He gave me one last smile, a wink, got on his bike and rode away. Not a word had been said about seeing each other again, but we knew we would.
I turned and there was the broken door and the doubts and fears about everything swept over me in a flood. I remembered the psychic images in the police station and suddenly I was deep in the past, running through the woods that night with Jim. Something terrifying was on our tails, and my leg hurt.
I heard the laughter in the woods and saw, as if through a veil, Charlie’s little mutilated body. His body then transformed into the other boy’s body. I slumped down on the porch against the door fighting to control the vision, and to keep from screaming. The image sparkled and shifted until it was the image of a little dead girl with huge chocolate brown eyes that stared into nothing, and long, dark braids.
I screamed and must have passed out, because when I opened my eyes next I was lying at the bottom of the porch steps on my stomach, my face in the grass. I’d fainted. That never happened before. I whimpered as I wiped my dirty face with a trembling hand. I was crying. I dragged myself to my knees and stumbled up the front steps.
My hand touched the doorknob before I saw it. The door was wet with dripping blood. It stained the splintered door and trailed down to where I’d been sprawled in the grass.
I stared at my hands. They were covered with blood, too. I couldn’t hold it in anymore and began to weep softly until it bled the anger and shame out of me.
No one heard. Everyone was too far away. As always, since a child, I was alone in this. Alone. No one could help me, not Jim, my son, not even Ben.
I crawled into the house and huddled on the kitchen floor, crying, until I couldn’t cry anymore. My face was red, ugly and puffy but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t crying for myself any longer. I was crying for the child who was to die. Soon. I couldn’t stop it.
I finally wiped my tears with a bloody hand, and went to clean myself up. Crying, grieving for what was to be, had drained me. As I walked past the bathroom mirror, I didn’t look at my reflection, but shed my bloody clothes and stepped into the shower. I scrubbed until every trace of blood was gone. No cuts or bruises anywhere, the blood hadn’t come from me.
Before I picked Jeremy up from school, I washed down the splintered front door as best I could, until the stain was faded. It wouldn’t wash entirely out.
On the way I prayed Jeremy would be standing outside, waiting for me. Prayed he’d be there.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jeremy was worried. School had been out for almost a half hour and his mother still wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He was a little irritated, too. She’d promised to be there.
He didn’t like standing alone on the empty playground. For some reason the place gave him the chills. He was pretty sure it was the same school his mom, her brothers and sisters had gone to. He shuffled around in the gravel and dirt and eventually went to sit on one of the lonely swings to wait.
School hadn’t been too bad. He liked his teacher, but the creepy girl who lurked three seats behind him kept staring at him all day. Every time he swung around there she was, staring. He got tired of it and once, right before recess, he’d deliberately looked back to catch her eye and had stuck his tongue out.
He was lucky he hadn’t been caught by the teacher, but the girl had deserved it. Why had she done it all day? He pushed out at the ground and started moving the swing in graceful arcs, until he was flying high above the playground.
That’s when he spotted her, hiding, or trying to, behind a tree eyeballing him. Suddenly all his anger, because of her ogling and his mother’s lateness, burst out and he jumped off in mid-swing, hit the ground and galloped right at her.
She screeched when she realized what he was doing and took off like a bullet.
He caught up and tackled her to the ground. It was only when he stood planted above her, seeing her crying and rubbing her scraped knees, he felt bad for doing it. Her tears touched him and he knelt down beside her.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you, only scare you a little. Make you leave me alone. You’ve been staring at me all day. Please, are you okay? Please!” He took a corner of his shirttail, and tried to wipe her tears. He’d never done anything so mean before and was ashamed, he couldn’t do enough for her to make up for it.
She wouldn’t stop crying and he apologized a dozen times, before she believed him and smiled warily through her tears. Finally, she trusted him enough to stop cowering like a beaten puppy at his feet.
“It’s all right,” she blubbered, wiping her face with the back of her dirty hands. “I guess I had it coming.” She had a funny way of talking, he thought, slurring her words like a baby. She must have a speech defect. He’d heard some of the kids calling her a dummy and making fun of her.
She told him she had no friends. When she looked at him there was such a hungry, sad glint in her brown eyes which were actually kind of pretty, soft and all, so he couldn’t stay mad at her. He grinned at her funny little face and put out a hand to help her up.
She had the longest braids he’d ever seen.
“My name’s Jenny.” She hiccupped.
“I’m Jeremy.”
“You’re the boy,” she said, “who lives in the haunted house.”
“Who told you it’s haunted?” Jeremy helped to brush her clothes off. Pieces of rock, dirt and grass poofed into the air around her.
“My mom. She warned me never to talk to you or go near your place. She said the devil would get me if I did.”
She embellished the story as she went and told him how both of her parents worked long hours, and she was left to roam the streets alone most of the time, and had learned to amuse herself. She liked to make up stories when there was nothing else to keep her from getting bored.
“Why would they say it was haunted?”
