In his mind's eye, he could easily envision Gayle, slowly, elegantly descending it. Every head in the room would look up at her, as she gracefully moved down. Smiled at the image he went deeper into the room. With it empty the fireplace seemed to dominate it. Its mantle was over five feet tall and nearly four feet wide. The fireplace itself was very deep and made from the same dark red brick as the exterior of the house. It seemed well used and William pictured how the room would look with a roaring fire.
Katie didn't pause to picture anything and moved through the archway separating the dining room from the living room. The dining room contained an equally impressive fireplace and little else. There was a door at the other end of the room, which led to a small hallway containing a pantry, a bathroom, and the kitchen.
"Katie Honey, your room is this way." William pointed back toward the staircase. She had gained the kitchen but turned on the spot and ran back. As she sped into the living room, she braked purposefully and slid on her stockinged feet a good ten feet. Oddly, the noise of the radiators seemed to stop just as she began her slide, so that the only sound in the house was the almost silent, long swwwisshh of her feet on the wood. The sound seemed to stretch out and there was an expectancy about it, as if some small event would occur when she finished sliding.
She stood there with her arms out from her sides, still in her sliding stance. Her head cocked to the side listening and a big smile lit up her face. William smiled and was about to tell her, "Good slide," but the words stuck in his throat, as if he didn't want to be the first one to break the silence. It was like a voice inside his head said, "Sshhh."
After a long moment, Katie asked, "Did you see that, Daddy?" As if right on cue, the radiators began banging away again.
"I did. It was very impressive, you should be in the Olympics," William responded, but quietly, speaking in low tones as though he didn't want to disturb something with his loud voice. He walked up to her and snatched her off her feet, and carried her to the stairs.
"Can I slide down this...this...thing?" she asked pointing to the banister as he climbed the stairs.
"It's called a banister and I guess so. You'll have to go down on your tummy until you get older." William refused to treat his girls like china dolls.
They reached the second floor and he put her down. The second story of the home had a long hallway that ran completely through it. To William's left, the hallway went about twenty-five feet before it ended at the back staircase. There were only two doors on the left; the first was the bathroom that Talitha and Katie would share. The next door opened practically onto the landing of the back stairs and was to be Talitha's room.
Directly in front of him was the family room and just to the right, the hallway only ran another ten feet. It ended with the door to Katie's room on the right and the master bedroom on the left.
"This one can't be mine," she said looking into the family room, which was windowless and boxy. The wall-to-wall, red carpeting seemed to absorb the light from the single bulb in the fixture. It was the dimmest room in the house and when Gayle first saw it, she eyed the red carpet as if it had personally offended her. He smiled at the memory of their first trip to the house, two months ago. "Are we allowed to rip it out?" Gayle had asked then.
"Only if we replace it," he had replied.
"What if it happens to have a very unfortunate 'accident?' I was thinking about taking up smoking, you know."
William was just considering that he might surprise his wife by ripping the carpet out one these days when Katie ran into the room and turned a nice cartwheel.
"I like the carpet. Does my room have this kinda carpet too?"
"No. Your room is right...here." William walked over and opened the door to her new room. She ran to it, but stopped in the doorway as if she wanted to take it all in before entering. There wasn't much to take in; it was a dinky eight by ten.
William tried to mentally describe the room and it was odd but he considered it sweet or nice. With two windows that took up the entire south wall it was easily the brightest room in the house. Added to this was deep shag carpeting in a very light yellow and bright white walls.
"Wow!" Katie's eyes were huge; she bent down and felt the carpet. "Daddy, feel this. It's really soft." Pulling her socks off, she walked about in the deep carpet. She stopped in front of him, looking down at her feet, as her tiny toes curled and uncurled in the shag.
Remembering suddenly, she turned and ran to the window. Peering through it, she cried, "I can see your office! It's right through those trees, right?"
William came over and bent down. "Yes that's it. Do you like your room?"
"I do. I like it a lot but Talitha won't fit in here, will she? She's going to be sad, not sharing a room any more. Can I not go to school today? I need to plan where all my stuff is going to go. When are we moving in? On-a-cuz I think we should move in pretty soon." Katie seemed excited.
"You're going to school today. And I don't know when we're moving, soon I hope. I'm going to check on some repairs and if you want to start planning, go right ahead." William headed for the doorway.
As he walked down the hallway, he heard Katie say, "Poor Tal, she'll be so lonely." In truth, Talitha couldn't wait for a little loneliness. Katie drove her sister up the wall with her constant talking. A typical conversation would sound like this:
Talitha: "Katie, I'm trying to read, can you quiet down for a while?"
Katie: "Sure, Tal." In a whisper, "Is this how quiet you want to me to be?"
Talitha: "How about you just don't talk at all?"
Katie: "Ok, I can do that. Mmh, mmh, MMH, MMhhhm!"
Talitha: "And no humming."
Katie: "You heard that?" In a whisper, "Can you hear this? Ta-lee-tha?"
Talitha: "MOM!"
4
William headed for the basement, thankful that Katie was staying upstairs for the moment. One of things he wanted to check on was a picture that one of the Nelson's kids had drawn on a wall. It was unpleasant and he didn't want Katie to see it.
