by Ed
Stephen stared at her as if she'd just told him water was wet.
"I heard him," he said, calmly, flatly. Then he turned and headed for the front door.
Frustration and anger suddenly burned like bile in Carmen's throat. If he was going to go on insisting that he was hearing voices, then there obviously wasn't a damned thing she could do about it.
"Okay," Carmen snapped as she shot up from the sofa and followed him, her jaw set, "okay, fine, if you want to believe that, go right ahead. I mean, it's pretty obvious he's not here, right? Oh, but don't let that stop you. Just, for crying out loud, don't tell your sister."
He turned to her, his eyes weary, and said quietly, "I'm gonna go outside for a while."
After he'd gone out and closed the front door, Carmen stood in the living-room doorway for a few moments, just staring at nothing in particular.
It was going to have to stop. Stephen simply could not go on talking about voices he'd heard, voices that did not exist. He'd already upset Stephanie—what next? She would have to talk to Al. They would have to do something about it. Maybe they should speak with the doctor, see what he had to say. Maybe it was something they should be worried about.
Carmen was also starting to get annoyed. She didn't know what got on her nerves more: Stephen's insistence that he heard voices that she never heard, and Stephanie's insistence that she'd seen a woman in her bedroom who wasn't there, or the vague, gnawing curiosity deep inside Carmen that made her wonder if maybe...just maybe...
"Uh-uh," she said to herself, going back in the living room. "No way. Ridiculous."
That Saturday night, after Peter and Stephanie had gone to bed and Stephen was asleep on the sofa, Al and Carmen spoke in hushed tones at the dining-room table.
"So, what do you think we should do?" Al asked. "You think maybe they need some kind of therapy?"
"Oh, Lord, I hope it's nothing that drastic yet. I'm just worried that...well, that it might turn into something like that if it's not stopped now. What do you think?"
"I dunno. You're with them all week, you're the one who hears about all these...voices, or whatever. I think their life has just been a little too interrupted recently and they want some attention, wanna feel normal again. And Stephen...well, those cobalt treatments are no picnic. At least, that's what I think. Do you think they need therapy? Hell, do you think we could afford therapy?"
She thought it over a moment. "No. No, you're right. It's just...well, it's getting on my nerves."
"Let them know that. If they're just after attention, give it to them, but let them know you're fed up with the ghost stories. I think they'll stop."
"Yes," she said, nodding, staring at her tea, "that oughta do it. Yes." She kept nodding, but that gnawing feeling of uncertainty, of mild confusion—the thing that had really been getting on her nerves lately—rose up inside her and would not go away.
Stephen waited for the silence that told him it was safe to get up. He hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but he'd been unable to sleep—in fact, he'd been unable to sleep a lot lately—and their voices had been clearly audible in the night's silence, so he'd heard everything Mom and Dad had said in the dining room. He'd felt his heart sink into his stomach as he listened and he'd thought over and over, They'll never believe me. Never. There's no way they'll ever believe me.
He threw back his covers, got off the sofa and flicked on the lamp at one end of the sofa before going into the kitchen for a drink of water. Because of the radiation treatments, his saliva ducts had dried up completely, and his mouth was constantly dry, so he drank more than he ever had before. When he was finished, he went quietly down the hall to Stephanie's room and tapped on the door with one fingertip before opening it and stepping inside cautiously.
"Stephanie? You awake?" He closed the door silently and stared into the dark. "Steph? It's me." Squinting in anticipation, Stephen reached out and turned on the overhead light.
She was lying on her back in bed, tense and trembling, the edge of the blankets pulled up just beneath her widened, terrified eyes. When she saw him, her body relaxed and she closed her eyes as she sighed and pushed her head back into the pillow.
"What's the matter?" Stephen whispered.
"I thought you were a ghost."
Stephen stared thoughtfully at her a moment.
"Is that what you think they are?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Ghosts?"
"I don't know." She shrugged. "What else?"
"Do you...feel them?"
She squinted, cocked her head to one side and thought about it a moment. "Mmm...sometimes. I think."
"Me, too," he whispered. "Sometimes I feel like...I don't know, like there's just something there. Even though I can't see it."
"I wish Michael'd come home," she breathed.
Stephen felt the same way, but asked, "How come?"
"Well...I think he'd believe us. Don't you?"
Stephen watched her for a long time. Most of the time, his little sister was an annoyance, a pain in the neck. Since he'd gotten sick, he'd been looking at everything a little differently— as he was looking at his little sister now. She had become an ally, a friend. He took her small hand in his and whispered, "Listen, Steph. If anything else happens, you can tell me. Come to me right away and let me know, okay? I'll believe you."
"Will you tell me if anything else happens to you?"
He nodded and squeezed her hand.
Carmen began to spend as much time with the kids as she could. With Peter, it was easy; he didn't wander far. But Stephanie was active, playing with other girls up and down the street, and Stephen spent a lot of time with Jason. They didn't seem to be in need of attention, but Carmen decided to keep trying.
