“Was it about the party? About his parents?”
“It was about his mama looking so pretty,” Lilah said and opened her eyes. “That’s what he said. He said, ‘My mama’s the prettiest lady in town.’ ”
She took a deep breath. “I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Jonathan,’ because, well, I wasn’t giving her no competition. And he said, ‘Do you think Daddy thinks so?’ And I said, ‘I’m sure he does, Mr. Jonathan.’ And then I said good night and he said good night, and I went out the door. I’m sorry, sheriff. That don’t help you much.”
The sheriff said, “And you never saw him again?”
“No, sir, like I said. Saturdays I don’t come in ’til noon, and they were already gone.”
“Would Mrs. Stark have gotten the boy his lunch?”
“Lunch?” Lilah said blankly.
“You do the cooking, don’t you, Mrs. Collier?”
“Well, yes, sir. ’Cept Saturday morning, but I think Mr. Stark mostly takes ’em out to the Magnolia Tree.”
“Magnolia Tree,” the sheriff said, making a note. “And for Saturday lunch?”
“Well, I do that. Baked eggs at one o’clock, regular as clockwork. That’s how Mr. Stark is.”
“Did they go out to the Magnolia Tree on the ninth?”
“I don’t know, sheriff.”
“Where was Mr. Stark that Saturday? Do you know?”
Lilah could feel her eyes widening, and her mouth was dry as cotton. “I don’t know, sheriff. Cross my heart and hope to die, I don’t got no idea.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Collier. I got one other question, and you can say no, and that’s just fine.”
“What is it?”
“I’d like to see Jonathan’s room. I don’t got a warrant, and you’re within your rights to refuse.”
“This ain’t my house. I can’t tell you what you can and can’t do. But ain’t it illegal for you to go wandering around without Mr. Stark says it’s okay?”
“Mr. Stark says he don’t want his wife bothered, and he says since Jonathan was kidnapped out of Humphreys Park, there ain’t no point in me mucking up his boy’s room. Mr. Stark ain’t gonna say it’s okay until sometime after Hell freezes over. But I’d dearly like to look.”
Although raised to distrust and dislike the police, Lilah Collier had been alone or almost alone in that house for over two months, and she was quick enough to see where the trend of the sheriff’s questions was leading. She said, “Okay, but if he finds out, I was at the grocery store and you just walked in.”
“That’s fine, Mrs. Collier. You don’t have to come with me.”
“I think we might both be happier if I did. This way, sheriff.”
They climbed the stairs together. The sheriff said, “Mrs. Collier, are you the only help the Starks have?”
“Me and Mr. Wilmot, who comes on Tuesdays to do the lawns and the flowerbeds. Why?”
“No reason.” But he was looking around uneasily. “There ain’t nobody else home?”
“No, sir.” And she couldn’t help asking, “Do you feel it, too? Like you’re being watched?”
The look he gave her was answer enough.
“It gets worse toward evening,” she said, almost babbling with relief. “And it’s been terrible today, I think ’cause there’s nobody else home. I ain’t dared ask Mrs. Stark if she feels it, and . . . and I ain’t dared ask Mr. Stark neither.” They were at Jonathan’s door, and she stopped with her hand on the knob.
“Has the house always been like this?” the sheriff asked. “ ’Cause you’re right. I can feel it.”
“Just since . . . since after he disappeared.”
Lilah opened the door.
It was the first time she’d been in the room since the eighth of April. Dust was everywhere, and the room smelled musty and unpleasant. There was a tang to the air, so faint that Lilah almost thought it was her imagination, the smell of something rotting. The sensation of being watched was heavy and cold, like water deep enough to drown in. Lilah and the sheriff both glanced over their shoulders, and neither advanced so much as a step into the room.
“Did the boy always leave his room this neat?” the sheriff asked.
Lilah looked around carefully, looked twice at the bed. “He was tidy-minded, for a child so young. But he couldn’t manage the sheets like that. He’d do his best, but the bed was always rumpled a little, even if it was just that you could see where his knees had been when he was getting the top straight.”
