Evil Stalks the Night

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Evil Stalks the Night

  By

  Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Damnation Books, LLC.

  P.O. Box 3931

  Santa Rosa, CA 95402-9998

  www.damnationbooks.com

  Evil Stalks the Night

  (First published by Leisure Books in 1984)

  by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61572-698-1

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61572-699-8

  Cover art by: Dawné Dominique

  Edited by: Pam Slade

  Copyright 2012 Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Printed in the United States of America

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  1st North American, Australian and UK Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For my son, James…and for all the memories, good and bad, of my beloved family. Long live the family!

  Chapter One

  Suncrest, 1960

  I was ten that summer. I look back now through the haze of the endless summers which came after, and remember nearly every minute vividly. I can ask myself now (oh, yes, now) why didn’t I see what was to happen? How could I have been so blind and so innocent of the dark forces stalking us?

  But I was a child. Maybe you can’t blame a mere child for the later sins of her life. Maybe, heaven help me, my innocence was what saved me.

  We lived in a drafty old fortress of blood-colored bricks. I used to think it stood so tall and proud, challenging the skies, to protect me and my family. There were nine of us living in that rambling house, facing the woods.

  Seven-0-seven. Suncrest. Seven was my mother’s lucky number.

  There were seven of us children.

  I smile now when I think of my mother and her superstitions. But I’ve turned out to be a lot like her, seven is also my lucky number. Or at least it was once, when luck counted. That was a very long time ago. So long ago when we all frolicked in the mysterious woods that ran the length of our street. We disappeared among deep ravines and creeks crisscrossing the land around us. It was so long ago when we were all safe and laughing in the old house…that summer.

  It’s a vicious circle my thoughts trample in, as life’s a vicious circle, the ends always colliding somewhere. How insignificant and weak we are when we rush to try to escape what has to be.

  The summer when I was ten and my brother Jimmy was eight, the sun unmercifully scorched the land to a crisp brown. Everywhere we ran the grass waved dry and brittle in the shimmering air. The soft greens and pale gold of early spring were long gone.

  Could be there had never been a spring. I don’t recall one. All I can remember is the swift, deadly heat which began in April and lasted long into October that strange summer.

  Jimmy and I spent most of our time trying to escape it. We crouched together in the tall weeds next to our house and laughed at the silly world, hiding from everyone. Jimmy was a queer little guy even then and I would watch him as he stared emptily into space, or as he chased ladybugs through the grass. He’d never hurt them. Jimmy never could stand to hurt anything—except Charlie.

  He’d constantly tease our little brother Charlie with words, or lack of them, but never lay a finger on him, even though I’d be the first one to say, if any child on this earth needed the hand it was Charlie. He was as mean as they come. There were times I truly believed Charlie wasn’t Charlie at all, but a demon in Charlie’s skin. He could be so cruel.

  But Jimmy wasn’t anything like Charlie. Jimmy wasn’t anything like anybody I’ve ever known. Jimmy was something special, but he never showed it to anyone. He hid it carefully. It was many years later when I learned why he had.

  Jimmy had light green eyes like me. I guess we must have looked very much alike with our thin, serious faces and tow-blond hair, because lots of people used to ask if we were twins. We weren’t. It was only because I had a special bond with Jimmy, we were so alike in so many ways, and we went everywhere together; we were inseparable.

  I remember one hot day in particular. It was one of those lazy days toward the end of August and we were brooding together out in the woods over the fact, in less than two weeks we would be back in school. Summer was so precious. We never wanted it to end.

  “Sure is hot, Sis. Whew!” Jimmy wiped a hand across his dirty face and smeared the grime deeper.

  He was grinning that mischievous grin of his, and kicking the weeds into shreds with his bare feet, as he talked. He had this way of using his hands when he spoke, like a magician working at his sleight of hand. I asked him about it once and he merely smiled weakly, but didn’t say a word. I felt like there was always something he wasn’t telling me.

  “It’s so hot you can see the heat waves rising in the air.” I squinted my eyes and spread my sweaty hands before me. “You see ‘em?”

  His laugh was odd. “Of course I do, Sarah. Don’t you know I see everything? Don’t you know that by now?”

  I didn’t reply. Silly boy, I thought. Silly child. No one could see everything. I truly believed it…and I was the silly one.

  “I think I’ll go back home and see if Mom’ll give me a Fudgesicle,” he said, and walked away into the sunlight. “It’s been hours since we checked in with her. She’s probably worried.” His voice trailed back lazily on the wind.

  “Probably,” I replied, almost to myself, frowning. I started to follow in his dusty footprints through the jungle of cockleburs, scratchy twigs, and wilted daisies. My hands skimmed the growth as we went.

  I stopped to pick some of the healthier looking flowers, reluctant to follow my brother home. I was afraid Mom would corner us on the rear porch, outside the ripped screen door and delegate a mess of new chores to do. Who wanted to go home and work? Not me. Summer was nearly over and I had better things to do.

