by Mark Lukens
Danny wanted to show the note to Paul. He wanted to show him proof that he had seen the girl again—he wanted to show him the physical proof he had in his hand.
But the others were following Paul and he felt suspicious of them suddenly. Something was wrong not only with this house, but with Robert and Helen. And for the first time Danny felt that he and Paul might be in some kind of danger. Maybe they had been tricked into coming here for some reason.
He folded the paper back up and stuffed it down into the pocket of his jeans as Paul came around the corner of the stacked boxes.
Danny tried to show a neutral face as he looked at Paul.
“Did you find the necklace?” Paul asked.
Danny shook his head no, afraid to speak; afraid he would somehow give away what he had just seen.
Both priests and Robert and Helen gathered behind Paul.
“We need to continue with the blessing of the house,” Paul said. The others nodded. It seemed like they all had conducted a little meeting in the kitchen and had come to a decision that Danny needed to put this little hunt behind him for now and get back to the real business of this house.
“We can all look for the necklace again later,” Paul said.
“Okay,” Danny answered. He realized that he wasn’t going to find the necklace dropped somewhere in any of these rooms. He was even more certain now that it had been stolen.
Danny followed the rest of them back to the sitting room where candles were already lit, where they would start their procession through the house again.
It felt like the folded piece of paper was burning a hole in his pocket. He was sure that Robert, Helen, and the two priests knew he had it. He was afraid the edges of the folds of the stiff paper could be seen outlined in the pocket of his jeans.
As they began their parade through the house with Father Hopkins uttering the same prayers as before, Danny had to keep touching his pocket every so often. He tried to be as inconspicuous as he could be, but he needed to keep touching it and make sure that it was really there.
He didn’t need to take it out and read it again—the words scrawled in red crayon were burned in his mind now:
Help me
CHAP†ER †HIR†Y-ONE
After a late lunch, Danny, as usual, helped Helen with the dishes and helped her clean up the kitchen. He didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t want to seem suspicious. He kept glancing at Helen who was putting on an act of her own, making small talk, asking him about school. But Danny wasn’t fooled. She was in on this, he was sure of it—both her and her husband. They were hiding their daughter in this house somewhere, pretending she didn’t exist.
And Danny was going to find out why.
But he knew he needed Paul’s help. And the first chance he got, he was going to talk to him about it.
†
Danny hurried upstairs after putting the last of the dishes away. He rushed down the hall and saw that the door to Paul’s room was ajar. He rushed in and saw Paul sitting on the edge of his bed with his back facing the door. He had been rummaging around for something inside of his canvas duffel bag when Danny burst inside the room. Paul stuffed something down into the bag and zipped it shut. He nearly threw the bag into the closet and turned around to face Danny.
“Danny,” Paul breathed out, looking surprised. “Do you know how to knock?”
“I’m sorry … the door was open.”
Paul just stared at Danny. “Do you need something?”
“I need to talk to you about something,” Danny said and glanced at the closet which Paul stood in front of like he was guarding it. “But if you’re busy …”
“No. Please.” Paul walked around the bed and gestured towards the door.
They walked across the hall to Danny’s bedroom. After they were inside, Paul closed and locked the door with the skeleton key sticking out of the lock underneath the door handle.
“What’s wrong?” Paul asked.
Danny paced over to the window. He glanced out through the glass, down at the snow. The footprints weren’t there anymore. It bothered him for a second, but he wasn’t going to let it get to him—he had physical evidence that the girl was real, and it was stuffed right down in the pocket of his jeans.
He looked back at Paul. “I saw the girl again.” He continued quickly before Paul had a chance to interrupt him. “I know you’re going to say that it was another one of my visions, but she was real. I know it now.”
Paul said nothing. He stood very still near the foot of Danny’s bed.
“When I was in the living room looking for my mom’s necklace, I saw the girl hiding behind the drapes that cover all of those windows. I walked over to her slowly because I didn’t want to scare her away. I asked what her name was. She told me it was Melissa. And then she handed me a note.”
Danny clawed at his front pants pocket, and for a horrifying second he couldn’t feel the slight bulge of the folded paper in his pocket. He stuffed his hand down and rammed his fingers against the thick paper. He pulled out the note and opened it, not too surprised that his fingers were trembling. He read the words scrawled on the paper in red crayon again just to prove to himself that they were still there.
Help me
He walked the five steps across the room and handed the note to Paul. He watched Paul’s reaction as he read the note, but Paul gave nothing away.
Paul refolded the stiff paper and handed it back to Danny.
“See?” Danny said, trying to keep his voice low, but he couldn’t help being a little excited. “She’s real. She gave me this note. They’re keeping her here like a prisoner in this house.”
Paul walked past Danny over to the window like he needed a moment to think about this. He turned and looked at Danny.
“I’ve talked to Robert and Helen again,” Paul said. “They swear they don’t have a daughter. They swear they’ve never had a daughter or any other children.”
