Summer's End

by Joel A. Sutherland

  Jacob yelled as loud as his lungs would allow.

  Time slowed down. A chill went up Jacob’s arm, making the blood in his veins feel like ice water. He pulled back with as much force as he could, but he wasn’t powerful enough to break free of whatever held him from the other side of the wall. He continued to yell. The initials shimmered and floated in circles on the brick surface. At first he thought he was hallucinating or about to pass out, but then he realized that this was the Black Sea Albruna had written about in the journal.

  Behind his back he heard feet thunder down the stairs.

  “Jake!” Ichiro shouted in panic. “Jake! What’s happening?”

  Jacob opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. It was as if his throat had been filled with cement and someone had ripped out his tongue.

  Hannah joined them, then Hayden. Their flashlight beams danced over the floor and walls.

  Ichiro grabbed Jacob’s shoulders and pulled him away from the wall. Their combined strength must have caught the attacker off guard, and Jacob managed to yank his hand free of the wall. But a child’s hand was clamped on to his wrist like a bear trap. And the child — still concealed by the wall — refused to let go.

  “What is that?” Hayden shouted in shock and disgust.

  The world around Jacob was growing colder and darker by the second. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on — to his footing, his sanity, his life …

  “Get it off me!” he pleaded, finally finding his voice. “Get it off me!”

  Hannah grabbed the child’s fingers and tried to peel them off Jacob’s wrist. A shiver jolted through her body like an electrical current, but she managed to hold on.

  A second hand reached out through the wall and grabbed Hannah’s wrist. She screamed and pulled backwards. Ichiro pulled Jacob’s shoulders again. And Jacob used his last shred of strength to dig in his heels and lean back. It was enough to free them, and all three landed beside each other on the ground. It was also enough to pull the child through the wall.

  It was Colton. Still ten years old, but up close his pallid skin and sunken eyes made him look like an old man on his death bed. He landed on top of Jacob, Hannah and Ichiro. They yelled again and tried to push Colton away, but their hands passed straight through his small body.

  A faint pulse of red light lit Colton’s face and the space directly around Jacob. Before Jacob could figure out what had created the light, the air crackled and Colton flew backwards.

  Hayden jumped out of Colton’s airborne path, while Jacob, Hannah and Ichiro retreated on all fours like a cast of scurrying crabs.

  Colton landed in a heap a metre or two away. He jumped up, surprisingly fast and agile for how sickly he appeared. He looked at each of the four friends in rapid succession, as if determining what to do, who to attack first. But when his eyes settled on Jacob, he smiled. “You came back to save me,” he said.

  Jacob rubbed his wrist. His skin was bruised in the distinct shape of four thin fingers and a thumb. “Yes, I did. Are you … are you okay?” Jacob wondered again what had created the bright light that had seemingly sent Colton flying through the air, and then he remembered his mother’s necklace. Had it actually worked the way he had hoped, creating the same effect as Albruna’s chalcedony necklace? “I didn’t mean to hurt you. These are my friends.” He motioned to Ichiro, Hannah and Hayden. “Do you remember them? They went — they go,” Jacob corrected himself, “to our school. You don’t have to be afraid of them.”

  Hayden, Hannah and Ichiro looked too shocked to speak.

  “I remember them,” Colton said. He took a few steps forward. Ichiro and the twins all took reflexive steps backwards, but Jacob fought the desire to do the same and stood still. Colton bent to the ground and picked up his red hat, which had fallen when he’d been rocketed off Jacob, and put it back on his head.

  “I saw Dr. Stockwell in the hall earlier,” Jacob said. He cast a nervous glance at the stairs, fearful that the mere mention of the doctor’s name would summon him. “Do you know where he is now? Does he come down here often?”

  Colton shook his head. “I don’t know where he is, but if she comes down, he’ll come down. And she comes down a lot.” In a whisper, he added, “They’ll both come soon if they hear me talking, if they discover I’m out of the Black Sea.”

