The Darkest Lullaby

by Jonathan Janz

  “Not a bit,” Aaron replied. “Not even when they started cutting on her.”

  Aaron took in his sickened expression and explained, “A lot of what they did involved blood.”

  Aaron went on, “The long and short of it was that Sarah went to live with them.”

  “They lived here?”

  “Not in the house. That was only for the man and woman they followed. The rest lived underground.” Taking in Chris’s confused silence, he added, “There are caves around here, Mr. Crane. You’d be best served to stay out of them.”

  He felt like he’d been gut-punched. How had he missed them? He’d spent dozens of hours in these woods. Had the entrances been covered in the intervening years?

  “Those caves,” Aaron said, “were where she had her baby.”

  “Was Daniel the father?”

  “We’ll never know. The child disappeared. Sarah did too, just days after she gave birth.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Cult members were questioned, but no one knew anything.”

  Aaron heaved a sigh. “Sarah and her baby were just two in a long line of missing persons linked to this place.”

  Chris said, “That’s why your brother got so enraged with Norman Campbell.”

  Aaron nodded. “Said Campbell was bringing up the past again, trying to relive all the old horror.”

  “Was Campbell one of the men who slept with Sarah?”

  Aaron’s lips curled in a disgusted frown. “I suspect he was.”

  Chris sought for Campbell’s words that night outside the library, then remembered them. “When Campbell was arguing with your brother, he said ‘She came because she wanted to.’”

  Aaron folded his arms. “As much as I hate to admit it, he was probably right about that.”

  “Daniel thinks they drugged her?”

  Aaron was quiet a good while, thinking something over. When he finally spoke, his voice was scarcely louder than a whisper. “I don’t think he suspected drugs, Mr. Crane. The group that worshipped here believed in all sorts of bad things. Daniel thought there were supernatural forces at work in his wife. He couldn’t imagine her changing that abruptly. She was everything you’d want in a woman. Caring, bright, hard-working…” Aaron shook his head. “It didn’t make sense she’d change without some influence.”

  “You agree?”

  The blue eyes locked on his. “I don’t know what to believe. There’s certainly evidence to support Daniel’s theory, I don’t dispute that at all. It’s just…” He paused, thinking. “…it’s just that people have a tendency to do the wrong thing even when—especially when—they know it’s the wrong thing to do. It’s like we have this need to hurt ourselves, to hurt the people we love…to kill the good things for no other reason than that we know we shouldn’t.”

  Chris thought of a Poe story he once taught, “The Black Cat.” How had Poe worded it? “…this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself.”

  Yes, a voice whispered. Like cheating on the person who means everything to you.

  Aaron was watching him. “That make any sense?”

  Chris nodded, a tightness in his throat. “It does.”

  “Anyway, Daniel wouldn’t think so. He can’t imagine a woman so good-hearted doing such wicked things. So he blames Campbell. Even more, I guess he blames those things we can’t see for what happened.”

  “He never remarried?”

  “Uh-uh…the last eight years or so, it’s been Daniel living out here with only his dog Levi to keep him company.”

  Chris bit the inside of his mouth. He knew what was coming even before Aaron frowned and added, “And even Levi’s gone now. Last week he either ran away or got himself run over.” He turned to Chris. “You haven’t seen him out here, have you?”

  He thought of Ellie’s incident with the monstrous black dog, thought of Petey’s muzzle glistening with blood.

  “I haven’t seen him,” he said, “but I’ll let you know if I do.”

  “Let Daniel know,” Aaron said. “He’s been beside himself with worry over that Rottweiler.”

  Part Three

  Sacrifice

  Chapter One

  The storm began after Chris went into town for groceries. Ellie was sitting on the front porch poring over baby names when brilliant light strobed over the woods to the north. She got up and walked barefooted across the lawn to gain a better view. As she moved, she marveled at how warm it had gotten, how swiftly the weather in Indiana changed. Ellie stretched her arms, glad she’d chosen the black tank top and beige shorts.

