by Ed
"Willy. He was out and I-I didn't know it. He g-got up on the counter and knocked over the pitcher of juice, and my casserole."
Al sighed and put his arm around her. "Well, why are you so upset? That's no big deal, is it? I mean, it's just...well, it's just a mess, right? It can be cleaned up."
She looked up at him slowly. Her mouth was curled downward, lips pressed hard together.
"Okay, then you clean it up!" she shouted. "You mop that fucking floor! See what it does to you!"
Al took a step back, his mouth hanging open. "W-what?"
"That floor! You just go ahead and see what—no, no! I'll show you myself!" She stood. "You just watch, just watch!" She shot from the chair and left the dining room.
Al stood beside the chair looking confused. Was Stephen's craziness catching? What was happening to his family?
In a few minutes, Carmen returned with the mop and a bucket full of water. She kicked off her shoes and bent down to roll up her pants.
"Now, you just watch," she said.
Still looking as though he'd been slapped in the face for no reason, Al watched as Carmen began to mop the kitchen's red-brick floor.
Michael, who had heard his mother's shouting, joined him.
So did Stephanie and Peter.
They watched as Carmen mopped. They watched as the mop turned a dark color. They watched as her bare feet began to slop through a reddish-brown liquid that formed quickly on the linoleum.
And they smelled the coppery odor.
Carmen was still crying, stopping now and then to wipe away her tears with the heel of her hand. After a while, she stopped and turned to Al, ignoring the children.
"You see this?" she shouted. "This right here, this is what I deal with every time I mop this damned floor! This is why I'm upset! You explain this to me! What the hell is this?"
Al gawked at the reddish mess for a moment, then stepped forward and put a hand on Carmen's shoulder.
"I'll tear this linoleum up," he said. "We'll replace it. The landlord'll pay for it. It's just old, is all. It runs when it gets wet.
We'll replace it and it won't happen anymore."
He squeezed her shoulder and forced a smile.
Carmen looked at him as if she were surprised.
"Really?" she asked.
"Yeah, sure, no problem. We'll just get rid of the damned lino. It's old, that's all. I mean, think about it. How old is this house?"
He gave her another smile, and he almost believed that one.
"We'll call Lawson and tell him, then I'll do it this weekend," he said. "That's all it is, honey. Really."
She stared at him. "You mean it?"
"Yeah, sure."
Her shoulder sagged with relief. She leaned toward him and he embraced her.
"What's wrong with the floor, Mommy?" Stephanie asked.
Al answered. "It's just old, honey. So, when it's mopped, the color comes out of it in the water. Looks almost—"
"Looks like blood," Michael said, with dread in his voice.
"Yeah," Al laughed. "Looks almost like blood."
"But what's that smell?" Carmen asked.
Al shrugged. "Just the linoleum, is all." He turned to Carmen. "You want me to clean this up, hon? I will."
"Would you?"
"Sure. Just let me go to the bathroom first." He kissed the top of her head and left the dining room, went down the hall, holding his breath all the way, and into the bathroom, where he closed the door, locked it, and put a trembling hand to his forehead. His head was suddenly aching, throbbing, and his heart was beating in his throat.
His calm was gone. The reassurance he'd shown Carmen was not only gone with it, but had not really existed in the first place.
He'd groped desperately for the explanation he'd given Carmen for the floor and, to his surprise, it had worked. The only problem was that he did not believe it himself.
"Dear God," he breathed tremulously as he slid down the door to a sitting position on the floor, "what's happening?"
15
House Guests
It was on a Sunday afternoon in June, a couple weeks after the end of the school year, that Carmen got the call from her sister Meagan in Alabama.
Michael and Stephanie were playing outside and Peter was in the backyard with Al, who was trying to get the barbecue started to make hamburgers.
Stephen, of course, was downstairs in his room.
