I paused at the brink of the roof above the kitchen and, positioning my body carefully, I sat down and dangled my feet over the precipice.
“I’m not moving an inch until you show yourself.” I was slightly angry and hoped my voice showed it.
A small warm body edged down beside me and sighed. “Here I am. It’s really beautiful out here, isn’t it, Sis?” He swung his skinny legs next to me. “Look, the moon has a blue ring around it. What does it mean? You read so much, you should know the answer.”
When we were children Jimmy thought I knew all the answers.
He pointed, his eyes peering up through the murkiness and deep into the yards below, searching.
“I think it means snow.” I giggled. I felt like the queen of a magical land way up there, surveying my kingdom. Everything appeared different at night. I wasn’t afraid of it then. The katydids sang in the rose bushes along the side of the house. The vibrant blooms were blackened by the dark and hid among the leaves, but their scent was strong and unmistakable; they were summer’s sweet bouquet.
I smiled, clasping Jimmy’s sweaty hand tightly in mine, and took great gulps of the night air. I have only to close my eyes, even now, and I can still smell that night and those roses.
“Snow? In August?” He chuckled, swinging his feet wide of the gutters we were perched above. “I’d like to see it.”
“So would I. It would be really wild. Snow in the middle of a heat wave.”
“Silly.”
I scooted enough to lean over the edge and tore a stray branch off the old sugar maple. Jimmy grabbed hold of my waist tightly so I wouldn’t fall. At times he could be as protective as a mother hen.
“It won’t snow tonight for sure.” I gazed mesmerized into the skies as I fanned myself with the leafy switch.
“I love summer,” Jimmy blurted out.
“I love…nighttime.”
“I love the sunlight more.”
I laughed. “That’s because you’re afraid of the night.” I didn’t have to see Jimmy’s face to know he was frowning.
He turned to me and I felt a shudder go through him. After a moment of silence he said softly, “Aren’t you afraid of anything, Sarah?”
“No. Why should I be? What is there to be afraid of, except bill collectors?” I tried to make a joke. “I read someplace once, ‘you have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ or something like that.”
“You read too many books, Sarah.” His voice was strangely melancholy. “You ought to be afraid of the things that can hurt you.” He sounded so old for his age.
“Like what?” I thought he was teasing me, setting me up for the punch line as usual. But it wasn’t anything like that.
“Like ghosts, demons. Evil. It’s out there, you know, waiting for you if you aren’t careful, waiting to trap you if you don’t know the way. Evil is real, Sarah. It is.”
“Stop it! You’re spooking me, Jimmy. What are you talking about? The problem is you don’t read enough books. Witches and ghosts are only superstitions. They don’t really exist.”
Yet I recall the conversation had unsettled me.
Because I’d remembered something awful and peculiar that had happened not long before it. Charlie had been walking the old wooden picket fence in the backyard and had slipped; we found him hanging upside down, screaming his lungs out about a thing pushing him off. He’d ripped open his cheek and torn his britches where the sharp pickets had trapped his legs so he couldn’t get down. A thing? He’d been terrified, out of his mind and he still talked about it. But Charlie was always making up stories to get attention.
“I didn’t mention anything about witches.”
“It’s all the same rubbish,” I huffed.
A loud noise from the kitchen below made us forget everything and freeze. We lowered our voices.
“Come on, Sarah, we’d better get down off here before Mom or Dad hear us,” he whispered.
“Okay.”
“Let’s go.” Jimmy took a deep breath for courage and scrambled across to the tree we used to escape down. His hands grabbed out for the tree’s wide trunk and his feet found the familiar branches. I watched as first his body then his head slowly disappeared down the side, hidden by the limbs.
“Last one down’s a rotten egg,” he softly yelled up at me.
“Thanks!” I muttered as I jumped for the branch and bumped down the same path he’d taken. “And there goes Jimmy, faster than a speeding bullet and louder than a damn foghorn,” I told him when I’d safely landed. “The whole neighborhood must have heard you. Can’t you do anything quietly? You’d make a lousy thief. Jesus!”
He steadied me when my feet hit the ground.
“No cussing now, Sis. Remember what you’re always preaching to me?”
“Well, just pipe down then, will you? If we’re caught I’ll never forgive you. You and your loud mouth.” We listened for sounds of our parents but the chorus of katydids and crickets had covered our escape. We were hidden by the shadows of the night.
“Where did you say the others were going to meet us?” I asked.
“The big pine tree near the edge of the woods. If they got out.”
“Let’s hope so or all this was for nothing, and playing hide and go seek with just two of us won’t be much fun.”
“You’re right. Let’s go see if they’re there or not.”
Our eyes growing accustomed to the dark, we made our way through the fields, cautiously skirting the pit-like gullies. They sometimes gaped open in front of us like hungry mouths, but we knew the surrounding fields and woods well.
The wind picked up and I watched the faint line of black trees in the distance inch closer with every step. The nearer we got to the woods, the stronger the eerie sensation I was having became. There was something there…something lurking on the perimeter of the woods.
Something waiting and wanting us to enter its domain.
