Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  “You think I care if he hears me?” John shouted. “What kind of thanks are you getting? You’re stuck here all day doing — what? Taking care of an old man who should have been put in a nursing home?”

  “Is that what you want?” Julia snapped.

  John closed his eyes in rage and banged both hands on the bureau. The comb bounced and fell to the floor.

  “That’s not what I want, but Christ, Julia! Is this what you want? To be hanging around the house all the time, watching him go downhill?”

  “I’m not ... unhappy,” Julia said softly, convinced that she was telling the truth — at least mostly.

  “I don’t see that you’re all that happy.” John scowled at her. “Five years ago, when we got married, that was the one thing I wanted to do — make you happy.”

  “And you do.”

  “Really?”

  “You know what would do that,” Julia said, softer still.

  “No. Don’t start in on that again!” John stretched out his arm and glanced at his watch. “Shit! I’m going to be late. I can grab lunch in town.”

  He started out of the room, but Julia caught his arm, halting him. He wheeled around, facing her with anger in his eyes.

  No, she thought. Maybe not anger …Hurt.

  “Even if he never says it, I want to thank you for trying.”

  The harsh light in his eyes melted as John leaned forward and kissed her firmly on the lips. A sudden, powerful stirring of sexual energy took hold of him, and if he hadn’t been running late, he would have grabbed her and carried her to the bed right then. He’d give her the baby she wanted, all right.

  “I really gotta run,” he said after breaking off the kiss.

  He went quickly down the stairs to the front door.

  So he won’t have to go through the kitchen and see his father, Julia thought, as sadness welled up inside her.

  “Call me when you get to the office, okay?” she called.

  “I will.”

  And then he slammed the front door and was gone.

  Julia stood at the top of the stairs, waiting to hear the car start up and pull away before going downstairs. By then, Frank had finished his breakfast and gone back into his bedroom. Through the closed door, she could hear the buzzing of the television. She wondered how much Frank had heard of their conversation, but she dismissed it as she set about her day. Judy Bartlett would be over soon to take care of Frank, and Julia wanted to get — and stay — as busy as possible.

  III

  “I think the whole idea is... sinful. That’s what it is,” Frank said with a grumble. It was a chilly but sunny Saturday afternoon, and he was sitting in the kitchen, talking to Julia while she washed the lunchtime dishes.

  John had driven over to the condo construction site to recheck a few angles and elevations so work wouldn’t be delayed on Monday morning. Bri. as usual, was off on one of her long walks along the shore. Julia found herself wondering if Bri’s walks might not be as solitary as she claimed — if maybe she was meeting a boy down there. She was considering giving her a serious mother-daughter talk that evening, but now — as usual — Julian was alone in the house with Frank.

  “It’s just harmless fun,” she said as she opened a plastic bag and poured tiny M&Ms bags into a bowl. “It’s a fun holiday for the kids.” She smiled pleasantly at Frank, but what she really wanted to do was laugh at him outright.

  “It’s a holiday for Satan. That’s what it is,” Frank said. “Bad enough they celebrate it at all, but on Sunday! The Lord’s day!” He banged his fist on his wheelchair armrest, making it vibrate.

  “That’s why the kids are trick-or-treating tonight instead of tomorrow night,” Julia said.

  “People don’t realize … once they open themselves up to this ... this devil stuff, it gets to where they can’t stop it, ‘n’ it overwhelms ‘em.”

  Unable to stop herself, Julia snickered, and it immediately blended into an all-out laugh. She turned to Frank, fully convinced he was smiling behind her back at the put-on he was creating. But Frank was frowning, his jaw set in a grimace that doubled the lines in his thin cheeks.

  “I’ll bet when you were a boy, you did your share of trick-or-treating,” Julia said mildly.

