by Carrie Bates
“We’ll see what your uncle is up to.”
But on the car ride back, Robbie watched skateboarding videos on her cellphone and got so worked up that after dropping the groceries in the kitchen and warning Tommy not to eat any of the snacks, she trudged upstairs to search for Kyle’s old skateboard.
She opened his door quietly, expecting him to be lying in bed listening to music or on his computer, but the room was empty. She took a few steps and gazed out the window into the backyard. Maybe he was out there – lately, he’d taken to walking the property, returning with odd things he found in the woods, like broken pottery or old farm tools.
Veronica had only been in the room for a few moments when the melancholy settled over her as it always did. She roamed his room slowly, touching a picture of Kyle and her parents, checking to see if he’d left his IPod on.
She sat on his bed and felt the burning just under her eyes that meant the crying would start soon. They were a family of people who didn’t cry often, but lately, she ended up sobbing whenever she came into this room – even if it was just to tell Kyle that dinner was ready, or ask if he could move his laundry over to the dryer.
It was a feeling she couldn’t understand. She hadn’t lived with her parents for over ten years, but the grief she felt when she was here…she didn’t know where else the emotion could be coming from, except that it was lingering from Kyle and how close he’d been to mom and dad.
She felt a sharp pain in her chest and clapped her hand to it, standing and stumbling toward the door.
She was only thirty – surely, this couldn’t be a heart attack? She listened for Tommy and Robbie in case she needed to call out. The pain was excruciating.
As soon as she hit the doorway, the pain ebbed away, and she was left gasping with tears streaking down her face. Veronica slid down the doorframe and sat still, trying to catch her breath. She closed her eyes and focused on the sounds of her boys riffling through the grocery bags.
Suddenly, someone gripped her upper arm painfully and dragged her to her feet. Her eyes shot open and she was confused, expecting to see Kyle but not sure why he’d be handling her this way. Was he upset that she was in his room? He never had been before…
But in front of her stood two gruesome men. The skin on their faces seemed to drag down unnaturally, and was dirty.
The taller of the two held her arm tightly, and the other stood too close to her face. The smell coming off of him was disgusting.
The panic set in when she saw their guns – old guns, rusted barrels, but that didn’t matter. She frantically tried to hear where the boys were. Had these men come in downstairs? Had they hurt Tommy and Robbie?
As she tilted her head away from the fetid breath of the shorter man, she heard the boys still chattering away downstairs. The men must’ve been in the room the whole time. Which meant Kyle was right.
But these two smelled like anything but warmth and grass – the decay smell was nauseating and overpowering. The man in her face grinned, leaning forward, and licked her collarbone. She shivered and tried to jerk away from the pair. The stench of his spit launched her into fight mode, and she began kicking out and wrenching her arm away from them.
She was still fighting when she found herself suddenly free, and completely alone.
Chapter Six
Robbie went from being excited about school and skateboards to timid. He walked around the house with his shoulders hunched, glancing over his shoulder.
Veronica was alarmed by the change in him, and Kyle was openly puzzled. He paid more attention to his oldest nephew, resorting to light shoulder punches and one-armed hugs to try to make the kid feel more comfortable.
The first, and only, night he wet the bed, Veronica sat him down in his room and gripped his frail shoulders.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she pressed, speaking quietly so as not to wake up Tommy, who was sleeping on the floor in his brother’s room in an old sleeping bag of Kyle’s. Robbie had begged Tommy to spend nights with him lately, and Tommy had reluctantly obliged. Veronica could hear Kyle out in the hall and knew he was listening. She didn’t mind.
Robbie muttered something under his breath. She asked him to speak louder. “I said, I don’t like using the bathroom up here.”
Veronica was silent for a moment. “Why not?” she finally asked, unsure of what else to say.
“I just don’t,” Robbie said angrily. The floorboards creaked under Kyle’s weight, and Robbie glanced at the door. Veronica saw the sudden fear in him, and her eyes narrowed.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Why don’t you use the bathroom downstairs instead?” she suggested lightly.
Robbie’s gaze swung back to her. “I don’t want to leave my room,” he said quickly, and Veronica waited for him to elaborate. “It’s the guy at the end of the hall,” he finally admitted, staring down at his feet in embarrassment. “He scares me. He’s always waiting.”
“A man?” Veronica asked quickly. She heard Kyle turning the door handle, and glanced over as it opened.
“What does he look like?” Kyle asked. Robbie relaxed a bit now that his uncle was in the room, forgetting about his embarrassment over wetting the bed.
“He’s just some old guy. He smells bad, I can smell him all the way down the hall, and he just stands there.”
“How does he get there?”
“I don’t know. He’s always already there when I open the door to go to the bathroom.”
“Is he near the stairs?” Kyle asked the question in a way that made Veronica think he already knew the answer. She watched her little brother’s face as Robbie replied.
“No. He stays down by your room. Leaning against the wall there.”
Their eyes met, and although she hadn’t mentioned the incident to him, Veronica knew that Kyle could tell she’d seen the guy.
“Alright,” she said, taking her son by the shoulders and leading him to her room. “You can stay in my room tonight, and just wake me up if you need to go to the bathroom, okay?”
Robbie looked up at her, relieved and still a bit ashamed. He nodded.
She closed his door behind her and stood out in the hall with Kyle, both of them staring down toward the master bedroom.
“How’s he getting in the house?” Kyle asked. She looked at her brother and sadly realized that he’d be off to college soon. And, she and her boys would be there all alone with the horrid smells and terrifying people. There was only a month until his eighteenth birthday; he wasn’t a kid anymore. The hard way he spoke now made her sad and proud.
