by Brian Hodge
"Come on, Marty," Bill called out from the kitchen above the sound of running water.
"Be right there, Dad," Marty shouted back, his voice steady and pleasant sounding. As he glared down at Kip again, a wicked smile split his face.
"You wanna know something, Dip?" Marty hissed as he came up close to Kip's face.
"Yeah..." Kip grunted. "You've been... eating fried shit again... haven't... you? I can... smell... it."
"Very funny," Marty snarled.
"You're smoking... pot... too," Kip sputtered. "I know it, and Dad knows it. Everyone knows—"
"No! I'll tell you what," Marty said, taking hold of Kip's throat and applying steadily increasing pressure. Pinpoints of white light shot like tracer bullets across Kip's vision, but his fear of dying had transformed into a weird, detached sensation.
"You'd better stop messin' with me," Marty said, lowering his voice to a growl. "'Cause I'm pretty damned sick and tired of you and your bullshit. You know that?"
"The... feeling's... mutual," Kip said, his voice no more than a squeak.
"You know," Marty continued, "every night before I go to sleep—do you know what I wish for?"
Kip tried to speak but couldn't, and that seemed to satisfy Marty.
"Every night I wish... you might even say I pray that it had been you, not mom, who died. Do you realize that?"
Kip tried to move his head, but Marty's vise-like grip pinned him to the floor. The fringes of his vision were closing in with swirling waves of blackness. His pulse was hammering wildly in his ears. Mixed with his present terror was the horror of remembering what he had seen that day. And the darkness that was filling his field of vision, the blackness that spun in from all sides, was that same blackness that blocked from his memory what he had really seen that day his mother was killed.
Now, pure, stark terror gripped him as he struggled beneath his brother's crushing weight. His feet thrashed on the floor, beating out a muffled tattoo on the carpet. His hands fluttered like wounded birds, trying to claw his way free. From far, far away, miles away, he heard the sound of running water. When his father called to Marty once again, the voice of his voice reverberated, growing louder rather than fading in echo.
"You're a real dick-head, you know that?" Marty said, his face so close to his brother's their noses touched. His voice rumbled like thunder.
Kip's only reality was his brother's bloodshot eyes and the surging blackness that was sucking him down. And at the bottom of that blackness—he knew—something was waiting for him.
Something... Many things...
Cold and dark, silent and swift.
They were waiting to sink their claws into his flesh... waiting to tear him to shreds... waiting to leave him—like they left his mother—a twisted mess of fleshy ribbons and exposed bone.
"What are you doing?"
The voice suddenly exploded into Kip's awareness. He didn't even register it was his father's until Marty rose from his chest, and air came crashing into his lungs like a tidal wave. He rolled onto his side, his chest burning with pain as his first exhalation turned into a sputtering cough.
"He was giving me shit," Marty said, standing up slowly and brushing his knees clean.
"Watch your language," Bill said automatically. "And that's no reason to start beating on him. God damn it, Marty. I'm getting sick and tired of you fighting with him all the time. Kip, what happened?"
Kip slowly twisted into a sitting position, convinced his chest would never be the same. His ribs felt crushed, and it hurt just to take a breath. Tears stung his eyes, and he was conscious of a spreading wet spot on the front of his pants.
"He was... picking on me," Kip said, gasping for breath. He moved his hands to cover where he had wet his pants. "Like he always does."
Bill turned on Marty and backed him up against the living room wall. Jabbing Marty's chest with the tip of his forefinger, he fought hard to control his anger.
"I've had more than enough shit for today, you understand?" he shouted. "I am sick and tired of you two constantly niggling at each other like... like you're still little kids. When are you two ever going to grow up?"
Kip scrambled to his feet and, twisting to one side so his father and brother wouldn't see his wet pants, started toward the stairs to go up to his bedroom.
