"It sounds like a great weight to burden one man with," Roland said.
"That is one of the reasons I chose you. You just might be able to get the message to many. Maybe it will be on the television, or maybe it will be some other way, but with your job, I hope you will find a way to share my story. She set the journal on the table and sat across from Roland. She sipped her tea and began to eat her fruit. The sun washed the room in a comforting light.
Roland kept the conversation going by explaining his evening in the B&B. She smiled while he told her about his dinner at the café, and his walk around the town common.
"The town common is a lovely place," she said. "It still looks as it did when I was a girl. Everything but that dreadful-looking playground equipment anyway. Damn thing looks like a giant spider web, but the children love climbing around on it."
Patricia opened the journal to the page marked by the ribbon.
Patricia's Journal—Sunday, April 21, 1912
I went to see Mrs. Wilson today. Mother forbade me from going, so I told her I was going to Penelope's to see her engagement ring.
She knew I was excited to see Penelope's ring, so she didn't question me further.
Poor Mrs. Wilson looked terrible sick. And she was talking nonsense. She insisted that Timmy was coming back to see her tonight. That he came last night and hugged her so tight she thought she would faint.
Poor Mrs. Wilson.
Penelope's ring is stunning.
"Mrs. Wilson wasn't making it up," Patricia said. "I thought she really believed her boy had come to visit her. The mind can play tricks when you're in grief, and her grief was double. I couldn't tell anyone, however. If I did, Mother would know I went against her wishes. I wasn't a child, but I still minded my mother."
"Did you go back?"
"I did. The very next day." She fiddled with the ribbon.
Roland watched as she slid it between her fingers. She had such delicate hands. Not the gnarled, bony talons you'd expect on a woman so old.
"Mrs. Wilson was barely alive when I got there. I couldn't leave her another day. I went directly to town and got the doctor. Fool man didn't want to go out to the Wilsons. I told him if he didn't I would surely send Daddy to give him a talking to when he came home. Daddy was something of a big deal around here, so the doctor hitched his buggy, and I went with him back to see Mrs. Wilson.
"That fool man didn't say a word to me the whole way out to the Wilsons place. Treated me like I was some mischievous school girl. But I didn't need to be a doctor to read the doctor's face when he laid eyes on poor Mrs. Wilson."
"Did he say what was wrong with her?" Roland asked.
"No, just barked out orders, like I was his assistant. Get some water, fetch the woman another blanket, open that window."
Patricia poured herself another cup of tea, added a spoonful of honey, and raised her cup toward Roland. He declined another cup with a shake of his head.
"When I slid those curtains open, well, poor Mrs. Wilson screamed like the devil himself was shining through that glass. Dr. McKinney yelled to close the curtains, like I took it upon myself to open them.
"As soon as I closed the curtains, she settled down. My heart pounded so hard I thought it was going to explode from my chest. Her scream scared me so."
"Was there anything out there?" he asked.
"If there were, it would have to be a bird. Mrs. Wilson slept upstairs. Wasn't nothing coming near that window but glorious sunshine. It was a brilliant day, a bit cool, but the sun was so warm.
"Dr. McKinney sent me to fetch help. Said to bring somebody who could help me bring Mrs. Wilson down the stairs to the buggy. He planned to take her to his house so he could watch over her. I didn't think he was such an ass after he told me that."
Patricia covered a smile with her hand. At 120, she still felt awkward about using colorful language.
Chapter 10
Patricia stood and gathered the dishes. Roland followed her lead. Five minutes later, they sat on wicker chairs on the veranda facing the western sky. The sun was high in the sky, but they were still well-shaded beneath the overhang. The morning dew had long since evaporated, joining the wispy clouds high in the atmosphere.
"Did Mrs. Wilson get to the doctor's place okay?" Roland asked. He no longer asked questions like a reporter after a story. He asked them like a child hearing a riveting fairy tale, wide-eyed and his attention devoted to her words.
