by Mark Lukens
Still, Paul felt terrible. The exorcism had gone badly, worse than he could’ve imagined.
How had he not known Richard was possessed along with Julia? How come he hadn’t figured it out more quickly?
It had all been a ruse.
But why?
To get them to the house? To get him there?
Just to give him a warning?
Paul felt a shiver run through his body as he sipped his coffee.
He glanced at the door in the kitchen that led out to the garage. He never parked his Bronco in the garage because he couldn’t fit it inside. The garage was divided unequally into a woodshop on one side, and a home gym on the other side. The gym consisted of a multi-station exercise machine with stacked weights, a bench and squat rack with a complete set of Olympic weights, a rack with dumbbells that went up to fifty pounds, a treadmill, a speed bag, and a canvas punching bag wrapped in duct tape that hung in one corner. The woodshop was a long counter with a large table saw next to it, and other various tools scattered along the counter. Two of the black boxes that he constructed were in pieces on the counter, waiting to be put together and painted. A pegboard took up much of the wall above the counters where he hung his other hand tools.
Paul thought that he should go out to the garage and work out right now. Take a break from the report, from these thoughts that tormented his mind.
He thought about calling Rachael again, trying to convince her again that this was very real.
But he didn’t.
He was supposed to meet Father McFadden this evening at the hospital to visit Father James.
Maybe a quick workout and then a shower would make him feel better. He had wanted to have the report ready so he could give it to Father McFadden at the hospital. But it would have to wait. He still needed to do more work on it.
Paul drank the rest of his coffee and headed back upstairs to change into his workout clothes.
CHAP†ER †WELVE
Cleveland, Ohio
Danny saw the man again.
It was Saturday and he had ridden his bicycle over to his friend Pete’s house. They were supposed to shoot some baskets in his driveway. Pete had a basketball hoop attached over the garage door at regulation height and they used to shoot the ball a few times a week in the summer.
But Pete wasn’t home.
“He went to his father’s house,” Pete’s mother had told him. “He didn’t tell you?” she asked with feigned shock. “That little stinker. And you rode all the way over here.”
Danny could feel the mock sincerity oozing from her and he just wanted to leave, but she stood in the doorway with that stupid, fake smile plastered on her face.
“That’s okay,” Danny said and offered a fake smile to counter hers. “Could you have him call me when he gets back?”
“I sure will,” Pete’s mother over-jubilantly exclaimed.
He wondered if she was on some kind of prescription medication that she might be overindulging in, something that set the chemicals in her brain on a constant excited little dance.
Danny hurried off the front porch, back to his bicycle where he had dropped it in their front lawn. No doubt Pete’s mother was probably frowning at the placement of his transportation as she stood at one of the front windows staring at him with that smile still plastered on her face.
He was thinking about that smile on Pete’s mother’s face when he rode home. He was thinking of how eerie her smile had been, and how it had reminded him of the stranger’s smile he’d seen on his way home from school yesterday.
When he was almost in front of his house, right in front of the driveway, he brought his bicycle to a screeching halt on the sidewalk.
There was someone at the back of his house, by the corner, near the driveway that led to the free-standing garage.
It was a man.
The same man he’d seen yesterday.
But the man was gone now.
Had he even really been there?
Maybe he had imagined the man because he’d just been thinking about him and that odd, twisted half-smile of his.
No, he was sure he had seen him at the back corner of their house. And now the man had ducked back behind the house. He was somewhere in their backyard right now, hiding from Danny.
For a moment Danny was paralyzed with fear and indecision. He stood on the sidewalk, straddling his bike, clutching the grips of the handlebars harder than he realized. He stared down the empty driveway. His mom’s car was gone.
He sprang into action.
He jumped off his bike and ran with it up across the front yard. He dumped his bike on the front lawn near his mother’s meticulously arranged shrubs and flowerbeds that ran the length of the front porch in front of it. He knew he’d get an earful from his mom later about leaving his bike in the front yard.
“You want someone to steal your bicycle?” she would say. “Why don’t you just leave a sign on it that says: Free?”
But he didn’t care about getting yelled at right now. Right now he needed to get inside and lock the front door. He needed to see if Lisa was home, make sure she was okay.
Danny got to the door and found that it was locked. Of course it was locked, his mom was gone. He shoved his hand into his front pocket and dug out the key to the door. He could imagine the man walking briskly down the side of their house from the back corner where he had been hiding. He could imagine the man’s plain brown shoes crunching along the gravel driveway, his gait quickening.
After he pulled the metal storm door open, Danny stuck the key into the lock of the front door with trembling fingers. He constantly glanced back at the front corner of the house, expecting the man to spring out at him and jump at the railing of the front porch, clamoring over it like a spider. Or maybe he was sneaking up from the other side of the house. Danny’s eyes darted to that corner.