“Well, ever since Timmy disappeared…last week, you know?” Her eyes were large and shiny. She moved her dirty hands around in the air as she talked. “Mom says it’s ‘cause you folks are cursed and you came back here to do mischief. It’s what my mom says.
“I’d get whupped for sure if she knew I was even talking to you. My mom has a lot of bizarre stuff to say about you and your family. But you don’t look like a monster to me. Now I’m thinking you’re kinda nice.”
Hurt, Jeremy walked away from her. She had to run to keep up with him.
“I don’t think it’s very nice of your mother to say those things,” Jeremy huffed. “None of them are true. Why does everybody hate us here?” He was never going to have any friends.
He glowered over his shoulder at the urchin and knew he’d have to settle for her. Girl or not, skinny and dirty-faced, she was the only friend he seemed to have made so far. Flesh-and-blood anyway. She was someone, after all, to talk to. Someone who’d listen and play with him.
“Sorry. It’s what people are saying. My parents. Everyone.” She gave him a brave grin showing two dimples at the corners of her mouth. “But I don’t believe it. I like you.”
He was genuinely grateful and reached out to touch her hand when she jumped and backed away from him.
Turning his back on her, he plopped down at the base of a tree, discouraged and frustrated. The sky was cloudy through the leaves that were becoming green. He’d only brushed her hand. Maybe she didn’t want to be friends with him, either. Why couldn’t he make friends in this silly old place? He knew about the murder. One of the kids in school had talked about it. Everyone had known Timmy what’s-his-name. It was a shame he was dead. That he’d died, they all kept saying, horribly.
What did it all have to do with his mom and him?
“Go away,” he told her, his lip trembling, when she tried to sit down by him. “Go away. I don’t need you. I don’t need nobody!” He put his head in his arms and closed his eyes. Against hi
s will a lump was rising in his throat.
If he ignored her long enough she’d go away. He didn’t want her to see him cry. He had some pride and she’d hurt it. He didn’t need a friend that badly.
Minutes went by and he peeked. She was standing above, observing him curiously.
“Are you okay? I mean, I’m sorry I said that stuff. I don’t know what got into me. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I’m really a pleasant person. Jeremy?”
He couldn’t stay mad at the only friend he had, he grinned and held out his hand. This time she touched it timidly and returned his smile. “Friends?”
“Friends,” she agreed.
“Let’s go play?” He stood up, walked towards the swing set, and checked to see if Jenny was following. She ran to him. They took turns pushing each other.
“It’s plain stupid what they’re saying about us and our house. It’s not haunted and my Mom wouldn’t hurt a fly. Why don’t people here like us, Jenny?” He was swinging alongside her, both moving back and forth under their own power.
“Cause you’re strangers, I guess.”
Jeremy didn’t feel like telling her his mom and her family had lived here a long time ago. They weren’t strangers.
“They always talk bad about strangers.” She chatted on about what else her parents and neighbors were saying.
Jeremy listened as they arched up and down through the air, tuning her out at times. Oh, how she went on and on, how the girl could talk, until something she said captured his attention. “Since you came back it’s all starting again.”
What was that supposed to mean? “What’s starting again?”
“The murders, silly!”
“Well, there! It shows how silly it all is. We have nothing to do with the murders or anything else,” he said, but even as the words slipped out he recollected something he’d overheard one night, when his mother had been talking alone to his uncle.
Jeremy was silent thinking of some of the things that had happened since they’d come there. Mom’s old burnt home. Charlie. The door. Other things.
“I’m not afraid of you, though,” Jenny bragged. She focused those big soft eyes on him. The wind was making her long braids fly behind her. Her skinny legs were pumping crazily to keep up with him.
“Thanks.”
“Do you like to climb trees or go fishing?” she asked excitedly, slowing the swing so he could hear her.
“Yeah. Both.”
“So do I. My dad takes me fishing sometimes, when he’s not too busy. Maybe he’ll take you, too.”
Jeremy doubted it.
“We used to go fishing a lot.” Her voice sounded sad and Jeremy felt suddenly sorry for her. “But now he says he don’t have the time. Says he’s got to work two jobs to pay the bills Mom’s running up all the time. But maybe he’ll take us some Saturday. I’ll ask.”
Jeremy looked at her. He missed his dad, too.
“They fight an awful lot these days, Mom and Dad. I don’t stay around when they do. They yell at me and tell me to go away.”
She was speaking in a whisper and Jeremy could see she was afraid. Of what?
“I always sneak home after it’s over or when dad goes to work. Mom’s not so bad when she’s alone. Sometimes.”
It was the ‘sometimes’ that worried Jeremy. He’d noticed the ugly bruises on her arms and almost asked about them. Now he was glad he hadn’t.
“They fight all the time now,” she said wistfully, playing with her braids.
“You don’t think they’re going to get a divorce, do you?” The word struck dread into a child’s heart. He wouldn’t wish that on a dog.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Then a second later. “Oh, I hope not! Who would take care of me?”
“No problem. You could come live with us,” he informed her generously.
The look she threw him said it all. “Not in that house.”
