Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  “Realistically? I got nothing.” John slouched down and — to Julia’s surprise — actually snuggling up closer to her.

  “So why not take up Randy’s offer? Give lobstering a try. Who knows? Maybe you’d like it.”

  John’s laughter came out with a snorting spray.

  “Oh, I can see it now. The Old Man and the Sea. Come on. Gimme a break.”

  “Just a suggestion,” Julia said, nestling her face into his chest.

  What she was thinking now had nothing to do with his work. She was weighing in her mind whether or not she should try again to bring up the subject of having a baby. She hadn’t come up with any new angle, but maybe, since he was in such a good mood …

  “I guess I’ll toss this,” John said, heaving a sigh and standing up after taking one last sip of beer.

  Julia started to say something but remained where she was, letting the moment slip away.

  Maybe later … tonight, she thought.

  “I’ll check on Bri,” she said, also standing. “See if she needs anything.”

  From the kitchen, John listened as she went up the stairs. It seemed as though every step on the stairway had a rusty-nail creak in it. He went to the entryway and tossed the empty into the bag where they collected the returnable bottles and cans. Pausing for a moment in front of the refrigerator, he considered having a second beer but opted to have a Diet Pepsi instead.

  As he was reaching into the cupboard for a glass, something caught his attention in the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw a single sheet of notebook paper folded in half and stuck between the sugar and flour canisters. A spark of recognition made him start, and at the same time he experienced a weird sense of deja vu like he’d had the night before when he had seen that strange double reflection in the picture window.

  He slowly lowered his hand from the cupboard unable to control the shaking as he reached out and took the sheet of paper. From upstairs, he heard the soft buzz-buzz of Julia and Bri talking. His father wasn’t around, but John couldn’t shake the sense that someone was watching him as he flattened the paper open on the countertop and scanned what was written there.

  I Won’t …

  A dash of chills raced through him when he recognized the same heavy-handed pencil marks. He chuckled to himself, but that did nothing to relieve the tingling tension that was winding up in the pit of his stomach. His breathing became rapid and shallow.

  Is this the same piece of paper I saw before? he wondered as he held it up to the light, inspecting it.

  He was sure he had crumpled up that first note and tossed it into the wastebasket, so this couldn’t be the same one, but it sure looked the same — even down to the torn notebook ring holes — exactly the same ... except for the additional word “won’t.”

  “Won’t … what?” he said aloud.

  His scalp began to tingle, and he was sure someone was watching him from behind, but when he turned quickly, there was no one there.

  The trembling in his hands got worse as he tore the sheet of paper several times, each tear making a sharp, hissing sound. When the note was a little pile of rough squares, he sprinkled them like snowflakes into the wastebasket, then crammed them down beneath the day’s trash so they were out of sight. Then he got a glass from the cupboard and the Diet Pepsi from the refrigerator, and while he was pouring himself a glass — even though now he could really use that beer — he heard Julia’s footsteps as she came back downstairs.

  “How’s she —” he started to say, but he was cut off by Julia’s sudden shout.

  “What the hell did you do in here?”

  Confused, John put the Pepsi down and came into the living room to see Julia standing there with an expression of total confusion on her face. The newspaper, which had been lying on the living room floor, was shredded. Several sheets had been torn into long ribbons and strewn about like party streamers.

  John was just as confused as Julia, and he held up his hands helplessly.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said, thinking if Bungle were still alive, they could blame him.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Julia looked at him with a harsh expression. “After that number you did last night about the reflection in the window … are you playing some kind of game?”

  “No ... honest, I —” John went over to the pile of torn newspaper and picked up several ribbons, letting them slide like ticker tape from his hand to the floor. Shaking his head, he looked at Julia.

  “Are you sure you’re not trying to play some kind of trick on me?” he asked.

  “I was upstairs with Bri. And why the hell would I do something like this?” She paused and, staring at the paper, suddenly clutched her shoulders and shivered. “Do you think it was … rats?”

  “What?”

  “You know — maybe they were going to use the paper for — I don’t know — for nesting or something.”

  She looked back and forth along the floorboards, trying to find any trace of the rats might.

  All John could hear was the harsh ripping sound he had made as he tore up the note in the kitchen. Was there a connection?

  “I don’t think rats would do something like this. The paper’s torn so evenly on the side. Rats would gnaw things, but … I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “I don’t like this,” Julia said, nervously scanning the floor and walls. “I don’t like this one bit. If one of them is brazen enough to come out and start chewing on our newspaper in the middle of the day while we’re one room away, what else might they do?”

  “I don’t think it was rats.”

  “Then what was it?”

  John shrugged.

  “They might get into our food,” Julia continued. “Or what if they attack us when we’re sleeping? There was a news report about a baby in New York City, where the mother came into the child’s bedroom at night and found a rat in the crib, gnawing on the baby.”

  “They don’t do stuff like that,” John said. “That’s right up there with those albino-alligators-in-the-sewer stories. You’ve got to remember, I grew up in this house. We never had a problem with rats before.”

  “Yeah — before,” Julia said. “It sure looks like we do now.”