  “I hope Mom doesn’t remember we never cleaned up the filthy basement yesterday like she told us to,” I fretted out loud as our pace sped up. The backyard was a junk pile. We had enough work to last us two summers if work was what our mother decided we should do.

  We were running then, the hot air rushing through our hair and along our bare feet as we sped over the ground. I stopped, breathless and panting, to rest.

  “Come back, Jimmy! I’m stopping for a while!” A huge willow tree looked inviting and I lingered under it, waiting for him to notice I wasn’t behind him and double back. I didn’t want to go home yet. It took him a few moments to realize I was no longer in the race.

  “Tired, Sis?” He flopped down beside me, barely breathing hard at all. The boy was a veritable cheetah.

  I nodded, and remembered the feeling that came over me in the instant I looked at him, shading my eyes with my hand against the bright sun. I had the most ominous premonition something was watching us, something very evil was…waiting for us.

  It nearly knocked me over, the feeling was so strong. It was the first time—the very first time—I was aware of it. It was the beginning.

  Panicked, I jumped up and fled from the place with a bewildered Jimmy screaming behind me.
>
  “What the heck is the matter? Sarah? What are you running for? Will you slow down? Slow down!” He caught up to and passed me. I never understood the meaning of what he said then, not until many, many years later. “You’re safe, Sarah. You’re safe now.”

  At the time I thought he meant tag. I was safe. We were home. He hadn’t meant that at all.

  I forgot the terrible moment as fast as it came once I reached the first step of our porch. We sat there huffing and puffing, wiping the sweat from our faces, and the run, or the fear, had soaked me. My shorts were wet and the long braids hanging down my back felt clammy and damp to my touch. It was so darn hot.

  We sat there for the longest time drying off and listening to the familiar sounds from inside the house. As usual, there were shrieks and cries of children; the strident voice of our mother trying to calm bedlam.

  “John, no, no, no! Leslie, get me the red bowl up there. Yes, the chipped one.” A few moments later, after the sound of the plates hitting the table, mother’s voice again: “Has anyone seen Charlie? He has the forks and spoons. Where is that child, he was here a minute ago. Charlie!”

  Jimmy and I giggled on the back porch. It was as it should be, all was well in my world. It was a golden time I want to always remember and treasure.

  “You know if we stay out here any longer, old Charlie will come snooping and find us for sure,” Jimmy warned. “For sure. Let’s sneak down to Satterfield’s and ride the ponies.” His eyes lit up. “Come on!”

  “Naw. I don’t feel like it. So what if Charlie finds us? He doesn’t mean any harm.”

  “He’s a brat.”

  “No.” I stared him down. “He’s lonely. No one ever wants to play with Charlie and they run him off. How would you like it if the others did that to you all the time?”

  “He’s mean as an angry hornet, that’s why. He bites. He hurts…things,” Jimmy defended himself.

  “That’s why. You’d be mean, too. I told you, he’s lonely and fighting back any way he can. Why can’t you all be nicer to Charlie?”

  “Because he’s a snitch and he’s always whining around trying to get people in trouble. You know nobody can have any fun when Charlie’s around to spoil it. He picks his nose, for Christ’s sake.” He grimaced.

  Why did Jimmy, of all people, have to feel this way about poor Charlie? Jimmy wasn’t usually like that. “Let’s go catch the ponies,” Jimmy begged.

  I sighed, shrugged my shoulders and tried not to smile. I loved Jimmy so much. He was my favorite brother, but sometimes he could get me in such trouble. “Jimmy, first of all, we’re not supposed to be sneaking off to ride those wild ponies at Satterfield’s place. Mother would have our skins. Second, the last time we rode them, I got thrown in the thorn bushes at the edge of the creek and cut my legs up pretty bad, remember?”

  He laughed, and I had to hush him because if Mother heard us out there she would recruit us for kitchen duty, pronto.

  “Well, it was either the thorn bushes or the creek, and those rocks didn’t look all that soft. I chose land.” I held my chin up until it hurt. “It’s also another reason why we should stay away from those wild animals. I could have broken my…”

  “Butt, you mean?” Jimmy supplied the word. “You sure looked funny flying through the air when the pony ditched you. For Pete’s sake, you should have been able to stay on it. It was such a little pony, Sarah.”

  “How do you know? I don’t remember you riding one. You could never catch one.”

  “I tried.” He could be so stubborn when he set his mind to it.

  “Did you? Did you really?” And it was my turn to laugh at him as I remembered the way he’d desperately tried to run down one of the ponies and been dragged through the brambles for his trouble. He was too afraid of them. Sure, I’d been thrown, but at least I’d caught one to be thrown from.

  “They was wild!”

  “They was mad, is what they were. Besides, Mother’s right, they don’t belong to us and we had no business trying to ride them. That was why I got thrown. God punished me.” I said the last part so righteously. I lived the Ten Commandments and I believed. I truly believed in God and the punishment for sins.

  Jimmy tossed me a funny look. “There is no God!” He spat. It wasn’t what he said which upset me so much, it was that he truly believed it. I could see it in his eyes. It was as if he knew something no one else did, and he knew there was no God.

