Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  “Harmless?” Julia said, wanting to shout but holding back so she wouldn’t wake up Bri. “Do you call scaring her so badly she faints harmless? She’s lucky she landed the way she did. She could have banged her head really hard on the steps.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” John said. “I think it was a harmless prank that got out of hand. From the way Bri described it, they had it all worked out — what with her seeing that girl Audrey down by the road, and then having someone jump out from behind her.” He chuckled in spite of himself. “You’ve got to admit, it was pretty elaborate.”

  Julia sat cross-legged on the bed, looking at John and not believing what she was hearing. She also didn’t like what she was thinking, that he wasn’t taking Bri’s experience seriously because she wasn’t his biological daughter. Maybe that allowed him to see the humor in all of this, but all she felt was defensive and protective of her daughter.

  “I don’t think it’s fair of those kids — whoever they areto tease her like that,” Julia said, grimacing and shaking her fists with frustration.

  “But if you look at it from the other side,” John said mildly, “you could take it as — well, almost a hopeful sign.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” Julia snapped.

  “They at least consider her important enough to tease. I honestly don’t think it’s that serious.”

  “It’s serious if someone gets hurt,” Julia said angrily.

  John shrugged and said, “Yeah, but she didn’t get hurt bad. Mark my words — at school on Monday, I’ll bet the kids treat her a little better, and before long, she’ll be in with them.”

  Julia snorted and shook her head. “Yeah — or by Monday they’ll have thought of some other way to tease her ... some other little practical joke, and if it’s anything like this last one — who’s to say they won’t stop until they put her in the hospital?”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” John said mildly.

  He reached over and turned off the light, plunging the room into darkness. John fluffed his pillow and, with a deep sigh, sank his head down into it.

  For several minutes, Julia didn’t move. Still sitting cross-legged on the bed, she listened to her husband’s steady breathing, her eyes focused on the distant darkness out toward the horizon. She was mulling over everything that had happened, everything they had said, but she couldn’t bring herself around to John’s point of view. What those kids had done to Bri was downright mean-spirited. A prank’s a prank, but at least in this instance — because it’s my daughter — they went too damned far. If there were any way to find out who had been out there tonight, she definitely would make a few phone calls in the morning. First off, there was this Audrey Church girl.

  “What do you think she meant by that?” Julia said suddenly.

  John had already drifted back to sleep, but he rolled over and groggily muttered, “Huh — what?”

  “That girl … She told Bri to tell you she had seen Abby. What do you think that’s all about?”

  Even in the dark, she could tell John was fully awake now. His body tensed as he heaved a sigh and shifted in the bed. When he spoke, his voice had a deep tremor.

  “I have no idea. I mean … obviously it’s someone’s idea of a sick joke. Who knows? Someone who knows it — maybe someone who’s opposed to the condo development might have put this girl up to it, trying to spook me.”

  “Do you think she meant your Abby?”

  “What do you — Who’s my Abby?”

  “Your high school sweetheart.”

  “How the Christ should I know?” John snapped. His fist hit the mattress with a soft thump. “For Christ’s sake … this was a bunch of kids pulling some stupid Halloween prank. That’s all.”

  “Then why mention Abby?”

  Julia shifted around and lay down on the bed, not bothering to get under the covers. Her head turned toward the black rectangle of the window, she knew she wasn’t going to fall back to sleep.

  For a long time, they lay in silence in the dark room. Julia could tell by John’s breathing that he wasn’t asleep, His breath rasped gently in and out … in and out. Julia wanted to keep talking. She wanted to question him further, but their night’s sleep had already been ruined, so she lay there staring at the window, not saying what was on her mind.

  IV

  After tucking back into bed, Bri listened to the low-level buzz of her parents’ voices as they talked in their bedroom. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she had a good idea what they were discussing, and she was grateful that their talking masked the other sound … the low, piping of organ music that she might otherwise hear if the house were perfectly still.

  Sometime around dawn, she drifted into a thin sleep, but like a swimmer doing surface dives, she kept popping up to the surface to take a gulp of air before going back down. Her dreams shifted kaleidoscopically through her overworked brain, distorted replays of the night’s events.

  A face loomed out of the darkness at her, and in her dreams now it became twisted and rotted, with loose flaps of decaying skin hanging down in shredded chunks. Pointed, dirt-caked teeth grinned at her as the mouth opened in wild, soundless laughter. The figure standing down by the road became a thin, wafting, transparent shape that drifted on the wind. Thin, pale arms swayed like strands of kelp, tossing gently in the push and pull of the tide.

  Audrey’s upturned face floated up the side of the house and stopped at Bri’s upstairs window. Her cold, vacant stare was unblinking. Her eyes, as black as inkwells, drilled into Bri’s heart like icy spikes.

  Several times, Bri awoke with a start and found herself sitting up in bed, her face bathed with sweat, her eyes fastened on the rectangle of her window. She would have screamed if she had seen even a hint of a shadow there … and even when she was sure there was nothing in the window — no face staring in at her — her conviction that someone was outside, hanging from the sill below the window ledge … just out of sight — became so strong she wanted to scream and not stop. The only sound she could make was a soft whimper as she snuggled back under the covers where she was safe.

