Lying next to him in bed, Michelle listened with an air of patience. He’d figured on her being aghast at the information—perhaps even hysterical with worry—but far from these reactions Michelle only watched him with a frank gaze that revealed absolutely nothing.
“Is that all of it?” she asked when he’d at last fallen silent.
“Pretty much. Well, that and the fact that depression runs in my family. My dad shooting himself doesn’t exactly reassure me.”
When she didn’t speak, he said, “You act like it doesn’t add up to much. Like we don’t need to worry about our daughter.”
“Do we?”
He tamped down the surge of agitation her words brought on. “The day Angie Waltz came on to me at the Hawkins place—”
“You never said she came on to you.”
“Sorry. She didn’t get anywhere, and I didn’t see the need to worry you about it.”
Michelle gave him a sardonic look but waited for him to go on.
“That day by the pump…when she moved up against me…I swear I smelled ashes on her.”
Michelle nodded meditatively. “The same way Lily smelled those times this summer.”
Joe watched his wife and waited for her to come unstrung. He was perilously close to freaking out himself. Though his body was healing just fine, it was the emotional scarring that still gnawed away at him. He was sleeping less than ever, most nights lying awake and listening to their quiet house for the slightest noise. Or brooding over the possibility of his daughter being irretrievably marked by Sharon Waltz’s preparations.
He said, “What do you make of it?”
“You smelled the soot in Lily’s hair after Angie’s death?”
He nodded. “After Sharon scattered our son’s—” He cut off, clamped down on the quaver that threatened to hijack his voice. “—Ben’s ashes. I smelled it a couple times. Once when we were playing trains, once in her crib.”
“And have you smelled ashes on her since that night at the Baxter house?”
Joe thought about it. Then he shook his head slowly.
“So maybe it’s over,” Michelle said.
“I want it to be. But I’m afraid that’s just wishful thinking.
Michelle chewed her lip. “So…how does this change things? I mean, what does it do to our life going forward?”
Joe grunted. “From where I sit, not a whole lot. I mean, I’m already the world’s most paranoid dad. This is just one more thing for me to worry about.”
“But you don’t…”
“Do I believe Lily’s in danger?”
Michelle waited. He saw what might have been an inchoate fear in her big brown eyes.
Joe sighed, rubbed his jaw. “Look, Angie Waltz had every reason to be depressed. Raised by that witch…Sharon was all Angie had growing up. No father, no other relatives to speak of. So right there you’ve got a girl with very little support, not to mention the fact that she inherited her mom’s nasty disposition. Factor in the drug use, the messing around with that sick cult. All that weird shit. Cannibalism, human sacrifice…” Joe shook his head. “And then you take away the one good thing she’s got going—her child—it’s no wonder she did what she did. There might even have been some mental illness thrown in for good measure.”
Michelle did not look reassured. “What’s that got to do with Lily?”
“That’s just the point. It has nothing to do with her. Angie has nothing to do with her. Sharon bought into that whole legend about preparing a person for sacrifice, but all the evidence points to the more rational explanation—that Angie made the decision to kill herself. Granted, her mind was probably clouded at the time, but she was still the one who did it.”
In his wife’s eyes he could see the avid yearning to believe, the naked hope the nightmare really was over.
Michelle chewed her bottom lip. “You’re sure you don’t want to move to a new city?”
“I thought we decided that.”
“I know. It’s just—”
“Do you love this house?”
“Of course I do.”
“And the neighborhood? The schools? The town?”
She nodded. “You know it isn’t any of those things.”
Joe took her hand. “What you’re talking about, they’re memories. Those are gonna follow us wherever we go. This place is where Lily’s lived her whole life. Where you and I dreamed of living when we first got married. Leaving here would be the worst thing we could do.”
Michelle said, “And you don’t think we have anything to worry about?”
“I think it’s a scary world. I think there are plenty of things to worry about. I also think some of the stuff that happened can only be explained by the supernatural. Or maybe I’m just nuts.” He shook his head. “But Lily one day up and deciding to take her own life? That’s not gonna happen. Not with our girl.”
She searched his eyes for a long while. Evidently satisfied by what she saw there, she laid her head on his chest and nuzzled into him. “You think love is strong enough to undo the curse.”
Joe caressed his wife’s arm, inhaled the warm smell of her hair. “I do,” he said. “If there is a curse, I believe what we’ve got is stronger.”
When he was sure Michelle had fallen asleep, Joe peeled back the covers as gingerly as he could and crept out of the room. September had been hotter than usual, and to combat the heat, Michelle had taken to reducing the temperature to sixty-five degrees every night. His wife loved the chill, but the cold made Joe’s balls shrink. As furtively as he could, he bent to the digital thermostat and raised it to sixty-seven, a compromise he considered just.
He crossed to the hearth, where the pewter urn sat atop the mantel. Joe had been sure Sharon had disposed of it, but during the investigation of the cult, they’d found the urn on the floor of her van. They’d also returned to him the ashes he’d collected.
Joe let his fingertips brush the cool surface of the urn and said a prayer for Ben, his unborn son.