He went down the backstairs through the kitchen to the basement door, but stopped, feeling a note of anger rising in him. He'd seen this on his earlier visits: someone had put a hasp and combination padlock on the door.
It was annoying. There wasn't any need to have it there in the first place and yet someone kept locking the thing up. Shaking his head, he began to work the shiny new lock, not having to remember the combination, which was written in pencil directly above the hasp.
It was pointless and he wasn't a fan of pointless things.
The basement had a long hallway with five rooms off it, two on each side and one at the end. Just to his left was the boiler room and despite the thing roaring away mightily, the room was cold. William stepped in and inspected the device.
The boiler had been one of the key issues keeping them from moving in and he happily noted that it was brand new. It seemed to be a huge improvement over the last one, which had gaping holes where it had rusted through, while this was shiny and looked state of the art.
William checked that off his mental list.
He then went to the big room at the end of the hall.
"Damn."
The picture, or mural he supposed it actually should have been called, was still there; it hadn't been painted over. It was evidence of some sort of psychosis or neurosis—he could never tell what any of those high falutin words really meant. He did know that a happy well-adjusted kid didn't draw the picture. It was about four feet high and seven feet long, and in a sick sort of way, it was very well done.
It depicted some kind of black, two-headed monster, standing over a dead person, a little girl by the looks of it. The girl looked to have died in extreme agony, her head twisted around at an odd angle. It was the monster that fascinated him. One of the monster's heads was sticking out of its chest and was so well drawn, it looked three-dimensional. Using only crayons, the kid who drew it, captured incredible movement and emotion.
Unfortunately, the emotion captured was a sick, heavy fear. That's what William felt at least as he peered closer. He noticed now that someone, probably the artist kid, had scratched viciously at the face of one of the monster's heads. The fingernail marks went clear through the crayon, and the underlying paint beneath and then into the drywall.
"Damn," he said again, practically whispering it. He gazed a long time at the picture when he noticed there was a little bit of blood in the gouge marks. On impulse, he glanced to the floor under the mural and saw there what he didn't want to see.
Two fingernails.
Not ones that had been snipped off or even chewed off in nervousness, but ones that had been ripped off. He bent down and saw there was black crayon under the shredded remains of the tops of the nails, and that a small amount of skin and dried blood were still attached to the undersides.
He stood up quickly, feeling suddenly nauseous, and that was when he heard someone walking around in the kitchen. Whoever it was, wasn't trying to be quiet. The footsteps thumped heavily as if caused by work-boots, so that he thought it might be a painter coming to cover over the mural.
For a brief second, William felt like calling out.
However, something inside warned him to remain quiet and a sudden cold chill ran up his spine. The chill was literal; the temperature of the room dropped at once, as if someone had just opened a freezer door behind him.
Presently, the sound of the heavy tread neared the basement door and William suddenly realized he'd left the lock sitting on the counter next to it. Worried about being locked in accidentally, he made to call out to the owner of the boots, but his throat tightened as he heard the door swing shut with a deafening, quiet click.
Chapter 3
The Painter
May 10, 1980
1
When William heard the door shut, he felt one of the strangest feelings in his life: panic.
He was not a man prone to fear. He felt fear like everyone else, but he'd always been able to control it, burying it beneath his sense of duty. To command a Coast Guard Cutter in the midst of the most ferocious of storms meant that he must first command himself. He prided himself on his ability to conquer his fear and that was why he was so shocked when he stood in mute panic.
The feeling of being trapped was so overwhelming, that he froze in place for a span of seconds, scarcely breathing. However, the spell was broken when he heard the work-boots moving away, toward the backstairs.
Katie!
Throwing off his panic, he sprinted for the basement stairs and ran up them two at a time. At the top, the door was shut against him. Was it locked?
The door is too thick, you'll never break it down, a voice inside his head said.
That was very true. Everything about the house was well made and quite sturdy. Hesitantly he reached out and turned the knob—it came open easily.
An embarrassing sigh of relief escaped him. "Man," he whispered.
How had he let his fears run away with him? It wasn't like him.
"Hello," he called out self-consciously, as if the person who had shut the door knew of his fright. There was no answer and what's more, the footsteps seemed to have stopped altogether.
"Hello!" This time he raised his considerable voice and an echo came in back to him. Again there was only silence, not even a peep from Katie.
The thought of her sent a jangle of alarm through him and now he sprinted at a dead run up the backstairs to her room. When he reached the hallway that ran down the center of the house, he saw her door stood shut.
The alarm within him slid very close to panic and he ran down the hall so quick he could feel wind in his ears. At her door, he didn't hesitate and threw it open, taking in the whole room in a single glance.
"Hi, Daddy." Katie's voice was calm, but she had a startled look in her eyes.
The room was empty save for his little girl. William spun about looking down the hall and listening to the sounds of the house—there came only the banging of the radiators.
"Are you ok?" she asked sweetly.
"Yes, I am...didn't you hear me calling?"
"Yeah, you were saying hello."
