by Rick Hautala
“But you’re the older brother,” Bill said. “It’s up to you to stop it. You can’t go through life pounding the crap out of your brother whenever you feel a little hostility.”
Kip had been slowly edging his way up the stairs, but once he was halfway up, he suddenly darted the rest of the way and left the two of them downstairs. He’d heard it all before, and he knew that—like always—it wasn’t going to change a single thing. Marty would still pound him down whenever he got the chance. That was just the way it was, and he figured that sooner or later he would just have to accept that.
Kip flung open the door to his bedroom and hurriedly undid his pants, sliding them and his wet underwear off, and kicking them into the pile of dirty laundry by his bureau. His eyes caught his collection of metal fantasy figures, and he was held by the small, gray shape of a knight with his sword raised high over his head.
Standing by his bed, naked from the waist down, Kip closed his eyes to stop the flood of tears. In his mind, he saw the figure of the knight, looming tall, raising his sword up high, and then swiping it down with a whistling swoosh to strike off Marty’s head.
The stomping of Marty’s feet on the stairs broke his fantasy of revenge, and Kip grabbed for a new pair of skivvies as Marty’s footsteps came down the hallway and paused at his door.
“What’s a matta, baby?” a pitiful sounding voice said from behind the door. “Is the baby crying?”
Kip said nothing as he scrambled to pull on his clean clothes, fearful Marty would open the door and see him half naked like this. He realized that, at least up until five years ago, Marty would have said, “Is mama’s little baby crying?”
“Is the baby all upset now?” Marty said, followed by several mock sniffles.
“Leave me alone, or I’ll tell Dad.”
“Oh? And what will you tell him?” Marty cooed.
“That big bad brother made little brother pee his pants?”
“Get bent!” Kip shouted, hoping it would mask the sound of him running his zipper closed.
He tensed, waiting to hear the sound of his bedroom doorknob turning and to see Marty’s bloodshot eyes glaring at him from the doorway; but the footsteps continued down the hallway, and Kip knew that—for now, at least—he was safe. But he wouldn’t be...not for long...not unless he did something about it. And boy, oh boy, did he have a plan that would make them all—maybe even Marty—sorry.
5
After changing his pants, Kip went down and helped his father finish getting supper ready. The meal wasn’t very inspired—just hamburgers, peas, French fries, and salad. Marty muttered something about how they would have been better off eating at McDonald’s, but other than that, there was little dinner conversation beyond the ordinary questions about school and what they had planned for the weekend.
Bill and Kip were still only halfway through their meals when Marty slammed the last trace of hamburger bun into his mouth, gulped a final swallow of milk, and kicked his chair back.
“I guess I’ll head out now,” he said, his voice muffled by the food.
Bill glanced at him and then at the clock over the refrigerator. “I realize it’s the weekend and everything, but I’d still like you home by eleven.”
Marty snorted as he shrugged into his jeans jacket, wiping his mouth on the sleeve.
“Where’re you going, and who are you going to be with?” Bill asked.
He was getting used to Marty’s grunts and non-answers, but he still tried to communicate with him even though, deep down, he feared it was already too late to reach him. He tried not to imagine that, in a few short years, Marty would be looking and acting like Woody. With Kip, at least, he had fewer worries, and he found it a little ironic that it was Kip, not Marty, who was seeing a psychiatrist.
“Just out,” Marty said, leaning halfway out the door. “Maybe a movie or somethin’. With the guys.”
“Home by eleven. I mean it,” Bill repeated, tapping his watch, and then, with a slam of the screen door, Marty was gone.
Bill and Kip finished eating, cleared the table, and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher. They, too, had their long stretches of silence, but theirs were different if only because they had shared that day five years ago.
