She tried again to think of her mother’s face. The outline was there, but nothing else. “Mommy?” Sarah’s voice whispered to the empty room. But at that moment her thoughts were interrupted by the faint sound of music suddenly drifting out of the living room, under the door arch, and into the kitchen. Sarah immediately recognized the tune. It was from her dream. She stood up from the table and walked out of the kitchen- listening. It was coming from the basement she decided, and slowly made her way to the door. Sarah hesitated for a moment before unlocking and opening the door. She strained her ears- listening- and then flipped on the light switch. The lone light cast shadows up and down the walls of the stairwell. The glass marbles were still scattered at the bottom of the steps.
“Hello?” The music faded away. Sarah shook her head. Had she really just heard that? She closed the door and once again locked it, before heading back to the kitchen. Maybe I should give this a rest, she thought as she jiggled the withered ice in her whiskey glass. And then she was sure she heard something again.
“Aunt Elizabeth?” Sarah waited and listened for some sort of answer. There was none. But then the image of the name she’d seen scrawled across the side of the old box flashed in her head. “Lizzy?” She whispered. The music started up again. But this time it was coming from the upstairs hallway.
Sarah followed the rhythm and crept up the stairs, one by one, and then arrived at the closed door of her late aunt’s bedroom. The music was coming from inside the room- there was no doubt about it. She turned the doorknob and slowly opened the door as the music grew louder. She flipped on the light switch and immediately saw where the music was coming from. In the corner of Elizabeth’s bedroom sat an old-fashioned record player. Sarah couldn’t remember seeing it from her earlier venture into the room, but that didn’t surprise her. Sometimes things hide in plain sight. Some things sometimes hide in the corners of our rooms. As Sarah approached the record player, the music again stopped. She opened the top of the player, moved the tone arm, and picked up the vinyl record, examining it. She flipped it over. The yellow record label told her it was Faz Williams album,1922, but that was about it. Sarah looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes.
“Okay Lizzy. I’m listening.” But there was no answer. Sarah waited for another moment and then put the record back on the turntable, and quickly left the room closing the door behind her.
●
Sarah stood in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror looking hard into her own eyes. It was the only mirror she had found in the entire house. Her face was painted with dirt and dried blood from the scratches on her cheeks and forehead. She’d been so caught up since returning from discovering the tunnel, that she’d forgotten all about her earlier fall. She finally blinked and looked away from her reflection to the vintage bathtub along the south wall. It was a free-standing, iron clawfoot bathtub, and it was actually quite beautiful. Her thought was quickly interrupted by the chilling sound resonating from the mirror. It sounded like fingers rubbing wet glass. Sarah turned quickly back to the mirror, but it was not her face she was looking into, but that of a young girl. She screamed and jumped backwards, tripping over the bunched-up bathroom rug and falling hard on her backside. From her vulnerable seat on the tile floor she tempted fate again and looked back up into the mirror.
This time, however, the little girl was gone, and instead she was once again staring up at her own image. Sarah rubbed her eyes and shook her head trying to desperately regain her bearings.
Sarah pulled herself up off the bathroom floor and turned the metal knob above the bathtub. She put her hand under the spout, letting the warm water run over her fingers. It was time to get her thoughts in order, but first she needed to clean herself up. She was a mess. Her whole body seemed to be covered with scratches and black dirt. She walked out to the hall closet to find a towel, and then remembered her favorite warm, fuzzy bathrobe she had packed. That’s exactly what I need. She walked to the guest room to retrieve it. By the time she walked back into the bathroom, steam was already rising up from the tub and slowly beginning to fill the room. A thin fog covered the mirror. She was thankful for that. Sarah unbuttoned her torn shirt and slowly examined her body. There was a nice deep scratch above her left breast, and another across her left rib cage, but all in all, the trees hadn’t injured her too badly. She slipped out of the rest of her clothes and dropped them in a pile next to the bunched-up rug. She slid a foot into the warm bath water...it felt perfect. She then let her whole body follow down into the tub. The warm water covered her like a blanket, making her feel safe again. She sat there looking down into the water, taking deep breaths and trying to relax. Finally she let her eyes close. For a moment, she was sure that the music was faintly playing again down the hall. She opened her eyes and listened, straining her ears for something, but all she heard was silence. And then exhaustion from the day took a firm hold of Sarah, and she slipped into a deep nap.