“They’re lying,” Danny nearly shouted, and then his eyes flashed over to the bedroom door.
“Danny …” Paul said in a disappointed tone.
“What about the attic?” Danny had tried to go back up to the attic earlier to look for the necklace, but the door was locked again. “Have you been up there? Did you go up to the attic and take a look at the girl’s bedroom furniture?”
“I asked Robert and Helen about it,” Paul answered. “They told me that when they bought this house, the attic was already full of other people’s possessions. It was like many families had lived here over the years and then had suddenly left their possessions behind. Almost like people had left the house in the middle of the night and only grabbed the things they could carry, the things that were most precious to them.”
Danny took a breath and looked at Paul who still stood in front of the window. “I think we might be in danger here. I think there might be something wrong with Robert and Helen. Maybe even the two priests. I think this could be some kind of trap.”
“Trap for what?” Paul asked. His voice was still reasonable, he was still patient with Danny.
“I don’t know. But a lot of things don’t make sense. Have you seen any signs of hauntings in this house besides my supposed visions of this little girl?”
Paul waited a moment, and then he shook his head slightly. “It may take some time for these demons to reveal themselves. I told you that before we came here.”
“But you haven’t experienced anything yet,” Danny pressed.
Paul didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Danny was ready to reveal everything he had seen in this house now—no holding back now. “Why is the door to the basement locked? There’s a big padlock on it.”
Paul didn’t answer.
“How come we never go up into the attic or down into the basement when we walk around this house, blessing it?”
Paul looked away, glancing out the window. It seemed like he might really be giving Danny’s questions some thought. Or was that only Danny�
�s imagination?
“And the remodeling of this house. How come every single room is in some stage of remodeling? I’m not an expert, I admit that, but wouldn’t you start in one room or area at a time? And I don’t see many tools or supplies. I see wallpaper torn down, floors ripped up, walls half-painted, wood trim in the middle of scraping and sanding, but not too many tools anywhere or new materials for the house like flooring, cans of paint, carpeting, or drywall. The garage is practically empty.”
Paul didn’t answer.
“Maybe the tools and supplies are in the basement,” Danny said sarcastically.
“Danny, these are good questions,” Paul said like a teacher talking to a slow child. “But you have to at least open yourself up to the possibility that the girl you’ve seen is not real.”
Danny held up the note. “This is real.”
Paul looked anguished for a moment, and Danny was sure Paul was going to wonder aloud if Danny couldn’t have possibly written that note himself. But he didn’t. It was a thought that had crossed Danny’s own mind, a thought he had pushed away as soon as it had surfaced because he knew it wasn’t true.
“You need to be careful,” Paul told Danny. “There’s also the possibility that a demon is taking the form of this little girl and visiting you.”
Danny sighed. He could see that Paul wasn’t going to believe him. And in a way he couldn’t blame him since he had been seeing people who weren’t there lately.
But this was different, Danny was sure of that. She had given him something tangible, a piece of paper that he still held in his hands.
He decided that he needed more proof. That was the only thing Paul was going to believe.
“I know this is frustrating,” Paul said in a gentle voice as he approached him. “I know this is all new to you. And you’re handling it well. Maybe you need some more rest.”
Danny nodded in agreement. But he knew that rest was the last thing he needed right now. What he needed to do was to find that girl again.
CHAP†ER †HIR†Y-†WO
Later in the afternoon, Danny set out exploring the house again—the rooms that were unlocked anyway. He brought his iPod with him, hoping to take a photo of the girl if he saw her again.
He crept downstairs and stood in the wide first floor hallway with the stairs, guest bathroom, and the padlocked door to the basement behind him and the front door of the house at the other end of the hallway.
He walked past the kitchen and saw Helen preparing dinner. He walked past the sitting room and saw that Father Severino and Robert were huddled together on a couch. They spoke to each other in whispers, talking quickly, their shoulders hunched. And then they glanced up at Danny as he passed. He saw the nervousness in their eyes, the suspicion. And then Danny was past the sitting room.
After grabbing his heavy coat from the front closet, he opened the front door and stepped out onto the front porch. He closed the front door and walked to the peeling wood railing. He needed some time by himself. He needed some time to think. He needed some fresh air after being cooped up in that old house for nearly three days now.
The cold air was a shock to his lungs, but after five or six breaths he was already used to it.
The front porch ran the length of the front of the house, and it looked out onto the front field and the stand of woods beyond it. The narrow trail they had driven through to get to this house cut right through the middle of the trees.
To Danny’s right was the garage wall where it jutted out from the house like it had been added on at the last minute. But the vehicles were out of his view, parked on the other side of the garage where the big overhead door was.
There wasn’t too much on the front porch: a few wooden chairs, a frozen welcome mat, and an untrustworthy, rickety porch swing that was chained to the ceiling closer to the garage wall.
Danny shuffled down the front steps to the snow, letting his shoes sink into the snow as he walked. He walked the length of the raised front porch, looking down at the lattice covering the space underneath it. He bent down and peered inside the lattice, but he only saw frozen dirt and darkness. Some of the snow was piled up almost to the floorboards on the far side of the porch.