Then he went to the basement and contorted his body around the furnace until his groping fingers located the key. Moving briskly now, he crossed to the padlock covering the small crawlspace door. He unlocked the door, pocketed the key, and let the padlock hang. Joe took a moment to move the footstool into place, then he squirmed into the crawlspace entry, which was just wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. He crawled forward on elbows and knees until he reached the gun cabinet.
Michelle told him he was crazy for storing it under the house, and he supposed he was. But he’d heard all kinds of crazy stories about kids breaking into their dad’s gun safes, messing around with them, and blowing themselves or a friend away.
But it’s a combination lock, Michelle had argued.
You saying those things are foolproof? he’d countered.
Michelle suggested he keep the safe in his bedroom closet. Then, she reasoned, he’d be able to access the guns in case of a home invasion. What the hell did he think he was going to do, she added wryly, tell the invaders to hold on a second while he crawled under the house to arm himself?
Joe sighed, dialed in the proper numbers, as he’d done every night since returning home from the hospital. Yes, she was right. Of course she was right. There was no earthly reason to keep the safe under the house. But what she didn’t take into account—and what Joe refused to articulate, though she knew it just as well as he did—was that the events of the summer had taken that part of him, that raw, misshapen tumor of irrational paranoia and caused it to metastasize, its writhing black tendrils extending now to his every thought and deed.
I won’t let them hurt my baby, he thought. Gritting his teeth, he wrenched open the cabinet door.
To the replacement .38 the insurance company had provided, Joe had added a Remington 12 gauge and his own personal favorite, the .44 Magnum Colt Anaco
nda. He knew it wasn’t the same one Dirty Harry had used, but that’s how the gun made Joe feel whenever he gripped it.
In the gloom of the crawlspace, he only debated a second or two before selecting the Anaconda.
Taking care to lock the safe and return the key to its hiding place, Joe tromped up the stairs with the Anaconda at his side, its weight like a talisman against the skulking shadows he encountered on the way to the second floor.
Once there, he went to the room that had once been their office but was now a second nursery. Joe left the light off. Beyond the translucent baby blue curtains—Michelle had decorated the room almost entirely in baby blue—Joe could make out the dark void where once had stood the Baxter house. He didn’t like for the boy to sleep so near the site of where they’d both almost died, but it was preferable to having Lily on this side of the house. Lily, he reminded himself, was the one who needed the most protection. Lily was the one who’d been prepared, as Sharon and Bridget had claimed. Lily was the one Joe needed to keep a constant eye on.
Joe reached the crib, peered over the railing at his son. Little Stevie was sleeping soundly, he saw. The boy nearly always did. Joe had worried the child might suffer from nightmares, from recurring memories of that terrible night, or even of the many terrible nights the boy had no doubt experienced while living with Angie and Sharon. But Stevie slept like a stone, just like Michelle did. It was almost as if, upon adopting Stevie, Michelle had transferred to him her tendency to zonk out the moment her head hit the pillow and to remain in that position until early morning.
Joe reached down, stroked the boy’s forehead.
Stevie did not stir. Only continued his smooth, peaceful breathing.
Joe caressed the boy’s forehead one more time before heading down the hallway to Lily’s room. Four feet from the closed door, he realized he was holding his breath. You did that, some part of him argued, you wouldn’t smell anything you didn’t want to smell, and as long as you didn’t smell it, you could believe it wasn’t there.
His whole body trembling, Joe allowed himself to inhale.
The atmosphere outside Lily’s door seemed clean.
Without the faintest tinge of ashes.
Joe reached out, twisted the knob. And let himself into his daughter’s room. Again, he realized he was holding his breath, so again he forced himself to breathe normally. Still no whiff of smoke or cinders. Still clean air.
Joe bent down, placed the Anaconda on the floor, making sure to point the barrel toward the bathroom rather than one of his kids’ rooms.
He made his way around to Lily’s cribside and peered at her through the gathered darkness. Joe reached out to touch Lily, her little shoulder snug within the warm polka-dotted pajamas she loved. He smiled down at her.
Snatches of Sharon Waltz’s hateful words battered at his mind:
You’ve failed to protect your family.
Joe’s smile faded. The hand on his daughter’s shoulder tightened involuntarily.
You and your family will be dead soon.
His airway began to constrict. In her sleep, Lily stirred at the grip on her shoulder.
They’ll take her too, you son of a bitch.
Joe squeezed his eyes shut, thrashed his head from side to side, but Sharon’s voice reverberated in his brain, like the toll of malefic church bells.
They’ll take your Lily.
Joe realized he was sobbing. He knew the sound would awaken Lily, but it was as if his body had seized up entirely, prohibiting all but the slightest movements. Just like the goddamned Tin Man, only there was no oilcan sitting nearby to cure what was ailing him. There was only Sharon’s infernal voice and his own impotent tears. Copeland was dead. Lily was promised to the cult, or at least whatever remained of it. The police claimed they were all dead, save Shaun Peterson, who’d been found and arrested. But if other cult members were alive, wouldn’t they want retribution? Wouldn’t they do all they could to ensure Joe paid, and paid dearly? They would make sure Lily died. They would go after Michelle and Stevie too. Wouldn’t those monsters—
“Daddy?” a voice asked.
