by C. K. Brooke
We climbed the stoop and I grasped the doorknob, eager to return to the warmth of the house. But when I twisted it, the knob wouldn’t turn. I flexed my stiff fingers, wishing I’d have thought of gloves, and tried again. I laughed a little. “It must be so cold, the doorknob’s stuck.” I let go. “Either that, or my hands have gone brittle.”
“Let me at it.” My husband set the box on the stoop. I stepped aside to give him access to the door. He gripped the knob in a powerful paw and turned his wrist. It wouldn’t give. I watched his face morph into dismay. “What the hell? Did you lock the door?”
“Of course not.” I moved closer to inspect. “Why would I lock it without taking my key with me?”
“You don’t have your key on you?”
“We were only going to the shed,” I defended. “Why would I need to bring a housekey?”
Horst searched his jacket pockets, but they turned up empty.
“Maybe it’s just jammed,” I said, although my pulse was beginning to pound with apprehension. “What about the back door?”
He shook his head. “We never leave it unlocked.”
“Let’s just try,” I suggested.
But of course, when we wound around to the back of the house, the back door wouldn’t give.
“This is ridiculous,” Horst exploded. His breath was a visible puff in the freezing air. “How could this have happened?”
I was trying not to panic…until, through the sliding glass door, I saw the glow of the microwave timer counting down with just seconds to go. I gasped, swatting his jacket. “We’ve got to get inside. The oven’s on—I’m baking in there!”
“Suppose we’ll have to call a locksmith.”
“There isn’t time to wait for a locksmith! Those cutouts bake in under ten minutes. If they’re left in there to burn, it could start a fire.”
“Jesus, Cecily.” Horst patted down his pockets again, grimacing. “My phone’s not on me anyway.”
“Neither is mine.”
We exchanged glances—mine helpless, his exasperated—and waded through the snow to the front of the house.
Grumbling, Horst returned to the shed. He reemerged with an old hatchet.
I watched, bemused. “What’s that for?”
“Stand back.” I moved aside, giving him a wide berth as he swung the hatchet over his shoulder. “I hate to have to do this, but…”
I winced as the little glass pane on the door shattered. He reached an arm through the jagged hole and felt around for the doorknob from the inside. Barking out a humorless chuckle, he fumbled with it. “Locked.” He glanced over at me. “And you wanna know what’s funny? It was deadbolted, too.”
My breaths were frayed. “Okay,” I replied uneasily.
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “You can’t shut the door from the outside when the deadbolt’s out.”
Goosebumps assaulted my flesh. “Sharon,” I whispered.
“Huh?” Carefully, he extracted his arm from the broken window and straightened to his full, imposing height.
“Nothing.” I lowered my head, anxious to open the unlocked door, and hurried inside.
The microwave was beeping by then, and there was definitely a burning smell overriding the gentle aromas of my scented holiday wreaths. I rushed into the kitchen, turned off the oven, and rescued the poor cookies from their inferno. They were golden brown, with an emphasis on the brown, and black at the edges.
I sighed with disappointment, although I was grateful to have gotten back into the house before something worse could happen. “I can’t bring these to work. I’ll have to make another batch.”
“Don’t pitch ’em.” Horst appeared in the kitchen behind me, removing his scarf. “I like them crispy.”
I stared at the oven clock. “I know.”
Click. Turn. Click. Turn.
I slowed in the small hallway between the kitchen and foyer, to the right of the stairwell. Instrumental Christmas music hummed softly from my phone on the mantel, drifting through the darkening house. I’d plugged in the LED candles at the front windows, casting a cozy atmosphere, and what I hoped was a pleasant view from the street.
Horst noticed none of it. He’d boarded up the hole in our door (which looked awful), and was now kneeling over his toolbox, tinkering with the deadbolt. Over and again, he locked and unlocked the deadbolt, opened and shut the door. It had been more than an hour, and every time he opened it, a draft swept through the house and the heat poured out.
