Shutting off the light, she went over and set her book beside the window. She unlocked it and opened it just a crack. Lucy smiled out at the darkness, took a deep sigh, and went back to her bed, quickly falling asleep.
The minutes passed by without another sound. On her bedside table, the digital clock read 10:00, and that slowly turned into 10:10. Unbeknownst to anybody in the home, the window in Lucy’s room slowly rose up.
It rose, higher and higher, until it was completely open. Dreadfully slowly, the cold night air made its way into the room. A pair of gnarly, old hands reached in from the darkness. The crooked fingers grabbed the notebook and flipped it open.
They paused on the first page for a few moments, and then flipped to the next. It lingered for a couple of seconds on each one, before moving to the next. Horrid images flashed by.
A forest of trees with a figure hanging from every one…
An old house with fire leaping from every window…
A stone bridge crumbling onto four dark silhouettes…
Two towers burning to the ground…
And below every terrible scene, on the bottom of the page, was a sea of headstones. Each one was identical, each page with the footnote of a depressing scene.
The cemetery was in order, going from tallest in the middle to shortest on the edges of the paper. And on these final mounds of stone were names: Michael, Christian, Crystal, and Brandon. But in the center of them all, rising higher than the rest, was a single word drawn in deep red and with blood flowing from it.
Daniel.
The clock became 10:30 and the gnarled hands shut the book, closing the window. Then they disappeared, far away into the darkness, preparing. It was coming. Something terrible that nobody could anticipate.
Daniel.
Chapter 11
Steven
“Good morning, Steven.” Daniel stood beside the table, leaning against the chair. He set a cup of bitter tea down. Steven glared up at him, visibly shaken.
“I’ve been waiting for over an hour, and I don’t even want to be here. I can’t believe you’d bring me back here, let alone keep me waiting for such a long time.” Steven’s tone was defiant, but he was shaking and fidgeting in the chair.
An unfinished crossword puzzle lay on the table, ripped into shreds. There was a glass of water, untouched, with a ring of condensation dripping onto the table.
“Wow, I really feel the friendship rekindling.” Daniel chuckled. “You’ll barely glance at me.”
He took a seat, comfortable and at ease.
“How are you, Steven?”
“Better before you sat down.”
Daniel sighed. “Oh, come now. What way is that to talk to an old friend?”
“That was a long time ago,” Steven growled. “Old friend or not, I don’t wanna get into this business.”
“But you don’t even know what happened, Steven.” Daniel folded his arms on the table and stared intently at the opposite man. “You’ve been-”
“Out west, yeah. It’s your fault I was sent out there. And I know enough of what happened to want out. This isn’t good business, and I’d rather be alive still come Christmas-time.”
Daniel sipped his bitter tea. “Wouldn’t we all.”
“Why did you want to meet me, anyways? They’re done now; won’t happen again for twenty years. You missed your chance this time. She’s gone,” said Steven, his hands still shaking despite the rough bravado in his voice. “Detective Smith.”
With the dark coat crumpling at his movements, Daniel shook his head with a sober expression and placed the teacup on the table. “They’re not done for me, Steven.”
“What do you mean?”
He crossed his arms. “Would you like to hear a story? The entire story? It’s really quite something ... ”
“No, I don’t. I want answers,” said Stephen. He gave the other man a stern gaze. “So give them to me, or I’m leaving.”
“You can only get the answers you asked for in the story.”
“Just summarize it!”
“You can’t summarize the story.”
“If you say story one more time, so help me God!”
Daniel grinned. “I know exactly what you think of me, but it changes nothing. Story, or not?”
“Fine,” said Stephen, leaning back in his chair with a glaring expression. “Tell me the story. What’s it about?”
“It’s the story you never finished. The story you left in this town. About what happened, right here, not so long ago as you might think. I suppose in some ways the town held the story, but it’s really more right to say that the story was the town, is the town, and always will be.”
<><><> <><> <>
The story was told. Simple words for a terrible thing.
Daniel took one last sip of his bitter, nasty tea. Setting it down, he stared at the man across from him, who was glancing about open-mouthed. Steven couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to, but he knew it was true. After all, he had been there himself for the first half of those events until the chief transferred him to California. What Daniel told were the events from two decades ago, all the way to the day before.
“Now you see why I had you come meet me early in the day. A story like that takes a long time to tell,” Daniel finished, a calm smile spread across his face.
Outside, the sun was beginning to set behind the buildings of Hardy. It had been twenty years since Daniel set foot in this town. Nearly all of the families he knew had moved away. In the twenty summers since the kids were taken, all the townspeople had left. Everyone now was completely unaware and unprepared. It was always like that.
“It’s a beautiful town,” he said, talking more to himself than to Steven. “Quite a beautiful town.” Still a beautiful town.
Steven blinked, still dazed. He scratched at his balding head and frowned.
In the diner, only a few people remained, eating their late meals or talking about the times. Every waitress had whispered at some point throughout that day about the two men sitting there at the table, talking alone in hushed voices.