  Jacob’s mind raced as he worked out what to do next. “All right, we can use that to our advantage.” He pulled the necklace over his head. It glinted green in the flashlights’ beams. “This is what propelled you off of us. The stone is chalcedony, and somehow it repels …” Jacob stopped himself before he said ghosts. He restarted. “If I can push Dr. Stockwell into the Black Sea, then hang this on the wall, maybe using one of those rods on that table as a hook, I don’t think he’ll be able to get out again.”

  “Why would you want to stop the doctor?” Colton asked. He looked genuinely confused.

  Jacob sighed, realizing the boy knew so little about what had happened to him. He didn’t even seem to know he was dead. “Colton,” he said gently, “I’m sorry, but … Dr. Stockwell killed you four years ago.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “He did. He killed a child back in 1915, and after he killed himself he’s killed another kid every four years. It’s why so many kids have gone missing over the years. It’s why the whole town believes in the Kalapik. Dr. Stockwell is the Kalapik.”

  “No, he’s not,” Colton said. He hesitated, but then allowed something he’d been holding back to pass his lips. “Mother is the Kalapik.”

  After all he’d been through, Jacob almost laughed. Mrs. Cannington hadn’t looked good when they’d talked, but she certainly wasn’t dead. “Your mom is still alive. She misses you. She asked me to help you. She’s definitely not the Kalapik.”

  Colton’s face grew taut and he looked at his feet. “I didn’t mean my mother. I meant Mother. She makes us call her that. She’s evil.”

  A pit swelled in Jacob’s gut, threatening to swallow him whole. He knew — deep down in his very core he knew — but he had to ask it anyway. “Who’s evil, Colton? Who makes you call her Mother?”

  “Tresa.” Colton looked at the staircase as if he was afraid Tresa might stalk down the steps at any moment. “She threatens us. Yells at us. She hates it when we leave the Black Sea. She killed us. All of us.”

  Jacob took an involuntary step backwards. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, no. That can’t be. The doctor killed all the kids. He killed her too, and himself.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  Jacob nodded, remembering the conversation in the dining room while simultaneously wishing he could forget it.

  “And you trusted her?”

  Jacob couldn’t speak. He had no words.

  “She lied. All her words are lies. She’ll say anything, do anything, to get what she wants. And all she wants …” Colton raised his eyes slowly. “Is a family.”

  A dead silence fell upon the group as the truth sunk in like a knife to the heart.

  Dr. Stockwell wasn’t the ghost to be feared.

  Mrs. Stockwell was.

  Back in the front hall, when the doctor had towered over Jacob and yelled at him to look out, he must’ve been trying to protect him from Tresa.

  Jacob recalled his mother warning him never to swim alone. She had described the Kalapik as a man who lived at the bottom of the lake, stole children who disobeyed their parents and kept them with him forever.

  Tresa wasn’t a man and she might not live at the bottom of a lake, but everything else lined up all too perfectly, sickeningly so.

  She was collecting children. If she couldn’t have one in her life, she’d harvest them in her afterlife.

  A voice broke the tense silence. It floated down the stairs like water traversing a gentle slope, covering a hint of malice.

  “Colton?” Tresa said. “Are those my four new children I hear you talking to down there?”


  EIGHTEEN

  In the trembling illumination of their flashlights, they saw Tresa’s feet first. Her feet alighted briefly on each step without a sound. Her dress — Jacob hadn’t noticed it in the dining room, but now he recognized it as the first one Hannah had pulled out of the master bedroom dresser a few weeks ago — swirled around her legs. Her hands came next, long and thin and pale, followed by her chest, her neck and her face. Her mouth was open and her teeth gleamed. Her pale skin glowed faintly in the dark as if she was lit from within. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, her dark eyes regarded Jacob and his friends. Jacob had heard of hungry eyes before, and that’s how he thought of hers.

  “Oh, good,” Tresa said. “You’ve all met Colton. You’re going to be friends. No, more than that. You’re going to be siblings.”

  “We know what you did,” Jacob said forcefully, taking a step backwards while trying to buy some time. “You killed your husband, not the other way around.”

