by Ninie Hammon
Maybe he had been … taken, snatched up into the jaws of the Jabberwock.
That’s the way she thought about it now, like a creature with jaws.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son, with jaws that bite and claws that catch.
She had written eleven children’s books about three little kids who did battle with dragons, using swords with magical powers to slay the beasts. She had made each of the dragons unique. Balderdash had been a huge red dragon with yellow cat eyes. Millicent had been a female dragon, smaller, black, with spikes on her tail and claws as sharp as knives. Constantine had been pure white, with red eyes that glowed like coals when he breathed fire.
Those images were metaphors in her mind for the Jabberwock, and eventually she would try to puzzle out in her mind the connection between her books about dragons and the real dragon they all faced. But not now, her mind was too fried to process any higher-order thinking.
She pulled into the driveway of her mother’s house, her headlights sweeping over the huge fallen limb that had been torn off the tree by the storm. The one in the driveway that Merrie tripped over. Charlie had dragged it out into the yard and just left it there and thought every time she saw it that she needed to get a chainsaw, cut it up and …
She got out, went around the car and opened the back door, unhooked Merrie from her seatbelt and lifted her up into her arms. The child was out cold, that deep sleep that had made it possible for—
Slam!
She banged the door shut on those thoughts. Not tonight!
Carrying the sleeping child up the sidewalk to the front door, she didn’t even question anymore why that was, why she no longer went into the backyard through the gate and in the kitchen door. That’s what kitchen doors were for. Front doors were for guests; back doors were for family, that’s what her mother’d always said. Flipping on the light switch in the front foyer, she crossed the living room into the hallway and down the hallway to her bedroom, where Merrie slept on a day bed at the foot of her bed. She recoiled from the images that filled her mind, of another night when she had laid a sleeping child down on the bed, took her shoes off and …
Not now, she pleaded with the rogue thoughts. Please, not now!
Slipping the child’s shoes and socks off, she planted a kiss on her forehead and pulled the blanket folded on the end of the bed up over her. It was a light blanket, but it was all she’d need. It would not get down below sixty degrees tonight.
The realization that that was true made her nauseous. She no longer looked up into the night sky. At the random, unblinking lights that weren’t stars. She didn’t want to see. Stepping out of her own shoes, she slipped out of her clothes and into her light summer pajamas.
Her mind was so exhausted she couldn’t think, yet thoughts spun around and around in it so fast they were in danger of catching her hair on fire. Both at the same time. Impossible? You betcha. Mutually exclusive processes operating together — piece of cake in the Jabberwock world.
Face washed, teeth brushed, she went into the kitchen. Too fried even to boil water for tea, she got a Diet Pepsi from the cupboard. The last can.
She turned to leave the room when her eyes fell on the chalkboard — where her mother had written the last item on her We’re Not in Kansas Anymore TO-DO list — buy bird seed.
She thought of this morning, when she’d imagined she saw Stuart’s handwriting there, had written some stupid message of her own in response.
Stuart.
She actually groaned out loud. She couldn’t turn anywhere in her mind anymore without running into pain, like her whole brain was full of razor blades. With a little burp of sardonic laughter, she stepped to the chalkboard, picked up the piece of chalk from the tray and wrote, “I want to go home!”
She put the chalk back in the tray and looked at the words. Shaking her head, she reached for the eraser. And froze.
Her heart began to bang around in her chest like a sperm whale in a fish tank.
Words were forming on the blackboard below what she had written.
She wanted to run out of the room, but her body had staged a revolt, had mutinied and refused to obey her commands. Unable to move at all, Charlie just stared spellbound as … someone? Something? wrote beneath her plea.
The handwriting wasn’t Stuart’s. The letters were formed with big, bold strokes, as if the chalk used to write them had pressed down hard on the blackboard. Angry strokes, she thought. Not cursive, all caps, printed.
The words formed slowly, but were perfectly formed, distinct and legible.