Meagan had diabetes and had been very ill lately. On top of that, she and her husband were going through a very difficult separation, complete with screaming fights and threats and the digging up of old offenses which were best spoken of privately in hushed tones—not in front of their two daughters. She was calling to ask if Carmen would mind taking in the girls, Mary and Laura, until the situation improved.
"Well, I, um, sure, it wouldn't be...can I call you back in a few minutes? I really should talk to Al first, and I promise to call you right back, okay?"
As Carmen hung up, the front door opened and Michael came in looking sweaty and out of breath. He tossed her a wave as he passed the doorway on his way downstairs.
Carmen went out to the backyard and told Al about her conversation with Meagan.
"Yeah?" Al said when she was finished. "Well, if she needs help with them, sure. It's fine with me. How long, does she think?"
"She didn't say."
"Well"—he shrugged—"that's all right. Yeah, go ahead and tell her to send 'em."
"Thanks, hon." Carmen went back into the house, picked up the telephone and was starting to dial her sister's number when she heard—
"Mawwm!"
Michael's scream was so piercing that Carmen dropped the receiver.
"C'mere Mom, c'mere now!"
She hurried down the hall to the stairs. "What?" she called as she started down the stairs. "What is it?"
Michael stood at the foot of the stairs, pointing into his room, mouth gaping as he hopped lightly up and down; his other arms waving, beckoning Carmen to come quickly.
"Hurry, hurry!" he shouted.
Once at the bottom, she stood beside Michael and looked into the room and saw—
Nothing.
She stared, waiting for something, anything that might explain Michael's behavior. Nothing happened.
"Michael, what's wrong with you?" she scolded.
"But he was there a second ago! He ran all the way around the room on the shelf!"
"Who was there? Who ran around the room?"
"He-he was—there was a-a—" As Michael stammered, he pointed into the bedroom, his hand jittering anxiously.
"Okay, Michael, calm down, what is it?" Carmen's voice broke. She realized Michael's behavior was making her very uneasy.
"It was a boy, Mom! A little boy! He was, he-he was black and-and he was wearing pajamas, Superman pajamas, red and blue, and he ran all the way around the room from that end of the shelf to that end, and then he...he disappeared."
"Disappeared where?"
His body relaxed then, as if his excitement were suddenly being drained out of him. He turned to her slowly and bowed his head, suddenly ashamed.
"In...into the wall," he muttered.
Carmen looked around the room silently for a moment. She didn't know what to say or do. How would she explain this sort of thing to Mary and Laura? What would she tell them? Worse yet, what would they tell their mother when they went back home?
She was jarred from her thoughts by the sound of muffled laughter behind them. She turned to see Stephen standing on the other side of the French doors, which were open a crack. He wore only a pair of undershorts that looked in need of a wash, and a pair of headphones with a cord that stretched to the small stereo by his bed. Apparently, he'd drawn something on his chest: a star of some sort with a circle around it.
He was laughing at them.
"Did you do something to scare your brother, Stephen?" Carmen asked angrily.
He laughed again. "I didn't do anything."
&n
bsp; "Did you see it?" Michael asked hopefully.
Stephen held up his hands, palms out, and took a couple of steps backward, chuckling, "Hey, no way, I'm not breakin' the rule. We're not supposed to talk about it, remember? No ghosts, no voices. Otherwise, we get yelled at."
"Well, if you saw something, I want you to talk about it, Stephen," Carmen insisted.
Another laugh as he shook his head. "No fuckin' way." He reached out and closed the doors, then turned and walked to his bed.
Carmen spun away from the door, running a hand through her hair as she hissed, "Damn!" To Michael: "I'm sorry, hon, I just don't have time for this right now, I've gotta call your aunt Meagan." She headed up the stairs, trying to ignore Michael's sad and heavy sigh.
Her thoughts returned quickly to her nieces. The girls would think they were all crazy. Should she warn them first? If they knew about what the kids kept insisting they were seeing, if they knew about the history of the house, would they come...or would they decide to go stay with someone else for a while?