"Well, dear," she said. "She did get there alive. Was she okay? No, I don't think you could say that.
"That poor lady looked a dreadful sight. Her eyes looked like holes in her skull, and her skin looked as grey as the face of her dead child the day they found him in the woods.
"Roland," Patricia said, placing her hand on his, "when they got her out of bed, she was so thin. Her pink nightgown hung on her like a blanket on a clothesline. She was half the woman she had been just days before.
"She wasn't strong enough to get out of bed, but she had plenty of strength to argue with the men who helped get her to the buggy." Patricia giggled when she recalled the memory. "Some of the words I heard her use, I'd never heard spoken by a woman until that day. She insisted that if she left, Timmy would not know where to find her. Of course, Dr. McKinney just thought these the ramblings of a delirious woman."
"You didn't believe that though, did you, Patricia?"
"It was in her eyes. There was nothing in her eyes but concern for her boy. Sure, she was concerned about a child who was in the ground, but somehow her eyes told me that Timmy would be back to find her. It was those eyes that kept me from sleep that spring and summer. When someone made a comment about the impossible, I saw Mrs. Wilson's eyes. I saw the knowledge that not everything we know to be true is in fact true. Does that make any sense to you?"
"I think so," Roland said. "There is a whole lot of world out there. Mankind will be discovering new things centuries after we are all gone. Things that people of today think impossible."
"Something like that," she said. "Something very much like that."
The sun had crept around to the side of the house, and the far end of the veranda was now soaking in the brilliant spring sunshine. A grey tabby leaped up on the railing, stretched out, dug its claws into the ancient wood, then went to sleep.
"Yours?" Roland asked, motioning to the now sleeping feline.
"Do you have a cat, Roland?"
"A pet rock would die at my house, Patricia. I am never home." They both snickered at that. More than was probably called for.
"No, Scuba isn't mine. I don't think anyone can own a cat, Roland. Cats belong only to themselves. They only do the bidding of people if it suits their own agenda. Wouldn't you agree?"
His lips curved up in a grin that made it all the way to his eyes. "His name is Scuba?"
"Oh, that's what I call him. If he visits anybody else around here, I'm sure he is called something completely different."
"Why Scuba?" he asked, the grin still in place.
"Why not? Look at him. Can you think of a better name?"
He said nothing, just shrugged and looked back to Scuba, as if the cat might tell him.
"What happened to Mrs. Wilson?" he asked after he lost interest in Scuba.
"They got Mrs. Wilson downstairs easy enough. While the men helped her down the stairs, Dr. McKinney instructed me to open the door. Roland, when she saw the sunlight spilled into the room, she shrieked like she had been set afire.
"The doctor yelled at me to shut the door, once again like I opened it of my own accord, when all along whose instructions did I follow?"
Roland didn't answer, and she didn't look to him for one.
"While they were trying to soothe her, I ran to her room and fetched her blanket. It was macabre watching them wrap a living woman up like that, but what else could they do?"
Patricia began to giggle when she pondered what she would say next.
"Those men were not loggers, and by the time that they carrie
d Mrs. Wilson to the buggy and wrestled her onto the seat, they were spent. Huffing and puffing like overworked plough-horses.
"She made it to Dr. McKinney's well enough, such as she was. The doctor's guest room was on the second floor, and the men had it much harder getting her up, as you might imagine.
"Before long, Mrs. McKinney had her all tucked in. The doctor told his wife to get her some broth and water. 'Try to keep her drinking,' Dr. McKinney said.
She was anemic and needed lots of fluid to get her blood up.
"That's as much as I can tell you first hand on that," Patricia said. "Dr. McKinney thanked me for my assistance and sent me home. Dismissed me like I was a child."
"I saw her name on one of those headstones. She died that spring. She didn't get better at the McKinneys', did she?" Roland was so deep into this story now that he would have passed on an interview with Elvis, found alive and well and living in Kalamazoo, if it meant leaving before hearing the rest.