  Tresa held a finger to her thin lips. “Shh. You’re upsetting your brother.”

  Colton had backed himself into a corner, where he cowered and shook.

  “He’s not upset by us,” Jacob said. “He’s afraid of you.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Tresa said. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, Colton?”

  Colton didn’t look at her, but said, “No, Mother.”

  “You see? I love my children, and they love me. I will protect them with every ounce of my strength, every fibre of my being — just as I will keep you four safe. It’s time you met the others.” With a nod she indicated the wall and what lay behind it, the Black Sea. “They’re dying to meet you.”

  What happened next surprised Jacob. Hayden — not Hannah — charged at Tresa and threw all his weight into the frail woman. Although she saw the attack coming, Tresa didn’t brace for the impact or even step aside. Hayden passed straight through her and landed heavily on the ground. Tresa spun, laughed and grabbed a handful of Hayden’s hair.

  “You will be first to go through.” Tresa dragged Hayden across the floor.

  Hannah yelled and ran at Tresa, but Tresa grabbed her around the neck, pinning her where she stood.

  “Wait your turn,” she hissed, and then tossed Hannah aside like a bored cat disposing of a dead mouse.

  “What do we do?” Ichiro asked Jacob.

  They were running out of time. Tresa had nearly dragged Hayden straight across the basement. Another few steps and she’d reach the wall. But if Jacob waited for the perfect moment …

  “Don’t do anything,” Jacob whispered.

  “What? We can’t just stand here and let her take Hayden.”

  “We’re not going to let that happen,” Jacob said. He held up the necklace but kept the pendant concealed in his palm. “When she gets close enough to the Black Sea—”

  “You hit her with that and push her in,” Ichiro said, nodding. “It’s crazy but it might just work.”

  I just hope nothing happens to Hayden, Jacob thought.

  A moment before Tresa reached the wall, a new voice shouted down from the top of the stairs. “Let him go,” Dr. Stockwell said.

  Tresa stopped and turned to face her husband. “No, James. He’s trying to escape. I’m doing this for his own good. He’ll see. He’ll come to love me, just like the others.”

  “He’s not yours to take.” The doctor walked down the stairs and pointed his knife at Tresa. “He belongs here in this world. Not in there, forever in limbo,” he said, moving the knife to point at the Black Sea.

  “Don’t you dare take another step,” Tresa said with malice. “He belongs with me. He belongs to me. They all do.”

  “No. I’ve let this go on far too long. This ends tonight.” He jabbed his knife at her head but she ducked underneath it. Before Dr. Stockwell could swing again, Tresa grabbed his apron and pulled him off his feet. Although he was much bigger than her, she possessed an inhuman strength.

  Maybe he wasn’t expecting her to fight back. Maybe, after all the years stuck in Summer’s End, he simply had no fire left in his soul. Maybe she had the power of a mother’s love and an unbreakable will to protect her children. Whatever the cause — however Tresa managed at that moment to overcome her husband — she spun and flung him at the wall. He passed straight through it and was gone.

  Tresa shouted in triumph. “It will take him a long time to find his way back through the wall. He was always so meddlesome, protecting children by scaring them off the island. But there’s no one left to protect you now, is there?” She grabbed Hayden and readied to shove him into the Black Sea. “Except for me.”

  “Why did you kill your husband?” Jacob shouted. It was the first thing that came to his mind, and he hoped it would make Tresa pause. “If it’s only children you want, a … family, why kill him? And why write a fake letter to your sister making it seem like he was the one who was about to kill you?”

  Luckily, it worked. She stopped and turned toward Jacob. The smile that spread across her face was a hideous thing, twisted and revealing too much of her teeth. “The letter was clever, wasn’t it? I had hoped someone would find it sooner, but I’m glad you finally did. I took great pleasure thinking the police would discover it and blame my husband for the deaths, but as it turned out, the letter wasn’t necessary — the authorities were eager to point their fingers at him without it. Why did I kill James? Well, the night Danny … died … James found out. About everything. He tried to leave, threatened to go to the police. So I stabbed him in the heart.”