On the drive back from Portland this morning, Bill—as usual—had tried to find out what Kip and Dr. Fielding had talked about. He hadn’t probed too much, but he tried to show genuine interest in what Kip was going through, the things he was trying to sort out. But for whatever reason, Kip held back, never saying much. Maybe it was all just part of growing up, and he was thinking he had to handle it by himself. The teenage years were definitely when you first started feeling the weight of the world on your back.
While they cleaned up the kitchen, Bill again attempted to start a conversation, but this time it had more to do with his own plans rather than with Kip’s doctor appointment. Still, he sensed there was a strong and direct connection between the two, and if he could just break through this barrier—invisible, but oh, so strong—he knew it would help both of them. He knew he and his youngest son directly shared their grief over Lori’s death, but until they expressed it, until it was fully vented, it would gnaw on them like a rat chewing through a grain bag.
But at every turn in the conversation, it seemed as though Kip clammed up. Whenever Bill mentioned that afternoon five years ago—whenever he even hinted at it—Kip’s face would pale, his lips would tighten, and his eyes would darken with a fear-filled overcast. Bill decided not to mention where he planned to go that evening. Kip said he wanted to get his homework done right away so he could enjoy the weekend, so Bill left him working away at his desk while he got into the car and headed out to the building site he had abandoned five years ago.
Driving down Main Street, Bill took a left onto Beech Street, and then turned left at the Baptist Church onto Kaulback Road. It was known locally as Mosquito Cove Road because nearby Deerfield Swamp was an active breeding ground for the pests, especially this time of year.
It didn’t take long to move from thickly settled town to dense woods. Four new houses had gone up in the last five years, so that made a total of seven on the road between the church and Bill’s construction site. Still, no matter how many houses were built, Bill owned nearly twenty acres on the wooded side of the road, with Eagle Hill backing him. Unless there was a massive attempt to drain Deerfield Swamp—something the local environ- mentalists would never allow—no houses would ever be built on the other side of the road. So Bill felt pretty secure that he and the boys would maintain their privacy once the house was finished.
That was why he was driving out there this evening: to check out the property and—after five long years—start mentally preparing himself for starting to build. He had only been out there a couple of times after Lori died, but he had decided that the mourning period had to be over. It was bad for all three of them to keep clinging to the tragedy as if it was the only thing that gave their lives meaning. With summer coming, he was more than tired of living right on Main Street in Thornton. Even if he and Lori would never share their “dream” house, he wanted more than anything to get on with building the house and getting the hell out of town.
Even more than that, he honestly thought that starting work on the house again would give all three of them a new focus, something to do together as a family. This was critical, and Bill knew that if he didn’t start actively pulling them together now, the pressures all around them would surely unravel them once and for all.
The asphalt road turned to dirt about a quarter mile before his property line. In the rearview mirror, Bill watched the plume of dust kicked up by his back tires. The trees leaned out over the road, embracing the dust with their cool, green shade, spiked by the golden rays of the setting sun. He slowed the car, anticipating the turn into the rutted dirt driveway. The weight of the car heaved over a bump, and the frame scraped against a half-buried stone. Bill stopped the car at the foot of the driveway and killed the engine.
Swirling dust floated into the open car window, making him cough. Then, waving one hand in front of his face, he snapped open the door and stepped out. Pocketing the keys, he stood for a moment, surveying the site.
The dirt driveway—which, he knew, was going to cost a fortune to pave—arced up from the road around to the right and up the gently rising slope where they planned to build the house. Some low-growing scrub brush had grown up where they had cleared it five years ago, but it wouldn’t be hard to get rid of that.
From where he stood at the foot of the driveway, Bill couldn’t see the cellar hole, but as he looked up the slope into the setting sun, he couldn’t help but think— That’s where Lori died—where she was killed.
All around him, the wind hissed through the pine trees. The only other sounds were the steady croaking of frogs in the swamp and the high-pitched buzz of strafing mosquitoes. The peace and quiet—Kip, five years ago, had insisted on calling it the “piece of quiet”—battled within him with the nightmare images of what had happened, the things he had seen and what he had found in the cellar hole. In spite of the warm breeze, he shivered as he started slowly up the slope.