Joe stared down at his daughter, became instantly aware of how hard he was gripping her shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said, though his voice was so husky the word was indecipherable. But it didn’t matter. He relaxed his grip, and Lily had shown no sign of discomfort, was showing nothing at all but concern for him. Her lucent brown eyes picked up some of the starlight slanting through the sides of the curtains, and in them he saw the same look Michelle often wore when he was beating himself up for something.
He cleared his throat and whispered, “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
His voice broke on the last word, the sobs still refusing to completely abate, and all of a sudden Lily was rising from her nest of pillows and toys and reaching for him. He stooped over to meet her, thinking she wanted to be held, but rather than simply resting her forearms on his shoulders as she ordinarily did, this time her slender arms enfolded his neck, hauled him down into her embrace with astonishing strength. Joe scrambled for some comforting word or phrase, but his chest was still quaking, the wet heat in his throat scalding him, robbing him of speech.
But his daughter, he now realized, was speaking, was repeating something over and over, her voice a soft, soothing whisper.
“You’re safe,” she said. “You’re safe, Daddy.”
Joe clenched his arms about her, a violent sob racking his body. But though he’d leaned into her, she somehow supported him, somehow helped him remain upright. Worried he’d collapse the whole crib and send her to the ER, he made to pull back, but she only tightened her hold on him, said, “Shhhh. Shhhh, Daddy.”
“Lily,” he tried to say.
“You’re safe,” she repeated. “You’re safe.”
Tears streamed over his cheeks, and though he fought it, the silent, quaking sobs took him then, rendered him powerless. He leaned against his daughter and wept, wept as he hadn’t since the miscarriage. The heat in his chest became a boiling inferno. It spread through his shoulders, his arms, down his abdominal muscles all the way to his toes, and now he let it flood through him, gust out of him, his daughter whispering to him all the while. She had turned three earlier in the month, but in her voice, in her unwavering, loving embrace there was something maternal, something ageless. She whispered to him and nuzzled her lamb-soft cheek into his neck, and told him he was safe, and when he’d finally regained control of his emotions, when he was at last able to draw back slightly and gaze into her liquid brown eyes, she was making a face at him, a face she often made when he’d fallen silent and she wanted to make him laugh. They called it her surprise face.
Joe looked at his daughter’s wide eyes and open mouth and began to smile, despite how messy he was with tears and mucus.
“Are you better, Daddy?” she asked.
He chuckled, nodded.
“Are you happy?” she persisted.
He wiped his nose and said, “As long as you’re safe, I’m happy.”
And without pause, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, she said, “I’m safe, Daddy.”
His breath caught in his throat. Their foreheads only two inches apart, they stared into each other’s eyes.
“Honey, we—”
“We’re safe, Daddy.”
It was as though a pair of brutal fists suddenly relaxed within him. A sweeping sigh of breath expanded his chest. Lily’s grip on him relaxed infinitesimally, but still she held on to him.
He was panting a little, his heartbeat still throbbing, but maybe not so painfully now. Her breath was sweet on his face, her gaze unwavering.
A little embarrassed at his display, he ventured a smile, but her answering smile was so patient and understanding that even his embarrassment began to drain away.
“Are you o
kay, Daddy?” she asked.
He nodded. “Daddy’s good. Are you okay?”
“I’m tired, Daddy.”
And she yawned. One of those vast, face-contorting yawns only toddlers can manage. Her sweet breath caressed his cheek.
He brought his lips to her forehead for a kiss, but the moment his lips touched her skin, she reached up, placed her hands on his cheeks. Drawing his face lower and rocking up on her toes, she kissed him softly on the lips. Then, she released him and yawned again.
“I’m tired, Daddy,” she explained. He lowered into her pile of blankets and pillows and toys. One knee skimmed over her Glo Worm, which lit up and played its gentle lullaby.
“Get some sleep, sweetie,” he said.
“I love you, Daddy,” she said, on her side now.
“I love you too, sweetie.”
He saw her lovely silhouette and allowed himself a long, luxuriant intake of air. The only scents he detected were the laundry detergent Michelle used and what might have been Lily’s baby shampoo.
He moved into the hallway and bumped something with the tip of his big toe.
The Anaconda.
Joe bent to retrieve it, and holding it at his side, he returned to the basement, where he went through the process of stowing it away for the night. As he squirmed out of the crawlspace he decided Michelle was right. It was silly to keep the gun cabinet down here. He’d move it up to his closet tomorrow and make certain he kept the combination a secret.
Another thirty seconds and Joe was crawling into bed. He yawned, feeling drowsier than he had in a good while. He closed his eyes and within moments began drifting into sleep.
He frowned, an unpleasant notion arising in him. He’d locked the front and back doors earlier, but he’d neglected to double-check them. Or triple-check them, which he did nearly every night.
He waited in the darkness for the urge to overtake him, for the anxiety to spread its ulcerous fingers through his chest, through his mind. Waited for the voice of Sharon Waltz to laugh its witch’s cackle and declare to him his failure.
Joe waited, waited.
And then, in a soft undertone, he heard his daughter’s voice.
The Nightmare Girl Page 29
