The branches moved, becoming liquid and reaching for the house. The woods were always breathing, moving, being. Just like many years ago, the twigs became fingers, the leaves morphed into eyes. Millions of eyes rotated to look at me. Some only an inch big, some several inches or a foot wide. They blinked in one movement.
I squeezed my eyes shut and fell to the floor. My back pressed into the wall, trying to root myself in the house, but suddenly I was somewhere else.
Angela stood in the middle of trees, kissing her boyfriend goodnight. I hid under the steps, Jordan and I holding in our giggles. Her boyfriend was too old for her. He could drive, but Angela was in eighth grade. His hand moved under her shirt.
“Gross,” Jordan mouthed, and made a gagging sound. I snickered. The couple stopped.
“Megan!” Angela yelled. “Get out of here.”
Her boyfriend headed towards the steps where we hid. Jordan and I fell on our butts and crawled out the other side as the boyfriend squatted. “Hey! You little pervs!” he yelled as we ran towards the trees to hide, laughing and shouting.
When I shot a glance over my shoulder, they had forgotten about us already, mushing back together again. Touching and kissing. They couldn’t see what lurked behind them, but I could.
A woman in black crawled out of the trunk of a tree. Her white hair was a long-tangled mess, her face indistinguishable. Angela screamed. Jordan dragged me towards the woods faster as my feet fought against my brain. Dad bounded outside with a blowtorch.
Then, as quick as she was there, she vanished. The trees were just trees. I stood in my room, a howl outside taking over the whole house. I looked around. Wolfy was gone, on the move. I stood in the spot where he had earlier; there could be no calling this a delusion now. Delusions did not occupy and leave a physical space. It wasn’t just me who saw these things either.
A real memory; Jordan and Angela saw it. They’d seen the woman crawling from the tree. They’d seen with me. Dad saw it too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I ran, hoping to find Wolfy outside. I wanted to catch him in the act of being alive, proving to myself once and for all that I wasn’t nuts. Didn’t know what I would do after. Especially since what kind of proof would I have without a witness there to see it?
Other people had seen what I had. Angela. Dad. Jordan. They’d seen and let me go on believing I was alone.
Not until the screen door opened, did I realize how stupid of an idea it would be to run towards a howling wolf, instead of hiding from it. But, it was too late. I stood on the porch, facing a set of dark eyes. Luckily, they belonged to a human.
Jordan jumped back, almost falling off the edge and down the muddy clay slope. His face moved from surprise to disgust in seconds as he looked me over. I glanced down at my clothes, remembering the red stain splashed across me. I looked like I belonged on the cover of a B horror movie.
“H-hey,” I stammered, searching for the offending howler.
“We’re meeting people for dinner.”
“Oh, fancy,” I said, using my best British noblewoman accent. “Shall I wear my pearls and mink furs? Or is it more of a ball gown type of affair? Let me fetch my cigarette holder stick thingy.”
If I hadn’t been studying his face, I would have missed the smile tugging for a brief second at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, put on a pair of jeans you didn’t dip in pig’s blood, and you’ll be fancy enough.”
On the way to town I used Jordan’s phone to call and check in with the auction house. We were still on schedule for a few days from now, but they needed a forwarding address to send my payment to after the event.
Forwarding address, what a joke. I didn’t know what two weeks from now held, and whenever someone brought it up, I pushed the worry further from my mind.
“You got a lot of work to do out at your dad’s?” Jordan asked.
I shrugged, looking out my window as we passed by the old burger barn. “I guess. I mean, right now it’s all waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“These guys to come get all his shit to sell it. Then I gotta clean or hire a maid or something.”
Jordan snorted. “Can you afford to hire someone?”
“No,” I said.
He smirked. “And uh...no offense but, the state of the house...”
I looked over as we passed Dieter and Sons. The windows were dark and the bay door was closed. Would Nathan be at dinner?
