The Grim Keepers

by CW Publishing House

  Annie sat up. She was weak and trembling from being touched by him, flung by him. She found her voice with some difficulty.

  “Please, Sid, it wasn't her who called you. It was me.”

  Her face was as pale as a mask and her lips were dry and cold. Annie could hardly force the words out of her mouth,

  He turned, his face open with desire. He wanted Felicity, true, but he longed for Annie even more. Lady Annie with her special gifts. If he could take her with him he would be more powerful in the realm of rot and death than ever before. He dropped Felicity to the ground. Her legs shook and she crawled behind the couch, crying and moaning. Even his touch was pain.

  “You want to come with my at long last, Lady Annie? You swear you will come with me? You swear you will be my bride once more?”

  “I will swear so long as you leave Felicity alone forever. Renounce her as your daughter and I will be your bride, Sid.”

  Sid held his hand out towards where Felicity hid behind the couch. “Felicity Dunworth, I renounce you now and for all time as my daughter.”

  His other hand didn't let go of Lady Annie for a moment. He turned to her, his eyes reflecting nothing but the image of Annie's own face as he leaned forward to kiss her. She saw her eyes were rimmed with red and devoid of all hope and life. Her face was thin and her own eyes frightened her. The white dress she had worn for the reading was soaked through with damp moisture from her husband. The fetch had come to her and embraced her. She turned to say one last goodbye to Felicity, but she saw their wet footprints ended abruptly behind them at a wall. On the wall was a picture of an old deck covered in the leaves of autumn, and a redheaded woman with white threaded through her hair, tending her potted Artemisia and clutching her shawl against a sudden, cruel wind. Annie reached her fingers out behind her and saw they were draped with seaweed. She cried out Felicity's name, but in this underwater realm of dead dreams, her sobs were only bubbles of air that popped soundlessly when they reached the surface.

  About Virginia Caraway Stark

  Virginia Carraway Stark has a diverse portfolio and has been writing professionally for nearly a decade. Getting an early start on writing, Virginia has had a gift for communication, oration, and storytelling from an early age. Over the years she has developed this into a wide range of products, from screenplays to novels, articles, blogging, and travel journalism. She works with other writers, artists, and poets to hone her talents and to offer encouragement and insight to others. She has been an honorable mention at Canne Film Festival for her screenplay “Blind Eye”, and was nominated for an Aurora Award.

  http://www.virginiastark.wordpress.com

  https://m.facebook.com/Virginiacarrawaystark

  Bollywog

  By Sharon Flood

  The Fergusons' garden of rotting vegetation and dark, damp soil stretched out for an acre behind their centuries-old, black, field-stone house. It cast a brooding, early-evening shadow over a group of girls who prepared to set up camp in the meadow behind the garden.

  “Here's a good flat patch of dirt where we can pitch dad's old fishing trip tent, girls. It's huge. All ten of us will be able to fit our sleeping bags in it,” Sharla Ferguson said.

  One of the girls stooped, picked up a fistful of black earth, and smelled it.

  “This dirt smells burnt, Sharla. Was there a fire here?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Over fifty years ago. There was some kind of grass fire. Nothing has grown on this patch since. I don't know why. Dad told me that he and his friend, Felix, dug up some ancient artifacts and some charred human remains here years ago, before I was born.”

  “Eww,” was the general reaction among the girls. Sharla grinned and shrugged. The ringtone on her cell phone sent out a shrill whistle, and everyone jumped. She laughed and answered it. She listened for a moment, said, “Okay,” and hung up.

  “Dad says it's getting late, and if we want the tent we have to go get it now. He doesn't want to set it up in the dark. Let's go,” she said.

  She headed up the path through the garden with her nine friends trailing behind her. The late autumn day was overcast and gray. A hint of winter in the stiff, cool breeze blew dead leaves around the girls' feet. There was a good deal of grumbling as the girls trudged through the muck of the path. Andrea Lawler strode up beside Sharla and kept pace with her.