  Lightning again, three quick flashes this time, followed by a louder rumble. The air was redolent with fresh green life, with the pleasing fragrance of the coming rain. Ellie savored the feel of the bluegrass on her arches. Soothing, like the touch of a baby’s fingertips.

  She stopped and a warm smile spread over her face. She put a hand to her belly, slowly caressed.

  A droplet of rain splashed over her cheek. Another in her hair. She sighed. It would be nice to stay out here, but foolish. It would be just her luck to get struck by lightning the day she found out they’d finally conceived.

  Yet she didn’t feel like being shut indoors either. She’d get a book and read on the porch.

  The open garage door drew her attention. She walked to the garage, careful to keep to the yard so the driveway gravel wouldn’t bite her flesh. When she could go no farther in the grass, she tiptoed across the gravel, wincing as the jagged limestone shards stabbed her tender soles.

  Lightning bloomed, closer this time, and the succeeding thunder sounded much more insistent. Ellie tasted the electricity in the air, the tingly flavor of ozone.

  She moved deeper into the garage and found she could see pretty well despite the lack of an overhead light. A stack of boxes bulged against the back wall.

  Ellie frowned, approached them. She was sure they’d unpacked everything…

  Then she remembered.

  Aunt Lillith’s things.

  The woman’s hateful face rose like a stench in her mind. Ellie pictured her in one of her expensive St. John outfits, residing in one of her antique brocade chairs and sipping hot tea. In her vision, Lillith was watching Chris with that somehow obscene expression, a speculative grin etched in her wrinkled face. Then she’d turn to Ellie, and what life had been in Lillith’s face drained away and was replaced by a dead mask of loathing.

  Christopher has always been my boy, and no vulgar little slut is going to change that.

  Ellie shut her eyes against the woman’s zombie stare.

  Christopher will always belong to me.

  Thunder crashed behind her and made her jump.

  “Jesus,” Ellie said and covered her palpitating heart. Calm down, girl, she thought. It’s not just you now, remember? You’ve got a little person in there, and it won’t be good for him to get so worked up.

  Ellie chuckled at herself. She realized that ever since the news she’d been thinking of the fetus as a him instead of a her. Why, she had no idea. She certainly wasn’t against having a girl. In fact, the thought of it was exciting. There would be shopping excursions, watching pageants together, girl talk…

  Absently, Ellie fingered the cardboard edge of a box. Though it was dim in the recesses of the garage, she could make out the words PICTURES and PERSONAL EFFECTS.

  Personal effects, huh? She couldn’t imagine what sort of personal effects a wretched old crone like Lillith might have owned, and the thought of riffling through them filled her with both anticipation and disgust.

  She began to lift the box when she thought of Chris and paused. How would he feel about her going through Lillith’s things?

  She considered this a moment and realized she had no idea.

  Well, she thought as she hoisted the box and prepared for the dash to the house, at least she’d have something interesting to do while he was gone. And though it made her feel guilty, she realized she wanted h
im to be gone a good long while.

  Long enough for her to find out if Lillith had any juicy secrets.

  Smiling, Ellie squeezed the box against her chest and sprinted for the back door.

  The smudges bothered her.

  Many of Lillith’s photographs of Chris were framed, but the ones that were not were in albums or the original store envelopes. The latter featured Chris at various ages, but all of them shared one common trait: smudged edges. Lillith had examined these pictures so many times that their borders were ruined with overhandling.

  Not for the first time Ellie found herself chilled by the depth of the woman’s obsession with Chris. It was impossible to study those smudges, the purplish marks sometimes forming a perfect fingerprint, and not also imagine the spinster’s fierce gaze, the cracked lips open slightly, her breath rasping like two yellowed sheets of parchment scraping together.