Beneath where Charlie had written “I want to go home” were the words:
No! Stay here and play with me.
THE END
Chapter One
Viola sat in the truck out in front of the house, with Essie beside her. On the street, not down the driveway that curved off the street to the front walk, and back out to the street. You a’had to pulled her fingernails out by the roots to get Viola Tackett to admit how excited she was, that she felt like a little kid at Christmas, but unlike the last time she’d stood in front of this house, eaten up with the wanting of it, this time Viola was gonna take what she wanted, take what was owed her! The universe had not done right by Viola Tackett and this was just the beginning of her evening the score.
Esther Ruth was quietly singing the nonsense song she sang almost nonstop from the moment she woke up in the morning until she went to bed at night. They’d all tried, everybody in the family, to figure out where she’d heard it, or even heard something that sounded like it because it wasn’t no real song, just one she made up. A lot of the words wasn’t even real words, just sounds she could make with that big old tongue, like most people with Down syndrome had, a’sticking out her mouth — ahhh-nah, and gahma-gahma-gahma and so-so-wissy-wheeee. You couldn’t rightly say there was a melody, just a kinda sing-song rhythm. If you asked her what the song was about, she’d tuck her chin and get that shy look on her face and say, “‘bout nuthin’” and then she’d say sorry, like she done something bad and most times she’d cry. She sounded so pitiful, like a baby rabbit got run over by a tractor, made this wheezy wailing sound, and big old tears would run down her face and drip off her chin. So didn’t nobody ask her about the song ‘cause didn’t nobody want to make the pour little thing cry.
Truth was, she wasn’t no little thing, though Viola always thought of her as a little girl. She was a woman growed and didn’t bear no resemblance whatsoever to her namesake, the Esther in the Bible who got picked by the king of Persia to be his queen ‘cause she was so beautiful. Essie was so fat she waddled when she walked, had a flat, ugly face, round cheeks and almost no hair right on the top of her head, though it did grow thick on the sides and she liked it long, so Viola just let it grow. Viola braided it in big braids that hung all the way to Essie’s waist whenever she took her out, which was almost never because the child didn’t really care where she was, was happy just a’sittin’ in the sunshine grabbin’ at dust motes, or splashin’ her toes in the creek, singing her song. ‘Sides, Essie wasn’t completely potty trained and was like to have an accident at any time and didn’t nobody want to deal with that.
Viola’s brought her along to town today to show Essie her new home.
She’d sent Neb and Obie up to the door to knock while she waited in the truck with Zach and Essie, had to make sure that Mr. Sebastian McFarland Nower III was at home, ‘cause she surely did not want to go waltzing in there without being invited. That wasn’t a neighborly thing to do and she was all about being neighborly, about treating others with respect. Even if maybe they hadn’t never treated her respectful — and they would one day be sorry for that, yes sir they surely would be sorry for a fact.
Neb stepped down off the porch and made come-on motions and Zach started the truck to take his mother and sister right up to the door.
“Drive slow, son,” she told him. She was determined to squeeze every bit of the juice of delight from this moment she had been waiting for since she w
as a little girl.
Viola Tackett was coming home to a place she’d never lived before. Now it was hers, all hers.
There was just the minor detail of Sebastian Nower to contend with but that’d be simple as flicking a fly off’n the end of her nose.
Stepping down out of the truck on the passenger side behind Essie, Viola paused to get her breath, ‘cause sitting out there looking at the house had plum knocked the wind out of her.
She didn’t know the proper names for the elements of style that made the 150-year-old home such an impressive sight. It was made of red brick, three stories tall and all the windows was tall and thin, and had little ornamental white things over top of them. The ones on the top floor was imbedded in the roof so’s the roof tiles come down around them and the second floor was all windows — one after the other, all the way around the house. The first floor had a huge porch, and a roof supported by white pillars.
Even from here, she could see the trim needed a paint job, and a flash of anger blew through her that Sebastian Nower had let the place go like he’d done, hadn’t kept it up so’s it was a castle, a sight to bless every eye that beheld it.