  With dawn brightening the sky, she finally slipped into a deeper sleep and stayed asleep until well after ten o’clock when her mother finally called to her.

  PART TWO

  Lachesis — the Assigning Fate

  I dreamed last night a deathly dream. Perhaps

  The morning will dispel it if I speak it...

  — Euripides

  Terrors compelled me,

  to terrors I was driven.

  I know it. I know my own spirit.

  — Sophocles

  NINE

  Wharf Rats

  I

  It was the first day of November, and the weather changed overnight. Monday morning dawned cold, windy, and raw, with rafts of clouds spreading like steel gray fingers over the island. The early morning sun, looking like a low-wattage light bulb, shifted in and out of the clouds like a teasing dancer.

  At first John thought the nausea in his stomach when he first got out of bed was simply a case of the morning blahs; but even after breakfast — which he barely touched — he didn’t feel any better. Worse, in fact, and during the drive in to Portland, the twisting in his stomach intensified.

  After he had parked the car and walked up to the Atkins office, the backs of his knees were feeling like sponges. He went straight to his office, bypassing the crowd gathered around the coffeepot in the conference room. A few minutes later, Barry poked his head into the room, a steaming Styrofoam cup in each hand.

  “I brought you a cup,” he said, his smile wide and pleasant. John simply nodded as he slouched in his chair, barely able to focus on Barry’s face.

  “Are you getting serious about your work, or’s something bothering you?” Barry asked as he sidled into the room.

  John shifted forward in his chair and, supporting his head with both hands, propped both elbows on the desk. Looking at Barry, he force
d a smile and grunted. The mere thought of taking a sip of coffee sent his stomach into a whirlpool.

  “I’m — ah, not feeling so well,” he said.

  Barry chuckled, apparently not realizing how bad John felt. He put the coffee cup on the desk next to John and said, “Well, what with working on Saturdays and making the rest of us look like slouches, it’s no surprise you feel like shit on Monday.” He glanced out the office window at the gun-barrel sky. “‘Specially on a crappy Monday morning like this.”

  “I don’t mean to —” That was as far as John got because his stomach suddenly felt like someone had connected with a solid jab in the gut. Spinning around quickly in his chair, he grabbed the wastebasket beside the desk and ducked his head into it. With three loud heaves, what little he had for breakfast splattered into the metal can like rain on a tin roof. Barry took an involuntary step back, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “Jesus, man,” he said, watching dumbfounded as John continued to retch into the bucket. “If you’re feeling that bad, maybe you should’a called in and stayed home?”

  John looked up at him with glazed eyes.

  “I didn’t know I was —”

  That was all he said before another series of dry heaves clenched his body.

  “Lemme get you some water,” Barry said, and he hurried from the room, returning moments later with a cup of water and a handful of paper towels. He handed them to John and then stepped back, wrinkling his nose from the ripe smell of vomit.

  John nodded his thanks and took a quick sip of water, but that only gave his stomach something else to heave out. After wiping his mouth with a paper towel, he was back with his head in the wastebasket.

  “I, ah, think you’d better head on home,” Barry said once this wave was over.

  John nodded agreement, but when he stood up, he didn’t think his legs would carry him down the hall to the elevator, much less out to the parking lot. If he had been feeling better, he might have found it funny how the room appeared to be expanding and contracting with each breath. He felt oddly dissociated from his hand as he reached out for his coat, and it took an incredible effort to put it on. Screw buttoning it up.

  “Don’t worry ‘bout the wastebasket. I’ll take care of it,” Barry said, stepping to one side so John could walk out into the hallway.

  Placing his hand on Barry’s shoulder, John forced out the word “Thanks,” and then made his way slowly toward the elevator.

  The drive home was hallucinatory. It reminded John of the times at college when he had used LSD. The worst aspect was the time dilation. It seemed to take hours to get out of town and across Tukey’s Bridge. The construction on I-295 didn’t help, but even after he was on Route One, he had the distinct impression the road was a greased upward incline, and he was getting nowhere. To keep from falling asleep, he rolled the side window down and let the cold air wash over him. He shivered so hard his teeth chattered, but it was better than falling asleep at the wheel.

  By the time he took the turnoff onto Foreside Road, the world looked and sounded like it was submerged in water. Crossing the bridge onto Glooscap, he was still shivered with fever chills, so he rolled the window up and clamped his coat collar tightly around his neck. That didn’t do much good. By the time he slowed for the turn into the driveway, bright yellow spots were zigzagging like meteors across his vision.

  He stopped the car halfway up the driveway, not caring that he left it at an angle that blocked the garage door. All he cared about was getting into the house and upstairs to bed. The only positive thought was that, since this bug had hit him so hard and fast, maybe it would leave as quickly.

  “I’m home,” he called out as he shouldered open the door and lurched into the kitchen. His voice barely carried above a whisper, but he could tell from the dense silence of the house that both Julia and Frank were out. Bri had left for school when he left for work, so that left the whole house to himself and his misery.