"When you guys were little," Bill went on, "I could understand that every now and again you'd get on each other's nerves, but at your age, for crying out loud. You're fifteen years old, Marty. Leave him alone, will you? If you have so much energy or whatever, go out for the football team and take it out on the field."
Marty looked at his father with a haughty frown. "He works my nerves, Dad. Honest to God, I don't start it."
"But you're the older brother," Bill said. "It's up to you to stop it. You can't go through life pounding the crap out of your brother whenever you feel a little hostility."
Kip had been slowly edging his way up the stairs, but once he was halfway up, he suddenly darted the rest of the way and left the two of them downstairs. He'd heard it all before, and he knew that—like always—it wasn't going to change a single thing. Marty would still pound him down whenever he got the chance. That was just the way it was, and he figured that sooner or later he would just have to accept that.
Kip flung open the door to his bedroom and hurriedly undid his pants, sliding them and his wet underwear off, and kicking them into the pile of dirty laundry by his bureau. His eyes caught his collection of metal fantasy figures, and he was held by the small, gray shape of a knight with his sword raised high over his head.
Standing by his bed, naked from the waist down, Kip closed his eyes to stop the flood of tears. In his mind, he saw the figure of the knight, looming tall, raising his sword up high, and then swiping it down with a whistling swoosh to strike off Marty's head.
The stomping of Marty's feet on the stairs broke his fantasy of revenge, and Kip grabbed for a new pair of skivvies as Marty's footsteps came down the hallway and paused at his door.
"What's a matta, baby?" a pitiful sounding voice said from behind the door. "Is the baby crying?"
Kip said nothing as he scrambled to pull on his clean clothes; fearful Marty would open the door and see him half naked like this. He realized that, at least up until five years ago, Marty would have said, "Is mama's little baby crying?"
"Is the baby all upset now?" Marty said, followed by several mock sniffles.
"Leave me alone, or I'll tell Dad."
"Oh? And what will you tell him?" Marty cooed. "That big bad brother made little brother pee his pants?"
"Get bent!" Kip shouted, hoping it would mask the sound of him running his zipper closed.
He tensed, waiting to hear the sound of his bedroom doorknob turning and to see Marty's bloodshot eyes glaring at him from the doorway; but the footsteps continued down the hallway, and Kip knew that—for now, at least—he was safe. But he wouldn't be... not for long... not unless he did something about it. And boy, oh boy, did he have a plan that would make them all—maybe even Marty—sorry.
5
After changing his pants, Kip went down and helped his father finish getting supper ready. The meal wasn't very inspired—just hamburgers, peas, French fries, and salad. Marty muttered something about how they would have been better off eating at McDonald's, but other than that, there was little dinner conversation beyond the ordinary questions about school and what they had planned for the weekend.
Bill and Kip were still only halfway through their meals when Marty slammed the last trace of hamburger bun into his mouth, gulped a final swallow of milk, and kicked his chair back.
"I guess I'll head out now," he said, his voice muffled by the food.
Bill glanced at him and then at the clock over the refrigerator. "I realize it's the weekend and everything, but I'd still like you home by eleven."
Marty snorted as he shrugged into his jeans jacket, wiping his mouth on the sleeve.
"Where're you going, and wh
o are you going to be with?" Bill asked.
He was getting used to Marty's grunts and non-answers, but he still tried to communicate with him even though, deep down, he feared it was already too late to reach him. He tried not to imagine that, in a few short years, Marty would be looking and acting like Woody. With Kip, at least, he had fewer worries, and he found it a little ironic that it was Kip, not Marty, who was seeing a psychiatrist.
"Just out," Marty said, leaning halfway out the door. "Maybe a movie or somethin'. With the guys."
"Home by eleven. I mean it," Bill repeated, tapping his watch, and then, with a slam of the screen door, Marty was gone.
Bill and Kip finished eating, cleared the table, and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher. They, too, had their long stretches of silence, but theirs were different if only because they had shared that day five years ago.