“My Mom and Dad are divorced, you know. It’s not so bad, but don’t let it happen if you can stop it. I never see my dad anymore.”
“That’s too bad.” In a soft voice Jenny breathed, “I wouldn’t mind that myself. When my father drinks with my mother, they yell and scream at me a lot. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t care if I never saw either one of them again.”
Jeremy jumped off the swing and strolled around to the front of the school. Jenny tailed him. He was really getting worried about his mom. He could walk home, it wasn’t too far, but his mom had said she would pick him up. Where was she?
“It’s not so bad now,” he said to Jenny. “Mom’s got a boyfriend already. He’s a detective.” He grinned mischievously.
She skipped along beside him, her pigtails bouncing.
“What else do you like to do?” His eyes scanned the horizon for his mother’s car. It had to be at least an hour since school let out.
“Well, I like to search for lost money and old empty bottles along the road and in the fields. The bottles you can turn in for two cents apiece. Sometimes I find a lot. Once I found a whole dollar bill.”
He almost laughed until he saw she was serious. What a silly girl she was, looking for lost money and dirty bottles. It occurred to him she must be very poor to have to do those things.
“Lost money?”
“Yeah, people lose money out of their pockets or their kids do on their way to the store up there all the time. You’ll have to look with me someday.”
“Sure, I will.” He was busy looking for his mother.
“We can climb up to the tree house in Sutter’s field. You’d like that, I bet. The tree’s real old.”
Jeremy could hear a motor coming from far away and felt relief as his mom’s car came into view. He’d all but forgotten Jenny standing behind him when he ran out to the street waving his arms. “Here I am! Mom, I was worried!”
He trotted up to the car and smiled at his mother’s smile. “Hey, mom? I got a friend I want you to meet,” he announced. But when he turned to grab Jenny’s hand and introduce her there was no one there. She’d vanished.
Heck! Jeremy thought, bewildered, as he got into the car. She hadn’t even said goodbye.
“I guess she couldn’t wait. I think she had to get home.”
“Oh,” his mom muttered. Her mind must be on something else, he thought. “That’s too bad. I’ll have to meet her some other time.”
“I guess so.” Yet he wasn’t sure. Jenny was a tad strange. She might be afraid of meeting his mother, after those things she’d said everyone was thinking about them. Girls were weird.
They drove home and he clomped upstairs to change clothes and get ready for supper.
* * * *
Jenny kept hidden behind the tree until they were out of sight. She wasn’t sure why she’d run away when Jeremy had wanted her to meet his mom.
Head down, she started the long journey home. She didn’t really want to go there. Her dad would be drinking and he’d be mean. If her mom was at home, too, it wouldn’t be good. Jenny kicked at the dirt as she ambled down the road. She was scared of her parents. They were always angry at her, always trying to get rid of her, always hitting her and saying she was bad. Jenny didn’t think she was bad.
They only did it when they were drinking. She had to be so careful around them. It was best to keep out of sight. She’d creep around the house like a mouse or a thief. If they didn’t see her, they couldn’t beat her. There were red welts all over her back from the last time.
It wasn’t their fault, Jenny made excuses for them as she always did. They just had a lot of worries and when she was bad they couldn’t help themselves.
She was afraid to go home, but it was getting dark and she had no place else to go. She hid outside the rear door and listened to their angry voices bouncing back and forth inside. She huddled
in the dark, cold and hungry, and waited until they were quiet and it was late. Then she sneaked inside and darted to her room where she jumped into bed.
She’d fooled them one more time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jim awoke gradually, sluggishly, as if he were moving in slow motion. The dream world he was leaving in his wake had been of his childhood again. Innocent children with no hint of the shadows to come.
He lay in his bed and thought about the dream. His eyes were swollen and he was tangled in his blankets. In the dream, they’d all been playing in the basement. No, that wasn’t exactly how it had begun. He rubbed his eyes. First, the scene had been barren of life, with only the old, squeaky steps, the coal-burning furnace with its smoldering clinkers and the cold concrete floor. It felt and looked like late fall, very chilly.
It was raining outside. He could hear the drops pounding against the outside walls of the old house. The windows had streams of water cascading down the glass. It was warm in the basement, though, as he always remembered it.
The overall ambiance was sadness, because he was viewing something he knew was gone and the children dead. Yet, it’d been so long since he’d seen them all, being there filled him with joy. Like very old, dear friends he’d missed them, and it was good to see them.
It was dark at first and he’d let his eyes get accustomed to it. The basement smelled of dampness and age peculiar to such rooms. The fire danced brilliantly in the furnace and intermittently illuminated the hidden spaces and corners. The clinkers popped and he could feel the warmth pouring out in waves from the furnace.
How many times had he and Sarah taken shovels and dug out those unwanted hunks of fire-rocks and clinkers, then discarded them in the metal buckets?
Too many to count.
The basement had been full of old junk and furniture piled here and there. A long sheet covered table lined one wall. It was a very old table. One of the tasks they hated the most was cleaning the basement. It took forever.
Evil Stalks the Night Page 22