He finally got the door unlocked and pushed his way inside. He turned around to slam the door shut. The door had a large piece of glass in it that took up most of the top half of the door and it rattled in the loose frame when he closed the door. He realized that this barrier of glass was a poor defense against an intruder if that intruder wanted to barge his way in. There was the storm door on the outside of the front door; it was just a thin metal and glass door, not much extra protection. But he had forgotten to lock the storm door, and he wasn’t going to unlock the front door again to do it.
He backed away from the door, the floorboards of the one hundred year old house creaking underneath the carpet as he took each step.
“Lisa!” he called out.
No answer.
He took a few quick steps over to the stairs and yelled up the steps. “Lisa, you up there?!”
Still no answer. She was either ignoring him, which was possible, or she was out with Mom. It was Saturday and they might have gone grocery shopping.
Danny felt frightened suddenly, like a small child that had been forgotten and left behind at home.
Stop it! Danny told himself. Calm down. Think!
Danny slowed his breathing down and made his panicked mind think logically. The man probably wasn’t even out there. He might have imagined the whole thing. He had only seen him for a split second. Or maybe the man had been their neighbor, Arthur. Or maybe it had been someone cutting through their backyard.
The back door!
Danny raced through the living room and then through the dining room, the glass plates and bowls tinkled inside the hutch as he thundered past it. He ran through the kitchen to the mudroom where there was a guest bathroom and a door that led outside. He got to the door and was relieved to find that it was still locked. This door also had a large plate of glass in it. What was the deal with these doors and the large glass panels?
He pulled the curtain away from the door’s window and looked out through the glass. He pushed his face against the glass so he could see as much of the driveway, garage, and backyard as he could.
Nobody was out there that he could
see.
He backed away from the door, making sure the deadbolt was locked. He thought maybe he should check each window on the first floor and make sure all of them were locked. But he knew his mother always kept them locked if they were closed.
The basement. Maybe he should check the windows in the basement. They were small, maybe too small for a man that size to squeeze through, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to check. And then he remembered that there was another door that led outside on the first landing of the basement. They hardly ever used it, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until he checked to make sure it was locked.
He walked into the kitchen and stood there for a moment, looking at the sliding pocket door that opened up to the stairway which led down to the dark basement. There was no lock on the sliding door.
For a moment, he imagined he heard noises coming from behind the sliding door, from somewhere down in the basement. It sounded like a sneaky noise, maybe a jiggling noise, like someone trying to open the door that led outside.
Come on, Danny! he told himself. Don’t act like a scared little kid. Go down there and check the door. Once you know it’s locked, you will be able to breathe easier.
Part of Danny wasn’t ashamed of being frightened a little bit. There was a strange man outside his house, a strange man he’d seen yesterday on the way home from school, and now that man could possibly be trying to break in to their home. But he wouldn’t be breaking in to steal anything out of the house. No, his plans were going to be much worse than that.
Danny wasn’t sure where those thoughts had come from.
He forced himself into action and made himself march across the kitchen. He thought for a split second about grabbing a knife from the block of knives on the counter, but decided against it.
He pushed the sliding wood door aside and stared at the wooden stairs that led down into the darkness.
He flipped on the light switch and it made a clicking sound. The door that led outside was only six steps down on the landing. This door also had a glass pane in it, but it wasn’t as big as the ones in the front door and the back door. And the glass was covered right now with a solid curtain.
Danny looked at the door handle. It was still. No one was rattling it. All he needed to do was go down there and check it.
He hurried down the steps before he could change his mind. He grabbed the metal door handle, expecting it to jiggle in his hand when he did.
But it didn’t.
And the door was locked.
Danny breathed out a sigh of relief and stood there for a moment. He let his hand drop down away from the door handle like the strength had drained out of him. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been. But he was safe now. The man out there (if there was a man out there) wasn’t going to get inside unless he broke one of the windows. And then Danny would be on the phone dialing 911 before the man had a chance to—
The door handle jiggled.
Danny stared down at it like he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.
He lifted his hand up towards the curtain to push it aside. But it didn’t feel like it was his own hand anymore, it was like he was watching someone else’s hand and arm pushing the curtain aside.
Once he ripped the curtain to the side, he saw the man’s face right on the other side of the glass.
CHAP†ER †HIR†EEN
The man stared at Danny through the glass. It was the same blond-haired man he had seen yesterday. He had the same half-smile frozen on his face, a smile that wasn’t really a smile. And his dark eyes watched Danny. The man’s eyeballs were pure black; Danny could see that now that he was so close to him.
Danny let the curtain drop back in place and he backed away from the door. He stumbled back up the basement steps, scraping his shoulder against the plaster wall on the other side of the stairwell in the process, knocking down an old framed picture from the wall.
Only one thought pounded in his mind: he needed to get to the cordless phone; he needed to call the police.
He froze when he heard a voice calling out to him from the living room.
