Knock Knock

by S. P. Miskowski

  William Robert Knox was a no-nonsense man. He was educated as an engineer and was admired in his line of business. He brought with him his wife, Harriet, who was from a well-to-do family and had been to college. They settled down in a very pretty cottage that had been built for the duration of William's job. The state estimated the work here would take about five years.

  Harriet was raised to country club life, and she had already made a compromise. This wasn't the kind of place she had her heart set on when she married. Also she had disappointed William by not being able to give him a child. They had tried and been let down, so now she had a little failure to bear. You have to understand: She was a woman who wasn't accustomed to failure and disappointment.

  There were other wives who settled here temporarily while their men worked at building the Interstate. These were educated women who probably would have found the spot hopeless if they hadn't gotten together with each other. They stayed busy playing bridge and taking train trips to Portland and down to California, playing golf and throwing cocktail parties. In the winter they planned ski trips and spent the holidays together.

  These women were refined, but they weren't nice. They were a vicious bunch by all accounts and they believed in sticking with people who had the same advantages they had. They made only one exception to their habit of mingling with their own kind.

  Harriet had a bad miscarriage the first year after she and William moved here, and maybe that changed her. One thing is sure: it caused her to swear off her family doctor. From then on she relied on and confided in the local midwife, who came to be accepted by some of Harriet's friends as a healer and a reliable adviser, and was shunned by others as a witch.

  "Witch" was nothing but a word they used for women who were poor white trash and knew how to make herbal medicines. They didn't include her in their social lives, but as time went on more of them decided she was harmless and her cures were possibly therapeutic. She got to know a few of these well-to-do women, and maybe she was flattered by being let into their circle as a consultant. She also went on tending to the poor, those who couldn't afford a doctor, but she started to look on these poor people with a different attitude. Maybe she got above her place. She began to think how she might help one of these families. That wish, to do good things, might have been vanity on her part, since she was no better than the people she wanted to help.

  On the midwife's say-so Harriet Knox got to know of a family that was poorer than most. This branch of the Dempsey family was still living in a two-room cabin with a tin roof but no indoor toilet. They lived off what they could raise in their yard, which wasn't much. The road they lived on didn't have a name and wasn't traveled much. Their last child was a girl named Flora, age twelve when Harriet Knox first heard about her.

  Flora was undernourished and small for her age. The midwife made a good case for the girl as a general help around the house, and Harriet agreed. With a fifty-dollar tip in her pocket, the midwife spoke with the girl's parents and sweet-talked them a little. She told them what an educated woman Harriet Knox was, and that she could afford to pay them well. They agreed to let the girl move into the Knox house, in exchange for a one-time payment of one hundred dollars. That was a lot to people in their situation back then. Having one less child to feed would help, too. Mrs. Dempsey wasn't thrilled with the idea of Flora moving in with strangers, but the rest of the family wore her down.

  It was understood that Flora would do whatever work Harriet needed her to do indoors, and keep her company during the long hauls when her husband camped at various work sites up and down the coast. To make this more natural and avoid embarrassing questions, it was also agreed that for the time being the girl would go by the name of her patrons and be known as Flora Knox.

  From the start Flora was angry about having to leave the only home she knew. She didn't take to Harriet and her snobby friends, who made fun of the way she talked. Mostly the girl kept to her chores and her room. The idea Harriet and the midwife had, that the girl would benefit from being with people of a higher class, didn't impress Flora. She made it clear that she didn't care to be improved.

  As time went on, problems developed between Flora and her patron. To the outside world they seemed close enough. People noted how Harriet would take the girl shopping and would spare no expense to make her look less like a tomboy and more like a young lady. Flora went on climbing trees and she ruined every dress she had. Harriet tried to teach her to read but Flora could never get the hang of it. She was surly with the piano teacher Harriet hired, so that didn't work out either.

  No matter how much time her substitute mother spent on her education, Flora wasn't happy. She got in fights with other children, and she made claims against Mrs. Knox. No one would listen to her stories about Harriet locking her in the cupboard, or starving her for days. Harriet was seen as a refined and respected woman. She gave the appearance of wanting a child of her own more than anything in the world, and that alone went a long way. Always has, still does.

  When Flora turned out to be a disappointment to her, Harriet stopped taking a personal interest and gave her more work to do around the house. If the girl slacked off on her chores, Harriet had William punish her when he came home. That's when the real trouble started, with petty acts of spite between the woman and the girl.

  Flora got a reputation for defiance and back-talking, which would try anyone's patience but infuriated Harriet, who felt she had given up the whole world to stay at her husband's side. Now her lady friends were settling down to motherhood and Harriet had fewer distractions to keep her happy. After each flurry of excitement, and the baby shower that followed, she would describe to the midwife how letdown she felt, not having a baby of her own. She said she was heartbroken, although she didn't look it. The midwife judged she was terribly bored. And now the girl she had rescued from meager circumstances wouldn't mind her any more.

