Winter Wake

by Rick Hautala

  “Everybody has his thing, all right? Some people can’t stand snakes. Others can’t handle spiders. Mine just happens to be rats. Are you coming with me?”

  Julia thought for a moment, but even considering that he had already done one “dirty” job tonight, calling Hilda Marshall, she didn’t want to go up there. She could barely stand being here in the opened doorway. Crawling around in a dusty, dimly lit, confined area even if it wasn’t infested with rats wasn’t her idea of a fun time. She chastised herself for thinking it, but baiting the rat traps seemed like a man’s job.

  “You can take care of it,” she said as she took a few steps away from the door. “I’ll wait here and listen for any screams, okay?”

  “Thanks,” John said, shaking his head. “Thanks a pant-load.”

  He opened the attic door and put his foot on the first step, but before he started up, he looked back at Julia.

  “You’re sure you won’t reconsider? Last chance.”

  “Go on,” she said, waving her hand at him. “Get it over with.”

  He reached out for the light switch on the wall, snapped it up and down several times, but somehow wasn’t surprised when the bulb didn’t come on. None of them had been up into the attic since moving into the house … mostly, John told himself, because storing stuff up there instead of in the garage made it feel like more of a permanent commitment to staying. In the back of his mind, he clung to the idea that they would be moving off the island and out of Maine soon.

  With a flick of his thumb, he snapped on the flashlight and let the oval of light play up the stairs to the top. Only the floor of the attic was insulated, so cold air came rushing down at him. The breeze stirred up a thick layer of dust and cobwebs in the stairway. With one last inhalation of fresh air, he braced himself and started up the stairs.

  I won’t see any rats, he kept telling himself. They’ll run and hide as soon as they hear me coming.

  The floorboards creaked underfoot. When he reached the top of the stairs, he stood in a crouch, looking back and forth to each end of the attic, trying to decide the best places to set the traps.

  Again, he thought of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and chuckled softly, wondering if perhaps he might see a rat wearing Julia’s gold necklace and earrings.

  “Look out!” Julia suddenly yelled from downstairs. John swung the flashlight around and leaped to one side even as he registered Julia’s sharp cackle of laughter.

  “A real comedian, you are,” he snarled. “Why don’t you let me handle this.”

  He tisked softly to himself, but there was nothing funny about the sweat-slick grip he had on the paper bag and the flashlight. The musty attic air, which probably hadn’t circulated in a decade or more, filtered into his throat like fine-grained sand. The chill of the night air turned his breath into a fine mist.

  Looking around, he saw that sometime recently his father had brought some things up here. Everything was hazy with the thick layer of dust, but he recognized several pieces of furniture. There was the old easy chair his father used to read his newspaper in at night. The red covering was laced with holes from which yellow tufts of stuffing hung like curdled cream. An old coffee table with a chipped and splintered top was buried under several bundles of tied-up magazines. Some of the twine had rotted and snapped, fanning the magazines — old copies of Life and Look — across the rough-cut pine flooring.

  Further in were several boxes jammed so full of old clothes they bulged out the sides. Sleeve ends and hems looked frayed, as though they had been … chewed, he thought, even though he didn’t want to admit it. A wave of nostalgia hit him as he scanned the accumulated family history. Fragments of his childhood — maybe even his collection of plastic soldiers and his old Lionel train set — were up here collecting dust, their boxes good for nothing more than to provide material for rats’ nests.

  Was that actually his mother’s fancy blue wool coat, the one she used to wear every Easter, hanging from a nail in a rafter?

  And wasn’t that the sleeve of his father’s military uniform sticking out of that box, the one John used to put on when he played soldiers with Randy?

  John had been moving slowly down to the end of the attic, watching for any sign of rats, but there were no droppings on the floor, at least that he could see.

  He froze when a soft scuffing sounded behind him.

  His neck and shoulders were tense and tingling as he snapped around, his flashlight beam weaving as it tried, like a bloodhound, to locate the source of the noise.