“Oh, you mean how the roof’s missing patches of shingle, and boards are hanging off the side of house?” I listed off the obvious issues. “The broken window in the attic, and the mole infestation I’m gonna discover once they get all the shit out? Oh, and how the front porch is lying there in boards, making the front door unusable? That state of the house?”
“Yeah, that state.” The light turned green. We moved forward, the car next to us sped up and flew ahead, smoke spitting out from behind its tires.
“Idiots,” I said.
“High schoolers.” He chuckled. “We used to do the same thing in high school, cruising and racing up and down the road. Do you remember when we—” He cut himself short, probably realizing what he said. We didn’t do anything together in high school.
“I mostly drank at Green State Park.” I rolled my window up as traffic thinned and we moved at a steadier pace. “We’d end up camping there too. Well, I guess you could call it camping.” When teenagers admitted they were too drunk to drive home and had to sleep in their cars, you knew they were messed up. Or maybe it was less of a choice, and more of passing out before we put the car into drive. “Most of the time camping. Sometimes just being extremely lucky.”
“Yeah.”
That ease we’d found earlier in the conversation slipped away, replaced with awkwardness that only irreconcilable relatives can squander time in. The rest of the ride remained in that silence, while I considered filling it, but batted away every idiotic discussion point that came to mind. When we pulled into the almost full parking lot, my brain was as tired as if I had just taken an exam.
I frowned at the izz, the only letters lit up on the Paul’s Pizza sign. “Didn’t they shut this place down? Something about rats?”
“I’m sure the rats are all gone now,” he said as we got out of the truck. “Even if they’re still here, it’s dollar pitcher night. And considering how much beer you can suck down for a girl who weighs a buck and... Well, almost a buck — cheap is what we need.”
“Drink hard or go home.” A friend’s boyfriend had taught me how to keep up with everyone around me, or at least appear like I was. Hell, it might not be so much of a learned trait as it was inheriting Dad’s liver. A squirrel darted through the empty parking spot next to us up a nearby tree, leaves shaking as it climbed. “Squirrels are rats.”
“Squirrels are tree rats, not pizza rats. Anyways, it hasn’t been shut down in at least a year.”
I cringed. I had no reason to be snobby considering the places I’d laid my head over the past year, but I still didn’t want rat poop in my food. Of course, there could be rat droppings on my bed at Dad’s for all I knew.
I recognized the back of Ken’s head when we entered. Seated directly under one of the few bright lights, his blond hair turned into a kind of shiny beacon, ever more a dollhouse regular. He was with a few others, including a manically waving Cecelia and Greek god Gary. What a pair.
I nodded hello, and Cecelia turned back to her conversation with a girl with dark hair at the end of the table. The girl looked young, and familiar, in an odd stretched out kind of way. I tried to place where I knew her from, and imagined Tracy’s friend Dana demand that we, “IMDB it.”
Jordan slid into the seat next to Ken, and I plunked down in the last chair to Nathan’s left. Cecelia squealed a hello.
“Hey.” I raised my hand, waving meekly towards her.
“This here is Gary,” she said across the table, her accent stronger than usual. “That’s my cousin, Meg.”
“W
e met. The other night, remember?” I awkwardly asked, and Gary nodded.
“She got here a little earlier than the rest of us,” Nathan whispered close to my ear, and my stomach clenched at his breath on my cheek. Oh, if only thirteen-year-old Meg could see me now, she’d be so jealous. He pointed at an empty beer pitcher.
I grunted at his statement and bent my toes against the floor. Cecelia called my name and introduced me to the threesome sitting next to her. The two men were friends of Gary’s from work, and the woman with dark hair was Gary’s sister.
Gary’s sister waved to me. “Your big sister used to babysit me.” She must have noticed the where do I know you from look. “You came with her a few times. We lived on Peach. That’s how I recognized Cecelia so fast, you guys could be doppelgangers. I’m Donna.”
“Hey how’s it going? Doppelgangers?” The word held a familiar ring, but I couldn’t place it.
Donna splayed her fingers wide and moved her hands out as she spoke. Like she was going to perform magic. “You know? Someone who looks exactly like you. Like more than your own twin.”