  No matter how many times Harriet locked the girl in the woodshed for lying or for running away back home, no matter how many times her real father hauled her back to the Knox house, no matter how much William beat the girl with his belt when he came home for a quiet rest after a two-week stint of road work, Flora was defiant. She was one of those children that won't break. Every beating only fed her stubbornness.

  All of this worry took its toll on the marriage. William got to see a side of his wife she had kept hidden before. He was ashamed of himself for punishing the girl on nothing more than Harriet's say-so. He began to side with Flora against Harriet, which made things worse.

  It was after Harriet and Flora had formed a deep, lasting hostility that Harriet noticed signs of a different kind of betrayal. The girl was fourteen by then, and had been menstruating for over a year, when her period stopped. Naturally Harriet consulted the midwife, who assured the angry woman that any number of reasons could be to blame, and it was most likely because of how she had been brought up by the Dempseys. The girl was scarred from years of malnutrition. That was the best explanation.

  The midwife was lying, playing for time. She could never get the girl away from Harriet long enough to give her a remedy, even if the girl had cooperated. All she could do was wait, and cast her spells, and hope for a miscarriage by accident.

  Flora started to show in her fourth month. William was away in Portland, the first time Harriet noticed the girl's belly. That day she beat the girl black and blue and demanded to know the name of the boy she'd been sneaking off with. But the girl said, and she never changed her claim, that the baby would rightly be named Knox after its father.

  Around the same time the company William worked for offered him a permanent job on the west coast. He would manage operations in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. It meant staying put in the Northwest, instead of moving back east. This was a big step up for a self-made man who had paid his own way through college. He accepted the new job without first consulting his wife. He also told his employers he was satisfied with a home base in Skillute, turning down their offer of
a house closer to Portland, where his wife might have been much happier.

  Harriet was livid when she found out, but she pretended to her lady friends that it was her idea to stay in this backwoods corner of Washington. She was too proud to let other women know how little her husband thought of her feelings. She didn't complain in front of anyone except the midwife. Seeing how things stood, with her marriage in the balance, she didn't dare accuse her husband of doing the things Flora claimed. Her hold on William had weakened that much during the time they had lived here. He spent more time away from home, and Harriet spent more time with the midwife, who consulted her cards and oracles to determine what the woman ought to do next.

  Of course by this time the midwife had seen her mistake clearly enough and she was in favor of sending the girl back to the Dempsey family. She assured Harriet that this was what the oracles instructed. It was also the sensible thing to do. The girl was ruined, she said, and was obviously lying to hurt the reputation of her benefactor's husband, and not worthy of the goodness Harriet had shown. The midwife all but pleaded with her to send the girl back to her family to take her chances.

  Nothing would persuade Mrs. Knox once she decided on her course. She would wait until the baby was born, she said, and adopt it as her own. This was the only fair compensation for what she had been through. She was owed a child, and she would collect on the debt. Then Flora would be sent away and could fend for herself.

  Harriet said: "If the girl is so smart, she can make her way in the world. I'm done with that ungrateful monster, but she owes me for taking her under my wing."

  On the night when Flora gave birth, only Harriet and the midwife tended to her. The baby was underweight and malnourished. At first they didn't believe it was alive. The midwife would claim all of her days that it was stillborn.

  The two women fought. Seeing all that had occurred because of her vanity, the midwife's conscience shamed her and she argued with Harriet about what they had done. While they fought over whether or not to call the doctor, Flora bled out. She was so small, and the birth was even harder than they expected.

  Now this is the part that Harriet denied. The part no one would believe.

  The very second after Flora died, her child took its first breath and cried out. The midwife dropped to her knees at the sight of the baby she had pronounced dead, now alive and screaming for its mama. She said it was a demon, something come through the baby to be born again.

  Harriet pushed this idea aside. She said the midwife was a superstitious fool, and would be in a world of trouble if anybody else heard the story. Harriet was greedy for a child of her own. She took the baby in her arms and claimed it. From that moment on her life was changed.

  Nobody was much concerned back then with how Flora had lived or what happened to her. Children from poor families were expected to be sickly and were likely to die early. The story told by Mr. and Mrs. Knox was good enough. They were respectable people. Also, William had the right to hire and fire the men who worked on the roads. There wasn't anybody who would cross him. If he said his wife had given birth to a fine beautiful baby girl, congratulations and gifts poured in and no one argued, although several people knew the real story. One of them was the midwife, who now felt she had made a terrible mistake, an unforgivable act, guiding Harriet to Flora Dempsey's family.

  Around this time one of the foremen working for Knox and his crew bought the land Flora's family had been living on for years. The Dempseys had been staying there dependent on the kindness of their neighbors and the authorities, you see. Despite their cabin and their vegetable patch, they were still nothing but squatters. That kind of thing was tolerated right after the Depression but things were different now. New people arrived every month and looked around and decided to stay as long as the jobs held out at the lumber mills and the pulp mills. These were people who wanted to buy land and settle down.