  Was that a rat sneaking around behind the piles of junk?

  Or was Julia still at the foot of the stairs, making noises to tease him?

  He hadn’t heard her leave and go downstairs.

  “That you?” he called out. His voice, dry from the attic air, was little more than a whisper.

  To his left, he caught the faintest hint of motion, but by the time he brought his flashlight beam to bear on it, it was gone. Swearing softly under his breath, he scrunched down and opened the bag from the hardware store. Bracing the flashlight under his arm, its beam directed at the open mouth of the bag, he took out a trap along with the jar of peanut butter and the knife.

  He had three traps to set and, if he’d had his choice, he would just as soon have set all three up by the door. Let the damned rats come to him. But rats were probably smart enough to avoid something so obvious as three traps lined up side by side.

  John nailed the anchor chain to the floor, bending over the nail to make sure no matter how big a rat he caught, it wouldn’t crawl away dragging the trap with him. He spun off the jar lid and scooped a glob of peanut butter, smearing the bait pan. Then he spread the teeth-lined jaws apart and locked them open with the spring bar. Gently, he placed the trap on the floor, pushing it with his foot toward one of the piles of boxes.

  He had started to stand up to go to the other end of the attic when — again — he heard a faint rustling sound. This time it was a bit louder … and closer. A thin dew of sweat broke out on his upper lip, and a deep, urgent churning filled his gut. He waited, poised in one position until his arms and legs began to ache, but he didn’t dare move — not yet.

  “Jule … if you’re fooling around … “ he said, but as he waited for even a hint of a giggle, something moved over by the old recliner. A thick, heavy body dropped with a thump to the floor and quickly scurried out of cover not five feet from him.

  John let out a startled gasp when the rat, one of the biggest rats he had ever seen, stopped, turned, and glared at him with a cold stare. Its beady eyes shined like black metal balls glistening with oil. The rat laid back its whiskers, exposing its chisel teeth. It chattered at John, who still hadn’t found the strength to move.

  Christ … He’s going to attack me … he thought in a flood of panic.

  The open attic doorway — his only escape — was beyond the rat.

  It might as well have been a hundred miles away.

  The rat hunched up its body, its front paws skittering on the floorboards, making a sound much worse than fingernails being dragged across a chalkboard.

  Finally John’s body responded to his mental command to do something.

  Raising the hammer defensively, he took one step back and braced himself, ready to jump forward the instant the rat came at him. He prayed he could get past him.

  “Go on! Get out, you bastard!” John shouted. He shook both the hammer and the flashlight back and forth in front of him.

  The rat darted off to one side and disappeared under another pile of boxes … gone as suddenly as it had appeared. John’s heart was thundering in his ears so hard he could barely hear the scuttling sound of the rat’s departure.

  “Goddamned good riddance,” John said.

  Without wasting a second, John moved quickly to the other end of the attic, anchored, baited, and set the second trap, then went to the attic doorway, where he left the third baited trap. After spinning the peanut butter jar shut, he crumpled up the hardwa
re store bag, tossed it over by the first trap, and hurried down the steps to the upstairs hallway. Not wanting to disturb Bri, he eased the door quietly but firmly shut and locked it. He leaned against the solid wood for a moment to give his racing pulse a chance to slow down.

  “Everything all set up there?” Julia called out from downstairs.

  “Yeah,” John said, wiping his forehead with his shirtsleeve. He took a deep breath and added, “Everything’s Jim-dandy.”

  But he didn’t feel Jim-dandy because he knew the worst was yet to come.

  In the morning, he was going to have to check the traps to see if he had caught anything, and he more than half suspected he was going to lie awake half the night waiting and listening for one-two-three snaps as the traps sprung.

  Just Jim-dandy …

  V

  In the morning, it was even worse than he had imagined.

  Before he opened the attic door, he sensed trouble. And he found it, all right, at the top of the stairs.