The sheriff grunted. His eyes traveled around the room again. He said, “Mrs. Collier, you mentioned a toy rabbit. I don’t see it.”
“Ain’t it on the bed? That’s where he kept it.” But she looked for herself, and the dingy, ragged bunny was nowhere to be seen.
“He wouldn’t have taken it with him?”
She shook her head. “That bunny drove Mr. Stark wild. He couldn’t stand it that a son of his would be carrying it around. Jonathan wasn’t allowed to take it out of his bedroom, and he did what his daddy said. Always.”
“Could it’ve fallen off the bed?”
They looked at each other. Lilah saw her own feelings mirrored in his face; he didn’t want to go into that room either. She supposed it should have made her feel better—less missish—to know that a middle-aged sheriff had the creeping, crawling horrors the same way she did, but it didn’t. It made her feel ten times worse.
Finally, she said, her tongue dry and dusty in her mouth, “I’ll look.”
She walked into the room slowly, her heart thudding wretchedly in her chest. The sheriff stood in the doorway. Step by step, she walked around the bed, to the side not visible from the door. “Nothing,” she croaked.
“Jesus,” the sheriff said and armed sweat off his forehead. “Mrs. Collier, I hate to say it, but will you check under the bed?”
“I think you oughta swear me in as a deputy first,” she said, and they both yelped with laughter. Then Lilah, knowing she would have had to, even if the sheriff had said nothing, slowly bent and lifted the counterpane. She straightened up again in a hurry, all but gasping for breath. “Nothing,” she said. “Just dust. It ain’t here.”
“Christ on a crutch,” the sheriff said. “You come on out of there, Mrs. Collier. I ain’t doing no more without I got a warrant.”
“Yes, sir,” Lilah said and left the room, gratefully and fast.
They went back down to the kitchen. The sheriff said abruptly, “How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Lilah said. She was past the point where she could lie to Sheriff Patterson. He’d felt the wrongness in Jonathan’s room.
“Christ. I ain’t leaving you here by yourself. This house ain’t no place to be alone in. You write a note—tell ’em you took sick or something. I’ll drive you home.”
“And it ain’t so far off the truth, neither,” Lilah said, finding the pad of paper she used for shopping lists. “Sheriff, what do you reckon happened? What’s the matter with this house?”
“That’s a question for a preacher,” the sheriff said. “But you want the honest truth, I reckon Jonathan Stark never left this house, and I further reckon he was dead a long time before Saturday noon.”
“Me, too,” she said, shivering.
Lilah left her note (“SORRY MRS. STARK. FEELIN BAD. GONE HOME. COME IN ALL DAY SATERDAY. L COLLIER”), and climbed into the front seat of the sheriff’s car. “Never thought I’d be glad to be riding in one of these,” she said, and he laughed.
“Where’m I taking you?”
Suddenly, Lilah could bear the thought of her own empty house no better than she could bear the Starks’. “Take me up to the pit office, if you’d be so kind. I’ll just meet my husband.”
“You’re sure?” he said, giving her a sideways look.
“I can talk to Emmajean ’til he’s done.”
“Okay,” the sheriff said, and she knew he understood.
He didn’t leave her at the gate, as she’d expected, but drove up to let her out directly o
pposite the office door. She stopped halfway out of the car and said, “Sheriff, you got somebody you can go talk to or something? Or you can come in and Emmajean’ll give you coffee. Ain’t as good as mine.”
He smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Collier, but I got to go down to the station and figure out how I’m going to persuade any judge in this county to give me a warrant to take a look at Cranmer Stark’s house. There’s plenty of people around, though, don’t you worry.”
“All right. Thanks, Sheriff.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Collier. You been a world of help.” She got out, closed the door. He drove away. Lilah went in to talk to Emmajean, although later she could not remember one word Emmajean had said. She kept hearing Jonathan Stark, the words she hadn’t heeded at the time, but that now wouldn’t leave her alone. My mama’s the prettiest lady in town. Do you think my daddy thinks so?
Butch’s shift ended at six; Emmajean had passed the word that Butch Collier’s wife was waiting for him, but it was six-thirty when Butch came sauntering into the office like he owned the world. “What’s happening, Lil?”