  As he started to scoop up the shredded pages — and now that he looked at it, it didn’t seem quite so bad; only a few pages were torn, and a rat might have done it — ·John started to laugh, remembering one of Bri’s favorite books when she was little. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The image of a real rat wearing a pair of wiry bifocals and reading the Maine Sunday Telegram was too much for him. Shaking with laughter to relieve his tension, he crumpled the newspaper into a tight ball, went into the kitchen, and stuffed it into the trash.

  Julia followed him and, checking the time, said, “Your father’s gonna be home soon, but I don’t feel like cooking. Maybe I’ll heat up some soup for supper.”

  “Fine with me,” John said. “I’m not all that hungry, anyway.”

  The truth was, his stomach was twisting from the tension he had felt when he first found and read that note.

  I WON’T …

  Won’t what?

  After cramming the newspaper into the wastebasket, being sure to tamp down the remnants of that note, he tried not to give it a second thought. Seeing the bottle of Pepsi on the counter, he poured some into a glass and headed back to the living room.

  “I’m gonna pop on the TV and see what the score is,” he said, trying to ignore the withering stare Julia gave him.

  But he had other things on his mind — things that, at least for now, he didn’t want to think about … things like What did that message mean, and who wrote it?

  II

  All day Monday at work, an undefined sense of dread filled John. By the time he left to go home, he had figured out one reason why. Tomorrow, he was scheduled to go out to the Surfside condo project. Whenever he thought about the field where Haskins’ barn stood, he couldn’t help but remember the times he had spent out ther
e while in high school. And some of those were memories he would just as soon not stir up.

  The sun was edging the horizon as he drove across the bridge onto Glooscap. Even though he knew Julia would be waiting on supper until he came home, and even though he honestly didn’t want to, he turned left after the bridge instead of right, intending to drive past the construction site and the old barn. He kept telling himself all he wanted was to glance at the site so he could see what progress had been made, and he would know what to expect in the morning.

  The workers had left for the day, and in the gathering gloom, their silent, abandoned machinery looked like dinosaurs frozen in time, Everywhere, the land showed marks of their passing, with huge chunks of earth carved and piled up like mountains on the moon. Like blank, unseeing eyes, frozen puddles in the rutted dirt road and churned up earth reflected back a pale image of the sky.

  As John rounded the corner and glanced up at Haskins’ barn, a shiver ran through him. He was tempted to stop and go up to see what work had been done around it. He knew the place was schedule for demolition, but not yet. In he morning, he was going to check the grading for the road that would be laid out past where the barn now stood.

  He slowed the car, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

  There was no way he was going up to that barn alone … not with night falling so fast.

  Stepping down on the gas, he rounded the corner a little too fast. His tires skidded in the dirt the trucks had spilled on the asphalt, and his car swerved around the corner alittle too fast. He experienced a momentary panic that he might drive off the road and over an embankment, but he gritted his teeth and held the steering wheel until the tires grabbed the road and held.

  He was relieved once he had control of the car, but a plume of dust from his tires rose in his rearview mirror like storm clouds, swirling behind him. No matter how fast he drove down the road, he couldn’t dispel a gnawing feeling of dread about this place and especially that barn.

  He wondered if he ever would …

  III

  “You’ve got to talk to your father … or Mrs. Marshall …or someone.” Julia said when she greeted John at the door.

  He walked into the kitchen, shook off his heavy coat, and hung it on a peg in the entryway. Dropping his briefcase to the floor, he stared at Julia.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Someone’s been screwing around with the furniture. I went to the store this afternoon, and when I got back, the couch had been moved over to the wall. I had a hell of a time pushing it back.”

  “Did Bri stay home from school today?” John asked. “Maybe she moved it so she could look out the window.”

  “Bri didn’t move it,” Julia snapped. “There’s no way.”

  “I don’t suppose my father could have, either.”

  “Then it must have been Mrs. Marshall. She must have done it when she came to clean. I told your father he didn’t need to have her come in anymore, but he insists. He says he’s paying her with his money and she’s come to depend on the income, so he doesn’t want to let her go.”

  John shrugged. “Well, if she’s screwing things up, maybe it’s time we spoke to her.”

  “Maybe you should talk to her,” Julia said. “You should call her right after supper.”

  “All right … I will,” John said. He picked up his briefcase and carried it into the living room, where he deposited it beside the telephone desk. A moment later, he returned to the kitchen.

  “Oh, and there’s something else,” Julia said, folding her hands in front of her as she stood by the kitchen table. John raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t want to go pointing a finger,” Julia said softly, “but I’m missing some jewelry.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t misplace it?” John asked.

  Julia shook her head.

  “Positive. Nothing valuable, but I haven’t been able to find a necklace and two pairs of earrings. You know my gold-link necklace? And those two pairs of Laurel Burch earrings — the ones with the birds on them.”

  “What, you think Mrs. Marshall may have taken them?” John said.

  “Like I said. I don’t want to point a finger at anyone,” Julia said. “I was wondering if you knew where they were.”

