by John Searles
“Stop it!” Rose screamed as I scrambled to my feet. “Please stop!”
“I’m not stopping,” Franky told her, “because if she gets out of here, she’s going to tell the police and everyone what she’s learned. And then you and me, Rose, we are going to be sent away for a long time. And where they put us is going to make Saint Julia’s look like a funhouse. I’m not letting that happen to us.”
I looked at my sister’s contorted face and could see tears rolling down her cheeks, shimmering in the yellow light. “I’m sorry, Sylvie,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry. I never wanted it to be this way. I know you won’t believe that, but I didn’t want any of this.”
What would I have told her if I had the chance? That I forgave her? That I understood? That I would make sure things would turn out okay? But none of those things was true in the moment. The most I knew was that I felt trapped there in the basement, since Franky had made her way around from the back of the stairs and was now holding the hatchet from the massacre at that old New Hampshire farm turned inn. I thought of the Locke family my father talked about in his lectures, the bloody end the mother and children all met, the way their souls were said to haunt that old hotel for years afterward.
As if to warn me that she intended the same fate for me, Franky reached up and whacked the hatchet into the stairs. The blade sunk into the wood and she yanked it back out. It caused Rose to let out a shriek.
And then Franky reached up and used the hatchet to smash the lightbulb. In an instant, the basement grew dark and full of more shadows, lit only by the stray shafts of sunlight that made its way through the casement window. I turned and ran toward the partition. Tangled in the blankets, I saw something I had not noticed before. When I pulled back the covers, there it was: my journal, wide open and facedown. There was no time to reach for it, so I went to the sliding glass door just beyond. When I tried to pull it open, nothing moved. I looked down and saw a broomstick wedged at the base to keep the door from opening. I pulled and pulled on the broomstick, but she must have nailed it there, because it would not budge.
When I turned, Franky was watching me calmly since she knew I could not get out that way. The only thing I could think to do was to reach for those Tupperware containers. I picked them up and hurled them at her, then stumbled toward the dental chair, where I reached into a nearby drawer, grabbed a handful of old dental tools, and hurled them at her too. None of it did anything to keep her from coming closer still, moving steadily, as though nothing would ever stop her from attacking me with that hatchet.
I ran to the hulking bookshelf, thinking I could pull it down to get into the crawl space. Penny and the cage wobbled on top as I reached around the back and began pulling. The bookshelf rocked a bit, but was too heavy. One by one, I began throwing those old tomes about demons and possessed girls my age from so long ago at Franky. She just swatted them away with the hatchet while I exhausted myself. When I cleared the shelves of most of the contents, at last I pulled again and this time knocked the entire piece of furniture over. That shelf and the remaining books and the old rabbit cage and Penny went toppling down in a loud clatter. I wasted no time pulling my body up into the gaping hole in the cinder-block wall that led to the crawl space. Only once did I glance back to see that Penny had come free from her cage and landed, lifeless and still, on the cement floor while Franky stood there looking momentarily stunned by it all.
I kept moving, crawling into the darkness, the only light a small rectangle in the distance created by an air vent on the other side of the house. My hands were grimy with dirt by the time I reached that light. I put my fingers on the metal grate and pulled. Who knew how many years it had been there. Long enough that it wiggled the slightest bit but refused to come loose.
Behind me, I could hear grunting as Franky lifted herself into the crawl space too. It made me tug on the grate even more frantically. Over the sound of the shhhh, I heard her drawing closer with every second. Soon, she will be upon me, I told myself, and it will all come to an end there in the darkness beneath our house.
With every last bit of strength I could muster, I pulled on that vent until it came loose. Fast as I could, I slid my body out into the daylight. As my feet were about to slip free, I felt Franky grab at them. But I kicked and wriggled loose before she could get hold. And when I was standing, I turned to see her hands reaching out from the vent. It would not stop her, I knew, but I stomped my foot on her fingers. The force caused her to release a loud howl, and another when I stomped again.
As Franky withdrew her hands into the crawl space, I looked around and wondered where to go. That’s when I thought of Dereck on the other side of those woods, slaughtering turkeys in time for Thanksgiving. I began running across the street, toward the path beyond the first of those empty foundations.
But Franky had made her way out of the crawl space by then and started running too. Just as I got to the edge of the foundation, she caught up and shoved me so hard from behind that I found myself falling over the edge. I landed in a murky puddle at the bottom and looked up to see Franky standing up above. My mind felt so dizzy that her image shifted and reshaped itself.
My back, my arms, my legs—all of me—felt in too much agony to move. And yet, I needed to since she was making her way to the crumbling cement stairs. As I lay there, so many memories and thoughts flashed in my mind: There was Abigail drawing a map on the walls around me the night before she left. There was my sister and me creating the details for our imaginary home over and over again: a window, a painting, a doorway. There were my parents, who had come to this neighborhood and bought the lot across the street, starting their lives out like any other new couple. How could they have known they’d be the only people ever to live here? How could they have known how horribly wrong things would go for them . . . and for all of us?