  She had found over the past few weeks that — as the old expression went — Frank’s bark was worse than his bite. Frank scowled and grumbled a lot — and some of that was justified, considering that up until four months ago, he had been a hale and hearty man. But now he was confined to a wheelchair, and no matter how much his doctor said there was a chance that, with exercise and luck, he might be able to walk again, he knew he was going to be wheelchair-bound until he died.

  This was it ... the end of the line.

  That couldn’t help but sour anyone’s attitude, Julia thought, and what with his frequent memory lapses — he had called her by at least four different names since they moved it: Abby, Dianna, Ruth, and Marcia. She tried to deal with him with patience and understanding. When he got into a tirade, though, it was difficult not to lose her composure. What bothered her most was that, even in the short time they’d been living with him, his outbursts seemed to be increasing in frequency and intensity. And now he was starting in on something as harmless as Halloween.

  “When you’re a kid,” Frank said, “young ‘n’ foolish, you do plenty of stupid things — things you’ll live to regret ... if you’re lucky ‘n’ smart.” He blinked, holding his eyes closed for several seconds before continuing. “Sure, I done things I wished I’d never done. We all have. But I think makin’ a national holiday out of devil worship is going too far.”

  “It’s not a national holiday,” Julia said. “It’s just a … a custom … a little fun and a few harmless pranks. Tell me you never soaped up a window.”

  Frank’s scowl deepened as he looked down at his useless leg. His lower lip began to tremble, and Julia felt a jolt of panic when, for an instant, his eyes fluttered and rolled upward.

  Is he having another stroke?

  “I was reading in the paper th’other day about these kids — teenagers — who got involved with those dungeon games, and they did a spell or something that actually raised a demon that possessed ‘em. They killed two girls.” He snorted. “Should’ve killed themselves and done the world a favor.”

  “Come on,” Julia said, laughing softly. “You don’t actually believe it was the game that made them do that.”

  “I read it in the paper,” Frank said, as if that was the final authority. “These kids got possessed and ended up killing people before they turned themselves in. Said they wanted to be exercised.”

  “You mean ‘exorcised.’”

  “Whatever. The point is, something like Halloween can unleash demonic forces.”

  “A couple of dozen kids roaming the neighborhood asking for candy hardly seems like a threat from hell,” Julia said.

  “Go ahead,” Frank shouted, pointing at her with a trembling hand. “Go on. Laugh all you want. You’ll see. Once you open the door to these things, you can’t shut it. They’ll get you in their power ‘fore you know it, and ‘fore you can get away from ‘em. It ain’t slipped my attention that since you moved here, you and my son ain’t been to church. Ain’t you religious?”

  Oh, boy … Here we go, Julia thought.

  She took a deep breath and held it, shaking her head. They had spent a lot of days with just the two of them in the house, and from discussions they’d had and comments Frank had let drop — especially on Sunday, when Josh and Allen Stubbins came to bring him to church — she had feared this topic would eventually come up. Now Frank had taken the opportunity of bitching about Halloween to get around to what was really on his mind.

  “It’s not that we’re not religious,” Julia said, leaning back and bracing herself with her hands on the counter.

  “What is it then?” he asked, but before she could reply, Frank went on. “Me and Dianna tried to raise John right, yah know? But even back then, he was s
o damned headstrong.”

  I wonder which side of the family he gets that from, Julia thought.

  “We took him to church, did what the baptism service saysput the scriptures in his hand — but it didn’t do no good. I was kind of hoping you’d be the one to bring him back.”

  “I don’t want you to get me wrong, Frank,” she said, hoping what she was really feeling didn’t show. He could talk about his religion all he wanted, but that didn’t stop him from letting fly a curse whenever his blood pressure spiked. “John and I simply don’t buy into organized religion. We believe that religion is —”

  “Buy into! You said you don’t buy into religion? It isn’t something you buy into!”

  Julia cocked her head to one side, resisting the temptation to throw at him some recent incidents involving television evangelists and their pitches about buying salvation while soliciting prostitutes, both male and female.

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand me,” she said. “I think — and John thinks — that religion is a personal thing, an individual choice.”