On the drive back from Portland this morning, Bill—as usual—had tried to find out what Kip and Dr. Fielding had talked about. He hadn't probed too much, but he tried to show genuine interest in what Kip was going through, the things he was trying to sort out. But for whatever reason, Kip held back, never saying much. Maybe it was all just part of growing up, and he was thinking he had to handle it by himself. The teenage years were definitely when you first started feeling the weight of the world on your back.
While they cleaned up the kitchen, Bill again attempted to start a conversation, but this time it had more to do with his own plans rather than with Kip's doctor appointment. Still, he sensed there was a strong and direct connection between the two, and if he could just break through this barrier—invisible, but oh, so strong—he knew it would help both of them. He knew he and his youngest son directly shared their grief over Lori's death, but until they expressed it, until it was fully vented, it would gnaw on them like a rat chewing through a grain bag.
But at every turn in the conversation, it seemed as though Kip clammed up. Whenever Bill mentioned that afternoon five years ago—whenever he even hinted at it—Kip's face would pale, his lips would tighten, and his eyes would darken with a fear-filled overcast. Bill decided not to mention where he planned to go that evening. Kip said he wanted to get his homework done right away so he could enjoy the weekend, so Bill left him working away at his desk while he got into the car and headed out to the building site he had abandoned five years ago.
Driving down Main Street, Bill took a left onto Beech Street, and then turned left at the Baptist Church onto Kaulback Road. It was known locally as Mosquito Cove Road because nearby Deerfield Swamp was an active breeding ground for the pests, especially this time of year.
It didn't take long to move from thickly settled town to dense woods. Four new houses had gone up in the last five years, so that made a total of seven on the road between the church and Bill's construction site. Still, no matter how many houses were built, Bill owned nearly twenty acres on the wooded side of the road, with Eagle Hill backing him. Unless there was a massive attempt to drain Deerfield Swamp—something the local environmentalists would never allow—no houses would ever be built on the other side of the road. So Bill felt pretty secure that he and the boys would maintain their privacy once the house was finished.
That was why he was driving out there this evening: to check out the property and—after five long years—start mentally preparing himself for starting to build. He had only been out there a couple of times after Lori died, but he had decided that the mourning period had to be over. It was bad for all three of them to keep clinging to the tragedy as if it was the only thing that gave their lives meaning. With summer coming, he was more than tired of living right on Main Street in Thornton. Even if he and Lori would never share their "dream" house, he wanted more than anything to get on with building the house and getting the hell out of town.
Even more than that, he honestly thought that starting work on the house again would give all three of them a new focus, something to do together as a family. This was critical, and Bill knew that if he didn't start actively pulling them together now, the pressures all around them would surely unravel them once and for all.
The asphalt road turned to dirt about a quarter mile before his property line. In the rearview mirror, Bill watched the plume of dust kicked up by his back tires. The trees leaned out over the road, embracing the dust with their cool, green shade, spiked by the golden rays of the setting sun. He slowed the car, anticipating the turn into the rutted dirt driveway. The weight of the car heaved over a bump, and the frame scraped against a half-buried stone. Bill stopped the car at the foot of the driveway and killed the engine.
Swirling dust floated into the open car window, making him cough. Then, waving one hand in front of his face, he snapped open the door and stepped out. Pocketing the keys, he stood for a moment, surveying the site.
The dirt driveway—which, he knew, was going to cost a fortune to pave—arced up from the road around to the right and up the gently rising slope where they planned to build the house. Some low-growing scrub brush had grown up where they had cleared it five years ago, but it wouldn't be hard to get rid of that.
From where he stood at the foot of the driveway, Bill couldn't see the cellar hole, but as he looked up the slope into the setting sun, he couldn't help but think—That's where Lori died—where she was killed.
All around him, the wind hissed through the pine trees. The only other sounds were the steady croaking of frogs in the swamp and the high-pitched buzz of strafing mosquitoes. The peace and quiet—Kip, five years ago, had insisted on calling it the "piece of quiet"—battled within him with the nightmare images of what had happened, the things he had seen and what he had found in the cellar hole. In spite of the warm breeze, he shivered as he started slowly up the slope.