She could hear Nower’s squeaky voice, addressing Neb like Neb was the butcher selling a pork chop and had tried to put his thumb on the scales.
She walked slowly, regally down the front walk and stepped up onto the porch. Nower was dressed like he’d been at the meeting the night before, a suit and tie. Maybe that’s the way he always dressed, didn’t never wander around the house in a ratty tee shirt and jeans with holes worn in the butt, or maybe he was getting ready to go to church. It was, after all, Sunday morning, and a body’d ought to have they bum warming a church pew somewhere every Sunday morning. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” That’s what the good book said.
She stopped in front of the suit-and-tie-clad gentlemen standing just inside the house, with the door partially closed.
“Mr. Nower, sounds to me like you didn’t quite understand what my oldest boy was telling you.”
“I understood every word he said, thank you very much, and I am outraged, offended and …” He was so flustered he couldn’t even hang names on all the ways he was upset. “He says you and your family will be staying here. That’s absurd. This is my house and I have not invited you to be my guests. So I will thank you to get off my porch and take your—”
“Now see, there you go. You done already misunderstood what’s happening here, Mr. Nower, sir.” Her mock graciousness and subservient manner instantly planted a smug smile on his face.
“I knew there had to be some mistake, that—”
“What he didn’t make plain was that we ain’t moving into this here house as visitors.”
Nower was glad for the clarification, but still unsure where the conversation was headed.
“Well, then, I’d appreciate it if you left—”
“We ain’t gonna be your guests ‘cause you ain’t gonna be here.”
She wanted to laugh out loud at the look of shock on his face. He was so surprised and confused he didn’t know what to say, so she strutted her stuff across his porch — her porch — and stood in front of him.
“I don’t never repeat myself, ain’t gonna say this but one time so you’d best listen up. I’ll use little bitty words so ain’t no way you can misunderstand. If’n you like, I’ll wait if you want to go get your crayons so’s you can take notes.”
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind and she laughed out loud again. She’d never imagined how much fun this whole thing was going to be.
“I am taking possession of this house. As the duly … appointed — as of last night’s meeting — judge executive for Nower County, I am confiscating the residence as my home.”
“You’re what? How dare—”
She moved fast for a fat old woman and she was in his face in two steps, grabbed hold of that stupid red tie of his and yanked down so the knife she’d slipped out of a sleeve scabbard was at his throat.
“Here’s how I dare, Mr. Nower. I dare because I can, and you ain’t got no say about it one way or the other because you can’t. I’m taking this here house to live in. I can’t be overseeing the county, be the one who settles disputes and the like, be the “law” from a little old house on Gizzard Ridge in Turkey Neck Hollow … now can I?”
He said nothing, likely couldn’t speak.
“I got to be in a place where folks know where I’m at when they got trouble, so they know where to find me. I got to be accessible to the folks I’m sworn I’d protect. So I am taking possession of this house, declaring it … what do the gub-mint call it when it takes your house from you because it’s to be used for the good of other folks? The right of eminent domain, that’s it. I looked it up.”
He just stared at her for a moment, clearly not tracking with what she was saying. After all, he was the upper crust and she was pond scum. Probably wasn’t never a single time in his life anybody’d talked to him like this.
“But … it’s my house.”
“Not anymore it ain’t. It’s my house now, and you got …” She looked at her watch and then back up into his eyes. “You got half an hour to pack a bag.” She turned to her second-born son. “Obie, you go with him, see to it he don’t try nothing, help him gather up his clothes and his toothbrush and whatever else he can carry out of here.”
“This is … crazy. Where … where will I go?”
That statement was a drop of water in hot grease and Viola Tackett only barely kept herself from reaching out and slitting the old man’s throat.