I shivered though the night was warm. It was a shiver of the soul I felt that night, now I know the feeling well. I was frightened, but of what I wasn’t sure. I was as skittish as a baby rabbit when it smells a cat but can’t see it.
“Jimmy?” I caught his shirttail and yanked until he stopped and gazed back at me, his face pale in the moonlight. I discerned the strain, the irritation in his manner and the question on his lips before he asked it.
“You feel it too, huh?” We were whispering again. We were both shaking.
Gently I pulled him into the nearest gully. “Let’s rest for a minute? I feel a little…strange.”
“Me too,” he answered, sinking down gratefully against the dry dirt forming the crack in the earth.
We were silent for a while, listening to the night noises. The wind whimpering through the trees and the humming of the insects buzzing past us. I thought I heard footsteps and the cries of forsaken children, their souls lost, their pain tangible. I laid a trembling hand on Jimmy’s shoulder as if he were my talisman against the evil I felt so near.
A scream ripped the air around us.
It wasn’t anything human.
“Did you hear that?” Jimmy squeaked, his lips quivering. Oh God, was he going to cry?
“I think I heard something. What did you hear?” I slid my eyes over to meet his in the faint light. The forest was droning like a beehive. My heart pounded. I inched up to the ridge of the gully and examined the gloom of the nearby woods. I felt a drop of something liquid, a raindrop, splash on my forehead and slide down my cheek. My fingers grazed it and I gazed at it in the dimness. The substance was dark and sticky. I wiped it off in the grass. I didn’t want to know what it was.
“A scream, I suppose. You mean you didn’t hear it?” He became almost hysterical. I could hear his heart thumping loudly in the stillness.
“Maybe it
was one of the other kids? Shep or Brian. Maybe they’ve started without us?” I replied sheepishly, unwilling to accept any other explanation but what I could understand. “Do you see any of them down by the trees?”
He’d moved up next to me. “No. I don’t see anything. Besides, the cry came from the opposite direction.” He pointed. “What would they be doing so far out anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sis, it’s still out there. It’s still watching us. I can feel it!”
Another scream hit our ears.
“I’m not going out there! I’m going home,” Jimmy cried. He scrambled up and out of the gully like a mountain goat and glared at me as if to say you’re still down there?
“What about Shep and Brian? They’re waiting for us.”
“Let them wait ‘til doomsday for all I care. I’m not going in there with…that thing. If they heard anything they’re home already. Where we should be! I’m going. You coming or not?” He reached out his hands for me, a gesture of real love at that moment. I could see his knees shaking. “Please, Sarah!”
I held back.
“Please…I’m going to be sick!”
I tried to get his mind off his fear. I didn’t want the whole night ruined. I wanted to wait and see what happened, wait until Jimmy was back to his old self.
“Jimmy, do you remember last winter after that humongous snowfall? I think this is the gully Charlie fell into.” I laughed, but it had a hollow, false ring to it. In my mind I could see the dazzling whiteness of the new snow around me in place of the warm moonlight, feel the frozen wetness of it. It had snowed for days and we’d all gone out to sled in it. Charlie ran off willy-nilly alone in the fields searching for gullies with deep drifts to jump into. It was a game we played.
Except Charlie had outdone himself. The snow had been stiff with ice, chunky with dirt clumps and sharp rocks, and way over his head. The hard crust had trapped him in its grip and he’d screamed as he fought to escape. Oddly enough, I knew where he was and I knew he was in trouble. Something had flashed in my mind before we noticed he was missing. I never said a word, but led everyone to the spot where Charlie had fallen.
“We had a devil of a time pulling him out, didn’t we? Remember the expression on his face when we found him?” He’d been terrified, clawing at the snow until it was red with his blood. “We almost didn’t find him, remember?” I gave another false chuckle. We’d looked for Charlie long after his voice gave out. He was buried so deep in the snow we almost hadn’t seen him when we came upon him. Only his small bloodstained hands stuck out. I shuddered to think of what would have happened if we hadn’t found him and pulled him free.
He moaned about having chased something he’d heard calling him until he’d tripped and had been swallowed by the gully.
Chasing something in the woods. I stared at Jimmy’s pale face and realized he remembered it too.
“I’m going home,” he declared. “Now!”
“Wait!” But he’d already turned tail and was running home, leaving me alone to decide what to do next. The woods were alive with noises. Faint, mocking voices mingled in the wind sweeping past my face. Jimmy was right. I should run for home, too, but what about Shep, Brian, and the others? What was out there with them?
There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
I was being silly. Our friends deserved the right to know we weren’t coming, so they wouldn’t spoil their night by waiting on us in the woods. Yet as something vague and shadowy fluttered through my mind, I knew there was another reason I didn’t want them waiting in the woods.
If there was something deadly hiding among the trees, I didn’t want to be responsible for anything which might happen. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural, but with men. I knew there were bad men in the world that did bad things, even to helpless children, and there was definitely something or someone out there. Our friends could be in danger.
Scrambling up the side of the ditch, I headed for the old, lightning scarred pine, our usual meeting place; not heeding the growing foreboding increasing with every step, as I drew nearer to the woods. I kept on running until the tree loomed ahead.