  Flora's family was the poorest and the least educated of the Dempsey clan. With no paying work and no prospects, they drifted up the hill into the woods to hide out. They lived in tents and later in trailer homes. Meanwhile the land they once lived on was sold. It became the property of the foreman and his family, until they moved up to Canada. That's when they sold it to another branch of the Dempsey family. While Flora's parents were just hanging on and hoping for the best, their in-laws had made sacrifices and saved what they could. They had bought a couple of acres here and there, scattered around Skillute. So when timber finally got to be scarce and the big companies went poking around for any privately owned scrap they could still get, the family earned a handsome profit.

  But all of this happened over the course of the next decade. By then Harriet Knox was all but forgotten, although her spiteful neighbors started to call every little thing that they didn't like the fault of "Miss Knocks." Miss Knocks made the rain that ruined the company picnic. Miss Knocks was looking down from the treetops when a logger was injured and lost an arm.

  It was superstition, blaming a hateful woman (whose real name was barely remembered) for everything bad that happened in Skillute. What people didn't know was that something was alive in the woods, but it didn't come from Harriet Knox. In fact it was Harriet's sworn enemy and it wouldn't die until it was satisfied.

  The Knox household was considerably quieter after Flora died. You see, no one confirmed her death. Harriet told people she had stolen some jewelry and had run off. Everything known about the girl confirmed that she was the kind that might do such a thing. She was hard to handle and she had run away so many times.

  Keeping quiet cost those who knew Mr. and Mrs. Knox some of their peace of mind. Avoiding William and Harriet socially made matters a lot simpler. No one snubbed them or insulted them outright, but they were never invited to get-togethers or parties any more. People smiled and said hello on the rare occasions when Harriet went into Longview to shop. Everyone was cordial. But no one called on the Knox family after Flora disappeared. Harriet was marked. Even her educated friends thought so. There had been something wrong with her all along, and now they could all see it.

  Most of those uppity women took their babies and toddlers and moved on to bigger towns, when their husbands were promoted or saved up enough to relocate. People said that Harriet went stir-crazy living alone with her baby in that beautiful cottage with its silk drapes and cobblestone walks and cedar shingles. All she did was walk from one room to another, and from the front door to the woods and back. Her husband spent all of his time working, so he never noticed something that his wife couldn't help but see every day.

  There was something wrong with the child Harriet pretended was her own. Not a physical infirmity, because she seemed remarkably strong, given the terrible circumstances of her birth. The stronger and quicker the girl (named Ella) became, the more Harriet seemed to sink down into herself, turning away from any activity outside her home. Only once in a blue moon she could be seen in Longview, with Ella pulling her along and arguing with her whenever she hesitated to buy things the girl wanted. More than once the girl used rough language and called Harriet names in public. One time she struck Harriet, slapped her right across the mouth, and the woman said nothing. "Little hellion" is what the neighbors called Ella.

  They called her much worse things the night she set fire to the Knox house. Everyone said it was probably one of Ella's pranks that had gone wrong. The girl herself was trapped by the smoke and flames, and died in the house along with her adopted mother.

  William Knox hired some of his men to salvage what they could. It wasn't much, and the men weren't very conscientious. They hauled most of the burnt timber off into the woods and dumped it there in a stand of old growth fir and cedar.

  Marietta and Beverly

  Beverly left the kitchen. Marietta could hear her rummaging through a drawer in her bedroom. In a minute she returned with a linen handkerchief, which she placed on the table in front of Marietta, who lifted the corners delicately and looked inside. Then she looked at Beverly and said: />
  "How long have you had this?"

  "All of my life, at least since the day I got pregnant."

  "Bev."

  "What do you think?"

  Marietta shook her head. She sat back and looked at Beverly with a weary smile.

  "She wants it back, you know."

  "I can," Beverly had trouble saying the words. "I can see that, now. I understand. I'll bury it."

  "That part of the woods is gone now, paved over."

  "I'll bury it in another spot, and you can cast a spell. There has to be a way to get rid of it."

  "No," said Marietta. "This is exactly what we need. You see? If this is something she wants, then this is what we can use to catch her."

  Marietta

  Sitting alone in her room, in the house she shared with Henry and his wife Alicia, Marietta had formed a plan, one just subtle enough not to raise suspicion. It would take place on the following day. It relied upon two things: the girl's arrogance, and her desire to reclaim the memento Beverly had taken all those years ago. If the girl wanted the relic badly enough she would pursue it, and if she were as sure of herself as she seemed to be, she wouldn't expect anybody to trick her. It was almost certain to work. It had to work.

  Another child had gone missing. That made two children in less than a year. The first was almost sure to have been snatched by her father, according to the sheriff and local gossip. But Marietta thought it was possible that the girl's father was long gone and had forgotten all about his first wife and his daughter, Tracy. He might be happily remarried, settled in another town with a new name and a fresh start and a second family. Nobody knew.