I tried to get up. The most I managed was to roll over onto my stomach as the murky water splashed around me, soaking my jeans and sneakers. Franky ambled down the stairs, slipping on the rocks but not falling, hurrying to reach me. When she did, she grabbed a hank of my hair and pushed my face into that dirty puddle, holding me there so that I was unable to breathe.
The shhhh in my ear grew louder still, the sound warping itself into something higher pitched and hysterical. And then it became an altogether different sound—it became a kind of tune instead, one I recognized. For the first time, I heard the words as my mother’s lilting voice sang that song she used to hum:
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.
Franky lifted my head by the hair and yanked me out of that water. For a few fleeting seconds, I saw the cracked gray walls of the foundation. I saw the fading daylight. I saw the fallen leaves around us. And then she shoved my head down, smashing my face against the cement. In the white light and blistering pain that followed, that shhhh warped itself into the sound of my mother’s voice once more. I heard her there, so close now, singing that old choir song to me:
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!
Again, Franky lifted my head, and again she brought it down. The force was so great that this time it felt as though the world had stopped. I tried to open my eyes but could not. I heard no sounds, not even my mother’s singing.
And then, after what felt like a long stretch of time, my eyes blinked open into the gloom of that water, and I had a vision of her: my mother, standing on the other side of some great abyss, that dirty water an ocean between us. She wore the beige trench coat from the video I played that day in the basement so long ago while Rose messed with the fuse box and Dot bathed in the tub upstairs reading her silly boo
k. For a moment, the image flickered and blurred just as it had done that day on the TV screen. I’m losing her, I thought. Once again, I will have to let her go. But then her image sharpened. And when her lips moved, she spoke in a serious voice.
“This is what I will tell you, Sylvie,” my mother said. “Each of us is born into this life with a light inside us. Some, like yours, burn brighter than others. As you grow older you will come to understand why. But what’s most important is to never ever let that light go out. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”
“Yes,” I opened my mouth to tell her, only to take in more dirty water, swallowing it, filling my lungs.
“That’s a good girl,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but you have to believe. And you have to fight. Okay?”
This time, I knew better than to open my mouth to answer. Besides, it no longer mattered, because that ghost, that globule, that memory of her—whatever it was—had vanished into that murky green water. At the same time, Franky made her greatest effort yet. She lifted my head by the hair. And when I was delivered back into that world of air and fallen leaves and the gray autumn sky growing dim above, my free hand scrambled along the cement floor until I found what I needed. Before she could send me down a final time, I squirmed around until I was on my back, pinned beneath her. And then I used my free hand to bring a rock against the side of her head.
Once. Twice. A third and fourth time, until I saw blood. After that, her body went slack and she fell to one side of me.
For a moment, after I let the rock drop, I lay there catching my breath. As soon as I could manage, I forced myself out from under her. I stood, wet and bloodied, and looked down at Franky. Her back rose and fell with each breath, but otherwise she was motionless.
I walked away from her and began the climb up those crumbling stairs. At the top, I stared back at my house. All those NO TRESPASSING! signs my father had nailed to the birch trees, which had done nothing to keep danger away. My sister was still inside, and though I thought to go and help her, I chose the path instead. Dripping and muddy and shirtless, I stumbled along the twisted trail to the field, where I stood so many mornings and afternoons. Over that barbed fence I climbed, careful not to do any more damage to myself. I walked across the trampled grass, where those turkeys had been for so long, most of them gone now. I kept going until I reached the doors of the barn.
“Dereck!” I called, knocking and knocking. “Dereck!”
When no answer came, I slid the doors open. A man who was not Dereck stood on the other side, wearing headphones and chopping meat on a wooden block. He had gray hair and a kind face. He looked the way I imagined my mother’s father to have looked. When he saw me, he yanked the headphones from his ears and came to me. “What happened to you, young lady?”
“I’m here for Dereck,” I told him.
The man removed his white smock and draped it over my shoulders. He led me through a maze of shelves and bins and small cages to a back room, where the air was chilled. He told me to wait a few seconds. And it really did seem like just a few seconds before Dereck appeared, covered in blood too.
He took one look at me, then went to a locker across the room and pulled out his battered barn jacket. Like that day I had jumped from my sister’s truck, he offered it to me, this time slipping it over my arms and zipping up the front. As he did, I began to cry, the tears warm against my skin. Dereck put his arms around me. “What happened?” he asked and asked again, though I could not force the answer from my mouth. Not right away. Not for some time to come. And still he kept repeating that question, “What happened? What happened? What happened?”
But the words would not come. All I could do was take his ruined hand in mine and lead him away from the farm, back across that trampled field, back over the barbed-wire fence, along that twisted path in the woods toward home.