Lines marked Daniel’s once vibrant face; his eyes were old and tired, bored of everything they saw. His old, black coat was ragged and dirty. It was no longer that of a policeman or a detective, but a normal person. A normal person who was lost, now, and had no hope. He could put on a strong face for Mary, but still there was the feeling inside that none of them would survive.
“We’ve both gotten older,” he said to Steven, who cringed every time Daniel spoke. “Much older. Although I like to think of myself as the Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford-type of old guy. Remember when those first three movies came out? What a franchise.”
Steven finally spoke up, ignoring the remark. “Why did you tell me this… this horrible story? Why did you make me come all the way from California, where I was just beginning to be happy?”
“To give you nightmares, of course,” said Daniel with a laugh.
“That’s not funny,” Steven growled. “I... I was happy. Really happy. Why do you want to ruin that?”
Daniel took on a serious gaze, looking Steven right in the eyes. “Neither of us can be happy until she’s gone. I know somewhere, deep down, you had to know how it ended. You needed to understand.”
“What I need to understand,” Steven growled, “is why you dragged me all the way back to this hole in the ground, this dot on the map, to give me nightmares.”
“This ‘hole’ was your home, Steven. Still is. I left, too, after it all ended, and forgot just as much as you. I was happy, living life how I wanted with who I wanted, but then I came back here. Not for long, just for a little thing. And now I’m stuck.”
“Why’re you stuck here? Just leave. Like I’m going to.”
“No,” Daniel said grimly, “I can’t.”
“And why not?”
Daniel gulped, showing a hint of that youthfulness passed away through years of work and turmoil. For a second, his eyes looked sorrowful, befor
e regaining their steely, emotionless manner. “You don’t need to know. I just need you to write this story down somewhere; keep it fresh. If anything happens to me, tell everybody. Maybe that’ll break the cycle. Maybe it’ll set us free. Maybe they’ll be warned. Or maybe I’ll fail.”
“But why would anything happen to you?” With a skeptical gaze, he added, “And why can’t you write it down? I mean, I know your handwriting is bad” -he smiled weakly- “but now they’ve got comp-”
“I’m going after her, Steven.”
“What! Why?”
Daniel wiped his forehead with a hand, before continuing slowly, in a dark tone, “She has them. The ones I brought with me. One of them is my daughter.”
“I’m so sorry, Daniel.” Steven gazed at him with compassion, trying not to choke up. “I didn’t know. I thought they were just-”
“Other people’s? Even if they were, I’d go after her. This has to stop.”
“Let me help you. Two is better than one. We can-”
“No, Steven. This is my battle. I need you to keep what happened as a record. If anything happens to me, expose this evil. Maybe it’ll stop. It might not. I don’t know, but I have to try and beat her. I don’t have any other choice.”
“Daniel, I can help-”
“No. This is my battle. Don’t go anywhere near her, Steven. She remembers if you do. She remembered me.”
With that, Daniel pushed out his seat, which grated noisily against the floor. He kept his eyes on Steven a half-second longer. Turning around, he walked to the diner door, his eyes wandered towards Steven one last time. Steven looked up, and their eyes met.
At the same time, they nodded to each other. Each knew what was going to happen. Daniel was right, Steven decided silently; he had no other choice.
Pushing open the door, Daniel stepped outside into the fair weather of Hardy, which bristled with excitement over the coming of June, when new things always seem to appear. Celebrations, parties, dread of the new school year; the month was jam-packed, but finally felt like summer. This year was different, though. Every twenty years, it was different.
Daniel left his eyes drift down casually to dropped newspaper, where he saw the headline blaring out about some new ordinance the Marcy city council had passed. What really caught his eye was the short line just above that, declaring the date:
May 26, 2015.
We sure have gotten older, he thought solemnly. But I guess She has too. I hope that’s a good thing.
Steven watched him walk away, longing to help but not knowing what to say. It was terrible to be helpless and hopeless. After paying the waitress, who gave him a toxic look, he left the diner, heading for the hotel where he was staying.
Better get to work, he thought.
Ten minutes later, he was sitting at the desk in his room, looking out of the window around Hardy, which held a familiar sense of home. Still, it had the sickening look of a city that will never stop growing and a hometown that refuses to stay yours. Sunshine gleamed onto his face, a momentary beam of warmth, before that too was overcast by clouds, and the whole city appeared less friendly. Dusty, rundown, and still trying to grow; it reminded him too much of Marcy.
Unfolding his laptop, he opened a new document and looked at the screen, thinking for what words to say, and how he should begin. There was so much emotion and memory in what he was being asked to write. So much grief and so much joy. And despite it all, the words instantly jumped to mind, and he had no doubt that it was right; those words were true. Detective Smith lived it, the kids had known it, now he knew it too
She Watches Always.
Chapter 12
Books
Daniel left Steven at the diner and drove back to Marcy. He turned onto the main road and followed it for a bit, driving without much thought. He figured Steven would go back to the hotel and start processing what he’d been told. Hopefully, he would start typing soon, once he got back to California. There might not be much time left.