  One side of John’s mouth twitched into a smile.

  “Those earrings don’t go with a thing I have,” John said, smiling at his own joke more than Julia did. “I haven’t gone to work in drag lately. You know, I’m trying to give that up.”

  “Oh, aren’t we the comedian tonight. Come on, John. This is bothering me.”

  “What do you think I can do?” John said. Then he snapped his fingers and said, “I know. We’ve got gremlins.”

  “I’m serious,” Julia said with a flash of anger. “They were some of my favorite jewelry.”

  “You know I wouldn’t notice stuff like that,” John said. “Ask Bri. Maybe she borrowed them.”

  “I …. I don’t know … I guess so.”

  “We can either ask both of them, and if it’s Mrs. Marshall, we’ll tell her not to come by anymore, that we don’t need the help.”

  “That might be the best way to handle it,” Julia said. “I don’t want to come right out and accuse her. But … maybe they’ll turn up. I could have misplaced them. Why don’t you call Bri down for supper? I’ll see if your dad’s awake.”

  John turned to do as he was told, but then Julia said, “Oh,, there’s one more thing.”

  What now? John thought even as he forced himself to smile.

  “I told you I went to the store,” Julia said. She bent down and opened up one of the bottom cupboard doors and took out a large brown bag with Trustworthy Hardware printed on both sides. She handed the bag to him and said, “I don’t care what your father says about it, either. I want you to put these out.”

  John opened the top of the bag and saw three large metal rattraps with shiny, mean-looking teeth.

  “After you give Mrs. Marshall a call, you can smear those with something — the guy at the hardware store recommended peanut butter — and put them up in the attic. I don’t want any rats in my house.”

  “What happened to your live-and-let-live attitude?” John said.

  “I still have it,” Julia replied with a sly smile. “I’ll let the bastards live as long as they don’t come into my house.”

  “Fair enough, I suppose.”

  John refolded the bag and put it on the counter beside the toaster. He didn’t relish the idea of setting the traps — or cleaning them if he managed to catch anything — but once Julia had her mind made up, there was no swaying her. If there had been, they never would have moved to Maine in the first place …

  Supper went peacefully enough even after Julia informed Frank that she absolutely didn’t want Mrs. Marshall coming by to do cleaning anymore. She didn’t mention the moved furniture or the missing jewelry. Instead, she said it was an insult to her own housekeeping abilities to have someone else do the work, and that was that.

  After supper, Bri went straight up to her bedroom, saying she was still feeling wiped out by the flu. Frank and Julia went into the living room to watch the evening news while John cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. It was Bri’s turn, actually, but he told her he would give her a break as long as she paid him back once she was feeling better.

  From the living room, Julia shouted to him, reminding him that he had a certain phone call to make. John almost countered that, since he had work to do on the plan he would be using the next day, and since she was the “heavy” in this instance, she ought to call, but Julia insisted it was his job. Reluctantly, he grabbed the phone book and flipped through the pages to find Hilda Marshall’s phone number.

  As he rifled through the pages looking for the M’s, when he saw a piece of paper stuck inside the phone book. His stomach dropped as soon as he saw it because he instantly recognized what it was … a sheet of notebook paper, folded in half … with its punched ring holes torn … an
d something written in heavy-handed pencil.

  He could read the scrawled words in reverse through the paper.

  Whoever had written it had borne down hard to tear through the paper. John dropped the phone book and hurriedly unfolded the paper to read what was written.

  “Hey, Jule?” he called out, aware that his voice was shaking.

  “Yeah?” she replied over the televised sounds of gunfire and a reporter’s voice-over.

  His throat went dry, and he wasn’t sure his next words would come out right, but instead of going into the living room to show her the paper and ask if she knew what this was all about, he tore the paper into tiny fragments and rolled them into a ball.

  “Uh … oh, nothing,” he said, his voice little more than a croak. “I’ve got it.”

  He went into the bathroom down the hall and sprinkled the torn paper into the open toilet bowl. He hit the flush, and the paper disappeared with a sucking gurgle. But even as he watched the water swirl the note away, he knew he was going to see it again — next time, probably, with another word added.

  He wondered if Julia, or Bri, or maybe his father was playing a trick on him, and he decided that, no matter what was going on, the best thing for him to do was simply ignore it.

  IV

  “Because I don’t particularly like rats, that’s why. Is that all right with you?”

  Julia was standing with John in the upstairs hallway. She shushed him with a wave of her hands, indicating with a quick nod Bri’s closed bedroom door. What bothered John was the smirking smile on her face as she watched him, flashlight, hammer, and nails in one hand — bag of traps, jar of Skippy peanut butter, and a knife in the other.

  “Well, I don’t particularly like them, either,” Julia said, eyeing the attic door. “But I don’t see why you can’t go up there and set a few traps.”

  “If it’s so damned easy, why didn’t you do it this afternoon?”

  “I never knew you were scared of rats,” Julia said, her smirk widening into a smile.

  John sucked in a breath, held it, then let it out with a slow whistle. His eyes practically danced in his head, flicking between the attic door and his wife.