Chapter 22
Faraway Places
I did not take much from the house when I moved out. My journal, of course. That lone white horse Rose had given me, the only one that had never been broken. A bag full of clothes. My mother’s silver cross necklace, which I have not taken off, even seven months later, along with her slim gold watch I use to tell time. With the exception of a few other odds and ends, I left the rest behind. It would be boxed up, I was told, put into storage or sold off. My father’s old competition, Dragamir Albescu, surfaced and offered good money for the haunted artifacts in our basement. Rather than let the man pick and choose like some sort of rummage sale, my uncle offered him an all-or-nothing deal. In the end, every last relic from their unusual career—including the hatchet from the Locke Family Farm, Penny in Mr. Knothead’s cage, even my father’s old dental chair and my mother’s rocker—all of it was loaded onto a moving truck headed for Marfa, Texas, where Mr. Albescu maintains the Marfa Museum of the Paranormal.
Before he and the movers drove away, Albescu told my uncle that a special room would be dedicated just to my parents and their contribution to the field. When Howie made some mention of Heekin’s book and asked if the things he had written might keep people away, Albescu waved one of his jeweled hands in the air and scoffed, “Not at all. In fact, these things in our line of work are like a shuttlecock in the game of badminton. They need to be swatted back and forth in order to keep people paying attention.” Then he told us that we were welcome to visit the museum anytime, free of charge.
I can’t imagine a day will ever come when I’ll want to do that.
My life is different now. And the way things are looking, it is going to get more different as time moves forward, though I don’t think I’ll ever forget the life we lived in that house on Butter Lane as Rose once predicted. At the moment, I am staying a few towns over in Howard County, at the home of a couple named Kevin and Beverly. They take in foster children, which for the time being anyway, I am.
When I arrived on their doorstep, escorted by a brand-new caseworker, and carting along my journal, that horse, a bag of clothes, and only a few other possessions, they told me their names were easy to remember, because they rhyme. My mind was in such a daze still that I could not understand how that made any sense. But then Beverly—who wears a never-ending supply of oversized sweatshirts in bright pastels and keeps her hair tugged back in a never-ending supply of scrunchies—let out a bubbling, infectious laugh and said, “You know, Kev and Bev. It’ll be hard for you to forget us, Sylvie. Trust me. Now come on in.”
They showed me to my room, which is clean and simply furnished. There is a single bed with an oak headboard, a matching dresser and nightstand with a simple white lamp on top. The window beside the bed looks out over their fenced yard. The view is not unlike the one I used to draw outside the imaginary windows on the walls of the old foundation across the street. It is late spring now, so I see tufts of grass out there and all sorts of colorful flowers. Most days, there is a bright sun shining in the sky. Sometimes, I sit quietly in that room on the edge of the bed and spin my sister’s globe, which was another thing I took from our house. When I plunk my finger on a random location—Tokyo, San Francisco, Mexico City—I think of the way she used to do the same.
Places like that—faraway places, I mean—they’re where I want to go someday . . .
I hear her voice saying those words and, inevitably, I think of that final afternoon when I took Dereck’s hand and walked back through the woods. I should have noticed that Rose’s truck was gone from the driveway. But we were too preoccupied by the sight at the bottom of the foundation. When I’d fled not long before, I remembered glancing behind to see her back rising and falling. Now, though, the body had gone motionless. Whatever I’d done in the commotion with that rock had brought an end to a life down there. The sight made me shudder, and Dereck pulled me away across the lane.
“Rose!” he called, pushing open the door to our house.
The antique clock ticked. The oversized cross hung on the wall. The curio hutch showcased my father’s haphazard stacks or books behind the glass. Consid
ering all that had occurred, it seemed even those things should offer an indication of being altered somehow. And yet, it all remained the same, indifferent as ever.
“Hello!” Dereck called when we did not hear an answer.
Words refused to come to me still, but with my hand in his, I guided us to the kitchen and that door to the basement. For a long moment, we stood at the top of the wooden stairs that so many of those haunted people had clomped down in hopes of leaving their demons behind. We stared into the shadowy space, where I had last seen my sister. There was my torn T-shirt. There was the dishtowel with Popsicle juice dripping in all sorts of bright colors from the steps to the cement below. But there was no Rose.
It must have been the man who first opened the door back at the farm who thought to call the police, because soon sirens wailed in the distance and drew closer. Before long, car doors slammed outside, footsteps pounded up the front steps and around back of the house. At least a half-dozen officers arrived on the scene, maybe more. Many of them I recognized from the hallways at the station, or perhaps in my vague, flickering memories of that winter night when I was pulled from beneath the pew at the church. The last to arrive was Detective Rummel, since he had already gone home for the day. By then, Dereck and I were sitting on the steps outside. Yellow police tape had already been set up around the foundation across the street. Officers were unspooling even more around our yard too, stringing it among the birch and cedar trees. I wore Dereck’s barn jacket still and rocked and back and forth, since my body carried a chill I could not shake.
Same as he did that first day at the hospital, Rummel took my hand in his. He spoke gently, saying, “Tell me what happened, Sylvie.”