  “There’s only one way,” Frank said, his voice taking on a preacherly resonance. “I would think even if not for your own sake, you’d want to do something for Bri.”

  Julia rubbed her hand over her face, wishing she were anywhere but here right now. It took great effort not to lash out and ask him what the hell it mattered to him, anyway, how they raised Bri.

  Don’t talk to me about being a hypocrite, she wanted to say. Look at your relationship with your own son.

  She took a deep breath and carefully measured her words.

  “When she’s older, Bri can decide for herself. I don’t want to push her one way or another.”

  “It ain’t a matter of pushing, for Lord’s sake,” Frank said. “It’s a matter of guiding … of directing. A child can’t choose for itself if you don’t show it the right way. Satan will always be there to grab ‘em and drag ‘em down. There won’t be time then to ‘decide for yourself.’“

  “Bri’s not a child,” Julia said as mildly as possible, She had to bite down on her tongue to keep from pointing out that her daughter could decide for herself, not itself.

  “And if you want to be honest, you’re not setting the best example what with your swearing all the time.”

  Frank lowered his head and shook it.

  “You may not have noticed, but I’ve been makin’ an effort not to cuss, ‘specially when Bri’s around. But I talk the way I talk from spending my life on the docks. I ain’t saying I’m perfect myself, but —”

  “No, I don’t think you are,” Julia snapped, “but you are saying you’re better than I am and John is, and that’s one bit fair.”

  It took effort to make her motions appear unhurried, but she grabbed the sponge, wet it under the faucet, and started wiping up crumbs from the table. While Frank sat there speechless, she tossed the sponge into the sink, rinsed her hands, then dried them on the dish towel hanging from one of the cupboard door handles.

  “John and I know how we want to raise Bri,” she said, her voice low, almost trembling. “Now, I can appreciate your concern, but when it comes to Bri — whether it’s something as silly as whether or not she’ll go trick-or-treating or something as serious as the salvation of her soul — as her mother, I can handle it, if that’s all right with you.”

  She was glaring at Frank, and she knew she was taking advantage of him, standing so close to him he had to tilt his head back to look up at her. But she was angry enough not to care. If he wanted to, he could treat John like he was still a boy, but he sure as Hell wasn’t going to tell her how to raise her daughter, church or no church.

  “If you don’t mind me using your car,” she said, “I have to go out shopping,” Julia said.

  Frank’s face was expressionless as he pointed toward where his car keys hung on a nail by the door. “I ain’t ever gonna use that car again,” he said gruffly.

  “If Bri comes back while I’m gone, tell her I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  Frank was silent and didn’t move as Julia grabbed her jacket and the set of car keys, and walked out to the car in the barn. She opened the barn door, got into the car, started it up, and backed down to the street, the whole time thinking: Screw him! If he’s going to give it to me, he’s going to have to learn that I’ll shovel it right back.

  IV

  When Julia drove up to the condo site, she saw John’s car parked on the side of the road. Its trunk was open, and the transit box was on the roadside, open and empty. Some of the other equipment was gone as well. As Julia parked the car, she wondered how he dared leave his equipment out like that. What would stop someone driving by from stealing it?

  She got out of the car and scanned the area, looking for him, but there was no sign of him anywhere. He had said he would be working with Barry today, but he hadn’t mentioned whether he was going to pick him up in town first or meet him out here at the site. If Barry had driven to the island this morning, they might be off in his car somewhere. She glanced at her watch. It was a little after one o’clock. Maybe they were off getting lunch.

  On her left, the open, flat field sloped down toward the ocean, it thick mat of yellowed grass and weeds flattened and torn up by the heavy equipment. Other than a few mounds of dark soil, there wasn’t much that would hide him from view, so she turned to the other side of the road, toward the trees and dilapidated barn. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she called out John’s name several times.