Lilah hated it when Butch called her “Lil,” just as she hated the way he would make her wait for him, purely because he could. Today, she didn’t care, almost nauseated with gratitude only from knowing that she wouldn’t have to be alone all night.
“Nothing much, Butch,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
“Sure thing. Stay pretty, Emmajean.”
“You, too, Butch,” Emmajean said sweetly. Lilah bit the inside of her lower lip hard, and did not laugh. Butch almost never noticed jokes at his expense unless someone laughed at them.
In the car, heading out the gravel drive, Lilah made her mistake. When Butch asked, “What’s the matter, Lil? Why’d you leave work?” she didn’t answer, I came over funny, or even, There was nobody home and I got spooked. She told him the truth.
She told him because it was killing her to keep it all pent inside, not thinking about its effect on him. She had forgotten Butch’s desire to see himself as a hero, a character out of the pulp magazines he read in the same habitual, thoughtless way he cracked his knuckles. He said, “Lilah! Are you serious?”
“What d’you mean?” she said, belatedly wary.
“Do you really think Mr. Stark killed his little boy and buried him in the cellar?”
“ ’Course not,” Lilah said. “Don’t be silly.” But, of course, it was what she thought, she and Sheriff Patterson both, and she couldn’t entirely keep that out of her voice.
“They ain’t back yet, are they? You said they was going to Memphis today.”
“Butch, what are you thinking?”
He swung the Model T in a wide, looping turn. “You got a key, don’t you? We can go look!”
“You’re crazy!”
“Sheriff Patterson’ll be grateful. Maybe he’ll make me a deputy or something.”
“Butch, we can’t break into their house!”
“We ain’t. You forgot your purse. And if the basement door ain’t latched right, that ain’t our fault.”
“Butch, please!”
But Butch was more pig-headed than a pig, and Lilah knew from experience that no argument of hers would make him change his mind. She could only hope, noticing uneasily that the last of the sun was disappearing below the horizon, that the atmosphere of the house would do the job. And she hoped it would do it quickly.
Butch, however, noticed nothing spooky about the house at all. Lilah felt it the instant she opened the back door, moving out at them like a wall of ice; Butch walked in like it was his own house. “Nice things,” he said, then looked back. But he was looking for Lilah, not for the watcher in the corners. “You coming?”
She wanted to say no. No, Butch, thanks, think I’ll wait in the car. But she knew if he figured out she was too scared to come in, she would never hear the end of it, and Butch would never again pay the slightest attention to anything she said. And that would last a lot longer than the ten minutes it would take for Butch to look at the cellar and get bored. “Coming,” she said, amazed at how clear and normal her voice sounded. She walked into the house.
The cellar door was in the back hall, under the stairs, a place (Lilah now realized) that she had been avoiding, completely unconsciously, for weeks. The house was full of twilight around them, and the thing in Lilah’s peripheral vision was more than a cloud. When she turned her head, it wasn’t entirely gone, although that might just have been the shadows.
“Butch,” she said, and now her voice was trembling. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. This the door?”
Before she could say yes, no, or maybe, he’d opened it. That smell of rotting that she had noticed in Jonathan’s room was here as well, and, though still faint, it was distinctly stronger.
“Something’s down there,” Butch said with satisfaction. “They got lights?”
“Yeah, there’s a bulb,” Lilah said, “but, Butch, don’t—”
Butch found the cord, yanked it. For Lilah, the light made everything worse. It was harder than the dark, uglier, and anything it showed her would be true beyond any possible hope of redemption. Butch, oblivious, started down the stairs. It was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, but Lilah moved into the doorway to watch his progress.
“It sure does stink,” Butch called up. “I think he’s really down here, Lilah. I ain’t kidding.”
Oh, I believe you, Butch, she thought. That cloudy thing that she couldn’t quite see was down at the foot of the stairs now. She said, “Butch, come on up and we’ll call Sheriff Patterson. I don’t think he needs a warrant if we call him in.”
“Just wait a minute, Lilah. It’ll be better if I can find him first.”
