question that was, but she held her tongue. Beth was only trying to help her vent, she knew. “Maybe. I don’t know, really. I think about her all the time. I don’t know how hard that is, but apparently it’s been eating at me more than I thought.”

  “It’s not a bad thing, you know. I just want to make sure you know you don’t have to feel it all alone.”

  “I appreciate your concern.”

  “What about Lara? Do you talk much?”

  On a whim of irregular openness, Catherine told her everything. She told her about Lara’s breakup, and that she was staying over for a while. She even told her about the money missing from her purse.

  “I feel bad for thinking that, I just… I know it was there. And now it’s not.”

  “She’s not in any kind of trouble, do you think? Drugs, or anything like that?”

  “No,” Catherine answered quickly. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, if she did take your money… it’s not the worst or strangest thing in the world for a child to do.”

  “She’s not a child.”

  “I know, I didn’t mean it like that. Just that she’s your child. Parents have been lamenting their thieving children since the dawn of time, I’m sure.”

  Beth didn’t have children. Catherine felt awkward at times talking with her about her own, knowing Beth had very little personal knowledge to draw from. Any advice she could give would have to be taken with a grain of salt.