  Her voice didn’t carry very far, however. It bounced back with an odd flatness. With only the devastation of the ground breaking and one deserted, weather-grayed house and barn in sight, she was filled with a sense of loneliness. It surprised her how desolate, how unsettled this end of the island was. It made the southwest tip of the island where they lived seem downright thriving.

  She called out John’s name again before she concluded that he and Barry — if they weren’t getting lunch — were probably off in the woods across the road. John had mentioned something about the old barn and some woods that were going to be cleared out. Maybe they were over there.

  Pocketing her car keys and making sure her car doors were locked, Julia started out across the field toward the barn. She paused now and again, turning back to look at the view from the field. The wind off the water had a clean snap to it, chilly and invigorating. She couldn’t deny the beauty of the spot. Whoever ended up living out here was going to have a gorgeous view of outer Casco Bay.

  She also experienced a strong sense of the place’s raw beauty and what it would be losing once construction began. The gray house with its partially caved-in barn, looking out over the cold gray sea, spoke of a distant, less complicated and less hurried way of life — the kind of life, actually, John must have experienced growing up here. Even though she had no personal attachment to the island, sadness filled her when she considered how these fields would be chewed up by thick-treaded bulldozers and the house and barn would be bulldozed to make room for luxury living — the kind of living probably no one currently living on the island could afford.

  The dead grass swished at her legs as she walked. The sound, combined with the salty breeze, reminded Julia of the day last week when they had gone for a walk on Bald Hill and Bri had gotten lost in the woods. Looking to her left, she could see the ridge of Bald Hill rising above the screen of woods. Along the edge of the field, most of the trees, predominantly oaks, had been stripped bare by the cold weather.

  A blue jay singing its harsh song suddenly darted out of the woods. Caught by surprise, Julia was shaking as she watched the harmless blue bird flash over the field.

  Why so skittish? she wondered as she looked around to see if anyone was nearby and had seen her reaction. Being out in the open like this made her feel exposed, vulnerable. She had never been comfortable in wide-open spaces, so she hurried her pace to get closer to the trees.

  Once at the edge of the woods beneath an ancient, spreading oak, she stopp
ed and called again for John. The echo of her voice died away quickly. She strained to hear a reply, but none came.

  “Where the hell are you?” she muttered, looking back along the path she had trampled through the dead grass. Several wooden stakes had been driven into the ground and flagged with orange plastic tape to mark boundaries. John had been here, but when?

  From here, she could see the back of the barn with its shingle-less roof and fallen-down outbuildings. The side door was hanging open, and although at this distance she couldn’t hear it, fitful gusts of wind were shifting the door open and closed, banging it against the side of the barn. The windows on the side of the barn had long since lost their glass from boys throwing stones or winter storms slamming the northeast side of the island.

  While she was looking back at the barn, a tingling sensation rushed up her back between her shoulder blades … a sensation as if someone was watching her. A wave of goose bumps rippling over Julia’s arms.

  As she looked around, trying to see if anyone was watching her or if it was her imagination, she caught a brief motion shifting inside the darkened doorway of the barn. Thinking it might be John and wanting to get some distance between herself and the trees, she started across the field at a brisk pace.

  “John? … Is that you?” she called.

  She focused on the opened door as it swung back and forth, banging the side of the barn. The closer she got, the louder the banging became. She cringed at the squeaking sound of rusted hinges moving.

  The ground around the barn was littered with refuse — a collapsed chicken coop, old tools and machinery, a rusted plows and harrow, the burned-out shell of an old car, and several stretches of barbed wire and slat wood fences, now knocked flat. The air was redolent with the smells of age and rot. Everything combined to give the side yard the illusion of a devastated battlefield and nostalgia or not, it would probably be a good thing to get this mess cleaned up.

  Julia walked gingerly through the rubble until she arrived at the side barn door. She braced it open by leaning against it with one hand. The door was weathered smooth, but when a sudden gust of wind tore it out of her hand, a sliver of wood lanced into the heel of her palm.