That's not what you're worried about and you know it, her inner voice murmured. You're not worried that they'll think you're crazy or about what they'll tell their mother, are you? No, of course not. So what are you worried about, Carmen? What?
As she picked up the telephone, she knew exactly what was worrying her.
She was worried that the girls would not be safe in the house.
Michael went into Stephen's room and stood by the bed, where Stephen lay listening to his music, eyes closed, head resting in the cradle of his interlocked fingers. The muffled music coming from the headphones sounded like a swarm of tiny insects to Michael.
He reached down and shook Stephen's foot.
Stephen opened his eyes and stared at Michael, but did not remove the headphones at first.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Michael asked.
Annoyed, Stephen slid the headphones back off his ears. "What?"
"I said, you saw it, didn't you? The ghost. That little black boy in the Superman pajamas."
"How do you know it was a ghost?" Stephen asked with a sly smile.
"You don't think it was?" Michael studied his brother's face, the taunting, knowing expression he wore. "You know what it was, don't you? You know all about it. Don't you?"
Stephen laughed and put the headphones back on, closed his eyes and began to jerk his foot to the beat of the music.
Michael backed away from the bed slowly and left Stephen's room, closing the French doors behind him. He didn't feel very good all of a sudden and went up the stairs slowly, trying not to think about his brother, about whatever it was that Stephen wasn't telling them, whatever it was that Stephen knew....
Mary and Laura arrived three days later. Al went to the airport, picked them up and brought them home to one of Carmen's festive meals.
Mary was twelve years old, a quiet girl with golden blond hair and a sweet, fair face. She was seven the last time Carmen had seen her, and she hardly recognized the girl.
Even more startling changes, however, had taken place in seventeen-year-old Laura. She had grown into a tall and beautiful young woman with a svelte and shapely figure and full dark-blond hair that fell to her shoulders.
The girls put their bags in Stephanie's room. For the duration of their stay, Stephanie would sleep in Peter's room and Peter would share Michael's room.
They talked as they ate the big lunch that Carmen had prepared. While Mary was quiet and shy, Laura seldom stopped talking. She was animated and boisterous and the house rang with her laughter.
That laughter would not last.
While everyone else was eating and talking upstairs, Stephen was sitting on his bed, legs crossed Indian-style, in a pair of cutoffs with a large sketchpad open on his lap. Heavy-metal music played over his headphones as he drew on the pad with a black felt-tip pen.
The music was terribly loud, even too loud for Stephen, but that was the way he liked it...the way he needed it. He kept it that loud for a reason.
The voice had been speaking to him with more and more frequency over the months. It used to frighten him; now, at the most, it merely unsettled him. Sometimes, as the voice spoke, images appeared in Stephen's mind: ugly, violent images that haunted him, gnawed at him until he put them on paper, made crude sketches of the faint images that passed back and forth behind his eyes. The pictures were just as ugly as the things the voice said to him...bad, evil things.
He'd been playing the music on the headphones at deafening levels hoping that it might drown out the voice—although now, he didn't really care anymore. Only occasionally did he feel a chill as he listened to it, to the things it wanted him to do.
After all, what was there to be afraid of? As it had told him at the beginning, and many times since, Stephen was hearing the very voice of God....
As his pen scratched over the pad, the music made him deaf to the laughing voices upstairs, until—
"Stephen."
It was so sudden and unexpected, so clear through the raucous music, that Stephen's hand jerked, pulling the pen over the paper in a jagged line as he lifted his head.
"Stephen, they're here," the voice said.
Who? he asked silently, in his mind. He'd learned that it was unnecessary to speak out loud to the voice. It could hear his thoughts.
"Your cousins. Your lovely cousins. You haven't seen them in a while, so you don't know how lovely they are, but...they are, Stephen. So young and smooth-skinned. They would feel sooo good...taste sooo good...."
