The Presence

by Shady Grim

  “Yer assumption is correct. It’s good to know that the dirt’s only on the outside and not in yer head.”

  “Ethan!” blurted Heather. “What the hell is wrong with you? I’m sorry, Tim.”

  “Why are yeh always apologizin’ to ‘im?” shouted Ethan.

  “Because you’re always being rude to him. Come on, Tim, let’s get washed up.”

  “Not together!” shouted Ethan. He pointed his finger at Tim. “Dead man walkin’.”

  “What does that mean?” said Heather.

  “Nevermind!” growled Ethan. “I got my eyes on yeh, Dirt Man.”

  Tim was amused by Ethan’s histrionics. Heather was annoyed, but accustomed to this sort of behavior from her overbearing cousin. She took hold of Tim’s arm and guided him upstairs. Tim stopped at his bedroom door.

  “Your cousin is very protective of you.”

  “Hmph, more like overprotective.”

  “He loves you.”

  “That’s true, but he’s still controlling sometimes.” Heather walked to the end of the hallway and marched up the stairs to the third floor.

  “THEY SEEM TO BE GETTING quite cosy,” said Shelly spitefully. Ethan nervously rubbed his chin. He waited approximately ten seconds before going back upstairs to wait outside Tim’s door. He breathed a great sigh of relief when Tim opened the bedroom door and emerged alone. Ethan peeked in the room just to be sure.

  “She’s not in there,” said Tim.

  “She better not be.”

  Ethan’s reply annoyed Tim. “Your cousin is a grown woman.”

  “My cousin is too trustin’,” snapped Ethan. “Since we’re on the subject, I’d like to know exactly what yer intentions are regardin’ ‘er.”

  Tim stepped closer to Ethan and looked up into his sleep-deprived eyes. “My intentions are none of your business.”

  Ethan balled his fists at his sides. His ears were red with rage, and the veins in his neck pulsed. “Yeh better watch yerself, little man. If yeh hurt her, yeh’ll have me to answer to.”

  “What is going on here?” said Heather.

  “Just havin’ a little conversation with Dirt Man.” Ethan’s eyes bored into Tim’s, and Tim held his gaze.

  “Stop calling him that!” spat Heather. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. If you two want to kill each other, then do it outside.” Heather stormed passed them and down the stairs. Ethan knew she was going to be difficult. It was really hard to talk sense into her sometimes. She could be so damn stubborn.

  “I’m gonna say it plainly, Dirt Man. I don’t like yeh hangin’ around my cousin.”

  “I think that’s Heather’s choice, don’t you?”

  “That’s a good answer...but yer still short!” Ethan didn’t know what to do about Tim. Every one of Heather’s boyfriends was intimidated by him and eventually stopped dating her. A few rude remarks and the odd covert threat was enough to get rid of them. This guy wouldn’t back down from Ethan, and all he was getting from Heather was the occasional smile and some egghead conversation. Ethan was perplexed by this odd little man.

  Tim strode silently past Ethan, who was still fuming. He was the strangest man Tim had ever met. One minute Ethan was behaving like an ignoramus, and the next he was saying something thoughtful and profound. It was true that Tim was attracted to Heather, but he usually managed to keep his feelings to himself. He wondered if he’d let something slip, or if this Ethan fellow was more perceptive than he let on. Heather seemed to like him too; she was being very nice to him. Maybe she was that way with everyone. She didn’t appear to be overly placid as she certainly didn’t mind arguing with her humungous and aggressive cousin. Living with Jack and Stacy had greatly improved Tim’s social skills, but he still wouldn’t describe himself as a social butterfly. He wasn’t handsome, and he didn’t have a sunny disposition. He was small and skinny, and was basically the opposite of what most women wanted. Tim wondered if he should tell Heather that he liked her. Is that what people do when they’re attracted to each other, or do they go about it more subtly? Would she reject him? All he could do was wait and see. He finished showering quickly. Ethan wasn’t stalking the hall when he emerged from the bathroom. Tim found him outside talking to Heather. The two cousins appeared to have stopped quarrelling–at least for the time being.

  “Dude, yer like a little black cloud. Yer always pissin’ rain on everythin’.”

  “You’re a walking, talking, smiley face. So where does that leave us?”