Words had always fascinated him, how they lasted forever, at least in some form. The idea had come to him when he thought about the woman, and how every twenty years the townspeople were completely uninformed. Michael and the other kids had found some book, they said, and it seemed to be a common link in the line of children. They all discovered her, and then they were gone with her.
This time was different. Daniel already knew. In the past, the children’s parents had never gotten involved. Also, there was no book checked out by any of his kids, and he was fairly sure that Tyler hadn’t either. The pattern was crumbling; the pattern that Michael thought was so important. Would that hurt the woman, or would it strengthen her? Unleash her?
“Thirty-two,” Daniel mumbled. “He’d be about thirty-two now.”
He parked in front of the squat, timely bookstore and opened his door. Stepping out cautiously, he glanced up and down the street then walked over to the curb. He went straight for the building with a window full of books, pleased to see Alexander working again.
“Hey,” Daniel said as he stepped inside. “I, um… how are you?”
“Good, good.” Alexander smiled as he held an armful of books. Wobbling over to the bookshelf against the wall, he began to place them one-by-one with deft hands. “Your little friend isn’t with you this time?”
“She’s my daughter, and no. She’s back at the house.”
“I thought you all were leaving soon?”
Daniel sighed, leaning against the waist-high table by the door. “Something came up. I’ll be here a while.”
“Hardy or Marcy?”
“What?”
Alexander gave him a blank look. “Are you staying in Hardy or Marcy?’
“Marcy. Here. Just a couple blocks away, really.”
“Pretty terrible, what happened. Ya know? That guy and that-”
“I know.” Daniel cleared his throat. “She was… I mean, it was bad, yeah. Really sad. Anyways, I’m here to ask you about a book.”
“Really?” Alexander chuckled. “Another picture book?”
Daniel didn’t smile. “I heard the other day that there was rumors of a ghost or something in the park, where the boy got taken. I was wondering if there’s a book in here about local legends and ghosts, or something like that. Maybe by a local author?”
“I know a book like that,” Alexander said, “but no, we don’t have a copy.”
“Shouldn’t you?” Daniel asked skeptically. “Since it’s about Marcy?”
“It was a library book, and we offered to buy it from them. They said it got checked out twenty years ago and never turned back in. By some kid named-”
“Brandon?”
“No. The kid’s name was Michael. We looked, but he never had a library card or anything. The librarian just wrote his name down, no card. Nothing besides that name.”
“I know him,” Daniel said. “Knew him, anyways.”
Alexander gave him a curious look, but turned back to the bookshelf and placed the last few. “Well… yeah, sorry. We don’t have it. I’m sure you could find it somewhere online, for like a hundred bucks. Stupid rare books.”
“Well, will you let me know if you ever find the book, get it, or hear about it? Anything like that?”
“There’s other ways of learning,” said the old woman from the counter.
Daniel spun in that direction, and there she was standing behind the register.
“I didn’t hear you come in…” he said.
“Should’ve listened,” she mumbled.
“What were you saying about other ways to learn?” Alexander asked.
The old lady sighed, placing her gentle hands on the counter. “I’ve heard lots of talk of that woman in my own time. Seems to resurface every once in awhile. I remember the last time, too, and I know who you are Detective Smith. I know all of that. And I know how to find her again, without the book.”
“Detective?” Alexander turned to Daniel with wide eyes. “You’re a detective?”
>
“Not anymore, kid,” Daniel said. He asked the lady, “What are you talking about?”
“Books are one way of consulting the past, but there are many others. There are people. The ones who helped you last time. Find them. Ask them. And they will lead you to her.”
<><><> <><> <>
Steven typed furiously throughout that day, never stopping and barely breathing. He poured out all of his own memories from the first part, along with what Daniel told him. The words poured out of him like a waterfall over a rocky cliff, sweeping away all thoughts and feelings as they abandoned him onto the computer paper.
The words slowed, and eventually he leaned back in the stiff, wooden chair. The hotel room around him was a blur, his eyes leaking and weary from staring at the screen. He saved the document, closed the laptop, and went to lay down on the bed.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the street lamp outside. It was dark now, almost pitch-black. He inched his way to the window, breathing heavily. Steven pulled back the curtain, and saw her standing on the street, just outside the light’s range.
She was a silhouette in the dark, until she stepped forward and in the light smiled at him.
Shivers ran up his body as he saw her face for the first time. Sweat broke out on his forehead and above his lip. His blood ran cold, and his stomach churned into a ball of soaking yarn.
Her eyes met his, and although there was no expression he knew. He knew what she was thinking, and what she thought of him, and he knew what she knew.
The laptop lay beside him, out of sight from the window, but she knew it was there, and she knew what was on it. She knew who he was, and how he’d been here the last time. She knew he was a loose end, and a problem. His work was even more dangerous than him.
Steven quickly moved out of the way immediately got back onto the computer. He went to Google and tried to log onto his email, hoping to send the file to every contact in case she got a hold of his laptop. Then it would be safe, at least somewhere.
She Watches: A Horror Novel Page 7