As the singer screamed out of the headphones, backed up by shrieking guitars and thunderous drums, Stephen heard the voice laugh gently, that cold, icy laugh that sounded like wet rocks clacking together.
"I think you should go see your cousins, Stephen," the voice said.
Okay.
Stephen set aside the pad and pen, slipped the headphones off and stood up quickly. He didn't hesitate anymore when the voice told him to do something.
"No, no. Not now, Stephen."
He sat down on the bed again, slowly. Waiting.
The pinched music coming out of the headphones beside him sounded like a recording of a massacre.
"Later," the voice said. "I'll tell you when. Maybe some time during the night. If not tonight, some other night."
"Stephen?"
His mother's voice startled him; he hadn't even heard her coming down the stairs or opening the French doors. He jerked his head toward her.
"What're you doing?"
"Just...drawing."
"The girls are here. We're having lunch. Just wondered if you wanted to come up and see them and eat with us." She sounded cautious. She sounded cautious around him a lot these days.
"Oh. No. Uh-uh." He lay back on the bed, locked his hands behind his head and stared at her.
"You're not hungry?"
"Uh-uh."
Frowning, she approached his bed and got down on one knee.
"Stephen, listen to me," she said softly. Hesitantly, almost as if she were afraid to, she reached out and placed her hand lightly on his. "I'm not sure what's...wrong with you. You're not yourself anymore, and I think you know that as well as I do. I keep hoping that... well, that if something's bothering you, you'll come to me and talk about it. But I'm worried that...well, I keep thinking that maybe, um...maybe your illness ..."
"Has come back?" he prompted her, starting to smile.
She nodded.
Stephen laughed. "Don't worry about that. It's not gonna happen." Then he laughed again.
"What do you mean?"
"My friends aren't going to let it happen."
Her eyes widened slightly as her eyebrows huddled above them.
"What friends? Who?"
"My friends here in the house. Oh, that's right"—he put a hand over his mouth and snickered into his palm—"you don't want me to talk about them. You don't believe in them. But that's okay, Mom. They believe in me. And they won't let me get sick again."
She rose
to her feet slowly, her jaws flexing as she clenched and unclenched her teeth. She stared at Stephen as if, before her very eyes, he had been replaced by someone she'd never seen before. For a moment, she looked as if she were about to speak, but then her eyes fell on the open sketchpad, on the picture Stephen had been drawing.
Stephen's eyes followed hers to the figure on the page.
It was a man with a mustache and dark hair, wearing a plaid shirt, a man not unlike Stephen's stepfather, Al. Gouts of black blood gushed from the giant fishhook that pierced the man's neck.
Stephen grinned at his mother as she turned to him slowly, a cold look of shock on her face.
Finally, she turned and left the room.
Stephen laughed as he listened to her climb the stairs, and he heard the voice laugh with him.
16
Laura
Carmen had been wondering when it would happen. It seemed to happen with everyone, so why not the girls? She just didn't think it would be quite so soon.
It was the morning after their arrival. Al had gone to work a few hours ago, everyone had eaten breakfast and Laura had helped Carmen with the morning dishes. Mary had settled down in front of the television—she was watching a soap opera that she never missed—and the kids were outside. Carmen and Laura seated themselves at the dining room table with tall glasses of iced tea.
They had made small talk as they worked in the kitchen, but Laura had been unusually quiet. Yesterday, Carmen had thought it impossible for the girl to so much as calm down. But she was calm, even frowning a little, as if something was troubling her.
"So, how'd you sleep?" Carmen asked.
"Oh..." Laura shrugged.
"I know it's hard to sleep in a strange place sometimes. Takes a while to get used to a different bed than your own."
Laura nodded.
After a moment: "You didn't sleep well, did you?"
Laura's features tightened as she thought a moment. "Aunt Carmen, something's..." She took a deep breath, sighed.
"What?"
"I don't like this house."
It was Carmen's turn to sigh. Less than twenty-four hours had passed and already...
"What don't you like about it?"
