Storberry

by Dan Padavona

  The sun was down, and the landscape beyond the window to the backyard was fading into indistinct contours. Far to the north, she saw the Giovanni silo standing watch over the north end of Randolph Road. It made her think again of Mary Giovanni, who lived between the Dicksons and the farm. Mary had been with the group that had accompanied Rory early this morning. Evelyn had only seen her through the truck window, partially illuminated by the dome light. The haunted expressions on all of their faces had caused her own fear to percolate, but why the fuss?

  Rory had been evasive, yet she knew there must be terrible trouble in Storberry. His only command had been that she keep the doors and windows locked and not answer the door for anybody.

  But the heat had gathered in the house throughout the day, peaking after sunset just as it always did in the Dickson house. The digital wall thermometer reached 80 degrees, so she cranked open the casement windows in the kitchen to let fresh air inside. The outside breeze evacuated the stuffy air and instantly made the kitchen more comfortable.

  The ranch home was fragrant of strawberries and freshly picked roses. The kitchen timer buzzed, and Evelyn removed a strawberry pie from the oven and placed it next to the window to cool.

  “It should be ready in about 15 minutes. I hope you're hungry,” she said.

  “Yes, ma'am,” he said, still busy with a math problem which involved fractions.

  She was embarrassed to admit that she didn't remember a darn thing about adding and subtracting fractions, and she hoped that he wouldn't ask her for help.

  “Do you like math, Benny?”

  He nodded without looking up from the pad.

  “Benny, do you know what happened last night that got Mr. Dickson so worried?”

  He continued to solve the math problem.

  “It's okay. You can tell me.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don't know what happened?”

  “Didn't see. They told me not to look.”

  “Look at what? Who told you not to look?”

  “Mr. Moran and Ms. Tennant. But I think something bad happened.”

  “Bad? What kind of bad thing?”

  He drew a castle now, with a knight riding a horse toward a portcullis.

  “It's okay to tell me, Benny.”

  “I think someone got hurt or killed.”

  “Why do you think that, honey?”

  “‘Cause we heard gun shots in the barn behind my house when Mr. Dickson was looking inside. We came running, but they made me turn around so I didn't see it.”

  She covered her mouth with her hand. Had Rory been involved in a shooting? More than ever she wished she could reach her husband by phone.

  Now she understood why Benny was upset and why the others were troubled inside the truck—somebody had been killed. That also explained why Rory was insistent on keeping the house locked. Is the killer still at-large? Who in Storberry would commit such an act? Maybe looters, come in from the cities. She thought about the open casement windows. At least they were screened. If anyone tried to break in, she would hear them coming.

  “Well, you're safe here. It's just you and me and a yummy strawberry pie.”

  She smiled, but he remained dour and immersed in the castle and its knight. For a moment she swore that tears pushed against the backs of his eyes.

  When the pie was ready, Evelyn carved two slices and brought the dessert into the dining room. She cranked the windows shut, worrying about Rory and gunfire. Why had Rory been in the Marks' barn in the first place?

  Someone knocked at the front door.

  Benny's head shot up, his eyes centered on hers. She could see his mouth tremble. What did the boy know that made him so frightened? What had he seen?

  The knocks came louder.

  “Maybe I should see who it is.”

  As she rose from her chair, he shook his head furiously. She didn't see any reason for someone to knock on her door after dark when so much trouble was going on in town, but what if someone needed their help?

  “No. Don't.”

  “Don't worry. We're not going to let anyone in, just like Mr. Dickson said.”

  She wished Rory were here now. He had left her his shotgun, but darn if she had any clue how to load and fire it.

  Other guns were locked inside a basement cabinet, but she didn't know how to use those guns, either. Rory had given up teaching her not to fear them years ago.

  “I just want to see who it is.”

  Before she reached the threshold of the living room, the knocks came in thunderous booms, rattling he steel door within its jamb. She stepped backward toward the dining room.

  “Mrs. Dickson, I'm scared.”

  “Now, now. There's nothing to be scared about. Probably just someone with car trouble, or some sort of—”

  Her flesh crawled with goose bumps, as though centipedes skittered across her skin.

  ”I'm just going to peek out the window to see who it is.”

  As she started toward the window, feeling like she was walking upstream through a river, her legs turned to rubber. The pounding grew in fury, beginning to splinter the jamb.

  She realized with sudden, building horror that the thing that Benny feared most, the evil that Rory warned her to lock her doors against, was here with them. Evelyn turned back to the dining room, seeing the fear in Benny’s widened eyes.

  The door imploded. She grabbed him by the hand, and they ran to the sliding glass door off the dining room. The ham radio sat to the side, unusable. No phone. No radio. No one to help her.

  She yanked the door open, and they bounded off the back deck, the sound of footsteps plodding across the living room behind them. Night enveloped all in its blackness. Darkened strands of meadow grass cackled at them, swaying maniacally.

  “This way!” she said.

  She pulled him left, across the yard toward a white two-story colonial. The lights were off, but she saw the outline of a truck in the driveway. From behind them, she heard the dishes break as her dining room table was smashed.

  They ran up the back steps of the colonial and pounded on its door.