She opened her eyes and she was in the tunnel again. Up ahead in the distance, through the darkness, a shadowy figure slowly moved towards her. It seemed to be dragging something behind it. Sarah blinked and realized that it was dragging a lifeless body by the arm. She turned and ran back down the tunnel towards the lantern, the little door, and the house. But she seemed to be only running in place. It was as if the tunnel was getting longer and the odd little door moved further away from her. She couldn't close the distance even as her legs moved faster.
And then the vision flipped. She was in the cellar again, walking, she saw the back of the woman with long, black hair. Sarah froze. The woman stood over a long wooden horse trough. The shadowy figure was standing beside her. But it was the horse trough that had Sarah’s attention. For inside of it was the still body of a young woman, her left arm draped limply over the side. Blood was dripping from her wrist, trickling down her fingers and into a glass jar. It was a canning jar and it was almost filled to the top. The woman with the long, black hair bent down and lifted the lifeless woman’s hand up and held it over a wine glass. She squeezed the wrist and the dark, red blood filled the glass. She then handed the glass to the shadowed figure. She filled a second glass and as she brought it to her lips, that’s when Sarah saw the woman’s profile. It was strikingly familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it. Sarah took a step forward and that’s when the light in the room changed and she could now see the face of the lifeless body in the horse trough. She recognized the face and the red hair immediately. It was the girl from the newspaper. The missing school teacher.
Sarah awoke from the vision gasping for a breath. “Oh my God...” The bathroom was filled with a heavy cloud of steam. For a moment Sarah thought she might still be in her dream, but then she looked down and saw the tub was no longer filled with warm bath water, she was bathing in dark, red blood. Sarah screamed, jumped out of the tub, and grabbed a towel as she ran into the hallway. She rubbed vigorously all over her body in a desperate attempt to remove the sticky blood from her skin. She rubbed and rubbed until it hurt, before realizing that there was no blood on her body and there was no blood on the towel either. She stood there, naked, wondering if she had finally snapped. She first thought of her pills and then she thought of Nick. She quickly wrapped the towel around her and rushed into the guest bedroom, grabbed her phone, and dialed. With her ringing phone in hand, she ran back into the bathroom. The blood was gone. She was disoriented. She felt crazy. The room seemed to be spinning and fading away. I’m going to pass out, she thought. But that’s when she heard Nick’s voice on the other line.
“Hey Sarah I was just going to call you...”
“Nick?! Nick you have to get here now! The tub was filled with blood, there was blood everywhere…but now… and the school teacher... I know what happened… I know what happened! Call the police!”
“Sarah, calm down. What’s going on?”
“Just get here... please! I, I’m in danger!”
“I’m on my way!”
She hung up and again ran b
ack to the guest room, dressing as fast as she could and then rushed out into the hall.
Sarah immediately stopped. She stared at the wall. The broken, photo-less frame was now hanging back on the wall. And it was no longer photo-less. The wooden frame was now surrounding the photo of young Sarah on the tricycle.
At that moment, Sarah’s late aunt’s bedroom door creaked open and the record player again began to play. Sarah decided not to stick around to see what happened next and instead ran downstairs, but as she hit the bottom step, the lights went out. In the sudden darkness, her left foot missed the step and she went crashing to the hardwood floor below. She landed hard on her side. Sarah groaned. She could feel the bruise already forming on her hip.