“Danny!” his mom sang out. “We’re home! Come help us with the groceries. And how many times have I told you about leaving your bicycle in the front yard?”
Danny sprinted out to the living room and slid to a stop. He stared at his mother and his sister as they sauntered in from outside. The front door behind them was wide open—the stranger could come inside the house anytime he wanted to.
“The guy out there …” Danny tried to yell but his sentence came out as a wheeze of words. He ran past his mother and sister to the front door and slammed it shut. He twisted the deadbolt locked.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked, annoyed but beginning to become concerned. She stood in the living room with four plastic grocery bags gripped in her hands, two in each fist.
“You didn’t see the man outside?” Danny asked as he peeked out through the curtain over the door.
“What man?” Rachael asked.
“You had to have seen him when you pulled up in the driveway! He was right outside the door to the basement!”
†
Rachael’s stomach dropped and she felt the tingling of fear dancing across her skin. She knew her son, and she’d seen him overreact before, heard his share of embellishments and pranks over the years, but this was different.
Her son was really scared right now.
“Okay, just calm down, Danny,” she said more out of habit than anything. But she didn’t feel calm anymore. “When did you see this man?”
“I saw him yesterday when I was walking home from school. I know I should’ve told you about it but—”
“Today, Danny. When did you see him today?”
“I came back from Pete’s house, he wasn’t home,” Danny said, spilling his words out in a rush. “And when I got back home I saw the man in the driveway by the back corner of our house. He was just staring at me, and then he went behind the house. I ran inside. Locked the door.”
“Mom?” Lisa said. Her eyes were dinner plates of fear as she still held two plastic grocery bags bulging with food.
“It’s okay, baby,” Rachael assured her daughter, but then she looked back at Danny, waiting for him to continue.
“I checked the doors and windows,” Danny continued quickly. “And then I checked the door in the basement steps and he was jiggling the handle.”
Rachael marched into the dining room and set her bags of groceries down on the “good” table reserved for company. The bags flopped over and vegetables and a few cans of food spilled out of them. She hurried over to the cordless phone that sat on an antique desk and dialed 911.
“The door in the basement was locked, but he was still trying to get in,” Danny said as Rachael waited on the phone, listening to it ring.
She nodded, indicating that she had heard her son’s words, but her eyes kept darting to the archway that led to the kitchen—and to the basement.
The operator finally answered the 911 call. “911,” a woman’s voice said in a calm voice. “Is this a medical emergency or a police emergency?”
“Police,” Rachael answered. “I just got home and my son told me there was someone outside …”
“… he was outside the basement door,” Danny told her again. “Jiggling the door handle. Trying to get inside …”
“… he was outside our house, at the door that leads to the basement steps,” Rachael said into the phone as Danny talked to her. “He was jiggling the door handle. Trying to get inside.”
Danny now looked less afraid and full of energy. He bolted out of the dining room and into the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Lisa asked him and followed him into the kitchen. She set her bags of groceries on the small breakfast table in the corner of the kitchen.
Rachael, the cordless phone still up to her ear, followed both of them into the kitchen. She saw Danny at the back door, pushing the curtain aside and peeking out through the glas
s.
“Is the man still outside?” the 911 operator asked Rachael about the same time her daughter asked Danny the same question.
“I don’t see him,” Danny said, and then he hurried back into the kitchen to look out the window over the sink.
“We don’t see him,” Rachael said into the phone.
“I’ve got an officer on the way,” the operator told Rachel in a practiced calm voice. “Just stay inside and keep your doors and windows locked.”
“Yes, we will. Thank you.”
“The officer should be there in about five minutes. Would you like me to stay on the line with you?”
Rachael watched Danny as he ran over to the sliding door that opened up to the basement steps. The door was still open all the way. Her son clamored down the six steps to the landing below where the door was that led outside. He threw the curtain back boldly and looked out the window. He tested the door handle to make sure it was still locked as he peered outside.
“I still don’t see him anywhere,” Danny said.
“Ma’am?” the 911 operator said into Rachael’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” Rachael said, clearing her throat a little. “No. I’ll hang up and wait for the police. Thanks.”
“If you need to call back for any reason,” the operator said, “please don’t hesitate.”
“I won’t. Thanks.”
Rachael pushed the END button on the cordless phone and held onto it.
“This is where he was, Mom!” Danny said from the basement landing. “Right outside this window.”
More waves of fear tingled across Rachael’s skin. She remembered Paul’s words, his warning that she and the kids might be in danger.
†
Danny told his mom everything as they waited for the police. He recounted every detail that he could remember.
And then when the police showed up—which was only one officer, a giant African American man named Officer Booker—Danny retold everything to him.
“He didn’t say anything to you?” Officer Booker asked Danny.
Danny sat on the couch next to his sister, and the officer and his mother sat in the two arm chairs.