  “Please!”

  As she pounded again and cried for help, footfalls crossed the back porch of the Dickson ranch, drawing closer. Soon their pursuer would enter the bordering yard.

  “Run, Benny!”

  While they raced toward another two-story home, thin tree branches whipped at their faces and bramble grasped at them like talons. They pushed through the bordering trees. When something shrieked in the night behind them, Evelyn thought of the Book of Revelation and wondered if the sun would ever rise again.

  A light was on inside the house.

  The Barristers are home, Thank God.

  She took him around the side of the Barristers' home, hugging the shadowed walls toward the front of the home. With any luck they would lose their pursuer, who hadn't yet broken the tree line.

  “This way!”

  A rancid odor drifted downwind. A dead animal, she thought. The night pooled at the base of the home. The windows burned with orange light in the night, the outlines of trees appeared as misshapen devils.

  As they turned the corner to the front of the house, Randolph Road became visible, silver and deserted in the moonlight. Her lungs burned and her heart thumped dangerously fast.

  Just a little bit further, she thought, as they crested the steps to the front porch. She pounded on the door and screamed for help again, Benny pressing and holding the buzzer which wailed through the interior.

  “Mr. Barrister!”

  Limbs snapped like firecrackers somewhere behind the house. The intruder was through the tree line.

  The living room light shined through the translucent drapes, but she saw no sign of movement within. Her desperation growing, Evelyn lifted the metal mailbox off its screws and heaved it at the plate glass window, cracking it at the center. The resultant crash must have been heard inside the home or from neighboring houses, yet no one responded. />
  She heard the pursuer dragging its feet through the grass from around the corner of the house. At once Evelyn imagined their pursuer to be Frankenstein's monster, the werewolf, the mummy, and the embodiment of all the movie horrors that had haunted her youth.

  Why won't anyone help us?

  She turned the door knob. In a moment of insanity that she would have found hilarious under any other circumstance, she found it unlocked. She whipped the door open, just as a gnarled shadow turned the corner to the front yard.

  She screamed for help, her voice reverberating off the walls without answer.

  Turning the lock on the door and throwing the bolt into position, she saw that it was a solid steel door with no window. The door should have been nearly impenetrable, yet her own steel door had not held up to the attack.

  “Mrs. Barrister? It's Evelyn Dickson. Is anyone home?”

  The night had gone silent beyond the door. Benny tugged at her arm, but she ignored him and pressed her ear to the door.

  No sounds came from beyond the door, but something within the house whispered...so subtly that only she heard it...saying...

  The pursuer bashed against the door before she removed her ear, wracking her head in pain. The door shook as though struck with a sledgehammer, and inexplicably she could hear the reinforced door cracking along the jamb. She no longer resisted the boy who pulled her from the entrance.

  But safety was so very close, and Evelyn knew this because the whispers had now grown to discernible voices from the second floor. The voices spoke directly to her, promising refuge and something more…something personal, for her only. For the voices didn’t care for the boy, and he needn't know the comfort the voices could provide to Evelyn if she would only follow them to their place of origin on the second floor, to safety.

  She had blocked the whispers initially, for they tasted sickly sweet and smelled of carrion, as though they were something more than just voices, yet the voices persisted.

  As she raced with him up the staircase toward a darkened landing, from below, the front door groaned against the relentless assault. She knew the door wouldn't hold much longer. She saw a light switch on the wall but thought better of turning it on. She didn't want to give away their location.

  A long hallway stretched out before them with two closed doors to each side. A final door stood at the end of the hall, and she felt herself strangely drawn in its direction. Was it here that the whispers had come from?

  Safe, Benny. We're going to be safe!

  The first door on the left opened to a storage closet full of cleaning supplies, towels, and blankets. The promised sanctuary was not here. She opened the door on the right and found the upstairs bathroom, the glow of the moon bathing the tiled floor in blues.

  She called down the hallway.

  Why don't the voices answer me?

  Three more doors waited. Three more chances to find something or someone to defend them from the maniacal pursuit.

  The next two doors opened to bedrooms. Both were guest rooms that had the stale smell of disuse.

  But it was the third door that interested her—the room at the end of the hall. For a moment she thought she heard the whispers again, promising her refuge, coaxing her toward the safety of the room's confines.

  She pulled the boy forward, toward the last door, toward safety.

  The boy's eyes followed her gaze, terror welling up into his chest. He planted his feet on the carpet, begging her to turn back, but it was not difficult for her to drag him forward.

  And then the door at the end of the hall stood before them. Its knob, shimmering black, beckoned her forward. The boy tried to pull her away from it, back toward the guest rooms. He cried, he thrashed, he pleaded, but Evelyn would have none of it.

  A sharp crack emanated from the lower floor, a sound not unlike the snap of a bullwhip. The jamb had split. The front door was almost breached.

  She reached for the door knob, and when she touched it she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. It was cold to the touch, as though the door served as a gateway between seasons—the warmth of spring in the hallway, the dead of winter beyond.

  The whispers grew louder now. They called to her, and she answered.