"Then why didn't you answer?" That seemed like the reasonable thing to have done and he began to feel a little cross at her for...for what? Assisting in scaring him?
"Were you calling for me?" she asked, but didn't wait for his answer. "I didn't think you were, on-a-cuz when you do, you say KAY-DEE!" Her little voice went as deep as it could, which was actually surprisingly deep.
"You're right, that's what I say," he responded, rubbing his head in puzzlement. "Did you hear anyone or see anyone?" he asked as casually as he could, not wanting to scare her, especially now after she seemed happy to be moving in.
"Nope...will my dresser fit against this wall?" she inquired with her hands on her nonexistent hips, looking exactly like her mom in miniature.
Had there been someone in the house at all? It seemed suddenly empty. With a mental shrug William gave the wall a quick glance and eyeballed the measurement, "It'll fit."
"Really? The dresser is pretty big."
"No, you're just so small that everything looks big to you." He heard another noise then, coming from the attic, but thought it likely to be one of the radiators banging again.
"I'm going to check a few more things and then we have to get you to school."
She began to give him a look that suggested she knew of another reason she should stay home from school, but he squelched it with a simple, "No."
2
He left her scheming, trying to find a realistic excuse, and went into the master bedroom, hoping a handyman had fixed the loose bricks in the fireplace. They wiggled under his fingers.
Right behind his forehead, he felt a headache coming on.
As a greater hint to the workers, he pulled the bricks out and set them on the mantle. Out of frustration he considered making a little building with them, but decided instead that when he got to his office, he'd put a call into Lieutenant James Andre and tear a good size chunk out of his ass. The boiler was good, but some of the easier fixes should've been done weeks ago.
Clunk.
The small sound had William's full attention. It came from the attic. After a quick peek in at his daughter, he slipped down the hall as quietly as his two-hundred plus pounds would allow and made his way up the stairs. Here, there was no sense trying to be quiet; the stairs creaked loudly with his every step and besides, there was no way out of the attic.
The layout of the attic was simple: two storage rooms to the left and right at the beginning of a long hallway. At the end of the hall were two bedrooms and a bathroom. That was it.
At the top of the stairs, he paused listening, but no sound came and after a moment, he glanced into both the storage rooms and found them empty. The same was true of the bedrooms, he even checked the closets. He was just thinking that the 'clunk' sound must have been the radiators, when he heard the first scream.
"Ayeeee!"
William froze for the barest instant and then raced along the hall. In a second, he flew down the stairs pausing at the landing to look toward Katie's room.
It was empty.
"Ayeeeee!"
Another scream came from the kitchen. William took two giant leaps down the back staircase and was in the kitchen in a flash. What he found astonished him: little Katie standing calmly over a man lying on the floor.
The man, who appeared to be a painter, looked from Katie to William with a terrified expression on his face. He had both hands in front of him, palms out, as if to protect himself from William's forty-pound daughter.
William stepped between Katie and the man. "Hey! Calm down now!" he yelled. "What's going on here?"
The man blinked rapidly a few times and said, "I uh, I uh." He took a few breathes to calm himself. "I'm ok, I'm ok." He waved his hands to show that he was ok. William first thought the man was a lunatic, but the more he looked at him however, the
more he thought drug addict.
"Ok, ok...wow...I'm sorry, I really am," the painter said.
"Is he a retardo, Daddy?" Katie asked unexpectedly. "He's kinda like Arnold Frimley and Arnold is a big retardo." The man looked at Katie with surprise.
"The proper term is 'retarded', Katie," William explained, and wondered if the man was indeed a bit soft. "But it's impolite to make such assumptions, however."
"No, no, I'm not retarded," the man said. He got to his feet. "I'm real sorry. I didn't think anyone was here is all, and she," he pointed at Katie. "Scared the hel...I mean she frightened me very badly. She came out of nowhere." He glanced over at William in a slightly fearful way and William realized he was still scowling fiercely at the man.
The Commander softened his features, but only by a little. "That's hardly a good enough excuse to go about scaring little girls."
He stepped forward and eyed the man, trying to get a sense if he was on drugs or was really just afraid. The painter was a small man and wore an all white outfit. Overalls, jacket and painter cap were all white, and each had many layers of white paint on them. He was exceedingly speckled with paint, yet under all of it he had the Mediterranean tan of a Greek or as an Italian.
"I wasn't afraid," Katie piped up. She was spinning a padlock absently mindedly in her small hands. "He was afraid of me!" She giggled at this. Then a new idea came to her. "Maybe you're a spaz! Do you think you might be one?" she asked the painter.
His expression of embarrassed relief changed at the question and he glanced over at William in a perplexed manner.
"Katherine!" William said sternly. "You're being insulting. Please apologize to the gentleman, right now."
Katie looked very contrite. "I'm sorry, I asked if you were a spaz and a retardo...I mean a retarded...and I'm sorry that I scared you so bad."
The painter gave her a smile. "That's ok. I'm the one who should be apologizing to you and to your dad." The painter's manner now seemed completely normal. Maybe he had been just afraid.
The Trilogy of the Void: The Complete Boxed Set Page 4