As usual, she missed Al; having the house and the kids to herself all the time made her feel like she had more on her shoulders than she could handle. It helped to keep busy around the house and she visited with Tanya a lot. She took Stephen to the hospital for his treatments and watched as he slowly grew more pale and brittle-looking. Sometimes she wanted to take him in her arms and hold him, to keep him away from that hospital, fearing that the treatments were only making him worse. But the doctors assured her that those treatments were Stephen's best chance.
Her weeks were speckled by stories from the kids, mostly from Stephen, stories of voices heard around the house.
One morning, Carmen got up to find every light in the living room on and Stephen sprawled on the sofa, as if he'd had an unusually restless night. She went around the room and turned off all the lights, then woke Stephen. He said he'd heard a voice in the dark, so he'd turned on the lamp beside the sofa. But the voice—a man's voice—continued, coming from the darkest corner of the room, so he got up and turned on another light, then another, until they were all on and he was able to sleep. He'd told her knowing full well that she would not believe him, and that didn't seem to bother him. But the fact that he didn't care whether she believed him or not bothered her. His attitude poked a hole in the attention-getting theory.
It happened again and again: Stephanie would hear a voice in the bathroom or Stephen would hear one in the hall and no matter how Carmen talked to them, they nodded and apologized for bothering her, but somehow managed to give the impression that they knew something she didn't....
The incidents bothered Carmen enough for her to write about them a number of times in her journal. It had become a habit for her to write down her thoughts and experiences, if not every day then at least a few times a week, even when nothing particularly eventful had happened. It was comforting to put her feelings on paper with the knowledge that no one would read what she wrote, that it wouldn't be criticized or graded.
Early one Friday afternoon, she sat at the desk in the sun-room, writing in her journal as music played softly on the stereo in the living room. Stephanie and Stephen were outside and Peter was taking a nap. More than anything, Carmen was trying to pass time until Al arrived that evening.
She was writing in
her journal about the latest voice—a man's voice that had called to Stephen from downstairs—when a man called, "Carm? You in here?"
She dropped her pen and stood, thinking, Al’s home early, as she spun around and smiled and said, "Al? I'm in here."
Silence.
"Al?" She went into the living room and stopped, staring at the empty doorway that opened onto the hall and the front entrance.
Her smile quivered, then fell away. She frowned as she stepped through the doorway.
"Al?" she asked again, but now her voice was quiet and just a bit unsteady.
She was alone.
Al had not come into the house.
She looked out the window to find that he had not even arrived yet.
Carmen released a long, breathy sigh, forced a smile, and muttered, "Well," thinking, I must miss him, that's all, it's just that I miss him and was thinking about him and...yeah, that's all.
She turned and went back into the sun-room to continue writing, but not before turning up the music on the stereo.
5
Summer into Fall I
It was a hot summer with day after day of endless blue skies and nights covered with brightly shining stars. The air was redolent with honeysuckle, and during the day, the neighborhood rang with the laughter of children.
Tanya had a baby girl and named her Kara, and sometimes the sound of her crying was picked up by a summer breeze and carried to Carmen's. The sound made Carmen smile; somehow, it made the neighborhood complete, more comfortable.
So why does something not feel right? Carmen asked herself again and again. The question was asked by an inner voice so quiet it was almost inaudible...because Carmen was trying her best to silence it.
Stephen hated his treatments more every day and was becoming more resistant. He was rude to the doctors and nurses in the hospital and sometimes even snapped at Carmen. She tried to take it in stride, tried to tell herself that it was to be expected considering the strain the treatments put on the boy. But it worried her nevertheless. On top of that, he'd lost more weight and was looking more frail than ever before. Sometimes when she hugged him, she feared he would break.
Dr. Simon told her it was a good sign, though.
"If he's being cantankerous," the doctor said, "that means he's holding up. If he's fighting us, then he's fighting the cancer. It's encouraging."
So maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. According to the doctor, Stephen was doing very well and was likely to do even better.
That was good. So what didn't feel right?
Al was still working in New York, but came home every weekend like clockwork. The hard workweeks and long drives, not to mention his ongoing concern for Stephen, were wearing hard on him; he drank more when he was home on the weekends and was growing short-tempered. But, in spite of his grumbling, he was willing to help around the house. He painted the stained walls downstairs.
They went to church every Sunday; Carmen became involved in church activities, just as she had back home in New York, and had made some friends there, women with whom she was able to spend time during the week. Plus she saw Tanya a lot and they took turns taking care of one another's kids so each of them could get away from the house once in a while.
So what was it?
The other children, Stephanie and Peter, were fine. Michael was still in Alabama, but called regularly. Everything was just fine.
Except for...something.
The feeling had started the day she'd mopped the kitchen floor.
Kitchens seemed to be the first casualty in a house full of children, and it hadn't taken long for the brick-red mosaic linoleum floor in the Snedekers' kitchen to lose its shine, despite regular, if hurried, moppings. So, one day a few weeks ago, Carmen had gotten the mop and bucket, taken off her shoes and rolled her pantlegs halfway up to her knees, and begun a real scrubbing.
The kids were all outside that afternoon and the house was quiet.
The mop sloshed back and forth over the linoleum, its soggy strands of cotton writhing like tentacles over Pepsi stains and water spots. Carmen had mopped enough kitchen floors to be able to do it with a certain detachment, so she'd dipped the mop into the bucket a few times before she finally noticed the smell.