He must’ve sensed me standing there, for he spoke with his back to me. “I still don’t understand.”
I glanced at my hands. He didn’t want to hear what I had to say. He had to figure it out for himself, with logic. The problem was, he never would.
I turned, aiming for the stairs, when his voice stopped me. “Cecily.”
I waited. He didn’t speak again. It was as if he wanted me to say something, but didn’t know how to ask.
I gathered a breath, already knowing I was fighting a losing battle. “I don’t think we’re alone here. And if that’s the case, I don’t know how much longer I can stay.”
Because Sharon was winning. While just that morning, I’d been determined to maintain my ownership of twenty-seven Deepwood, Sharon had unveiled her upper-hand by locking me out of my house and threatening to burn it down. She knew what she was doing.
And I was in over my head.
“What’s that mean?” he replied gruffly. He still wasn’t facing me. “You don’t know how much longer you can stay?”
My mouth moved, trying to produce sound, until I finally managed, “I guess no one’s had any luck in this place. The neighbors recommend I leave.” I said I and not we, because I didn’t think Horst would appreciate anyone giving him advice. And also, because I wasn’t entirely certain how much of a we we still were.
He finally turned. Something in me stirred at his wounded expression. “What neighbors?” His eyes narrowed. “What, you mean that—that guy I saw you talking to?”
“Howard,” I nodded.
“Howard,” he spat.
“He’s just a friend,” I insisted, but my voice shrunk under my husband’s glare. “He’s been looking out for me. He cares.”
“Does he care enough to work every day to help support you and our life?” His cheeks reddened. “Did he care enough to buy you a house, like you’d been asking for years?”
“He cares enough not to ignore every word I say,” I returned heatedly. “Unlike you, he cares enough to believe me!”
“Oh, unlike me, huh?” He tossed down his screwdriver into the open toolbox. “You know what? I don’t have to listen to this.” Leaving his stuff by the door, he stormed down the hallway in the opposite direction.
“Of course you don’t,” I called after him. “Just turn on the TV and tune me out, like always!”
When I heard the drone of TV newscasters in the living room, I bowed my forehead against the bannister. Damn it, Cecily.
Horst may have been stubborn, yet I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been the one to screw up this time.
With my thumb, I circled the rim of my teacup. No matter how much I drank, I still couldn’t seem to get warm. A gentle snow had been falling all day. Idly, I watched through the window as snowflakes settled and stuck to the bare branches outside.
The days leading up to the solstice had been enshrouded in cold darkness. The sun had refused to show its face. I couldn’t discern whether it was the weather, my crumbling marriage, or the entity overtaking my home that was causing me to feel increasingly isolated and withdrawn. Not even the holiday decorations I’d put up or the Christmas carols on the radio brought the kind of cheer I’d hoped they would.
The sound of a little girl’s laughter trickled outside. The earth was coated in snow; no doubt the neighborhood children were sledding and building snowmen outdoors. But, though my eyes panned across the backyard through the sliding glass door, I didn’t see anyone.
Upstairs, the floorbo
ards creaked. The water had shut off a few minutes ago, and any minute, my husband would appear downstairs. I had no idea what to say to him. It had been a week since our last fight, and I may well have been invisible for all he spoke to me. Which confused me. If the thought of me leaving upset him, then why did he act like I was already gone?
I kept my eyes on my hands when his footsteps joined me in the kitchen. In particular, I studied the little silver band around my finger. I’d pawned off the engagement diamond years ago, when we’d needed the money. It never seemed important enough to buy back. We were married on paper, by law, so why did I need a diamond to prove it? It had been a tiny one, anyway. We were young and sort of broke. Or at least, I was.
I thought back to the day Horst proposed to me—although it wasn’t much of a proposal. We were best friends back then. But instead of simply saying that, he suggested marriage along with a list of all the reasons it was practical. He had health insurance. We could file our taxes jointly. It made more sense to tie the knot and sign a lease together than to keep commuting between different cities to visit each other every weekend. And at the time, I’d found it so cute, so clumsy, and so characteristically him, that I’d accepted, and picked out the tiniest stone in the shop so as not to be a burden.