  Overnight, he hadn’t heard any of the traps spring, but at least one of the rats had gone for the bait, and the steel jaws had snapped shut over their prey. The problem was, the prey wasn’t dead.

  “You son of a bitch,” John whispered as he eased his head around the edge of the stairway and locked eyes with the creature.

  The rat’s reflexes must have been quick, John thought, but not quick enough, It looked as though, just as the trap had snapped, the rat had tried to turn and escape. The teeth of the trap had clamped down on his left rear leg, which now hung from a few shreds of torn muscle and shattered bone.

  Cold, hate-fined eyes misted with dull, animal pain stared at John, reaching inside his stomach with a black, icy touch.

  You did this to me, the rat’s eyes seemed to say. The trap didn’t kill me … Look what you started … Now you’re going to have to finish it.

  For the space of several heartbeats, John stood there, staring at the doomed animal. There was a cold, hateful intelligence behind those nearly dead eyes, and the accusation chilled John’s soul. He knew what he should do next. He should walk up to the rat and step down — hard — on its head to end its suffering, if nothing else.

  But he didn’t do that.

  He couldn’t do it.

  No matter how much he knew he should, he simply couldn’t bring himself to go up those stairs into the attic. The dust-thick air clogged his throat; the dim lighting seemed to hide and distort vague, fleeting shadows that shifted from corner to corner. And way at the back of the attic, what he knew was his mother’s old blue wool coat didn’t look at all like a coat. In the dull light, it looked like …

  A body … dingy gray, bloated in death … suspended from the rafter.

  The old coat, John knew, was hanging motionless on the nail. He had seen it yesterday, but now, as he looked at it … It started to swing ever so gently from side to side … swing and — please, God, no! — turn around.

  In a second, he would see a face grinning … leering at him with eyes cold and sightless in death, but looking at him … reaching out to him with icy malice.

  “What the hell?” he said, trying to force himself to calm down as he started to back down the stairs to the hallway.

  Let the bastard suffer. I’ll clean him out tonight when I get home from work.

  He went quickly the rest of the way down the stairs, looking all the while, not at the rat caught in the steel jaws of the trap, but at his mother’s old coat …

  At the bloated shape hanging from the rafters.

  He made it to the bottom of the stairs and shut the attic door firmly behind him. Trembling, he went downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. Fortunately, Julia didn’t notice the sweat on his forehead, and she didn’t bother to ask how the traps had worked out. He sure wasn’t about to volunteer any information, either, so after eating a piece of toast that was dry and scratchy … like the attic air … and practically gargling his coffee, he kissed Julia good-bye and rushed out the door.

  VI

  Although the day was sunny, the wind off the water had a sharp bite. Even with a woolen hat and gloves, it wasn’t long before John’s face and hands were numb. He was in the field by Haskins barn, sighting through the transit and jotting down the elevations in his field book. All around him, the sounds of heavy machinery filled the air as bulldozers scooped out dirt and dump trucks dumped it elsewhere.

  It always amazed John how fast certain phases of construction went and then how slowly others seemed to go. Laying out this road seemed to be taking much longer than it should. He and Barry had been crossing and recrossing the open field on the ocean side of the road all day, and they still couldn’t make the staked areas agree with what was on the map. He hoped the boss didn’t blame any of the delay on his work.

  “Gotta do one more setup,” he shouted to Barry, who was crouched at a back site, trying to get warm. “Then let’s knock off for lunch.”

  Barry nodded, but as he started to stand up, he looked across the road. Competing with the sound of the trucks and bulldozers was an undertone of harsh shouts. When John turned to follow Barry’s gaze, he saw several men hollering and waving to them.

  “Wonder what’s up,” Barry said, walking quickly toward John.

  “I hope it’s not another bunch of protesters,” John said. He wanted nothing more than to get to the closest restaurant and start pouring in the coffee. He shrugged and, shouldering the transit tripod, said, “Let’s get to the next setup —”

  Before he could continue, though, he heard one of the men shout that they had found something near the woods.