  Ellie shoved the pictures back inside the box and debated whether to remain here in the kitchen where Chris would see her upon returning or to take everything upstairs, where she could reseal the box and pretend she hadn’t gone snooping. If he asked why she’d brought the box inside, she’d make something up. I was afraid the moisture would be bad for Lillith’s things. It almost sounded believable.

  Ellie cast another glance at the box, saw picture frames, albums, a stack of videotapes and a bundle of newspaper clippings. The tapes she could save for later. The clippings she could go through upstairs.

  The matter decided, Ellie gathered up the stuff and carried the box upstairs to Chris’s office. As the contents jostled, she tried to ignore the stench of mildew wafting out of the box.

  She twisted on the desk lamp, which did very little to mitigate the growing gloom, and settled herself in the leather chair. She fished out a photo album and felt her insides go cold.

  Every picture showed Chris as an adult, and every single one had been cropped to exclude other people. She flipped through the crackling pages, which were arranged chronologically, and beheld Chris at his college graduation, as a young teacher with a roomful of students, as a junior high track coach. And in every photograph the faces of his fellow graduates, his pupils, his runners and throwers had been excised.

  She flipped to the back of the album and gasped.

  The pictures were from their wedding, and of course Ellie’s face had been removed. But rather than neat ivory circles taking their places, she discovered black and white images of a young woman with long, curly hair.

  With dawning horror she realized why the woman she had seen staring at her from the forest had looked familiar, the naked woman with dark red ringlets.

  She’d been the woman in these pictures.

  She’d been the young Lillith Martin.

  Ellie rose from the office chair, the album still clutched in her fingers. Distantly, she heard the rain drumming on the roof, the continual growl of thunder, yet these hardly registered. The only things she noticed were the woman’s dark eyes, the expression that radiated malice. Pasted in Ellie’s place, it appeared as though Lillith was the one standing beside Chris at the altar, Lillith gazing up into Chris’s happy face as they said their vows, Lillith on their honeymoon in Cancun.

  Ellie closed the album and tossed it inside the box.

  Christopher will always belong to me.

  “Sick,” she whispered.

  Breath quavering in her nostrils, she backed away from the box. She longer cared if Chris discovered she’d opened it. He needed to know. He needed to see. See what a psychopath Lillith was, see the evidence of her unholy obsession. Christ, Ellie had always suspected something was amiss behind that coolly pensive face, but until now she never understood how deep that wrongness ran.

  She stopped. Beneath the din of the storm, she was certain she’d heard footsteps on the stairs.

  Chris is home, she told herself. You were so immersed in the photos, you didn’t notice him driving up.

  But that was wrong and she knew it. It was nearly dark, and the sky was moonless. She’d have seen his headlights.

  She listened, unable to move her body. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard creaking, the kind that wasn’t made by high winds or driving rain.

  The kind made by footfalls.

  Lightning shredded the horizon, a titanic cracking sound on its heels. A moment later she heard a sickening thump, a large tree felled by the strike. It broke her paralysis, enabled her to stride to the doorway, and so far she couldn’t make out a pale, nude figure with dark red hair in the hallway or on the stairs that led down. And down was her only thought now. Get downstairs, get out of this accursed house and make your way down the lane so when Chris finally gets home you can tell him you’ve had enough, that the experiment failed and it’s time to cut your losses.

  They could spend the night in town, and in the morning they could put this place up for sale again. They could live in an apartment, they could live in any town he chose. Just not here, this horrible place where Lillith had led them, Lillith who’d somehow beaten death. Lillith who’d become young again. Lillith who roamed naked through these woods…

  She took the stairs two at a time. She lost her balance and, remembering the baby, clutched the banister for a long, breathless moment. When she’d gotten control again, she continued her descent, moving methodically now, using all her will to suppress the fear that threatened to plunge her into panic.

  It was warm outside, she reminded herself. She wouldn’t take ill as long as she covered up a little. She was antsy as hell to get out of the house, but she flipped on the foyer light and forced herself to check the hall closet for an umbrella. There wasn’t one, of course, because that would have been too organized for the Cranes. She substituted one of Chris’s jackets for the umbrella, draped it over her head and pushed through the front door.