  “Jimmy!” I was shocked, as I often was at his anger and his blasphemy.

  “There is no God, Sarah, and you didn’t get thrown because it was wrong and I still think Charlie is a creep!” It tumbled out like angry bees and his face had turned red and ugly. Was this monster my Jimmy?

  I forgot and became angry at what he’d said about Charlie. Jimmy was lounging on the bottom step and I on the top one. I could feel the warmth of the wood beneath me from the hot sun. I could feel the splinters break away from the step as I bounced down to come even with Jimmy.

  Charlie needed a champion and I was the only one around. Not much, but Joan of Arc had always appealed to me with the romantic idealism behind it, not necessarily dying in the flames. I squared my jaw and jumped in.

  “He’s our brother, for Pete’s sake, and he’s only six. Don’t you have any heart?” I hissed, pinching his upper arm through the thin material of his plaid shirt to drive my point home.

  “Ouch! Sarah, you rat!” he yelped, and lunged at me, finally laughing, and we rolled down the yard into the grass tumbling over and over in our mock anger. All a game. Always a game. I could never stay mad at Jimmy or he at me. We got up and started to brush each other’s clothes off.

  “You look like a dust ball,” he teased, trying to make amends in his own way. He hung his head and shifted his eyes around to see if there were anyone spying on us, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “But he’s so old for only six. He hates everybody and everything.” Then, even lower, so low I had to strain to hear. “He’s a real pain in the ass.”

  “James Towers!” I turned away from him in disgust and climbed the porch steps. “You ought to have that filthy mouth of yours washed out with a bar of soap. Strong soap with lots of suds. Where do you ever pick up such language? It can’t be from our parents. It can’t be from me.”

  I jumped the steps three at a time, Jimmy trotting behind me like a hound on a scent. “What am I gonna do with you? I swear, you’re gonna go to the devil one of these days if you don’t clean up your act, brother. That’s one place I can’t help you with.” I shot him a penetrating glance. “How can you hate your own brother so much?”

  “I don’t exactly hate him.” He was relenting again. “Well, he is a snitch. Even you have to admit that, Sarah. But I’ll tell you what…”

  He walked up to me, green eyes sparkling and a sudden grin on his face. “I’ll try to be nicer to him, I really will—for you—for a while, anyway, Sarah. I promise.”

  We were standing in front of the kitchen door and Jimmy scooted past me and laid his hand on the doorknob, turning to look back at me over his shoulder. “You coming in?”

  The house, with its familiar musty scent, looked so cool. Even though it was a shabby old house with wooden floors and splintered porches; it leaned to one side and creaked in the summer storms, we cherished it. I couldn’t count the times I’d scrubbed those floors on my hands and knees or helped brush a coat of much needed paint over those cracked walls, but I never minded the work. It was home.

  The basement contained a pre-war furnace and the coal was stored in a small cave-like room with a trap door to the outside. One time Jimmy and I foolishly decided to make the coal chute our secret way into the house and snuck in through its ebony narrowness. We came out looking like two black goblins, got caught and a spanking to boot.

  The coal chute opened above our mother’s prized rock g
arden on the left side of the house, and Jimmy and I spent many long summer days searching the neighborhood for glittering treasures to stock it with. I loved to sit in the middle of it and lift the quartz rocks up towards the sun, reflecting their rainbows over the bricks of the house and the grass. There were small golden ones and huge silver-streaked ones with white frothy stuff running through them. Some of the rocks looked like solid glass, clear or milky white, even pastels as soft as a baby’s breath. I have never seen a rock garden like that one in all my days since. Those rocks were poor man’s jewels we had lugged from near and far.

  Sometimes Jimmy and I took some of the prettiest ones up into the protective branches of the cherry tree standing sentinel at the end of the sloped lawn. We played with them when we weren’t too busy stuffing our mouths with cherries when they were in season.

  From among the branches we could also see Mother’s collection of climbing roses. Their red, yellow and pink blooms filled the air with a thick sweetness. I’d always take deep breaths of the perfumed air.

  “Coming?” Jimmy’s voice returned me to reality in the fading, rosy light of the waning sun. The day was ending and I always fancied at that precise time of day the world was standing still. It’s the hour of the day when everything is bathed in a strange soft light that smooths the world’s sharp edges and makes everything look like a surrealistic painting.

  We’d go in each evening and eat the big supper Mother had slaved so hard over and afterwards we’d fight over who got the first bath, because by the last child the water would be completely cold. Later, we’d sprawl in front of the black-and-white television set, more than willing to be scared out of our wits or entertained by shows like The Twilight Zone and Zorro. Then, if the weather was nice, we older ones would sneak out and play hide-and-seek beneath the rising moon, wallowing through the deep gullies that rippled through the fields behind our house. We were a pack of young wolves tracking the countryside, running the fences, furry heads down, trying not to make a sound and give ourselves away in the moonlight.