Fast-forward eight years, and there we were: me, at our lonely little bistro table, quietly contemplating the last decade of my life; and him, approaching the kitchen with trepidation, as if I might no longer allow him in the same room with me.
The silence between us felt tight as a noose as he walked to the sink and ran the faucet. He began rinsing dishes and setting them in the dishwasher. While I appreciated the household help, I couldn’t be sure if the gesture was supposed to make me feel guilty or lazy for not having done it myself.
Lifting my teacup, I got up. I placed my cup on the top rack of the dishwasher, just as Horst was reaching over to add a Tupperware lid. The backs of our hands brushed, and he glanced at me, his face unreadable. I paused, my finger still looped in the teacup handle. My heart lolloped in a way it had seldom done. My gaze could’ve lingered on his dark eyes a moment longer, but he turned again to add the lid’s corresponding container to the rack.
I slowly pulled my hand away, the back of it still tingling. Really? I thought to myself, stepping back. Had it been so long? Was I that detached, our marriage so pathetic, that I was getting high off of the fact that our hands had touched?
Now was a time when I wished I had girlfriends, the way women did in movies. Someone to encourage me, “Open up to him!” or even to tell me to break it off, just so that I’d have an excuse to come up with every good reason why I shouldn’t.
The sound of a bowl dropping and smacking the bottom of the sink jarred me from my thoughts. I was alarmed to see an expression of horror on my husband’s face. “Oh, my God.”
My heart pounded again, this time in dread. “What?”
“The pond,” was all he said. And just like that, without fetching his coat or shutting off the faucet, he wrenched open the sliding glass door and flew outside.
“Hey!” I shouted after him, shuffling into my slippers. I shivered in the breeze blowing in through the open door, and hurriedly shut off the sink before traipsing in his wake through the snow. It seeped through my slippers, soaking them, but I chased him anyway, all the way to the fishpond.
I arrived, chest heaving, to find him circling it. He crossed his arms and uncrossed them. Put his hands on his hips, then raised them to his massage face in confusion. All the while, his eyes scanned over the frozen, shallow surface, looking shocked and confused.
“Horst?” Tentatively, I took another step forward. Snowflakes settled on the shoulders of my sweater.
“She was here. I swear.”
“Who was?”
He looked up at me, conviction in his eyes. “I saw a girl, facedown in the pond. She was right here.” He pointed, and I noticed his hand tremble slightly. “And her hair was all…sprawled and floating…”
“But Horst, the pond is—”
“Frozen, I know.” He sounded frustrated. “But I know what I saw!”
I stood there, shivering, as an ice cold tear crawled down my cheek.
He faced me again, and looked at me—really looked. This time, he didn’t roll his eyes and turn away. Only came closer. Realization shone on his face. “Cecily.”
I don’t recall how long we stood there, no jackets, the sliding door wide open across the yard behind us. In his arms, I felt steady, solid, at peace. Nothing could penetrate the shield of his embrace. As long as his arms were around me, I was secure.
“Let’s go in,” he murmured, once the temperature became too biting. I was glad he kept an arm around me to escort me back inside. He was so warm. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed that warmth.
We slid the back door shut and latched it, him casting one last suspicious glance at the pond.
“Well.” I dropped my hands to my sides.
“Well.” He studied me as though he’d never seen me properly before. The rare attention almost made me blush. “You think we both might be going crazy?”
In earnest, I shook my head no.
The smile on his lips faded. “Me neither.”
I waited for him to continue—draw his conclusion, laugh it off, offer yet another explanation. However, it appeared that, this time, he had none. Not when it had happened to him. Not when the vision was his.
I reached forward and did something I’d wanted to do for a while, and took both of his hands in mine. “Do you believe me now?” I whispered.
