Gideon

by Alex Gordon

  Why, Dad? She stabbed her key at the dead bolt, leaving deep scratches in the brass. Why witchcraft? Why now? Protection, Dilys had said. From what? Parking-lot lurkers? Nightmares returned? Something worse?

  “Best weapons in the world, stinky leaves and twist ties.” Lauren braced against the door to steady her hand and inserted the key in the slot. Unlocked the door and opened it slowly, then paused on the threshold and listened. She heard nothing but the rumble of the refrigerator, the soft flow of air through vents, and stepped inside, pulled off her coat and tossed it atop a kitchen chair along with her handbag.

  Her shoulders ached, the tension like claws digging into her upper back. She longed for a glass of wine, but settled for a couple of pieces of baking chocolate mined from the depths of the utensil drawer. The way she felt, one glass of wine would lead to another, and she needed to stay sober, focused. Too much was happening too quickly. She would panic herself over the edge of an emotional cliff unless she took care.

  Lauren walked through the dining room into the living room. Her home, this place, scented with lingering hints of morning coffee and the cinnamon-apple candles set atop the sideboard. Even so, she fought the sense that she had become a stranger here, an intruder, that something had invaded and supplanted her. She felt for the eye bracelet, then remembered she had taken it off during the drive home and put it in her coat pocket, along with the twist-tie circlet.

  “No protection.” Lauren flinched at the sound of her own voice, then swore under her breath. Katie had been right, as usual. Perky Nance and her new house were exactly what she needed right now. They could make plans tonight, and if for some reason Katie couldn’t make the trip to Portland, she would go by herself. A change of pace. A change of scenery. The issues with her father, the settlement of his estate, her job, and the return to routine could all wait for a few more days.

  Lauren flipped on the lights and turned on the television. A weather report in male staccato filled the room, the sanity of the world outside. She opened the curtain, and cloud-filtered daylight splashed across the leaf-patterned rugs, polished hardwood floor, her father’s desk—

  Lauren stared at the hulking rolltop. The finish, which John Reardon had buffed to a warm caramel, now looked grayed and faded, the brass fittings oily black with tarnish. She ran her hand across the surface and felt the dry grate of neglected wood, then examined her palm and found it coated with flecks of old stain, the powdery residue of decay.

  Lauren pulled one of the small drawers from its niche. As she did, she caught its smell, stale air and mildew and the closets of closed-off rooms. She turned it over, and found an X-centered circle in one corner of the underside, the edges burned like a brand. Her father’s protection. She scraped it with her thumbnail and it powdered away, as though it had been traced with pencil and not cut into the wood itself.

  Lauren shot the drawer back into place and pulled out another. Smelled the same dank odors. Found the mark again, and watched it disintegrate to her touch. She pulled out every other drawer in turn, and found them all branded, all in the same decaying state.

  She backed away until she collided with the end of the couch, then lowered herself to the arm and held on. Watched as dust motes thick as fog streamed from the desk into the weak sunbeam, swirled and tumbled by the air currents. It’s dissolving. Eroding like a stone in a stream. Already it looked duller than it had just a few minutes before, the surface whited as though coated with chalk. Dilys had been right. If John Reardon built the thing to protect her, it had stopped working.

  For long minutes, Lauren could only stare at the desk, limbs frozen, mind a blank. In the background, a car commercial jangled, counterpoint to her ragged breathing.

  “Dad?” Lauren imagined her father standing by the desk, polishing the hardware with his handkerchief or smoothing some scratch invisible to all but him. “What in the hell is happening?” She raised her hands and crossed her index fingers one over the other to form an X, as Dilys had done, and centered it over the desk like a bull’s-eye. That’s all I have going for me. She had to do better.

  She stood, and edged closer to the desk. It’s a ward. And according to Dilys, it had weakened because her father built it, and now he was dead. So it’s dying, too. She ran her finger along a roughened edge. But I’m alive. And she was her father’s daughter.

  “And this is my damned desk.” But Lauren had no clue what to say, or whether anything she said would even matter. The Book of Endor had contained no spells, no magic words.