  She longed to remain under the sheltering porch roof, but she could not rid her mind of the photo album, of the dead, staring eyes of the young Lillith. She’d nearly convinced herself it had been the Darvocet that made her see the naked woman that night. Yet deep down she’d known the woman was real, known the expression in that pale face had been familiar for a reason, because she’d seen that look before, on their first visit to Indiana, during their wedding weekend, and finally the last time, just before Lillith’s death, when the woman told Ellie she could never have Chris, that he would always belong to…

  The image of Lillith in her cold, sterile parlor was enough to get Ellie going. She hopped off the porch, her feet squelching in the sodden grass. Crossing the yard toward the lane, she chanced a look back at the third-floor office window and half expected to see the young Lillith watching her. But the window was vacant.

  Feeling better, Ellie leaped a puddle and started down the narrow jade island that unfurled between the saturated wheel ruts of the lane.

  When she reached the edge of the yard, she was heartened to note a slight let-up in the storm. Ellie lowered Chris’s jacket and slid her arms inside. It hung to her knees and made her feel like a child trying on her parents’ clothes. But wearing Chris’s jacket made her feel closer to him. She still wanted to move to another house, but she no longer felt like she was in immediate peril. She no longer worried she’d see the naked young woman again…

  She swallowed dryly, fighting off the dreadful realization that had just arisen within her.

  If the woman really had been standing at the edge of the woods that night, that meant it hadn’t been the medication that had caused her to hallucinate. And if she hadn’t been hallucinating, that meant…

  That meant the man in the basement had been real too.

  Calm down, a distant voice pleaded.

  Calm down? How can I be calm when there’s a maniac on the loose? How can I think of those crazed eyes and that monstrous grinning mouth and be calm?

  She took off at a jog, throwing frequent glances over her shoulder. She wished the woods weren’t so dense. A little rain she could stand. The darkness, though…the darkn
ess was a terrible thing. Why hadn’t she brought a flashlight, or better yet, a weapon? If she had the axe, she wouldn’t feel so helpless, so much like a woman in one of the horror movies she’d been stupid enough to watch. Sure, they were fun at the time. Sitting safely beside Chris, she could watch with clinical detachment as a machete-wielding psycho carved up some bimbo. But now, oh God, now those scenarios seemed all too plausible.

  She picked up the pace, her sneakers splashing through puddles. She no longer cared how wet she got.

  Lightning exploded to her right and Ellie shrieked. Self-preservation drove her to the other side of the lane. She peered into the forest and witnessed an enormous branch tilt and crash to the forest floor. She ran faster, scared not only of Lillith and the man now, but of being struck by lightning or being crushed by a falling tree. It had been dumb to leave the house, perhaps, but how could she have known the forest would grow so dangerous?

  She was thinking this when the lane angled left and she saw the Camry’s hood gleam in a flash of lightning.

  Relief flooding over her, she waved her arms and called out, knowing Chris could neither see nor hear her because of the storm. She drew nearer, wondering why the car was still so far away, even more curious about the headlights being off. Visibility was already bad enough—why on earth had he killed the lights?

  She moved forward but made negligible progress. Chris had to be driving at a crawl. She continued on, and the outline of the car grew clearer. Odd, but it almost looked as though the car were parked on the opposite side of the bridge. For what reason Chris had stopped she couldn’t even guess. At least she didn’t have to worry about him running her over by accident.

  When she got within twenty yards of the bridge, she realized why Chris had stopped.

  The bridge was gone.

  Numbly, Ellie approached the expanse where the bridge used to be. On the far side of the creek she discerned the concrete pylons, the rebar torn loose and pointing crooked fingers across the gap. Closer, she made out the other side of the creek, the turbulent water having swollen to triple its normal height, ripping away their one means of passage from this horrible place to the outer world.