It wasn't very strong, but the cloying, coppery smell was certainly unpleasant.
Then she noticed the water in the bucket.
It was a deep, dark red.
The mop's strands were a glistening crimson.
And Carmen's bare feet were smeared with red. In fact, the entire floor was smeared with red. She stared down at her feet with her lip curled up in a sickened grimace. The smell hung in the air like smoke.
Suddenly, Carmen thought of what Stephen had said their first day in the house—Mom, we have to leave this house. There's something evil here—and her heart began to thunder in her chest as she stared at the dark red fluid on the floor all around her, smelling that faint but awful smell.
"No, it can't be," she whispered to herself, "that can't be it, it's just...just the linoleum, that's all. That's all."
Deciding she couldn't let the kids see the mess, she quickly cleaned it up, using old kitchen towels and nearly half a roll of paper towels for the finishing touches. Then she'd given the room a couple of shots of air freshener.
"Just have Al rip that linoleum up, is all," she muttered. "That's what I'll do."
But it had bothered her that day, and in the days that followed.
Carmen hadn't told Al about it. She wasn't sure how. And what if he laughed it off? She just didn't look forward to mopping the floor again.
The kitchen floor was part of Carmen's off-center feeling. Another part was the fact that Stephen had stopped talking about the voices he'd been hearing in the house. He no longer made references to the house's being evil. In the space of just a few weeks, he'd simply stopped, as if it had never come up in the first place.
Carmen tried to tell herself that it was a good thing, that it was a sign Stephen was getting better. But whenever she told herself that, her inner voice whispered, Is it?
Sometimes, she walked into a room to find Stephen and Stephanie talking to one another with hushed, secretive voices. When they saw her, they would fall silent and pull away from one another, as if they had been caught doing something wrong. She'd thought nothing of it at first, but when it continued to happen—half a dozen times or so—she began to wonder if perhaps they were keeping something from her.
"So, what're you guys talking about?" she asked one day when she found them whispering on the sofa in the living room. She seated herself in Al's recliner and watched for their reaction.
Stephen shrugged and muttered, "Nothin'." He turned to the cartoons on television.
"We were wondering when Dad's coming home to stay," Stephanie said.
"It won't be long now," Carmen said. "It'll be a month, maybe a little less, till his transfer comes through."
Stephanie nodded, then she, too, turned her attention to the television.
It's just your imagination, Carmen told herself. They aren't keeping any secrets and Stephen is getting better and everything is just fine!
But, as it had so often recently, that tiny voice in the basement of her mind whispered, So why does something not feel right?
Stephen had stopped talking to his mom about the voices he heard because it didn't do any good. She didn't believe him. He didn't talk to Al about them, either; Al had become so cranky lately that if Stephen so much as hinted at the topic of disembodied voices, he snapped at him to knock it off and act his age.
The only person Stephen could talk to about voices was Stephanie. Although she still insisted she'd seen a woman appear in her bedroom, Stephanie did not hear voices. "But," she told Stephen one day as they whispered together on the sofa in the living room, "sometimes I...I..." Her face was tense with thought, with frustration at not being able to find the right words. It was much too tense for a six-year-old. "I feel like I'm not alone when I rea
lly am. Nobody's with me, I don't see nobody, but...I feel like there is somebody there."
But she didn't hear the voices Stephen heard: the cold, sneaky voices...the angry, mocking voices...
Only Stephen heard those.
But Stephanie was always willing to listen to him talk about them and had promised not to mention them to Mom. Her responses were neither judgmental nor disbelieving, but were filled with little-girl concern. Stephen found their talks comforting; they made him feel less alone.
Even so, the voice was becoming more insistent, more demanding. It seemed to know when it was frightening him— and it seemed to enjoy his fear.
"Stephen?"
Stephen froze outside the bathroom late one night. Everyone had gone to bed long ago, but Stephen had awakened with a full bladder. The voice spoke to him on his way out of the bathroom.
"Stephen, come down here," it whispered.
Stephen headed down the hall, his body chilled with fear, legs stiff with tension. But he moved slowly because, in spite of his fear, he was drawn to the voice, compelled to stop and listen to what it had to say.
"We have things to talk about, Stephen," the voice went on. "There are things to be done. No time to waste, Stephen. Let's get started."
What things? he thought, moving a little faster now. Get started on what?
"Time to stop putting it off," the voice said, then chuckled. It was a sound like ice cubes clacking together.
Stephen rounded the corner and went into the dark living room.
"I have things to tell you, Stephen. We have things to do." The voice was still whispering and yet Stephen could still hear it clearly.
He turned on the lamp at one end of the sofa, then the other. Under his pillow, he had a Walkman with an AM/FM radio and a pair of tiny earplug-like headphones. He'd had his mom get them for him from downstairs. He fumbled the small disks into his ears, turned on the radio and turned up the volume.
Music pounded in his head from a local rock station and he felt his body begin to relax.
But through that music, through the throbbing beat and the shrieking voices, Stephen thought he heard, for a moment, the voice's hard, cold chuckle....
