Creepers

by Joanne Dahme

  Prudence was standing directly below my window, as if expecting me to lower a sheet to hoist her up. The witch walked faster. Her eyes shone like a cat’s in the moonlight.

  “Prudence!” I screamed as the witch suddenly reached out to grab her. It was then that Prudence disappeared, her body shimmered into dust touched by moonbeams. The witch looked up at me then and released her cape so that it flapped like crows’ wings behind her. I pushed myself away from the window and nearly fell against my bedroom door. I had to tell Mom and Dad.

  The hallway darkness was only slightly tinged by the weak light of the lamp on the table at the bottom of the stairs. I grabbed the newel post on the banister at the top of the stairs, using it to steady myself as I tried to slow my breathing. I listened to the air. I could not hear the humming now, but instead heard a faint tapping coming from downstairs—a sharp, incessant, steady tap like a hammer hitting concrete. I knew that sound. I felt as if somebody was squeezing my heart in their hand like a bird’s egg. It was the chiseling.

  I do not know why I went down the steps instead of bursting into my parents’ bedroom. One part of me screamed from inside not to go down there, but another part felt a tug from something else. It was not terrifying but gentle and needy, as it led me to the front landing. The chiseling was louder and more frantic now. I turned to look at the basement door, the best-lit feature of the house, thanks to that table lamp squeezed between it and the stairway. I drew the latch and opened the door. I nearly fell back from the force of what sounded like hundreds of hammers and chisels, the metallic clanking buffeting my eardrums.

  “Prudence?” I whispered, although whatever drew me here told me it was not Prudence. I clicked on the basement light, but the chiseling did not stop. I figured that since I did not scare it the first time, it would not be afraid of me now. I walked down a few steps, bending to peer into the belly of the basement. The sound, magnified to a deafening roar, vibrated off of the walls and floors and pounded against my body in frantic waves. The basement door closed behind me.

  I stood on the steps, my muscles frozen, the fear beginning to swell in my stomach. More than anyone else, I wanted Margaret by my side. The witch won’t hurt us. She is just trying to tell us something. I repeated Margaret’s words. What would Margaret do if she were with me? I knew she would walk to the center of the basement, and look the ivy chiseled or real, right in the eye.

  The plaster walls and slate floor were ringing as I slowly edged toward the center of the room. This time, every exposed surface that I looked at—walls, ceiling, floor—was covered with the intricate, dizzying patterns of ivy vines. I covered my ears with my hands as I looked around the room, spying little puffs of plaster dust where a new ivy leaf was suddenly appearing. Yet I was unafraid. The presence that I felt in the basement seemed friendly, like it wanted to share a secret. I remembered the ivy connected Prudence and Christian. At least that was what the witch told Christian, according to his journal.

  “What is it?” I whispered, trying to understand. “What do you want me to know?” My teeth chattered as I asked the question, not daring to shout above the ringing of invisible chisels hitting stone and their echoes colliding against one another.

  Then the chiseling stopped. My ears stung slightly from the noise. I suddenly could hear footsteps on the floor above me and the basement doorknob jiggling in its socket. My attention was pulled back to the center floor, where a tiny chiseling sound began tapping a new shape into the slate that was already crammed with ivy. The tapping was slower this time, and the strike of the hammer chipped deeper into the slate. I felt a sudden chill and hugged myself as the new carving was completed. It formed a simple P. It reminded me of Sleeping Beauty, protected and hidden by monstrous thornbushes for all those years. Suddenly I wanted to shout. I understood!

  “Mom!” I yelled instead as I saw her crouched outside the basement window, a flashlight in her hand. Her face looked contorted as she pressed it against the dirty pane. The light from her flashlight seemed to ricochet all over the room in her unsteady hand.

  “Courtney!” I could hear her yell against the thick glass of the windows. “Are you all right?”

  I nodded yes as I noticed that she was in her summer pajamas.Was the witch still out there? I motioned to her to come back into the house.