  Maybe the words didn’t matter.

  Maybe all that mattered was being angry.

  “Get out of here.” Lauren gripped the desk with both hands, tried to clear her head as she had when she held her father’s book and smelled the wood he had loved so much. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, get out and leave me alone.”

  Nothing happened at first. Then the dust motes swirled like eddies in a stream, forming whirlpools that narrowed, then rounded again, like mouths working in silence.

  But there were words. Lauren heard them in her head, soft as whispers.

  Let me in . . . let me . . . in . . .

  Keeping the desk in sight, Lauren backed out of the living room, shutting off the television on the way. Through the dining room. Into the kitchen. She grabbed her handbag and her coat and dug through the pockets for the bracelet. Fastened it with shaking hands, then fled to the one place where she still felt safe.

  IN CONTRAST TO downtown Seattle, the Wallingford streets were weekday-morning quiet, commuters long departed, children sent to school. Rain had returned, a fine mist that fell from low clouds, and the sun was nowhere to be seen.

  Lauren kept her eyes on the brick-and-concrete planters in the middle of the intersections. If Parking-Lot Man stepped out from behind one, what would she do? Run him over? Confront him? Call the police? Would it make a difference, whatever she did?

  Only if he’s human. The thought dropped in out of nowhere, unbidden and unwelcome, to join the jumble that filled her head.

  She turned onto the street on which she had grown up, felt the pressure ease as happier memories returned. Sounds. Smells. The sensation of the breeze in her hair and the summer sun on her face as she raced her first two-wheeler down the sidewalk. Halloween parties, her mom filling an aluminum tub with apples for bobbing. Sitting on the front porch at night with a flashlight, sending coded messages to her friends across the street.

  Home.

  She pulled into the driveway, shut off her car, and stared at the house. Took out her phone and called Dilys, then disconnected after the first ring. What would she say to her? The desk my dad built spoke to me. She wasn’t sure that even Dilys would believe that.

  Lauren eventually got out of her car and mounted the steps to the front porch, disturbing a crow that had chosen the spot to pick apart a piece of bread. It hopped down to the sidewalk, then took to the air and came to rest atop a nearby spruce, squawking all the while.

  “Get used to it, bird. I think I’m going to be here awhile.” Lauren walked along the porch, the oak railings as firm as ever beneath her hand. Examined the front windowsill, and wondered if her father had carved protective eyes in this woodwork as he had in her desk. Would they work any better than hers did? God, I hope so. She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Stood with one hand on the knob, and listened.

  The air was cold and still, the rooms dark. Lauren closed and locked the door and walked from room to room, turning on every light and lamp, opening closet doors, looking under beds and behind the shower curtains. When she felt certain nothing had changed since her last visit, she went to the kitchen and stood at the top of the stairs that led to the basement, flipped on the light and checked her dad’s workshop. But even with bulbs burning bright, she couldn’t make herself take that first step down.

  She finally set a kitchen chair in front of the basement door to keep it from closing, and braved the descent. The place looked as it had the previous day, but now the sm
ell of fresh-cut wood filled her nose. “What do I call you, Dad? John Reardon or Matthew Mullin?” She imagined him standing at his workbench, adjusting a table saw or setting up clamps. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She listened to the silence, then returned upstairs.

  She dragged down the folding staircase and climbed into the attic. But instead of symbols carved into the support beams and stinky elder leaves scattered in corners, she found boxes filled with Christmas decorations and chairs from an old dining room set. No signs of magic. No disintegrating wood. She returned to the kitchen, sat at the table, and pondered what to do next, drifting in and out of awareness, half conscious of the weekday noises she seldom got the chance to hear. Barking dogs. Shouting preschoolers at play. The ping ping warning of a delivery truck backing up.

  “Child? Where are you?”

  Lauren flinched. She thought at first that she had imagined the voice. But the back of her neck tingled and she sensed a change in the air and knew someone had gotten into the house. A neighbor with a key. The reasonable explanation. But reason had long since fallen by the wayside.

  “Come out, child—I know you’re here.”