Patricia picked up the journal from the table next to her chair. Roland didn't remember seeing her bring it out, but it was there. She opened it, set the ribbon on her lap, and ran her hand over the page.
Patricia's Journal—Tuesday, April 23, 1912
I went to see Mrs. Wilson at Dr. McKinney's today. Mrs. McKinney told me Mrs. Wilson was doing better, but she was resting and couldn't have visitors.
When I tried to leave, she told me to sit a moment.
I wish I hadn't. Mrs. McKinney told me something terrible. She went to check on Mrs. Wilson before going to bed herself and she saw something in the window. It was Timmy, clinging to the window ledge, peering into the room.
She screamed so loud it strained her voice. She still sounded like a woman on the tail end of laryngitis. Dr. McKinney come running up to see what was wrong, and he could only say, "Dear Lord."
They both ran out to the side of the house to help the boy down from there, and that was when they knew something in Kings Shore was very wrong.
Timmy Wilson hissed at them like a feral cat might, then scurried down the side of the house like a spider.
"The dead kid climbed up the side of a house to a second-story window? Why didn't he climb in?" Roland asked, with more than a hint of skepticism.
"Be careful, young man. This story gets much more fantastic. If you are not in this for the whole ride, you might as well drive back to Toronto."
"I'm sorry, Patricia. But you have to know how this sounds."
"Why do you think the story has gone untold for one hundred years?"
"Can I ask you why you are telling it now?"
"You can, and I believe you did," she answered. "I am going to die soon, Roland." She held a hand up to staunch his protest. "My body has played host to a battle for so very long. Good vs. evil. Well, the evil has been all but cast out, and now I am free. Free to join Mother and Daddy."
Chapter 11
When the sun flooded over the rest of the veranda, Patricia led her guest inside. They settled in the parlor. Roland squinted through the darkness as his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside Patricia's favorite room. The shades were drawn, and the curtains closed tight, letting in only enough light to brighten the outer fringes of the fabric. A wind chime somewhere outside ushered in a sound so innocent, it seemed foreign inside these darkened rooms.
"Would you like me to let in some light?" Roland asked.
"I like to keep them closed in the afternoon," Patricia said. "The house stays cooler. I had air conditioning put in some years back, but I just don't like the way it makes the air feel. Do you know what I mean?"
"My mother says the same thing. She likes the cool air, but she rarely runs her air conditioner, unless it is over eighty-five."
Patricia nodded then motioned to the kitchen. "Be a dear, and get us some cool drinks."
Without a word, he went through the same door he had yesterday. On the counter, he found a tray with two glasses, a dish of sugar and a bowl of peanuts. He looked in the fridge and found a pitcher filled with what surely was lemonade.
"There is a bowl of ice in the freezer," Patricia called from the other room.
Grinning, he opened the freezer door. He retrieved the pitcher, added the ice, placed it on the tray and returned to his host. He found her seated with the journal in her lap.
"You were that sure I would come back today?" he asked, holding the tray up for effect.
"I had an inkling." She had a way of saying so much without saying anything. Her eyes spoke volumes that her lips never had to verbalize.
He set the tray on the coffee table, poured two glasses, set one in front of Patricia and took his seat on the couch across from her. They both sipped from the glasses. Roland twirled the liquid in his glass, studying the ice cubes circling. He saw himself in that glass. Trapped like the ice cubes, only his barrier could not be seen or touched, but like the ice, Roland could not get out. The realization that this just might be the story of his career made it impossible to leave. Trapped by ambition, Roland Millhouse would ride this wave until he rode it out or drown.
"You have mentioned many times an evil within you. That is something I am having a problem wrapping myself around. I have never met a gentler, sweeter person. I have to say in my work I meet a lot of people. I interviewed a sicko who killed his wife and their two teenaged girls, then chopped them up and tossed the pieces into Lake Ontario. That is evil.
"How is there even a hint of evil in you?" he asked.