  “It's almost sundown, Sharla. My new sneakers are wet and filthy, and I'm tired and hungry. It could be full dark before we set up the tent. Can't we do this tomorrow? It's Halloween. We could go trick-or-treating.”

  “It's my thirteenth birthday, Andrea. I'm the last one of us to become a teenager. We all agreed we were too old to go out on Halloween night. Everyone loved the idea of having a camping-out sleepover—including you.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Oh, you're such a whiner,” Sharla snapped as she quickened her step and forged ahead of the others. She wondered why she was suddenly so cranky. She liked Andrea.

  The group finally made it to the old carriage house that had been converted to a garage and machine shed for seasonal equipment. Sharla's dad, Gary, led the way. The stone building was over two hundred years old, the remnants of a country estate that had dwindled down to the house, the carriage house, and five acres. Now, a double overhead garage door stood where the wide open area for the carriages used to be. When they all arrived in front of the doors, Gary tried to open it with the remote. Nothing happened. He tried the manual keypad on a side doorpost, and the door opened about a foot, then stopped. He tried to pull it up, but nothing happened.

  “It won't budge. I'll need help, I think. Gather ‘round ladies. Pick a spot, get a grip on the door, and we'll count to three, then we'll all lift up at once.”

  The girls assembled along the width of the door, squatted, and put their hands under the door. Gary began the count.

  “One, two, three…lift.”

  Shrieks of terror shattered the silence as the doors rolled up and a huge black cloud of bats descended upon the girls.

  "Ah! Bats—I hate bats!"

  Sharla ran back away from the doors. She bumped into several of her panicking friends who were also running away.

  Gary leaned against the doorpost, laughing as he focused his camcorder on the stampeding girls. Some of the bats landed on them and were flung away as the girls ran. Sharla stomped on several bats before she realized they were awfully flat. She picked one up by its mangled wingtip and yelled at her friends.

  "Andrea, Joanie, Lisa, Allison, Colleen, come back. They're only paper.”

  She went to join her friends, carrying several of the black construction paper origami bats. The cleverly created three-dimensional flying rodents were examined carefully, as if they might suddenly come to life and take flight. Sharla stalked back to her father.

  "Dad. That was not funny. "

  "It wasn't supposed to be funny. It's Halloween. It's supposed to be scary. This year's video is going to be the best yet. You're thirteen now. I thought you'd be harder to scare, so I had to come up with something really special that you would never suspect."

  "Well, you got me, as well as my friends. Are you happy now? You can play your stupid video for the whole family tomorrow and laugh at how you scared the crap out of all of us."

  Sharla enjoyed the annual Halloween stunts that her dad had always staged for her and her friends. Those had been a little bit scary, but mostly funny. This one had actually scared her. She was not pleased.

  Gary grinned as he watched Sharla's friends giggle while they threw the paper bats at each other.

  "Still mad at me, Punkin?" Gary leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. Sharla shrugged and grinned.

  "No, I guess not. It was a really good stunt, Dad. It's going to be all over school on Monday. Are you done now? Can we get that tent and set it up, please?"

  "Okay, but help me clean up the bats first."

  Gary went into the carriage house and brought out a package of large lea
f bags. The girls had a good time playing “throw the bats in the bag” as Gary held the bags open to receive the paper missiles.

  When they finished, Gary led the group up the narrow, creaky stairs to the loft of the old carriage house, which used to hold harnesses, traces, and other trappings required for carriages and the horses that pulled them. It was now used for storage.

  There were squeals of disgust as spider webs and mouse droppings were unearthed during the search through all the old furniture and decades of stored junk. The carriage house was built long before electricity, so some rudimentary electrical wiring had been installed sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. A low wattage lightbulb hung from a porcelain lamp holder, screwed to an overhead beam in the middle of the loft.