“Where will you go? How about somewhere that ain’t got no indoor plumbing, somewhere there’s an outhouse that stinks. Couple dozen years, though, and you’ll get used to the smell, won’t seem bad at all. Somewhere it’s cold in the wintertime because the wind blows through cracks in the walls, makes the candles flicker on the table. Somewhere there ain’t enough food to eat so your belly aches from being hungry.”
She noticed his face had gotten red and realized she’d been pulling on his tie as she spoke, drawing it tighter and tighter. She let him go and shoved him away from her and he banged against the wall and almost went down.
“Get your things and get out my house!”
She strode past him through the open door into the foyer and stopped, looking at the polished floors, the curved spindles of the staircase railing as it wound across the wall and up to the second floor, beneath the sparkling chandelier with crystals so bright the flickering light stabbed like little swords into her eyes.
It was the flickering light, that’s what done it. Made her eyes water so big tears started running down her cheeks like she was crying. Just the light was all. She could hear Sebastian Nower whining like a little kid as Obie give him the bum’s rush toward the back door.
Then she sent the boys out to look under every rock, bush, chicken house and toadstool until they located the fella who was gonna make it clear to the fine citizens of Nowhere County, Kentucky, that Viola Tackett meant business — told them to take him down to that rinky-tink jail and lock him up.
There wasn’t nothing in the world good as a public hanging to get the troops in line.
Chapter Two
Jolene Rutherford was surprised there weren’t any cars in the Dollar General Store parking lot. There was always somebody there. The poor man’s Walmart, which was an oxymoron if Jolene ever heard one. But maybe the store didn’t open until nine or ten o’clock and that was hours from now.
She pulled into the lane to her father’s house across the road from the store, still unsure what she was going to say to him when they met.
How long had it been? She didn’t know, not because she’d just lost count of the years but because she’d never tried to keep track of them in the first place. She didn’t want to measure the time she had spent in a “fatherless” … no, “father-free” world. Somehow measuring it, qualifying it, made it seem like a situation that needed to be remedied, and sh
e had not been in an emotional space where she had any interest in repairing it — until …
She didn’t know why she had been sent her father’s medical records. Since the information had been identified as “next of kin” copies, she could only assume that was the reason, but that begged the question why now? Even though they had not spoken since … she didn’t know when … it wasn’t like she had only recently become her father’s next of kin.
It appeared to her that she had been sent these particular records because of the information they contained. Cancer. Dying. Okay, it didn’t say dying. Didn’t have to spell it out. Terms like “in remission” and “regimen of chemotherapy” and “quality of life issues to explore” drew an unmistakable picture.
That’s why she had immediately thrown some clothes into a bag in Pittsburgh and set out for Kentucky in the middle of the night. She’d left instructions for the crew to do the preliminary set-up work on the haunted mental institution in West Virginia without her, which, of course, had most certainly left her assistant Cecil Cunningham shouting “Thank you, Jesus”-es and “Now, I get my big chance”-es at the top of his lungs. He wanted her job, was, after all, far more “qualified” than she was, and had not the slightest understanding that the viewers wanted the eggheads to stay eggheads and the nerds to stay nerds. Her fans wanted them to operate the verification equipment and stay out of the way, to interact with the show’s host on camera only if she included them in some minor impromptu banter.
Jolene was the reason “If You Got it, Haunt It” was a success. Her personality, her charisma, her charm and wit were the reason people tuned in. Oh yeah, they were fascinated by ghost stories and haunted houses and “investigating paranormal activity.” But many a show had come and gone that did those things far better than Jolene did them. The key word being gone. She had stayed, had lasted because she knew how to work a crowd — even a virtual one on the other side of a television camera. She had earned her chops in that department in a decade of “psychic reading” gigs under a bajillion stage names. This show was the first time she’d used her real name. Jolene. Just Jolene, though. Dropped the Rutherford. Only one name added to the mystery. So did having different “plants” call her “Doctor Jolene” so she could protest with a convincing show of humility: “I’ve told you, I never turned in my dissertation — was too anxious to get out into the field to do research. So, technically, I am not ‘Doctor Jolene.’”