  Behind me the basement door slammed open and Dad yelled my name with much more gusto than needed. He pounded down the steps and looked wildly around the room. His hair was sticking up in all sorts of directions and one cheek still had a pillow line slanting across it. He scooped me up as we met at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Courtney, are you okay? I couldn’t get that basement door open!” He yelled it almost accusingly.

  “Dad, I’m fine, really,” I rushed to assure him.

  Mr. Geyer stood at the top of the steps. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and gave me a big smile. I suddenly felt way too happy for this hour of the morning.

  “Mr. Geyer!” I called, peering around Dad. “I know where Prudence is!”

  I WONDERED HOW THE KITCHEN TABLE BECAME THE CENTER of our life, for there we all sat again, this time with a hot cup of tea. Mom was in her pajamas, grass stains on her knees. Dad and Mr. Geyer were in baggy shorts and T-shirts. Only Margaret was dressed for a new day, her shorts and shirt without a wrinkle. I had fallen asleep in yesterday’s clothes.

  I leaned across the table, my gaze swerving back and forth between Mr. Geyer’s and Margaret’s faces. Margaret said she had a dream about me being locked in the basement. I kept calling her name.That was why they were here in the middle of the night. Now they looked at me expectantly.

  “Prudence is here,” I said excitedly. “She is buried in the basement.”

  Mr. Geyer sat up straight. Mom and Dad stiffened.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Mom complained.“All I know is that I had the scare of my life when I heard all that noise and discovered you locked in the basement.” She turned to my dad.“Tom, we have to get Courtney away from here.”

  Mr. Geyer opened his mouth to speak, but held back. Margaret shook her head back and forth slowly. “It’s okay,” she offered gently. “Listen to Courtney.”

  Dad stared at Margaret and pushed his mug away. “Jen is right. Nothing makes sense. For a little while tonight, this house was inhabited by something unnatural.” He grabbed for my mom’s hand. “And I don’t even believe in this sort of thing.”

  “Dad,” I interrupted. “It’s okay.” I said it sincerely, because ever since I felt that presence, I also felt a reassuring friendliness—it was happy to see us here. “That something that you are talking about, I felt it, too, when I was in the basement. It was chiseling more ivy and the letter P into the floor.”

  “P?” Mr. Geyer repeated, his voice trembling slightly.

  I had not had the chance to show Mr. Geyer the chiseler’s latest work. Dad had rushed me up the basement stairs and slammed and locked the door behind us.

  “Yes.” I thought for a moment about telling them how I saw Prudence prancing around our yard, but decided to hold that part of the story until later.“It was like the thing that was guiding the chiseling was trying to pound me over the head with the idea that Prudence is buried here, in this house.”

  “So the witch was trying to help us find her! The ivy was like a trail of bread crumbs!” Margaret’s eyes were shining with emotion. Even the tips of her ears were tinged with color. She turned and placed a hand on Mr. Geyer’s knee. “Isn’t this wonderful, Dad? Courtney may have found her!”

  Dad and Mom had been mute with shock during this part of the conversation. Dad broke out of the daze first.

  “Courtney, I can reliably say now that anything is possible, but are you suggesting that we remove the slate from the basement floor and look for Prudence’s bones?” Dad’s voice cracked under the strain of even asking such a question.

  “Well, not exactly,” I replied. “I think maybe her coffin is there. For some reaso
n I get the feeling that whoever moved her did it to keep Prudence close—and safe.”

  Mr. Geyer was nodding.“I suspect Christian may have had a part in Prudence’s relocation.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them with the hem of his shirt.

  Margaret turned to my mom and placed her hand gently on her wrist and asked breathlessly, “Would you mind if we look?”

  My mother shrugged, looking at my dad as she always did when she wanted to include him in a decision. “I don’t see why not.” She glanced at the clock hanging above the stove. “It might be three in the morning, but I can’t imagine going back to bed tonight.” She tilted her head, awaiting Dad’s response. He stifled a yawn.

  “I’ve got a crowbar and some shovels in the shed,” he announced. Despite the resignation in his voice, Dad was a man of action. I knew he wanted more than anything to figure out what was going on.