  Gary eventually found the old steamer trunk in which the big canvas tent had always been kept. There was a large, old padlock on the brass hasp, but it was unlocked with the key still in it. He took the lock off and put it in his pocket, then lifted the rounded top. The girls gathered around the open trunk and reached into it to grab handfuls of the canvas. Sharla pulled out a heavy object and held it up toward the dim light.

  “Hey, look what I found. It's an antique cast-iron carriage lamp. It was right in there with the tent. You must have taken it on your last camping trip. How long ago was that, Dad?”

  “Thirteen years ago today, actually. You mother wasn't due to have you for another two weeks, so we went up to the Great North Woods for an international fishing derby. There were hundreds of sportsmen in boats all over a small, secluded lake vying for the grand prize. It was a twenty-four-foot fishing cabin cruiser with two live fish wells, six rod holders, and a fully equipped kitchen. It was worth five-thousand dollars.”

  Gary's mind drifted back to that long-ago fishing trip and to the fishing boat they could have won if they'd been willing to claim the huge, dead fish which drifted ashore right below their campsite. If it wasn't for the gruesome baggage it carried along with it…

  Gary gasped as the full memory of that night assaulted his mind in a rush of fear and revulsion. He jumped up from his kneeling position on the floor where he'd been pulling out the canvas, grabbed the lamp out of Sharla's hand, and threw it into the trunk. There were several shouts of protest and surprise as Gary pulled the tent out of the girls' hands, bundled it up and shoved it back in the trunk. He pushed it down with his feet so he could get the lid closed. He took the padlock out of his pocket and put it through the brass hasp on the trunk. He walked over to one end of it and squatted to get his hands underneath.

  “Girls, help me lift this on its end,” he told them gruffly. “Sharla, go get that thick logging chain hanging from the rafter over there, and bring it to me.”

  “Why? What's going on, Daddy?” Sharla gasped, frightened.

  "Don't argue, Sharla Diane, just go get the chain."

  Sharla let out another little gasp. Her dad was a gentle man; he rarely raised his voice to her. His harsh tone surprised her, particularly since she hadn't done anything wrong. Holding back tears, Sharla ran to get the chain. By the time she got back, the girls and Gary had upended the trunk. He wound the chain around it as many time as could, unlocked the padlock, put it through the two ends of the chain, then locked it again. With a grunt, he pushed it back flat on the floor.

  “All right, girls, let's get out of here,” he said. “Now!” he roared when they hesitated.

  There was a general stampede down the stairs and out to the driveway, which was now awash with the last pale rays of sunset. Gary joined them.

  "D-does this mean my sleepover is canceled, Daddy?" Sharla asked as her voice broke and her bottom lip quivered.

  Gary's manner softened when he saw the effect his bizarre behavior had on his only child. He walked over to her and put his arm around her shoulders.

  "Of course not, Punkin. You've been planning this for weeks. I'll call Patricia Kairne, your Girl Scout leader. I'm sure she'll lend us one of the tents your troop used to go camping this summer.”

  "What's wrong with this tent, Dad?"

  "It's old, and it's been folded up for years. Your friends have already noticed how musty it smells. You saw the mouse droppings around it. There are probably nests of mice in it."

  "Oh...okay..." Sharla agreed, bewildered. This weird behavior just wasn't like her dad at all.

  “Why don't all of you go into the house for snacks while I go get the troop tent? Sharla's mom put out quite a spread in the dining room.”

  The girls obeyed quietly and headed for the house.

  As soon as the group was out of sight, Gary took his cell phone out of his back pocket. He dialed a number that he knew well from years of Sharla being in the Girl Scouts.

  "Hello, Pat? It's Gary Ferguson here. Could we borrow one of your troop tents for tonight? Sharla is having a sleepover. Yes, I know it's short notice, but the tent we were counting on is rotted clear through one side. It was badly stored in a damp area. It's completely unusable," Gary lied. "Good, I'll be around by the troop clubhouse in about an hour. Thanks a lot, Pat, I really appreciate it."