  “It leads to the back of my truck. Wait ‘till yeh see what I got,” he said excitedly, which made me nervous. I always get nervous when he says something like “Wait ‘till yeh see this!”; because it’s usually something off-the-wall that ends up costing me money or requiring a formal apology. “I got a few bags of garlic cloves,” he handed the bags to Shelly to take into the kitchen, “a dozen boxes of rounds–six each, and I got ten gallons of holy water. I’m gonna spray the outside of the house with it.”

  “Where did you get that much holy water?”

  “Father Murphy owed me a favor.” He saw the next question in my eyes and put his hand up. “Don’t ask.” I learned years ago to heed that warning, so I didn’t pursue that line of questioning any further.

  “Uh...what’s the garlic for? Are we fighting vampires now?”

  “Better safe than sorry.”

  “All we need now are silver bullets,” I laughed. He stuck his hand into the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out four silver bullets and showed them to me. A sudden shiver of realization cascaded down my back. “You were in my jewelry box, weren’t you?” I preferred silver jewelry, so my jewelry box was full of silver chains and rings. I didn’t often wear jewelry, but I liked to have it for special occasions, and a good deal of what I had were gifts from friends.

  “Two for you, and two for me.” I just stared at him in a mixture of shock and rage.

  “You son-of-a-bitch! You took my jewelry!”

  “I had to, I only wear gold! Besides, I left the Miraculous Medal that grandma and grandpa gave yeh, geez! I did this for us, yeh know! This is for the good of the family!” he shouted, shaking the bullets in his closed hand.

  “You’re going to give me an ulcer.”

  He turned around to the children, who were pretending to shoot each other with the water guns. “Yeh guys go put some garlic in all the windows for me.”

  “But, Dad, I wanna tell yeh about how good we did yesterday,” protested Emily, hurt with her father’s inattentiveness.

  “How good yeh did?” he asked, screwing his face up into a frown. “Oh, that’s right! Yeh had yer first shootin’ lesson. I’ll bet yeh both did great. Yer a couple of naturals, right?”

  “Yeah, Dad, we were really good...” started Emmy as she carefully described both hers and Jimmy’s accomplishments. Jimmy punctuated Emmy’s story with many phrases of agreement, such as “uh-huh” and “that’s right.”

  “How lucky are we to have two such talented kids in the family? Yer gonna do great things when yeh grow up, I can feel it. And I’m gonna be so proud of both of yeh.” He took the children in his arms and gave them an unusually long hug before they scampered off to perform their curious chore.

  Before she entered the house, Emmy turned around and said, “Hey, Dad, why are we puttin’ garlic all over the house?”

  “It’s for good luck.” The answer was satisfactory to her innocent little mind, and she turned to catch up with Jimmy.

  “Garlic cloves?” said Tim.

  “Well, look who it is.” Ethan’s pleasant demeanor instantly turned icy. “Does the garlic bother yeh, Dirt Man? Does it make yeh wanna leave?”

  “Tim isn’t a vampire, Ethan.”

  “Vampires sleep in dirt. Did yeh know that, Dirt Man? Hey, wait just a minute. There was dirt all over yer clothes when we met, that can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Stop it!” I was nearly at my wit’s end with Ethan’s paranoia, but Tim was amused by it.

  “Do
you mind if I have a look at your vegetable garden?” said Tim, still smiling at Ethan’s senseless accusations.

  “Not at all,” I replied. “If you see a box turtle in there, his name is Nicky.”

  “The shovels are in the shed. Yeh can shovel up as much dirt as yeh need, just don’t bring it in the house.” Ethan turned back to me and suggested that I give the rifles a good cleaning as we might need them later. I, of course, had no intentions of doing anything with the rifles except to leave them locked in their cabinets. Ethan picked up the shopping bags containing the new rounds and headed for the stairs with me behind him. We passed the children on the second floor hallway. They had just come from my bedroom.

  “You went to my room first, I see.” They giggled mischievously. “My room’s got a lot of cool stuff in it, doesn’t it?”

  “Make sure yeh get every window,” shouted Ethan as they disappeared into one of the bedrooms. “Good thing all that cool stuff’s locked up,” he whispered to me as we climbed to the third floor. “So, yeh wanna tell me just what the hell yeh were doin’ out there?” He pointed in the direction of my woodland excursion.