When I get up there, he told himself, feeling his anxiety swelling like a pale mushroom growing in the dark, When I get there, will she still be there? When I look down into that cellar hole, will she still be lying there?
He increased his pace up the dirt driveway, feeling himself almost propelled by an invisible hand from behind. For the past five years, he had repeatedly told both Kip and Marty that it was unhealthy to avoid dealing with the pain of their loss. If you try to push it aside, if you hide it in the dark, he had told them over and over, it will only get stronger. It's the darkness of repression that breeds monsters, not the sleep of reason, he thought. There aren't any monsters in the clear light of day...
"But the sun's setting," he said aloud, the sound of his voice surprising him as he looked skyward and chuckled softly to himself as he crested the slope. He glanced over at the cellar hole, which lay like an ink stain in the ground. Once again, he couldn't stop the shiver that danced up his back between his shoulders.
He had heard some of the stories around town about that cellar hole, and as he looked at it now, considering what had happened, he found himself thinking for the first time that just maybe there could be something to those stories.
He and Lori had planned to build, not on a newly dug foundation, but on the old cellar hole left by a house that had collapsed or burned long ago. The collapsing stone-lined cellar hole was testimony that someone had built not just a log cabin, but a home with a solid, granite block foundation. Something that was meant to last.
Around town, there were stories about a supposed witch named Goody Hibbard who had lived out here back in the late 1600s, when Thornton had first been settled along the banks of the Saco River. Of course, like all local gossip, there were no dates and no town records, not even a weathered gravestone in the woods to substantiate any of the stories. But long before Bill Howard and his family moved to Thornton, the cellar hole on Kaulback Road had been called the "witch house," and local kids spooked themselves with stories about the horrors that had happened out here.
And sometimes horrors even happen in the daylight, Bill thought, grimly as he looked down into the hole in the ground and forced himself not to imagine seeing Lori's mangled, lifeless form, lying twisted in the shado
ws.
The longer he stared into the cellar hole, the more threatening it seemed. Bill wanted to see it just for what it was, nothing more than a stone-lined hole in the ground with scrub brush, fallen stones, and rotting branches littering the floor, but the memory of the terrible memories of that day were still too fresh.
The sun was low in the sky, now, an orange ball on the tree-lined brow of Eagle Hill that edged the leaves with fire. The light cut into his vision like a knife, making everything hazy and indistinct. Even the ground at his feet seemed to shimmer in time with the sounds of frogs and buzzing insects. When he heard a branch snap with the clean crack of a breaking bone, a sense of danger swept through him. With a strangled cry, he started backing away from the cellar hole, his hands rising as if to protect himself from an unseen attacker.
"What the—" he muttered, scanning the woods left and right. A squirrel, no more than a gray blur, chattered and sprang from one branch to another, but that hadn't been what made the sound. It had been something bigger... heavier.
The wooded slope leading up Eagle Hill shifted with lengthening evening shadows, but as he looked around, Bill couldn't see anything that was threatening, certainly not anything large enough to snap a branch as loud as it had sounded. All he saw were thickening shadows and tangled brush that could look like something with groping hands—claws—but weren't.
It's just my imagination, he told himself. The quiet magnifies everything.
He struggled to steady his nerves and slow his trip hammer pulse. After five years, finally finding the courage to come out here and face his loss was twisting his nerves into knots. Living in town, even a small town like Thornton, tended to mask the sounds of nature. Out here in the woods, there were sounds and silences he just had to get used to.
That's all it is.
Or is it?
The shadows beneath the trees stretched down the darkening hill, reaching out to him like bony hands. And within those shadows, he thought he saw other, darker shapes that moved in a direction opposite to that of the wind. Small, mounded shadows that could have been cast by tree stumps or rocks or something else.