There was something strange in the woods. I could almost see it, sense it, but it moved swiftly and I couldn’t pin it down. My imagination was playing tricks on me.
I clung to the tree, breathing heavily, and peered into the darkness. An unnamed fear pressed upon my heart and I fell to my knees from the weight of it. Brian and Shep and the others weren’t there. Yet something not quite seeable was. I could feel its rank breath on my neck.
The moonlight cast eerie shadows everywhere and the wind began to howl savagely among the treetops and tear at my hair, wailing like a lost tormented creature. A fierce rain began to fall, pelting me like jagged stones. The entire world had turned angry at me.
I was not alone in the forest. It was with me. Watching.
Hungry.
Soaked and frozen by the drop in temperature, I wrenched myself to my feet and I ran for my life. The wind was gone, the rain stopped as abruptly as it had come, and I realized how alone and vulnerable I was. The woods were my enemy and it glared down with dark, hateful eyes. I’d disturbed its peaceful sleep and awakened it to some unspeakable pain. The silence rang with a warning.
I stopped to catch my breath, leaning against a towering oak. I studied the silhouetted tree above me and listened to the sudden hush of the woods. I felt as if I was the last person on earth after the final war. Alone. The last remaining human.
Blinking away the tears, shivering, I asked myself what nightmare had sucked me into the woods in the middle of the night. What was I running from?
I was about to find out.
With paralyzing terror, I watched the huge spectral shape rise up before me. A scream fought to escape but I kept it prisoner with my hands over my mouth. I slogged through the wet forest debris and slowly backed away from the lumbering shadow as it approached. It reached out with appendages not quite hands, dripping with what I feared was blood. I could smell it. An impossibly wide, leering mouth and fiery coal black eyes full of hateful hunger, hung suspended on the night wind. The hellish vision was all churning emotion and no substance. Yet. But I knew it could kill me if it wanted.
“No!” I shrieked to the silent trees, to the floating monstrosity as I stood up to it. “I won’t let you win. Won’t give in. No. No. No.” A shadow fell across the moon, across my face, and the monstrosity laughed like a demon from hell.
I ran. Home, where I’d be safe. I stumbled frantically through the weeds and bushes with it one step behind me the whole way, but it didn’t catch me, didn’t take me, and by some miracle I’ve never figured out I escaped, unless it was to do what I was predestined to do someday. My innocence, ignorance, sheer luck or some mysterious force had been stronger than its evil. I never knew what saved me and I didn’t care. I got away and it was all that mattered.
I crouched, frightened and sniveling, safe on the steps of my porch. I crawled up on all fours and huddled in the corner by the door, crying and afraid my sobs would wake my parents. My eyes were tightly shut and my hands were balled into fists at my mouth, as if that could protect me. I didn’t want to remember what I’d experienced in the woods. I never wanted to feel the sickening fear and helplessness again. The game was unbalanced, and unfair.
I didn’t know the rules, but I would learn, and I’d fight. I could hear the house settling, its wood creaking around me, and knew I was safe within its walls with all its love. Because mother had told me, ‘Love is stronger than anything.’
I remember praying she was right, for suddenly I was terrified of growing up. I don’t know how I knew it but whatever was out there stalking, was waiting for me to grow up.
“I’ll wait for you, Sarah.”
I lifted my head, my ears l
istening to the night, unmoving where I crouched in the dark. I thought I heard faint laughter. I got up slowly, wiping the tears from my face and turned my back on the voice that was more in my mind than out in the fields behind me.
I snuck into the house and made my way to my bed, checking to see if Jimmy was safe in his. He was. I crawled under the covers thankful and weary, with my wet clothes on, and closed my eyes.
My hands searched beneath my pillow and found Spotty, my little stuffed dog, and I clasped him tightly against my breast for reassurance.
“Yes, I’ll wait for you.”
I steeled myself to ignore the voice and willed myself to sleep, a cool breeze from the nearby window caressing my feverish face. There were whispers at the screen trying to get in; squeezing through the tiny holes of the mesh. I refused to listen. I was safe here. They would go away.
Finally, I slept.
When the sun came up the next morning and I got out of bed, I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened the night before. It was like the remnant of a hideous nightmare was eluding me, no matter how hard I tried to retrieve it.
Jimmy and I had a nervous laugh or two over the night before. Had it really happened or had we imagined it all?
He wasn’t sure, or so he said. In his own way he chose to forget the incident. The sun was warmly bright above us and as children can do, Jimmy put it away as he would have an old toy he’d grown tired of, or so I believed for all these years since.
I never really forgot, though I desperately wanted to. I couldn’t afford to. I wasn’t allowed to. I knew what happened had been real.
I’d seen it in my mind.
Chapter Three
Suncrest 1960 to 1967
The summer lazily wound itself to an end and we trekked our way back to school, fat and sassy from the long vacation; inches taller. None of our old clothes fit anymore, and Mother scraped together new wardrobes for us. Baby Samantha was growing, too, and she was now out of her playpen and crawling everywhere so we had to be careful not to step on her as we stampeded through the house.
Evil Stalks the Night Page 3