She frantically picked herself up off the floor and limped into the kitchen. The knife set was to the left of the kitchen sink. Thank you, God.. Sarah pulled out four knives from the wooden block before she found the big, long, sharp one she was looking for. The blade glistened in the dim moonlight slipping in from the kitchen window. It’s beautiful, she thought.
Chapter 11
Tunnel Vision
Sarah found herself standing at the bottom of the stairs in the dark, holding her kitchen knife and debating on whether to go back up or not. All at once, there was a loud popping sound and then the lights began to flash on and off. With each moment of light in the darkness, Sarah saw the face of a different woman standing in front of her on the stairs. Sarah screamed, and in return, the women screamed. Their numbers grew with each new flash of light. And then there were six female figures surrounding Sarah. The record player now blared from up the stairs in Elizabeth’s bedroom. Sarah could no longer move. She was surrounded and she could not move, but she could see.
The women all wore flowing white dresses, and seemed to be crying. They didn’t quite seem to be standing- no that wasn’t the right word. Their bare feet didn’t touch the floor. They floated. Sarah found her mind wondering where their shoes were and at the same time quickly realizing that she could see straight through the women to the wallpaper behind them. It was like looking through a dirty windshield on a glaring sunny day, when what’s there and what’s not is hard to make out.
One of the women, she had faded red hair, reached out and took Sarah’s hand. It was cold and wet. It made Sarah think of the times she had put her hand in front of a humidifier as a child. But it was what appeared behind the floating transparent woman that grabbed her attention. The outline of the frame was the first thing to materialize on the wall, but that was quickly filled in with the colors and outlines of a large photograph. The six women now all locked hands and formed a chain pulling Sarah towards the photograph on the wall. It had stopped shifting. Inside the large wooden frame was an old family photograph. Sarah looked closely at the faces, immediately finding her mother, her uncle, her grandparents, and then her focus shifted to the other young woman in the photograph. She had long, black hair and carried a striking resemblance to Sarah herself. It was the woman from her dreams.
“Lizzy.” Sarah whispered, and then the six girls all reached in grabbing Sarah’s hand and pulled her up the stairs. Sarah screamed and tried to fight against it, but they were much too strong for her, so she clutched the knife tighter and let them lead the way.
●
Nick’s truck flew up the gravel driveway to the white house, spitting small rocks from beneath the tires, and skidded to a stop. He jumped out, not bothering to close the door behind him, and sprinted up the steps and the front porch. He bolted through the front door.
“Sarah?!” He shouted as the door swung open. The opening door slammed against the wall behind it, and at that second, the lights came back on.
“Nick!” Sarah came rushing down the stairs to him, the long knife still in her hand. She tried to say more as her bare feet clapped down the steps, but the words just didn’t seem to fit together. Her memory seemed to have had lapsed since she went upstairs. There was a giant ball of blackness lingering behind her eyes. What the hell did I just see? She asked herself.
Startled by the knife, Nick grabbed it from Sarah’s hand and pulled her into his arms at the bottom of the stairs. “Oh my God, Sarah, what’s going on?!”
Sarah didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She just buried her face deep in his chest. She wanted to feel safe again.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked as his arms tightened around her.
Sarah fought for the words to come together for her. She took a deep breath and then let it all out. Once her mouth opened it was as if she couldn’t stop. She was hysterical and she hated it. “She’s here... they’re all here...they showed me… the tub was filled with blood. But it’s gone now... Just like in my dream. There was so much blood. I think I know what happened to the girls... Elizabeth, I think she was involved, Nick. She did something horrible to those girls.” Sarah whispered the last part, choking back muffled tears through Nick’s shirt.
Nick was stunned. He wrapped his arms even tighter around her, trying to soothe her. “Shhhhh… It’s alright, I’m here now. Nothing is going to happen to you. We’ll figure this all out together.”
●
Nick and Sarah were sitting in the living room on the sofa with the ugly orange and brown afghan draped over their laps. The fireplace was well stoked, Nick had made sure of that. The room was finally warming up, as the growing flames cast long shadows across the wallpaper around them. Nick had walked the whole upstairs of the old house twice over- just to be sure. He hadn’t found anything. Well, except for her pill bottle, that is. It made him wonder. He now had his arm around her, but Sarah was still shaking.