  Lauren stood and backed toward the counter, her eyes on the entry to the kitchen. Took a knife from the block, and waited for whoever had called her to show themselves, to say something more. But the silence lengthened, and she crept to the doorway and looked toward the living room.

  “There you are, child.” Dilys stood next to the couch, one hand resting on the back. “I heard your call. I came as soon as I could.” She wore a black coat, a baggy, hooded thing that hung to her boot tops and made her look like a medieval monk. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

  “You didn’t—how did you get in?” Lauren hid the knife behind her back. She knew she had locked all the doors and windows, had checked them again during her circuit of the house. She had wanted Dilys to contact her, maybe, eventually, but not by breaking and entering. She glanced at the living room windows, in search of any sign of movement out on the porch—had the woman brought any friends with her?

  “I came in as one does. Through the door.” Dilys inscribed something in the air, a letter or symbol. “One door closes, another opens. The cycle of life.” She winced, then pressed a hand to the side of her face. The black coat had sucked all the color from her skin. She looked pale, ill, eyes and cheekbones shadowed with fatigue.

  “Are you all right?” Lauren took one step closer. Another. No, those weren’t shadows. “You’re bleeding.”

  Dilys rubbed her cheek, stared at the dark wet that coated her palm. Then she looked around the room. “House of lies. He lied to you, but you know that now, don’t you, child?” She started to say more, then stopped and squinched her eyes shut. “Please.” A bare whisper. A mouthing of the words. “Please. I need more time.” She wrapped her arms around her head as though warding off a blow.

  “I’m going to call 911.” Lauren rounded the couch and grabbed her handbag, set the knife on the coffee table, and dug for her phone. “You’ve been hurt. You need help.”

  “Too late.” Dilys rocked back and forth. “Too la-a-ate.” She jerked upright. Her arms fell to her sides and she rose above the floor, legs dangling, as though someone had lifted her by the scruff of her neck. She screamed, writhing as she tried to break free of whatever held her. Then her head snapped to one side, stove in like a smashed egg.

  Lauren backpedaled as the mess hit her, warm-wet gobbets of brain and blood mixed with chips of skull. Bits of scalp studded with purple-tipped hair. They hit her face, slithered down her neck, spattered over her clothes and the furniture and the rugs.

  Dilys dropped to the floor and stumbled around the couch toward her, arms flapping so her coat sleeves billowed like wings, the side of her head pulped and lumpy. One eye bulged, blood flowing out around it. “Child.” Her jaw had dislocated, torqued to one side, and she tried to push it back into place. “You—mustn’t—”

  “Stay away. Lie down. Keep still!” Lauren freed her phone, but before she could key in a number, Dilys knocked it away, gripped her arm, pulled her close.

  “You mustn’t—go—you mustn’t—that’s what he wants.” Dilys coughed, wet hacks that brought blood bubbling up. It coated her teeth, dripped down the corner of her mouth. “He had his reasons.”

  “Who’s ‘he’? Who are you talking about? My father?” Lauren stared into the woman’s eyes. “Somebody else?” She watched clear gray dull, then grow milky as life light faded. “Let me call for help. You need help.”

  “I told you it’s too late.” Dilys pressed her ruined face to Lauren’s, blood warm and wet as tears. “Take care, child.” Her body twitched and shuddered—

  —and vanished.

  Lauren stood frozen. After a time, she touched her cheek, felt nothing but her own clean skin. She looked down at her clothes, then at the rugs, the couch. No skin or bone, no clots of blood or anything else. She lowered herself to the floor, hugged her knees to her chest, every so often rubbed away a stain that wasn’t there, that had never been there.

  The sound broke through eventually. Ping-ping. Lauren thought it another truck at first. But it kept repeating, over and over, and she realized it came from her phone. She crawled to the place by the couch where it had fallen, checked for bloodstains before picking it up. Saw the name “Paul” on the screen, and bit back a cry. “What happened? Is Katie—?”