  She turned the knob, and as the door swung open, cold, stagnant air met her at the entrance, like an air conditioning unit had been running at full power. But there was no rattle and hum of an air conditioner.

  The room was so inviting to her. The master bed, a beautiful queen with cannonball posts, was situated in front of her against the far wall. A closet door stood closed to her left. What wonders did it hold within? Surely something exquisite. Two closed windows stood to either side, thin drapes drawn to let in filtered moonlight. The way the dim glow danced across the bare floorboards and highlighted the bed reminded her of something out of a fairy tale. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  But Evelyn did not see what Benny saw.

  Now the boy planted both feet on the ground for leverage and pulled at her arm. He is an annoyance. Why did Rory leave me with such an unreasonable child? This child is not my responsibility.

  Unseen hands seemed to caress her. They urged her forward into the safety of the master bedroom. If the boy continued to come between her and this garden of beauty, this idyllic nirvana, this paradise, she would have no choice but to deal with him—with severity, if necessary.

  The stench of rot and decomposition grew overwhelming. The boy gagged, his lungs refusing to ingest the evil. But Evelyn did not smell it. To her, the scent of the hidden sanctuary was of primrose and youth. It drew her forward with thoughts of spring and rebirth. A hint of spice hung in the air, and she found the sweet smell comforting. Soon she had forgotten about the boy tugging at her arm, and she seemed to glide across the floor toward the bed.

  A defiled wooden cross hung over the bed, turned upside down. Something about the reconfigured symbol sounded an alarm at the back of her senses, but was transfixed by the silk sheets, pearl-like in the moonlight. The luxurious pillows, so soft and inviting. If she were to lay her head upon them, she would find the most reinvigorating sleep she had ever known. Perhaps she would awaken years younger. I feel so tired.

  She climbed into the bed and pushed her feet under the smooth sheets. Something had changed—the insolent boy no longer clamored at her; his hands no longer pulled against her.

  But there was more. Invigorating warmth percolated through the mattress into her bones, as though the mattress had shape-shifted into bathwater. She was vaguely aware that the pounding had stopped on the lower level of the house. She was finally safe, just as the whispers had promised. If the boy would just see...

  What the boy saw were buckets of blood splashed across the sheets and body parts arranged into a vile symbol on the floorboards under the left window. Candles, burned to the wick, surrounded the dismemberment.

  As the warmth poured into her body, she could almost feel the years being removed from her. Ten years younger. Twenty. Benny backed away in horror. Even from the threshold of the doorway he could see her wrinkles fading.

  The closet door mewled, and the door began to swing open.

  Benny was frozen to the floor as Janet Barrister glided forth in a blood-soaked nightgown. Straggly hair hung about her face, shielding him from her vision, but he knew all the same that she could see him. She glided toward the woman in the bed, who writhed in delight in the bloody sheets. The thing's shadow lengthened against the moonlight, spreading across the floor to his ankles. The outline chilled him, as though the woman's cold fingers had touched his skin.

  She bent over Evelyn Dickson with a grin of twisted fangs. Globs of saliva drooled out of Janet Barrister’s mouth in anticipation. She bit into Evelyn’s neck.

  Evelyn convulsed in the bed. She screamed, the facade of paradise gone from her vision. The fountain of youth reversed course, and the years poured onto her face. As a spiderweb of varicose veins spread across her skin, r
uby geysers of blood erupted into the air.

  Benny ran. Not to the safety of the stairs, but toward the bed. His feet carried him as if he were a bystander to his own actions. The Barrister woman sensed his presence and hissed, but it was too late. He grasped the defiled cross from above the headboard, yanking it off the nail.

  Now he backed away with the cross in his hands, turning the symbol upward as it was meant to be. Janet Barrister spun away from Evelyn and regarded him, head cocked to one side. He saw her porcelain doll flesh and vile teeth that dripped black and red.

  “What do we have here? A boy?”

  He retreated to the doorway with the cross held between him and the bedside horror. His body shook in terror, but he held the symbol aloft as though it were an unbeatable weapon. Behind them, Evelyn succumbed to the massive blood loss and went still.

  “I will rip you open!”

  Janet Barrister stalked toward him, her shadow drifting up his body and across his face, cooling his skin. She became a disheveled silhouette against the moonlit window.

  As he raised the cross higher, it tingled in his grip as though electricity pulsed within, and a faint glow emanated from the wood. Janet Barrister screeched and halted in her tracks.

  “Drop it! Drop it, and I promise that you will feel no pain.”

  The confidence was gone from her eyes. Benny thought to take a step forward with the cross, but then he heard the stairs groan behind him in the hallway. Their pursuer was in the house. He was trapped.

  The bed sheets stirred and Evelyn Dickson sat up. She looked the same as Benny had remembered her, no longer young. For a moment he wanted to believe that she was alive and that she would save him now. Then her eyes opened as red coals, burning through him.

  The Barrister woman was emboldened. She laughed and bared her teeth at him.

  “Where will you run to now, little boy?”

  The hallway floorboards groaned. Benny turned to see the thing that was once Bill Barrister blocking the path to the stairs. Benny spun back. Janet Barrister loomed over him, scarlet eyes full of hate.