Patricia shrugged, opened the book, smoothed out the page as though it were cloth instead of paper. She did this every time, almost as though she were caressing the words.
Patricia's Journal—Wednesday, April 24, 1912
Mother didn't need to tell me not to go back to the McKinneys'. I don't think I can ever go back there.
But Dr. McKinney's house is not the only place to avoid in Kings Shore. I saw him tonight, Timmy Wilson. It was just after sunset, the sky in the west still had a tint of purple.
I was almost home when the boy jumped down from a tree. The oddest thing. He should have broken a leg, but he landed on his feet as steady as can be.
The moon was pale, but I could see that boy's eyes. They were as red as blood.
I shan't ever forget this night.
Daddy's home. Thanks be to God.
"What happened with the boy?" Roland asked.
"It was so horrible, I couldn't write it down. I was staring into those demon eyes, incapable of running. I couldn't even scream. I believed him to be dead. Can you imagine what it might be like to see a corpse standing before you?
Staring at you with eyes as red as blood."
She reached for her glass, and for the first time, Roland saw a tremor of age, or was it fear, as she raised it to her lips.
"He walked right up to me, still dressed in the little suit he had on when they closed the coffin, sealing him in. He held out his hand the way a child will do with an adult. It was like he wanted me to lead him to safety. My mind told me to run, but my hand reached out and took the boy's offered hand. Oh, it was so cold! Even on that warm night, his hand felt like ice. I tried to pull away then, but he was so strong. He squeezed my fingers until I cried out. Then he leaped up and wrapped his arms around my neck, and his legs around my waist, holding me like I was his momma. He rested his head on my shoulder. I held him to me. I didn't want to but it was an instinct, I think. To me, he was a child, until I felt the pain. It was terrible at first, then it went a bit numb."
She massaged the side of her neck with her right hand and wiped a single tear from her cheek with the left.
"Would you like to take a break?" Roland said.
"You're sweet," she said. She took another swallow of lemonade, and Roland did as well.
"Funny, the pain, it was so strong, I thought I might faint. But like I said, it didn't last, and the numb feeling that followed was pleasant. That boy had punctured my neck with teeth like no human ever had, and drew my blood into his mouth. I could hear him gulping. I
didn't know then that it was my blood he was swallowing. I just remember it felt good, and whatever was causing that feeling, I didn't want to stop."
"Are you saying the boy was a vampire?"
"I guess that is what most would call him. Me, I called him evil."
"I saw all those headstones dated that spring. How is it you didn't die that night?" There was no judgment in his tone. No doubt. He wasn't all in yet, but he knew that whether the story was truth or fiction, it was true for Patricia.
"Daddy," she said. "He came home early. Word had reached him somehow about what was happening here, and he came as fast as he could. He happened home just when that Timmy thing was about to send me to the grave, or worse. I heard him holler, 'Demon, release my baby girl.'
"He did, too. Spun around and hissed at Daddy, just as Mrs. McKinney said. Daddy didn't falter though. Timmy was very strong, but he still weighed no more than a boy did. Daddy grabbed him by the hair and pulled him from me. It was awful the way he hissed and growled like an animal, all the while dangling from Daddy's outstretched hand. The tiny demon flailed its arms and legs at Daddy trying to get free. Like I said, it had great strength. When I saw Daddy's bruised arm, I almost cried.
"What came next caused me to faint straight away. The man who I knew to be as gentle as any human could be took his hunting knife and removed Timmy Wilson's head from his body. I can still hear my own scream as the cold black ick sprayed across my face. I gagged as some of that hideous demon's life force squirted into my open mouth. My head began to swoon from the gore and the loss of my own blood that Timmy had so tenderly pulled from my veins. The final blow came when that thing, dangling from Daddy's hand, no more body attached, looked at me. I don't mean it appeared to be looking. That little boy's red eyes saw me. It didn't die, not right away. It couldn't hiss anymore, but I think it was trying.
Evil Never Dies Page 4