When I get up there, he told himself, feeling his anxiety swelling like a pale mushroom growing in the dark, When I get there, will she still be there? When I look down into that cellar hole, will she still be lying there?
He increased his pace up the dirt driveway, feeling himself almost propelled by an invisible hand from behind. For the past five years, he had repeatedly told both Kip and Marty that it was unhealthy to avoid dealing with the pain of their loss. If you try to push it aside, if you hide it in the dark, he had told them over and over, it will only get stronger. It’s the darkness of repression that breeds monsters, not the sleep of reason, he thought. There aren’t any monsters in the clear light of day...
“But the sun’s setting,” he said aloud, the sound of his voice surprising him as he looked skyward and chuckled softly to himself as he crested the slope. He glanced over at the cellar hole, which lay like an ink stain in the ground. Once again, he couldn’t stop the shiver that danced up his back between his shoulders.
He had heard some of the stories around town about that cellar hole, and as he looked at it now, considering what had happened, he found himself thinking for the first time that just maybe there could be something to those stories.
He and Lori had planned to build, not on a newly dug foundation, but on the old cellar hole left by a house that had collapsed or burned long ago. The collapsing stone-lined cellar hole was testimony that someone had built not just a log cabin, but a home with a solid, granite block foundation. Something that was meant to last.
Around town, there were stories about a supposed witch named Goody Hibbard who had lived out here back in the late 1600s, when Thornton had first been settled along the banks of the Saco River. Of course, like all local gossip, there were no dates and no town records, not even a weathered gravestone in the woods to substantiate any of the stories. But long before Bill Howard and his family moved to Thornton, the cellar hole on Kaulback Road had been called the “witch house,” and local kids spooked themselves with stories about the horrors that had happened out here.
And sometimes horrors even happen in the daylight, Bill thought, grimly as he looked down into the hole in the ground and forced himself not to imagine seeing Lori’s mangled, lifeless form, lying twisted in the shadows.
The longer he stared into the cellar hole, the more threatening it seemed. Bill wanted to see it just for what it was, nothing more than a stone-lined hole in the ground with scrub brush, fallen stones, and rotting branches littering the floor, but the memory of the terrible memories of that day were still too fresh.
The sun was low in the sky, now, an orange ball on the tree-lined brow of Eagle Hill that edged the leaves with fire. The light cut into his vision like a knife, making everything hazy and indistinct. Even the ground at his feet seemed to shimmer in time with the sounds of frogs and buzzing insects. When he heard a branch snap with the clean crack of a breaking bone, a sense of danger swept through him. With a strangled cry, he started backing away from the cellar hole, his hands rising as if to protect himself from an unseen attacker.
“What the—” he muttered, scanning the woods left and right. A squirrel, no more than a gray blur, chattered and sprang from one branch to another, but that hadn’t been what made the sound. It had been something bigger...heavier.
The wooded slope leading up Eagle Hill shifted with lengthening evening shadows, but as he looked around, Bill couldn’t see anything that was threatening, certainly not anything large enough to snap a branch as loud as it had sounded. All he saw were thickening shadows and tangled brush that could look like something with groping hands—claws—but weren’t.
It’s just my imagination, he told himself. The quiet magnifies everything.
He struggled to steady his nerves and slow his trip hammer pulse. After five years, finally finding the courage to come out here and face his loss was twisting his nerves into knots. Living in town, even a small town like Thornton, tended to mask the sounds of nature. Out here in the woods, there were sounds and silences he just had to get used to.
That’s all it is.
Or is it?
The shadows beneath the trees stretched down the darkening hill, reaching out to him like bony hands. And within those shadows, he thought he saw other, darker shapes that moved in a direction opposite to that of the wind. Small, mounded shadows that could have been cast by tree stumps or rocks or something else.