  “I went to get Thor.”

  “I told yeh not to go in by yerself. Yeh never fuckin’ listen!”

  “What is the problem? I found Thor and brought him home, nobody got hurt.”

  “And yeh brought a total stranger home with yeh. We don’t know anythin’ about this guy. He could be dangerous.”

  “I promise you he’s not a vampire, Ethan.”

  “Yeh don’t know that for sure. Vampires are worse than mold. Once they’ve been invited into a house, it’s almost impossible to get rid of ‘em. Did yeh see how much that guy can eat? That’s a symptom of vampirism, most people don’t know that.”

  I rubbed my temples as I felt an oncoming headache. I was in no mood to discuss the symptoms of vampirism with him. “It was an emergency, Ethan. I wasn’t going to wait for you to get home and risk losing Thor.”

  “Yeh should’ve at least been armed.”

  “I’m not unarmed,” I said, pulling my knife from behind my back.

  “Oh, that’s great, a fuckin’ knife!”

  “Hey, I can split a matchstick at ten paces with this thing,” I said in defense of my favorite item in my father’s collection. Ethan plopped his bag of goodies on the bed and asked for the keys to the cabinets. I handed him my keys, and pointed to the window. We went outside onto the wrought iron walkway to talk privately. “I found something I want you to look at.” I retrieved two bullets from my pocket and handed one to him. “It was embedded in a tree over there. It was just by luck that I found it.” I pointed in the direction of my find, and I repeated to him the story that Emmy had told me, and described the blood trail that I found. “Tim removed this one from Thor’s leg.” Ethan examined the small blood-caked bullet in his hand, and compared it with the one I removed from the tree. “I also noticed that there were a few rounds missing from one of the boxes you brought down yesterday morning.”

  “What do yeh think it means?”

  “I think Shelly shot my dog.”

  “What? She wouldn’t do somethin’ like that.”

  “Think about it, no one’s home and I have several cabinets full of firearms. I keep the keys under the cushion of Thor’s bed. It’s not that hard to put it together. Oh, and that spider web I was observing is broken.”

  “The wind could’ve done that, or a bird.”

  “There’re fingerprints on the window, and prints on the walk that might have been made by shoes.”

  Ethan examined both the finger and shoe prints, frowning all the while. “It doesn’t make sense. Shelly couldn’t possibly think she could kill a dog Thor’s size with a .22.”

  “She might if she didn’t know anything about firearms. A gun’s just a gun to her, and that’s the only size rounds I had. She didn’t have any other option.”

  “Why would she do somethin’ like that?”

  “I don’t know, maybe she’s lost her grip on reality.”

  “I think we should take the kids to Sherm’s house for a few days. They’d be safer there.”

  “I agree.” I turned to go back inside. Ethan moved to follow me and stepped on the rope ladder that I set down the day before.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. I put a pack under the bed with night-vision goggles and a baton in it. It’s all for Emmy...you know, in case she needs it. If something happens and she can get up here, she might be able to scramble down the ladder and get away.”

  “A baton, huh? I knew yeh were teachin’ ‘er more than just boxin’.”

  “Don’t tell her that. I want to see what she does with it. You know how I feel about bullies. Okay, what’s the big grin for?”

  “So, yeh finally believe,” he said, nodding his head with a satisfied grin.

  “Ethan, I don’t know what I believe. I just have a bad feeling for some reason. I don’t know why.”

  “Yes yeh do, yeh just don’t want to admit that there could be somethin’ out there that yeh can’t explain. Yeh used to believe in this stuff, but now yer too caught up with yer books and science and stuff. All yer schoolin’ made yeh smarter in some things, but it made yeh dumber in the things that used to come natural to yeh.”

  I stood for a moment, just looking at him. His words cut me deeply, although that hadn’t been his intention. “Am I so different? Have I really changed that much?”

  “In some ways, yeah. Yeh used to be freer, more open. Yeh’ve become distant. Yeh can’t close yerself off forever, yeh know. Eventually it’ll ruin yeh.”

  I reached behind my left shoulder to scratch an itch and felt a small lump. I pulled at the neck of my t-shirt to look at the back of my shoulder and saw something dark on my skin. “Ethan, is that a tick?”