“If they’re fraternal sure, but identical?” the man on her right asked.
“Don’t get all nerd boy on me.” Donna leaned back and groaned towards the ceiling. “You watched The Vampire Diaries, right?”
“Like with Brad Pitt?” I asked, furrowing my eyebrows, trying to remember what I could from the movie.
“Ew, no. He’s old.” And I probably was too. “Like on TV. With Elena. There are these people over time who look like her, and they aren’t related at all. It’s all very romantic.”
She leaned back in her chair and smiled at the man on her left. I felt gratefully dismissed but confused about how Cecelia stealing my features could be in the least bit romantic.
The men flirted with Donna as soon as she forgot me, both wanting her attention. She pushed her raven black hair over her shoulder and returned to seductively eating a french fry. How could some girls do that? I’d never been able to master the act of being sexy while chewing food like cud.
A few large pizzas sat on either end of the table. I focused on my empty plate and listened to everyone else talking.
Ken said, “For less than your monthly electric bill you can get a basic surveillance system—”
“What?” Jordan asked. “Are you taking commission on these things now?”
“Not a bad idea.” Ken winked at him.
Nathan held his hand up. “They see those stickers in your window, that’s when they decide to break in. That’s how they know you have something worth taking.”
Ken laughed. “You sound like an old man. It’s a business; of course you guys have equipment worth stealing.”
“Nope. That’s what insurance is for. Now they want you to get a security system, spending more money every month, just to remind the shits we got equipment in there.”
“Jesus, you sound like Dad,” Jordan said.
The bantering came to a halt so fast, I waited for the sound of screeching tires. I cleared my throat, looking at the frothy pitcher between me and Jordan. “Beer.”
The empty glasses were on the other side of Nathan, who was busy picking green bits off of his pizza. He did not look pleased with the comparison to their father. I head-jabbed towards the stacked cups, and Jordan tossed a piece of popcorn at Nathan.
“Dude. Beer. Meg,” Jordan said.
Nathan filled a cup with beer and set it in front of me. He smiled, the lines around his eyes crinkling. “Sorry, I forgot you weren’t Cecelia. If I don’t pass her a cup, she’d just grab the pitcher and drink from it.”
Doppelgangers. I pressed my lips. There had to be at least an eighty-pound difference between Cecelia and I. How did people keep making the mistake?
Nathan swung an arm over my shoulder in an open hug and kissed the top of my head. I flinched and worked to push away the blush that worked at my face.
“Hey, Nate,” I said, as he pulled his arm back, the hug over. Jordan dropped a slice of pizza on my plate.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Nathan said.
“Yeah?” I asked, surprised Nathan would have noticed I left town at all.
“Jordan missed you a lot,” he said, and Jordan looked uncomfortable at the mention.
“Ten years of silence is a funny way to show it.” I picked sausage off my pizza, but I didn’t think anyone had heard me. The guys had gone back to their conversation about getting a security system at the garage.
Lonely at the middle of the table, I watched as two animated conversations flowed on either side of me. Two conversations that didn’t have room for me.
I took a bite. The cheese rolled thick and heavy as it passed down my throat, and I wanted to be back at the house alone. At least there, I could hang out in my t-shirt, tossing knickknacks into piles and feeling as though I chose to ignore the world, not the other way around.
I took a deep breath and looked over at Cecelia. Tonight, the resemblance didn’t pass much further than us both being in white t-shirts, blond hair pulled back into ponytails; she had a perfect face of makeup, and I was nursing two stress pimples. She fiddled with the beads around her neck. It looked like one of Aunt Dee’s necklaces.
She looked over at me with a cherubic smile that seemed to relax my mind. I returned the smile just as all the beads around her neck blinked in one swift movement. The blood drained from my face and I stiffened in my chair, staring at the necklace; no more than little hand carved beads again.
“What is it, sweetie?” she said, kindness dripping from her mouth like honey oozing from a hive. Bees hiding just outside of sight, ready to attack and sting. “You feeling okay?”