He drew in closer. “Believe what? That our house is haunted?”
“You make it sound like a joke.”
“It is a joke.” His grin was playful. “Does this mean we have to call ghost hunters? Will we be on the Discovery Channel under pseudonyms? With actors who look nothing like us, reenacting a B-rate cut of today?”
“Stop,” I told him, though I couldn’t hide my smile.
His face grew serious again. “Cecily?”
“Yeah?”
“You aren’t really gonna leave me, are you?”
I squeezed his hands. “I will if you don’t start sleeping upstairs.”
“Merry Christmas, neighbor.”
I startled, clutching the pile of parcels to my chest, before my mouth stretched into a smile. “Howard, hi! Merry Christmas.”
“You know, the post doesn’t come today.”
“I know,” I laughed. “I haven’t checked the mailbox all week. It was stacked a mile high with cards.”
He grinned and nodded, but there was something sad about it. I suddenly wondered if anyone was sending him holiday cards.
A strand of hair fell over my eye, but my hands were too full to brush it aside. I tried my best to jerk my chin and toss it off of my face. “So, you um, celebrating with family today?”
He made to answer, then stopped himself and shook his head.
“You’re welcome to…” I cocked my head toward my house, but he declined.
“Sweet of you, but I don’t want to intrude.” He lifted a hand. “Send my regards to Mr. Weber.”
“Howard,” I said, before he could trudge off. “Horst came around.”
He paused, turning back, and absently stroked his russet beard. “Oh? Did something change?”
My smile broadened, my heart feeling full and alive as I nodded.
It appeared he was trying to return my smile, but his eyes looked conflicted. I couldn’t imagine why. Despite our occasional conversations, Howard and I barely knew each other. He couldn’t possibly be disappointed that I’d reconciled things with my husband…could he?
“Sharon showed him something,” I explained. “It was a terrible apparition, actually.”
Something in his stance tensed. “How? Sharon doesn’t communicate with your husband. She communicates with you.”
“Can’t she can communicate with any of us?”
He closed his mouth, and only
then did I realize how much he wasn’t saying, and how much he’d been keeping—was still keeping—from me.
I didn’t like the sick feeling creeping through my gut, a sensation I’d been happy to abandon over the last several days, while Horst and I cuddled on the couch watching old movies and guzzling eggnog by the gallon. It was Christmas Day; I didn’t want to be thinking about Sharon, talking about her.
“What did he see?” said Howard.
The parcels were becoming heavy in my arms as I stalled.
“Your husband.” For once, the kind man sounded impatient. “What was his vision?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Dead girl. Child…drowned.”
“Drowned?” His forehead furrowed. “Where?”
“There’s a fishpond in back.”
“I know there’s a fishpond in back.” He almost growled the statement.
My eyes must’ve betrayed my alarm, for he seemed to remember himself, and relaxed his expression. Any perceived aggression was replaced with melancholy—a melancholy that uncannily matched my Sharon-induced nightmares, and the listless days before Horst’s revelation.
“Look…” We couldn’t say goodbye like this. Not on Christmas. Not when something was so obviously upsetting him, which he seemed not to be able to talk about. “If you’re all alone today, we’d love to have you. There’s plenty of turkey.”
“No thank you, Mrs. Weber.” He straightened the scarf around his neck and backed up the sidewalk. “I’d prefer not to spend Christmas in the house where my wife killed herself.”
“Sorry the turkey’s so dry.”
I looked up from my plate, catching my husband’s apologetic face.
“I always overcook it.”
“Oh, no—I like it this way,” I insisted, stabbing a slice of breast meat with my fork. “You know what they say about dry turkey.”
“More of an excuse to pile on gravy and cranberries?” he asked, while doing just that.
“Exactly.”
We exchanged grins, and I ran my knife over the breast. It was pitifully dry, but the skin was crispy, which I genuinely enjoyed. I took a draught of white wine, savoring it.