  “Eeeww, those things make my skin crawl,” he said as he looked down the back of my shirt. He was so disgusted by the tick that he looked like he was dancing a jig. “Just wait here a minute, I’ll get my aftershave.” I sat on the bed wondering how much his bay rum would exacerbate my headache. He came back in with the aftershave and a pack of matches in his hand. “The alcohol should make it come out. Take yer shirt off so I can pour this on it.” I did as he instructed and pulled my hair over to one side, out of the way. “It ain’t workin’. Ugh, that’s so gross! Its whole head is under the skin.” He pulled a match from the pack in his hand. “Fire usually gets ‘em movin’.” Before I could say anything, he lit the match and my whole upper left arm and shoulder were on fire.

  “Oh, shit!” I shouted as I frantically slapped the flames out. “Alcohol is flammable, Ethan!”

  “So it is,” he said as he pulled the charred tick from my shoulder and showed me its remains. “But the tick’s dead.”

  “Great, now I smell like burnt hair.”

  “It doesn’t look so bad, but I recommend that yeh keep it pulled back. It’s a good thing it’s thick. Yeh know, I’m surprised yer skin ain’t burnt.”

  “I should get the kids over to Dr. Zee’s.”

  “I want to see ‘em before they go.” We found them in Jimmy’s bedroom playing with their toys. Ethan stopped to talk with them. “How would yeh guys like to go over to Dr. Zee’s for a few days?”

  “Yeah! Are there gonna be other kids there?” said Emmy.

  “I don’t know, maybe. Before yeh go, I wanna give yeh somethin’.” Ethan took the small gold crucifix from his neck. It was his favorite piece of jewelry, and he never took it off. He put it around Emmy’s neck and gave her a hug. She picked it up from her chest and looked at it for a moment, then let it fall and looked up at him in bewilderment. “I got one for yeh too, Jimmy. I don’t want either one of yeh to take ‘em off.” He pulled out another gold chain and crucifix from his pants’ pocket and placed it around Jimmy’s neck. “Now, go get yer toothbrushes and some jammies.” They scattered to collect their things. “I got a lot to do before yeh get back,” said Ethan as he passed
me and went back up to the third floor. I helped the kids pack their little cases, and we all headed downstairs to face Shelly. Surprisingly, she had no problem with the children staying elsewhere for a few days. I found her cooperation disconcerting, but I wasted no time in getting out of there. Tim was still puttering around my garden, and I waved to him as I drove past.

  Tim lifted his hand to wave at Heather and the children as her truck passed by. He immediately turned his attention back to Heather’s garden. The soil was a little lacking in nutrients, which was easily remedied. The plot that Heather was using was clearly an old garden, and had mostly likely been used to grow some culinary herbs. Its placement was better suited to plants that preferred partly sunny locations, and not appropriate for some of the vegetables she was growing. He could tell with just a passing glance that the unusually level land had once been farmed. Tim walked beyond the garden, occasionally stopping to kick up a clump of grass and examine the soil beneath it by crushing it between his fingers. He mentally plotted out how best to expand the existing garden and what sorts of plants could be grown. He didn’t need to write down any notes because he had an excellent memory, and would recall everything in detail. He’d spent the last week scouting the entire woodland around Heather’s home. He knew every inch of it and every plant that grew there. Tim planned on discussing his proposed changes with Heather when she returned. He turned his attention to an old disused greenhouse that stood some distance away from the garden.

  As Tim walked toward the greenhouse, he looked over at Ethan, who was busily spraying the entire outside of the house with a squirt-gun full of holy water. Tim doubted that it would have any beneficial effect, but if it calmed Ethan’s hypervigilant nerves then it was worth the effort. A shed that stood directly next to the greenhouse contained some basic gardening tools; some were new, most were very old. The greenhouse itself was empty and was in minor disrepair. As Tim’s mind busily itemized the needed repairs and their cost, his concentration was disrupted by a familiar prickling sensation at his back. It had been many years since he’d felt anything like it, and he knew immediately what it was. The Presence had found him. Tim turned to see the humungous shadow-like form standing over him. He looked up into its vague malformed face and could smell the entity’s hot fetid breath blowing down on him.