Bill looked around nervously as he started down the driveway back to his car. The night sounds of the woods rose all around him as he strained, trying to hear...what?
The sound of a branch breaking?Footsteps?
What?
The gravel of the driveway crunched underfoot, the sound magnified as each step raised a puff of dust that glittered in the waning sunlight like dense smoke. When a sudden, wild screech filled the woods, he started running down the driveway. His feet slapped the ground, his arms beat wildly as he ran, looking from side to side, trying to identify the source of the sound but was so caught up by his fear, he couldn’t see clearly.
The sloping ground added to his momentum, and when he got closer to the car, he couldn’t check his speed. Small stones slid out from underfoot, and he fought to keep his balance as he tried to slow down. By the time he reached the car, he had cut his speed a bit, but he was still moving fast enough so he slammed into the front hood and ended up sprawled over the hood of the car like a splattered insect.
Both knees rammed into the fender, and sharp, stinging pain numbed his thighs as he rolled over and looked frantically around. He had no idea what he expected to see. Maybe a bear or berserk moose was about to come crashing out of the woods and charge him...maybe there was a rabid dog or wolf...or maybe some of those impossible creatures Kip said he had seen that long-ago afternoon.
Air whistled through Bill’s teeth and burned into his lungs like acid as he watched and waited, tensed, but the woods were perfectly normal. Birds sang, frogs croaked, and insects buzzed, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary.
Bill suddenly felt like a fool as he straightened up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His hands were shaking, and he had the unsettling sensation that other hands, unseen, had gripped his throat and were squeezing as he looked up the slope toward the cellar hole.
“Friggin’ jerk,” he whispered out loud, ashamed of himself for being scared about nothing. He took a breath and glanced at his watch. “Time to be getting home, anyway.”
He chuckled, hoping to relieve the tension, but as he dug into his pocket for his car keys, the screeching sound began again. Ice water splashed through his veins, but this time he looked up and saw what was making the sound. Perched on one of the branches overhead was an owl, looking down at him with icy indifference.
Leaning against the roof of the car, he studied the owl for a mom
ent or two as he tried to push aside the thought that this was some kind of warning. The owl’s weight had made the branch it sat on creak. That’s all. This was nature. This was the reason he and Lori had wanted to build out here in the first place. It was stupid, almost laughable, to be so jumpy. Finally, with a disgusted shake of his head, he opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel.
Before starting the engine, he glanced one last time in the direction of the cellar hole. Now that the sun had dipped below the horizon, he could imagine how dense and black the shadows filling the hole must be.
How silent.
How still.
How much like the grave was that spot where he had found Lori that day.
“But I did it. I went up there,” he whispered aloud, slapping his open palm on the steering wheel. “I damn well did it!”
Tears stung his eyes, blurring the streaks of purple cloud in the evening sky as he stuck the key into the ignition and gave it a turn. The car started up, scaring off the owl who glided away silently on wide wings.
After five long, terrible years, he had done it; he had gone back there and faced his fear like he’d been telling the boys all along. Shadows turn real only when you avoid them. Okay, so he and Lori would never share the house; but in a way, he felt he owed it to her memory to go ahead and finish the place the way they had planned. Even if it wasn’t a memorial to her, it would at least prove to him and the boys that life went on. Some dreams may die, and some dreams might get twisted, but life and dreams do go on.
He shifted the car into gear and slowly backed out onto the dirt road, heading back to town. Up on the slope, night filled the cellar hole, but the shadows there weren’t quiet. Stones from the foundation shifted, and dark shapes began to move. The dark hole Bill Howard left behind him was not silent or empty.
6
Located just outside of Thornton, on River Road just before the Cornish town line, John Watson’s house over-looked a bend in the Saco River. John was at the window over his kitchen sink, watching the sun as it dropped to the horizon and glistened on the river. His house, where he had lived the better part of four decades, was a small ranch house that had once been painted bright green but now was weathered to a burnished coppery sheen.