“Try and drink some water, Sarah,” Nick handed her the clear glass from the end table. “Do you feel any better?”
“I’m a little better. It was so cold before.” She took a long drink. “But I’m telling you, the girls were here Nick, all of them. They showed me the photograph… the family photo on the wall.”
“Sarah I believe you… but maybe… what if?” He stopped to clear his throat. “I think you were sleepwalking, Sarah. I didn’t see anything. I checked. No photo, no blood, and the record player is covered with dust- doesn’t look like it’s been used for ages. It’s just.. I’m sorry… maybe it wasn’t real.
“But it felt so real. No, Nick. I was awake... God, I feel like I’m losing it.” Sarah collapsed her face into her hands and sobbed.
“Sarah, we should leave…”
“No! I need to stay.” She looked up from her hands. Her eyes were red and puffy. “I need to show you what I found today. You promised you would help me.”
“Alright... Show me.”
Sarah lead Nick into the kitchen and began rummaging through drawers. “I know I saw another one” She said to herself. Nick just stood there, observing Sarah. Finally, she found what she was looking for. Another flashlight.
“I broke the other one.” She said. She led Nick to the door of the basement, flipped on the lone light and walked down the wood stairs, not hesitating, with no fear. But that was only because Nick was there to protect her. She made her way across the basement, past the old relics, and over to the staircase that lead down to the musty canning cellar. Nick helped Sarah push the desk away from the doorway and then followed her down the steps. Soon they were standing in the dark, in front of the odd little doorway in the cellar wall. Nick reached up and pulled the long string to the light bulb. It flickered above them, dimly lighting the open doorway and the small wooden door that no longer sat on the rusty hinges, but instead, laid askew on the dusty concrete floor next to their feet.
“Did you know about this?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Nick frowned, “but it was nailed shut.”
“Follow me.” Sarah flipped on the flashlight and crawled up through the narrow opening and into the tunnel. It felt strange to already be back in the tunnel, but with Nick she didn’t feel afraid. She traced the white light from her flashlight along the tunnel wall and the concrete ceiling above them. �
�This tunnel leads to the park, Nick. I walked all the way through this afternoon. I think this was how she got them back to the house unseen.”
Nick stopped dead in his tracks and looked at Sarah.
“Elizabeth. It was her.” Sarah said starkly. “The girls they showed me... in my dream, she had one of the missing women, the school teacher, in an old horse trough. I recognized her from the newspaper. She was dead, Nick, and Elizabeth was draining her blood... and then she, she drank it.” Sarah choked out the words and looked ill at the thought.
Nick was taken aback. “You have a gift, Sarah… and it’s getting stronger.”
“It’s not a gift... I’m cursed.”
“Amazing...”
“What?! What are you talking about?” Sarah looked deep into Nick’s eyes. Something was different. He looked nervous. “Wait, what are you not telling me?”
“It’s just, well this is happening faster than I expected.” Nick stopped for a moment, collecting his words, and bent down to pick up the kerosene lantern. He relit the wick as he spoke. “There is history here that you don’t know about. This river valley, this house, the Bayard Family... your family, Sarah.”
“I don’t understand.”
Nick gently took her by the hand. Their shadows loomed tall and narrow on the stark tunnel wall. He looked up from the lamp and spoke softly. “I’m sorry. I lied before when I said I didn’t know about this tunnel... I did, I do. There are a lot of things I haven’t exactly told you and I’m sorry. I just didn’t think you were ready to hear them yet. I wanted to protect you like I promised I would. But the way you “see” things, your gift...”
“Nick you’re scaring me. If you know something you have to tell me.”
“You’re not wrong when you said you’re cursed.”
“What?”
“Your whole family is cursed, Sarah.”
Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller Page 11