  Gary hung up and speed-dialed his neighbor and best buddy, Felix Hauptman. He tapped his foot impatiently on the grass as he waited for his friend to answer.

  "Hi, Felix. Can you come by the house right away? I need to get rid of an old steamer trunk. Yeah, that one. The one with the tent in it."

  Gary held the phone away from his ear as loud profanity issued out of the receiver.

  "I know I was supposed to get rid of it, but the minute I had it stored in the carriage house, Maggie from next door ran over. She had seen me pull up, and she came to tell me that her husband, Carl, took Arlene to the hospital with labor pains."

  Gary listened to Felix's response.

  "After Sharla was born, I forgot all about it. Nothing ever happened in the thirteen years since it's been in there, so I think nothing will happen now. We'll take it out to that old dump down Zuwicki road and burn the thing, just to make sure. After we're done, we have to go around by Sharla's scout clubhouse. We have to pick up a troop tent for her sleepover."

  He was just about to hang up when Felix continued the conversation.

  "I know. I shouldn't have even agreed to use the tent in the first place, but Sharla saw it in several pictures from our old camping days. She asked me if I still had it, and I said yes. She automatically took that as an agreement to use it. She only asked me to dig it out this morning. I had already opened it when I remembered about that night. Well, there seems to be no harm done. We'll get rid of it, and that’ll be that."

  When Felix arrived with his truck, he backed it up to the lawn in front of the carriage house. If he had gotten any closer to the closed garage door, he would have buckled it. He jumped out and ran around the back to open the tailgate. Then he joined Gary, who stood a little bit off to the side.

  “Where's the trunk?”

  “Still up in the loft. I couldn't handle it myself, and the less those girls have to do with that trunk, the better.”

  “All right, then. Let's go get this over with.”

  Gary went over to the keypad and opened the overhead doors. The two men ran up the narrow stairs and over to the trunk.

  "You take this handle, I'll take the other, and we'll haul this thing out of here."

  Gary nodded. They each grabbed the leather handle bolted on each end. With a mighty grunt of effort, both men picked up the trunk and headed down the narrow stairs. It was a tight fit, but they finally managed to get it to the bottom. They carried it to the truck and hauled it up into the back.

  They pushed it to the side where a steel bar and several leather straps waited to safely secure the trunk. They strapped the trunk down and jumped back down to the ground. After Felix closed the tailgate, they both got in and drove away. Neither one spoke until they reached their destination.

  Felix turned down the mostly overgrown Zuwicki road. There was nothing on it but the old dump, and it had been closed for y
ears. When they reached the unused landfill, Gary jumped out and used his bolt cutters to cut the rusted chain that held the metal gate closed. He swung it wide open and hopped back in the truck.

  They drove along the barely visible track to the dumping site. When they got there, both men got out and lowered the tailgate. They released the trunk and pushed it onto the gate. When both of them were on the ground, they pulled the trunk down and carried it to a flat spot overrun with vegetation. Felix retrieved the can of gasoline he had also strapped to the side. He unceremoniously poured the entire contents onto the trunk and lit it. The resulting fireball shot several meters into the air above it. Thick smoke billowed into the sky.

  “Holy shit!" Gary screamed as he felt the heat of the instant bonfire. "Are you nuts, Felix? That smoke’s going to be seen for miles."

  "If it is, then it is. It'll be blamed on Halloween pranksters."

  They stood there and stared at the fire, mesmerized, neither one making a move to leave.

  "This will be the end of it for good, then," Gary remarked as he watched the dancing flames.

  "There should have been an end to it thirteen years ago," Felix said peevishly. The longer he stood there, the more he wanted to leave, but he couldn't even move.

  "My wife was giving birth. I never even thought about getting rid of the tent."

  "I'm not talking about keeping it. I mean we should have burnt it where it was."

  "There were fishermen all up and down the river. That big a fire would have brought somebody running. We should never have gone up there anyway, so close to Arlene's due date. You were so greedy for that grand prize you couldn't even think straight.”