  “And then you killed yourself.”

  “Of course. I had to be with my children, my beautiful family. My only regret is that I didn’t first claim the eight children who were still alive upstairs.” She pointed at the wall and the initials, eight of which were uncrossed. “I look at their initials whenever I need to remind myself of my failure. Never again. So I wait four years between reapings, just the right amount of time so as not to arouse too much suspicion.”

  His plan had worked. Tresa had relaxed her grip on Hayden, and the entire time she had talked Jacob had been steeling his nerve. He squeezed the necklace in his hand. It dug into his flesh. This had to work. It had to.

  And if not, they were dead anyway, so he had to try.

  He lunged forward with all the strength he had. She was shocked, caught off guard and slow to react. Jacob collided with Tresa and pushed her the remaining distance to the wall. Hayden tumbled sideways, free.

  Jacob raised the necklace. He shoved the gemstone in her face.

  Nothing happened.

  Tresa looked from Jacob’s face to the pendant and back again. “That’s a lovely necklace,” she said, in a mocking tone.

  Jacob knew Tresa could have overpowered him then, but she seemed content to draw the moment out, to toy with him. “I don’t understand,” he said quietly, willing the necklace to start working, to send her through the wall. “Colton flew off me when he touched this. Your sister’s journal mentioned chalcedony; it’s supposed to repel ghosts.”

  “Oh, it most certainly does. But that,” she pointed at the gemstone, “is not chalcedony.”

  How could he have been so wrong? He’d read Albruna’s journal so carefully.

  The journal. The journal had only been one half of what he needed to stop Tresa.

  The hallway.

  Cannington.

  A pendant in the shape of the letter C.

  In the hallway.

  Not in Mrs. Cannington’s house.

  In Summer’s End.

  The necklace they had found taped to the back of the photo frame the first day they entered the house.

  The necklace Ichiro had dropped when they ran outside.

  The necklace Hannah had found under the front-hall table and claimed as her own.

  Please let her still be wearing it, Jacob prayed.

  “Hannah!” he shouted, making everyone in the basement, even Tresa, flinch. “Throw me your necklace!”

  She clued in immed
iately. She ripped the necklace off her neck and threw it to Jacob in one fluid motion, with all the accuracy of a natural pitcher.

  Jacob grabbed it out of the air and pressed it against Tresa in one swift motion. It immediately grew red-hot.

  The final sight Jacob had of Tresa — a vision that would haunt him for years to come — was of her mouth agape in shock and her black eyes festering with fear. The light of the necklace coated her face like a spray of blood.

  And then she rocketed backwards and disappeared through the wall.

  Jacob laughed — part joy, part hysteria. Ichiro joined in, then Hayden, still a little dazed from being dragged across the floor by his hair. Finally, Hannah laughed as well.

  “You did it!” Hannah said, wrapping him up in a tight hug. “You saved my brother! You saved all of us.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said. His hands were shaking and he felt like he might throw up on his shoes at any moment. “I guess I did.” He just hoped Tresa would take as long to find her way back through the wall as she had said her husband would.

  Hannah released Jacob and hugged her brother. “Thank you,” she said. For once — maybe the first time ever — he had protected her, not the other way around. “That was very brave.”

  Hayden blushed. “You would’ve done the same for any of us.”

  “Hello?” Ichiro said, drawing the word out. “I helped too. Have you all forgotten that I was the first to charge into the basement when Jacob yelled, and tried to pull him free?”

  “Of course we haven’t forgotten that,” Jacob said. He gave Ichiro a backslapping hug. “Thank you. I promise that if a ghost ever nearly yanks you through some sort of portal into some sort of paranormal dimension, I’ll try to pull you free too.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Ichiro said.

  Colton slowly emerged from the shadows where he had remained hidden since Tresa appeared. “I can’t believe it,” he said with a bewildered look, staring at the place his captor had stood only a moment ago.

  Jacob was suddenly painfully aware that Colton was now safe, but that the other children Tresa had killed over the years were still in the Black Sea. And not only were they still in there, but they were still in there with Tresa.