He started feeling a little better just being outside. The air was cold, and for once the sky wasn’t overcast—it was deep blue with hardly any clouds.
As he got closer to the garage wall, he heard voices.
Two people were talking—two men.
He had just seen Helen, Robert, and Father Severino inside the house, so he had to assume it was Paul and Father Hopkins outside by the garage door talking to each other.
And it seemed to be a heated discussion.
Maybe Paul was telling Father Hopkins about the girl Danny had been seeing.
Danny moved cautiously down the side of the garage until he was near the corner, as close as he dared to get. He could hear them clearly now.
“Does he know what’s going on yet?” That was definitely Father Hopkins’s voice.
“I don’t think so,” Paul answered. “Not yet.”
“When are you going to let him know?”
“Soon. When it’s the right time.”
What the hell are they talking about?
“We can’t wait too much longer,” Father Hopkins snapped.
Paul didn’t answer and there was a brief, tense silence, and then the sound of a sharp inhalation of cigarette smoke from Father Hopkins.
“What we’re doing is incredibly dangerous,” Father Hopkins growled. “The most dangerous thing. We’re messing with things we shouldn’t be messing with.”
Paul said: “Remember the oath you took.”
“We should get back inside,” the priest told Paul, and then Danny heard their crunching footsteps in the snow as they walked away.
For a horrifying moment Danny thought they were walking his way and they were going to turn the corner of the garage and see him standing there, eavesdropping. But then he realized it was a trick of the sound bouncing off the snow and now the footsteps were definitely fading away.
Danny stood there in shock for a moment.
What had they been talking about? Were they talking about him?
Of course they were talking about him.
What was Paul supposed to tell him? And why was he keeping it a secret so far? Was it something they were keeping secret from Robert and Helen, or were they in on this too? Did all of this have something to do with Melissa, the girl he had seen in the house?
It must have something to do with her.
Danny’s mind raced. He realized that he had been standing in the same spot next to the garage wall for at least four or five minutes now. The cold was beginning to seep into his bones and no matter how much he would rather stay outside where he felt safer, he knew he needed to get back inside where it was warmer.
He hurried back through the snow to the front porch steps. His legs were getting stiff from the cold but he climbed the steps quickly and clomped across the floorboards to the front door.
Just as he was about to grab the door handle, the front door swung open and Father Hopkins stood there in the doorway, dressed all in black, the white square on his collar practically gleaming in the sunlight. He seemed surprised to see Danny on the front porch, but he also seemed to have suspected it.
“Danny? What are you doing out here?”
“Just getting some fresh air.”
Father Hopkins nodded like he understood that—just a slight nod of his head. “You coming inside now?”
“Yeah. Too cold out here.”
For a moment Father Hopkins stared at Danny like he knew he had been eavesdropping on his and Paul’s conversation.
Danny looked at the priest in a new light now. He was keeping secrets. And Paul was keeping secrets. Why? What was really going on here? Why were they really at this house?
He wanted to go find Paul and ask him these questions, but he didn’t dare do that right now. He felt like he needed
to wait, he needed to watch more, listen carefully, and find more clues. He needed more information. He needed to know who he could trust. Including his own father.
Danny kicked his shoes against the doorframe, knocking the snow off of them and then he entered the house. Father Hopkins closed and locked the door behind him.
“I’m gonna go upstairs and lay down,” Danny said.
“Another headache?” Father Hopkins asked with suspicion in his voice. “Helen told me you had one yesterday.”
Danny nodded. “Yeah. Not too bad, though.”
Danny hurried down the hallway to the stairs. He climbed the steps and walked to his bedroom. He entered and closed the door. And for the second time since he had been staying in this house, he locked the door with the skeleton key and left it poking out of the lock.
He went to his bed and plopped down on it, stretching out. His mind still reeled, questions bouncing around in his mind over and over again.
Then he froze.
He heard a noise coming from his closet.
The door creaked open as a pale hand pushed at it from the inside.
There was someone inside his closet.
†
After Father Hopkins went back inside the house, Paul walked to his Bronco and popped the hood. He raised the hood and looked down at the engine for a moment. Then he went to the back of his Bronco and opened the hatch; he grabbed a small toolbox.
He went back to the engine and he used an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver to unhook the battery cables. And then he lifted the untethered battery out of the truck.
This was it. It was going to happen very soon now, he was sure of it, and they all needed to be ready. There was no turning back now. There would be no running away. They had made a commitment to this. They had made an oath, a pact, and they were going through with it no matter what happened.
Paul carried the battery to the garage. He walked to the far corner of the nearly empty garage and hid the battery on a cracked wooden pallet underneath an old tarp.
He walked back out to the sedan the priests had driven here in and he removed the battery from their car. And after he was finished with the sedan, he would take the battery out of the Dodge Durango that Robert and Helen owned.