  The basement bulbs cast shadows under our eyes, making us all look like vampires, except for Mr. Geyer, of course. His super lenses caught the weak light as it glowed from the various points on the basement ceiling, so that Mr. Geyer became another source of illumination. Mom held the flashlight in her hand and kept looking nervously around the room for any weird activity.

  Mr. Geyer and Margaret were on their knees, their fingers probing the carvings in the slate slabs as if they were reading Braille. Margaret turned to look at me.

  “Courtney, this is amazing,” she said, her voice a trembling whisper. “She let you witness this?” She extended her hand as if she wanted me to kneel beside her.

  I followed her lead, laying my palms flat against the surface of the chiseled slab.The roughness of the stone and the carvings almost tickled.

  “Courtney,” my mom said nervously behind me.“Please get up.”

  I turned to her, as Margaret turned to me. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s so weird, but I don’t feel at all scared or freaked out. I don’t sense anything bad here, just . . . a feeling like a sigh of relief.”

  My dad frowned, probably getting a little itchy because he still held a crowbar and shovel in his hands and had not used them.

  Mr. Geyer leaned on one knee to stand up. “I’m sorry, Tom. Margaret and I have never witnessed such a manifestation. I’m literally shaking. Can you feel the presence?” he asked hopefully.

  Margaret nodded.

  “I can,” I confirmed. “It feels like something is embracing us, encouraging us to keep going, as if we are part of some incredible journey.”

  Mom put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me against her as Mr. Geyer smiled. “Courtney is incredibly sensitive. A truly remarkable girl,” he said, gently resting his hand on the top of my head.

  Dad cleared his throat. “Shall we get started?”

  “Certainly. A splendid idea,” Mr. Geyer replied. His voice sounded a little higher than normal.

  Mom, Margaret, and I stepped back and grasped one another’s hands as Dad pried the edges of the slate floor that contained the fury of carvings superimposed with the large, ornate P.

  I looked around the room, peering past the dark corners of the basement, the pile of boxes in the center, and the washer and dryer on the other side. I wanted to make sure that the ivy was okay with what we were doing.There was no new chiseling or real ivy squirming across the basement floor trying to stop us. I took a deep breath.We must be doing the right thing.

  The three of us remained silent as Dad and Mr. Geyer squatted to pull up the first loosened slab.They grunted at its weight as they lay it gently aside. A puff of cool air tinged with the aroma of damp earth pressed gently against my face. No one spoke a word to one another as they removed three more. Each slab was the size of a tombstone.

  The dirt beneath the slate stones was soft and red. Dad and Mr. Geyer shoveled easily and carefully. Neat piles of dirt began growing beside them both. I was mesmerized. With each new shovelful of dirt removed, I felt my stomach tighten until it felt like the size of a hard little ball.

  Mr. Geyer’s shovel suddenly thumped in the dirt.

  “You hit something!” Margaret announced, letting go of my hand to peer into the three-foot hole they had dug. Bits of stone and gravel embedded in the earthen walls sparkled when they caught the light.

  “Yes,” Mr. Geyer agreed. He tapped his shovel gently along the length of the hole. The blade of the shovel continued to thump along the top of something still covered by a layer of dirt. Mr. Geyer looked expectantly at Dad.

  Dad nodded. “Okay, let’s dig around the edges. Looks like it’s about six feet long and two and a half feet wide.”

  I was holding my breath now. Mom twisted her head back and forth, one hand periodically covering her mouth as if to hold something back. Margaret cried silently, but her shoulders heaved at the effort, as Dad and Mr. Geyer unearthed what appeared to be a wooden box. Its lid was splintered and stained dark by the damp earth.

  “Is it her coffin?” Mom ventured, pulling me forward with her as she still held my hand.

  “I think so,” Mr. Geyer replied softly. “But we must remove the lid to be sure.”

  Dad did not look so sure. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a dirt streak that looked like an exercise band. “You really want to take the top off?” he asked.