  “No, no—she’s fine. She just can’t talk right now.” A rumbling sigh. “She wanted you to know—”

  “Dilys.” Lauren worked to her feet and circled the couch until she came to the place where the woman had stood. Where some part of the woman had stood. Her ghost, spirit, soul. “It’s about Dilys.”

  “How did you—?” Paul paused. “Hang on.”

  Lauren heard muffled back-and-forth. Switched her phone to her other ear, almost dropping it as her hands shook.

  “I can’t believe this. It’s too horrible.” Katie, voice cracking. “She left the store a few hours ago. Right after you did. Some emergency. On her way home. Her car went off the road.”

  “A few hours ago?” Lauren shivered as Dilys’s words came back to her. I heard your call. She imagined the woman’s phone ringing in the wrecked car, remembered hospice workers telling her to be careful what she said in front of her father even as the end approached, because hearing was the last sense to die.

  “Her partner just called me. He said it looked like she hit her brakes and swerved to avoid hitting something. They found skid marks.” Katie’s voice broke, and she paused to blow her nose. “But no one saw her car. They drove right past the spot where she went off the road, and no one saw her car. It was a bright red Prius, for God’s sake. How could they miss it?” She sobbed. “She was still alive when they found her—she died in the ambulance.”

  Lauren looked across the room at the mantel clock. “About a half hour ago,” she murmured.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Lauren pushed up her sleeve. The bracelet Dilys had given her had already begun to deteriorate, the shiny glass eyes clouding as whatever protection it provided ebbed away. She unfastened it and tucked it in her pocket.

  “I’ve closed the store for the day. We’re all just—there are no words for this. We’re meeting at our place to sort through . . . to talk about . . .”

  “I’ll be right there.” Lauren listened to Katie ramble for a few minutes more, what-ifs and maybes and whys. Then she disconnected, still standing where Dilys had stood. She sniffed the air, expecting to smell . . . what? The metal tang of blood? The stale chill of death?

  She walked to the couch, and sat. Where now? Where could she go? My office. She could stash clothes in her locker at the on-site gym, sleep under her desk. They’d think I had lost my mind. Word would filter to the top floors as it always did, and someone from human resources would appear bearing a folder and a card with a few hastily scribbled phone numbers. Billings-Abernathy was a conservative company. Strange behavior
by program managers was not looked upon kindly.

  Lauren turned off the lamp, sat in the quiet dark. She couldn’t go to any other place where they knew her. Whoever, whatever, had stalked her father had turned its attention to her. It wanted her for reasons unknown, and would hurt anyone who helped her. So what can I do?

  After a few minutes, she got up, walked to her old bedroom. She pulled together the few clothes she kept there and stuffed them into a suitcase. Returned to the living room, grabbed her handbag, and checked for credit cards, her bank card, and her father’s book. Turned off all the lights, locked up, returned to her car, and fled the one place in Seattle where she’d thought she would be safe. She should have known better. Dilys had tried to help her, and had paid with her life. Safety was just a word. It didn’t exist anymore.

  LAUREN STOPPED BY Katie’s house for as long as she dared, long enough to hear stories of kindness and silliness and words of regret at a life cut short. Then she headed to a nearby sandwich shop. Found a table in a dark corner, sat with her back to the wall, and watched the door. As time passed, she sensed the fish-eyed stare from the young woman behind the counter, and ordered coffee.

  On the other side of the glass, the U-District went about its weekday December evening. No signs of ghosts. No shadowy figures lurking across the street. It would be easy to relax here, convince herself that Dilys had simply suffered a tragic accident, that stress and grief had overwhelmed her and she just needed to breathe.

  On the sidewalk in front of the shop, a crow pecked at a piece of bread while dodging pedestrians, squawking when one passed too close. Lauren watched it dart and dance until it finished its meal and took wing. Then she dug her phone out of her handbag, opened a map app, and worked out the route to Gideon, Illinois.

  You mustn’t go. Dilys’s voice, garbled by blood and broken bone. That’s what he wants. But which “he” did she mean? Not her father—he had done his best to hide his past, along with a good part of his present. Was it Parking-Lot Man, who even now could be watching her? Who are you, you son of a bitch? She meant to find out.