I blinked, keeping my eyes closed a second longer than normal. Just Cecelia. Just beads.
“Yeah, hungry. I think.” I grabbed my slice and took a large bite. Cecelia took Donna’s hand and said something I couldn’t hear, and the two women laughed. I watched the beads, waiting for them to move again, but after a minute nothing happened. I turned away from the women and listened to the others talking.
I let myself be soothed, listening to Jordan, Ken and Nathan talking and joking around. A real family. Long gone were the cowering days when their father judged their every move. Loud opinions followed by a fist, the memory of Mr. Dieter was not honored at this table. Watching them, I almost forgot the darkness of our childhoods.
After my second beer, they shifted the conversation to some of the kids we had grown up with. Laughing about one guy who had been arrested in Arizona for armed robbery of a dollar store. Gossiping about the valedictorian who returned to town sans college diploma, but with three children. Sobering as they told me about the two who died; one on the wrong road at the wrong time, the other went out with a gun to the head, drunk, alone and in the attic. The mood darkened again.
Nathan and Jordan lightened our spirits by telling stories about the weird things they’d found in cars, from specialty porno mags, to baggies full of nail clippings. I laughed and wondered if this night would be my Friday nights from now on? No. I didn’t live here. But if... If I lived here. If I stayed. If...
I’d get a job downtown, stay in the old house. Fix it up bit by bit. Or sell it and move into Cecelia’s trailer park. Start to have a real life. The Dieter boys found life without their father around; I could do the same with Dad gone.
“Psst, Meg,” Cecelia hissed across the table at me, not so discreetly. We all turned to her. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but Bobby’s here, and he’s looking at you like you’re dinner.” Jordan looked over to where she indicated, but I couldn’t move my head without making it obvious.
“I’ve never seen Bobby here.” Jordan’s eyes flickered from me to the bar then back again. A curious wrinkle appeared across his forehead and disappeared as he studied my face. “You know, he got arrested last year for breaking his wife’s arm.”
“I heard he was married.” I let the rest of the sentence glide over my head. “Wait. Was or is?”<
br />
“Is. And that’s what interests you about what I just said?” he asked. Ken cleared his throat and Nathan asked if I wanted another slice of pizza even though I still had plenty on my plate. I ignored him. Jordan spoke again. “The part about the broken arm, that seems like something totally normal?”
“If you’re wanting to ask if he did the same thing to me, shove it,” I said. It was none of his business what happened to me during the years he wasn’t my friend. “Give me a little more credit than thinking I’d sit around and live through the life Aunt Dee chose to die from.”
Ken picked up his coaster and waved it between Jordan and I. “Look, they’re participating in the pub crawl next month. Huh, I thought that was just for the breweries.”
“Nah, anyone with a liquor license,” Nathan said.
High pitched laughter shot out, and we all looked at Cecelia, choking on her beer from laughter. She looked like Mama in that moment. Not in that puffy way I thought she had when I first met her, but in a real way. Happy. Not from how I remember Mama from life, but how I remember her from the dreams. She turned to Gary, putting her hand on his shoulder.
“I’m going to smoke,” I said, grabbing my purse off the chair, and Nathan stood, pulling my chair back.
“I’ll join you.”
As much as I needed a few minutes to calm myself, I was grateful for Nathan’s company as we walked past a leering Bobby. Bobby wouldn’t follow me across the parking lot and give me a hard time for the other night if I had Nathan with me. I didn’t think he would, anyway.
We stepped under the bus-stop converted smoking pit at the other side of the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” I said, looking at the cars as they sped by. A teenage boy hung out of the passenger window of a car and whistled at me. A narrow sidewalk separated the smoking station from Sixth Street, busy with cruising teenagers. Up Sixth, down Seventh. Or was it, up Seventh, down Sixth? I couldn’t remember. “What? There was no room in the road for the smokers?”
Going Home (Cedar Valley Hauntings Book 1) Page 14