  The churning in his stomach was slightly better, but he needed something to help settle it. He opened the refrigerator, grabbed the half-liter bottle of ginger ale, twisted off the cap, and drank down several swallows. With a rumbling belch that almost brought everything back up, he went over to the counter, fumbling for a pen to leave Julia a note, telling her that he was upstairs in bed and didn’t want to be disturbed.

  He found a pencil and notepad, but when he walked over to the kitchen table and sat down, he noticed a sheet of paper lying squarely in the center of the table.

  “What the — ?” he muttered, picking it up and looking at it. The sheet had been torn from a notebook; all three ring holes were ripped. At the top of the sheet, a single letter — or was it a number? — was scrawled in heavy pencil.

  I

  Dizzy with fever, John scowled at the page, trying to figure out what it was. Obviously it had come from Bri’s notebook. She had probably started to write something and then changed her mind. Most likely, in the flurry of activity to catch the school bus, she had forgotten to throw it away.

  With a quick flexing of his fingers, John crumpled the paper into a tight ball, twisted around in his chair, and tossed it at the wastebasket. It hit the rim and bounced onto the floor beside the refrigerator. Rather than getting up and putting it into the wastebasket, John stood up, shaking with chills, and made his way up the stairs. The joints in his arms and legs burned like hot wires as he peeled off his shirt and pants and slid under the covers. Within seconds, he was flirting with sleep, and throughout the rest of the morning, his awareness skimmed like a seabird over the surface of sleep.

  As his fever raged, vague dreams and images twisted through his mind. Several times, he became convinced there was someone in the room, standing at the head of the bed....

  How can that be, he wondered groggily, when the bed is up against the wall?

  But that was the feeling he had as he wrestled with sleep.

  Maybe it was Julia, back from wherever she had gone. But if it had been her, she no doubt would have talked to him, asked him how he was, maybe gotten him some more ginger ale.

  He remembered leaving the bottle of ginger ale on the kitchen table, and like someone lost in the desert who sees a distant oasis, he wanted nothing more than to get that bottle of ginger ale and gulp it down. But he didn’t have half the strength he needed to get downstairs, and even if he did, he knew he couldn’t make it back upstairs to bed. At one point, he dreamed he did get down to the kitchen, but when he grabbed the bottle and tilted his head back to drink, his mouth was suddenly filled by a flood of soft-bodied, gray things — maggots! He woke up, sputtering and spitting, but — surprisingly — didn’t throw up again.

  Over the course of the morning, the clouds had shifted and sunlight now filtered into the room. In his brief moments of clear consciousness, John watched motes of dust, brightly illuminated, spinning like planets and then winking out as they drifted into shadow. The shadows themselves — cold and blue — seemed to shimmer and sway, at times creating the watery illusion that the bedroom furniture was moving, shifting soundlessly across the floor.

  The worst part of it was the sense he had that someone was hovering around the bed as he lay there tossing and turning. The image he had seen — When? he wondered — rose in his mind with shocking clarity.

  A slouching gray shape dangled from the ceiling, frayed rope digging deeply into the flesh of the neck. The head was snapped to one side because of the broken neck. The face, gray and bloated, was turned away from him, but in his mind he saw the face turning... slowly turning... to look at him. The eyes, cold and lifeless, were slowly opening.

  The image rose in his mind and fell away like the surge of the tides. Every now and again, John would hear what might have been a soft, indistinct voice whispering close to his ear... so close, in fact, that he could almost imagine the cold, dead breath washing over the side of his face like ice water. He couldn’t understand the words, and whenever he turned his head to see who was there, the voice would
shift to the other side, still hissing and whispering weakly like a radio signal struggling to increase its gain.

  Sometime in the early afternoon — he knew it was afternoon because, in a moment of clarity, he saw that there were no longer shadows cast across the sill of the east-facing bedroom window — he imagined a hand reaching out from behind the bed and gently brushing the sides of his neck. Icy darts shot up to the base of his skull when the cold fingers gently stroked his throat under his jaw. The touch — like the whispering voice at his ear — was faint, as though, as much as those hands might want to grab him, they didn’t have enough substance or strength … not yet, anyway.

  Throughout the afternoon, the voice whispering to him from the head of the bed seemed to gain in strength, so he could actually make out a few of the words. Lying there with his eyes closed, John tried to focus his awareness, imagining it as a beam of laser light cutting through the darkness, but no amount of concentration would bring the voice in any clearer.

  “ … didn’t … fault … haven’t … yours …” the voice hissed, wavering up and down the scale.

  Moaning and tossing his head in the fever-hot well of his pillow, John tried to reply, thinking that whoever was trying to speak to him had an important message for him.

  ... you... realize... fault...

  John’s muttered responses were no more coherent than the babble of words he was hearing. He blurted out fragments of thoughts, none of which, in his more lucid moments, made any sense even to him.

  Sometime in the afternoon, Julia came upstairs — yes …It was really her — and asked if he needed anything. Grateful at last to actually see someone, and not feel like there was an unseen person in the room whose hands were reaching out for him from the wall behind him, he shook his head and rasped a single word, “No.”