“Come on, Butch.” Without wanting to, she started down the stairs, as slowly as she had walked across the floor in Jonathan’s room. She did not love Butch Collier—didn’t even like him much—but she knew her duty toward him, and her duty right now said she had to get him out of the cellar before something horrible happened. “Let’s just go call the sheriff, huh?”
“My Christ, Lilah, what’re you scared of? The boogeyman?”
“ ’Course not,” Lilah said. Butch and that cloudy shape, small and white, were converging on the same patch of floor. “But I don’t think it’s safe. The Starks come back and find us in their cellar . . . we might disappear next, Butch. I ain’t kidding.”
Butch knelt, putting his face on a level with that small, white, cloudy presence; Lilah reached the bottom of the stairs and froze there. She told herself she was being silly, that Jonathan Stark had been a meek, mild, sweet-tempered little boy, and that even if his spirit was vengeful, those who had not killed him should have nothing to fear. But she’d lived with that watcher for over two months, felt it in every room, felt its strength increase from hour to hour as the day waned. Whatever her rational mind said, she was afraid. She clutched the banister, licked her lips, said, “Butch—?”
Butch said, “Holy Christ, he’s right here!” She saw the dirt swept aside by his broad, grimy hand, saw, unmistakably, the shapes of small fingers being uncovered.
Then, several things happened at once; Lilah was never able, no matter how carefully she thought them through, to put the pieces together in order. She knew that the front door slammed open; she knew that Butch, looking up, seemed finally to see the small, white watcher. She did not know what he saw—she never, first to last, saw the watcher’s face—but she saw Butch’s face change, saw his death before he could have fully known it was on him.
Butch Collier screamed.
Lilah, watching helplessly, sagged sideways off the stairs, ending up on her knees, still clutching the banister as if it could save her. She heard footsteps along the hall, heard Cranmer Stark say, “Go upstairs, Sidonia! I’ll deal with it.” Then he appeared in the doorway.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded, in a roar like that of a beast, set his foo
t on the first step, and started down.
At the same moment that Lilah realized the white, watching presence was no longer beside Butch, she saw it, as clearly as she ever did, on the cellar stairs just below Cranmer Stark. Its back was to her, but she saw its child shape, saw the tilt of its head. It was looking at Cranmer Stark.
She didn’t think he saw it fully. He saw something; he shouted wordlessly, tried (she thought) to dodge it, and pitched headfirst down the stairs. She was close enough to hear the crack when his neck broke.
Lilah, who only realized later that she was screaming, flung herself up the basement stairs, slammed and bolted the door behind her, and half-scrambled, half-fell into the kitchen to call Sheriff Patterson.
When they unearthed Jonathan Stark’s body, they found his toy bunny clutched under one arm.
Lilah was in Sheriff Patterson’s car again. He’d taken her statement, tried to talk to the hysterically weeping Sidonia Stark, got his deputies started on the basement. Then he’d come back to the kitchen and said, “Mrs. Collier, would you care to come with me?”
“Am I under arrest?” she asked when he opened the door for her.
“Nope.” He got in the car, started it, said, “I believe you. I busted up enough fights with Butch Collier somewhere near the middle to know what he was like. And I was in that house today. I believe it happened just like you said.” He turned left at the end of the Starks’ street, away from the middle of town. “But, and I hate to say this, there’s a bunch of folks in Hyperion who ain’t gonna see it like I do. They’re gonna see one woman and two men in a cellar, and only the woman comes out, and they’re gonna say, we don’t know nothing about who put that little boy down there, but we know what two men end up dead over when there’s a woman in the room. They’re gonna like it better than the truth. Now, those folks can’t make me arrest you, but I can’t keep them from lynching you, neither. You understand?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Lilah. “I hear you, sheriff.”
“So I was thinking—I got your testimony, and I think when Sidonia calms down some, she maybe is gonna tell us the truth. And the man who needed prosecuting is dead, besides. So if you was to just . . . vanish, people could think what they liked and nobody’d get hurt. And I can’t believe you’ll be sorry to see the last of this town.”
Ghosts: Recent Hauntings Page 9