  Mr. Geyer nodded solemnly. “We have to. This may simply contain Christian’s carving tools. He noted in his journal that he buried them sometime after Prudence’s death. He refused to carve another stone after he completed hers.”

  Dad sighed and turned to us girls. “Okay. Do you all want to wait upstairs while Christian and I inspect this box?” His question sounded more like a command.

  “No,” Mom answered while my mouth was still forming the same reply. “I mean, we have witnessed this much. I think we need to see it now to its finish.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. O’Brien,” Margaret said gratefully.

  Dad frowned but took his crowbar to the box’s lid, which squeaked in protest as he pried along its edges. The wood looked very old and flimsy, nestled in the dirt. It reminded me of an ancient trapdoor to a secret passageway into the earth.

  A few of its nails simply cracked as sections of the once-smooth wood split apart as Dad crouched to press all of his weight against the crowbar. He moved awkwardly around the perimeter of the hole, carefully prying along the lid’s edges little by little. After a few passes, the wood made a popping sound as if the box suddenly cast it off. A more powerful smell of earth, dust, and metal perfumed the air.

  Dad lifted the wooden lid and slid it behind him across the basement floor. We held on to one another as we leaned over the hole to peer into the box.

  “Thank God,” Mr. Geyer pronounced, grabbing hold of Margaret and pulling her head into his chest. For nestled in the box on top of a yellowed and fraying quilt lay Prudence. Instead of stepping back in horror, I felt a weird relief, simply glad that Prudence was finally safe and sound. I knew it was Prudence, because the bones held crumbling pieces of the loose white skirt and shirt that I had just seen her wearing as she had raced around our backyard. Of course, the clothes looked much older, were faded and torn, but I could still recognize them.At her feet were a collection of tools—chisels, hammers, and stones. The small stones were the color and texture of slate.

  Mom and Dad were silent and stepped back as Margaret and Mr. Geyer knelt beside the hole. His hand trembled as he held it over the coffin, almost as if he were giving a blessing.

  “Dad, you must touch her and then you must touch me, remember?” Margaret prodded him. Her gaze was focused on the coffin as she took his hand to guide it toward the place where Prudence’s heart once beat. Before he did so, he leaned into the hole to gently pull at the edges of the quilt, as if to make sure that Prudence was comfortable.

  Mom and Dad stepped back and hovered behind me. Both were wide-eyed.

  I watched Mr. Geyer as a tear traveled down his cheek.

  He turned to Margaret, still holding her hand. “We must find C
hristian,” he said roughly.

  It was then that I saw what looked like an old rolled-up paper sticking out from the small pile of stones at Prudence’s feet. “What is that?” I pointed into the coffin. We all leaned in now as Mr. Geyer carefully plucked the paper from what I guessed to be remnants of a tombstone.

  “It looks like a parchment,” Mom murmured, no longer able to contain herself.

  Mr. Geyer stumbled to his feet as he clutched the scrolled paper. He opened it and whispered, “It’s a page from Christian’s journal.”

  “Read it to us,” Margaret said, suddenly clasping my hand.

  He wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist and straightened, as if assuming the old Puritan stance. His voice went low as he read.

  The witch said that this was the only way to end our misery.

  I knew she loved me. I never doubted her word on that.

  She had refused to be my wife because she was a witch.

  But she was unafraid to have my child.

  Prudence.

  Your mother knows what to do.

  “Bury her,” she said, “in the cellar.

  Bury her at your foundation.

  They cannot hurt her there.

  And when you die,” she promised, “I will bury you,

  Not far from me or our daughter.

  In the end, the ivy will bind us,

  And in time, unite us for eternity.

  The ivy will know when the time is right.”

  God help me for believing her.

  I wondered if everyone’s heart beat as ferociously as mine.

  “What does it mean?” I whispered. Even Dad leaned into our circle now. Mr. Geyer was trembling. He cleared his throat before replying.

  “It means that the witch had planned all this, as if somehow she could manipulate nature’s laws to bring them all together in the future.” He took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses against his shirt. “Together in a time when witches would no longer be burned at the stake.”