  “Wanna take a look?” Barry asked.

  Sighing, John shook his head.

  “Not really. I’d rather get this last elevation done so we can break for lunch. How important can it be?”

  “I dunno,” Barry said.

  By this time, he had already started up toward the road, so John, still carrying the tripod, followed along behind him.

  As they clambered up onto the asphalt, one of the men who was coming toward them across the field shouted,

  “Where’s Watson’s truck? I need to use the radio.”

  “Someone hurt?” Barry asked.

  The man shook his head vigorously.

  “No … not recently, anyway.”

  “What is it, then?” John asked, feeling a sudden coldness in his groin.

  “Dug up some bones,” the man replied. He didn’t make eye contact with either of them. He was too busy scanning the area for a truck with a radio.

  “No shit,” Barry said. “So what’s the panic?”

  The man said, “Remember last summer, when them workers out to Old Orchard uncovered the body of that man who’d been missing for a coupla weeks? Well, I ain’t takin’ any chances with this. I’m getting the police out here right away.”

  With that, he started across the field toward the truck. Barry and John exchanged glances.

  “Bones, huh?”

  The tightening in John’s stomach was an actual physical pain as he looked across the road to where several men had gathered near the tall oak tree not far from Haskins’ barn. They were huddled close together, looking down at a deep gash in the ground. Twisted, arm-thick roots of the oak lay exposed to the air in a tangled heap beside the now silent backhoe.

  “Wanna take a look?” Barry asked, raising an eyebrow.

  John’s neck felt as if it were welded into place as he tightly shook his head.

  “No,” he said, voice sounding unusually high. “We’ve got our own work to do.”

  “Come on,” Barry said as he started out across the field, his boots crunching the frozen earth. “A little excitement to break the monotony.”

  Reluctantly, John followed him over to the spot under the oak tree. His mind was running on automatic, and he was barely aware of walking as he came up close to the hole in the ground.

  “What you got there?” Barry asked, glancing around the circle of men.

  “Lo
oks like someone was buried out here,” one of them said, pushing his hard hat back on his head and rubbing his forehead with the flat of his hand, leaving a large dirt streak above his eyes.

  Looking down, John saw a single knob-end of a bone almost the same color as the dirt sticking up out of the ground. The blade of the backhoe had scraped along the side, exposing a thick, mushy-looking black center. For several seconds, he barely listened as each of the men offered an opinion as to what this was.

  “Might be some Indian or something,” one of them suggested. “Look how deep it was buried.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Mike. Soil round here’s too acidic. Bones won’t last more’n a coupla hundrit years, tops. Gotta be more recent ‘n that. Maybe a farmer from colonial times.”

  “Bone looks too thick to be human,” someone else offered. “Might be a cow or a deer leg bone.”

  “Wouldn’t be too thick if it was your skull.”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  “Why don’t all a’ you guys get back to work?” one of the other men said sharply. “The cops are on their way. We can stand around here jawin’ all day and not be any closer to knowin ‘. There’s plenty of work needin’ to be done.”

  Grumbling, the men dispersed, leaving Barry and John and the man who had sent them back to work standing by the open trench. As the men walked away, they continued to argue about who — or what — might be buried there. Their words hit John’s ears like the garbled reception on a cheap transistor radio. He fished a cigarette from his coat pocket and lit it, inhaling deeply and letting the wind whisk the smoke away as he blew it out. He couldn’t move. All he could do was stand there, staring at the single bone sticking up out of the ground.

  And all he could think was, Maybe they’ve found her … Maybe they finally found Abby …

  Fifteen minutes later, the police arrived, and while they set about exhuming the single bone and digging close by to see if there were any more bones, John and Barry left for lunch. When they came back an hour later, the state police had arrived, and now they wouldn’t let anyone near the site except for the job foreman and the man who had first uncovered the bone.