“I have no idea. It’s like he’s already here.” They stood for a moment in silence. “Did you know about him?” she asked, understanding somehow that the man Robbie was seeing was different from the man Kyle had seen.
Kyle shook his head. “I haven’t seen him, but I smell him at night. I know what Robbie’s talking about – he reeks. But he’s got to be getting in somehow. We’ll figure it out.”
Veronica’s world was suddenly very different; all of these years, she’d been the strong one, plowing through problems and finding solutions. Now, she found herself relying on her kid brother. This scared her; more than divorce, more than the death of her parents.
Chapter Seven
Kyle had found a job in town as a mail carrier. The week before, he’d sat down with Veronica and explained that he needed a little more time – but that he loved the house, and Louisiana. He’d apply for college in the next few weeks and just miss the fall semester. In the spring, he’d start up with some classes.
He went in at 8 AM to sort packages and envelopes, help people mail random things, and keep the stamps stocked, and he got home around 5 PM every day.
It’d be perfect when school started in a week, as Veronica wanted to see if the boys – now 8 and 9 – could handle being home by themselves for an hour or two. They’d have to, eventually, when Kyle went to college.
Kyle walked home one day, up the steep hill that led to their ho
use, and the land around it. What had been the rest of the plantation was a subdivision down closer to town and a horse farm further up the road from them. They were lucky to have the land with the apple trees on it, which had begun to bear fruit that looked good enough to eat.
Veronica had recently received a promotion at the bank and was able to step down at the boutique. For now she was part time, but when they managed to find a replacement, she’d be able to leave and be a one-career woman.
He passed the neighbor’s house and could hear Tommy and Robbie out back with the boy who lived there, probably playing soccer. Kyle continued on to their own house and unlocked the front door to let himself in.
As was normal now, he did a round of the first floor to check that the windows and the door to the backyard were all locked. They were. Then he went upstairs and peered into the bedrooms before going to his own.
He’d left the door open and kicked the dirty laundry on the floor as he entered, thinking that he better do it tonight. As he looked up, he was startled to see the young woman from a month or two again standing in his room.
This time, she was wearing a layered dress the color of magnolia blossoms, and had delicate cloth shoes on her feet. Her hair was half-out of its braid, and her mouth was open as though he’d startled her, as well.
Which was ridiculous, because she was standing in his room. With a knife held up to her sternum. Suddenly nauseas, he remembered the dream he had had, what seemed like ages ago, when he had been outside as Robbie and Tommy caught fireflies. He had to be dreaming again; this couldn’t be happening - again.
As soon as he realized it was real, he shouted and lunged forward, trying to snatch at least one of her arms away. But she turned quickly, bending toward his bed, and he knew from the way she cried out that it was already done.
Her body loosened under his weight, and he felt her sigh. Kyle pulled himself away from her quickly and grabbed her shoulder, wanting to turn her over. He stopped when he saw the blood blooming against his blanket in a long arc. Her arm quivered.
Kyle backed up quickly, staring at the limp young woman on the bed. Her skirt was hiked up to expose her bare calves. Horror was flooding him even as he realized that she was wearing some kind of antique underwear, which bloomed out at the knees.
Without warning, Kyle remembered the moment he’d been told about his parents’ accident. It had been triggered by the desperation and emptiness he felt now, staring at the girl who was slowly dying on his bed.
He slouched to the floor and reached out to touch her ankle. He didn’t realize that he’d been sobbing until Veronica appeared in the doorway, home from work and frazzled.
“Kyle!” she shouted, dropping to the floor next to him and wrapping him in her arms. He moaned, rocking slowly with her. She hushed him gently, letting him get all of the crying out before she asked him what had happened. She expected him to admit that he hadn’t been doing as well as it appeared, getting over their parents’ death.
Instead, he described the scene he’d witnessed in a trembling voice. When he was finished, and his sister didn’t say anything, he pulled back to search her face.
“You don’t believe me?” he accused, eyes swollen. Veronica looked away from him. “You don’t smell her?” he asked harshly, and she realized as she sat on the floor that the room did, in fact, smell like sunlight, dirt – and death.
“I believe you, Kyle,” she said softly, terror gnawing at her gut. She remembered the woman she had seen on Kyle’s bed with the knife sticking out of her chest; a woman she thought she had imagined, the night she had thrown up on Kyle’s bedroom floor.
Chapter Eight
Two months later, things had calmed down, but not gone away.
Tommy and Robbie started school and were doing well. Robbie had only sprained an ankle once while learning to skateboard. Sometimes, Veronica let Kyle borrow the car to drive him to the skate park a few towns over, while Tommy played soccer with the neighbor.
Kyle was beginning to come fully back to himself. He spent the mornings before work leafing through college pamphlets, and although he knew his good grades and graduating high school early could get him in pretty much anywhere, he told Veronica that he wanted to go somewhere nearby so that he could still see the boys on weekends at least.
The neighbors were devastated to be losing another babysitter, but they were only slightly older than Veronica, and stopped over some evenings when they walked down the street to say hi.
It was the wife – Marsha – who got Veronica into baking. She brought over a pound cake that was divine, and explained that they were pretty easy to make if you had the time.
Time was something Veronica had a lot of lately with the new job. She went in at seven and got out at three thirty, which was earlier than she had hoped. She’d be able to be home for the boys with only a few late meetings a month.
In late autumn, Veronica was out checking the apple trees when Mr. Bloomquist wandered out from the trees.
He was an older gentleman that Veronica and Kyle had run into a few times. Occasionally, Kyle would walk down to his house to help out with random household tasks or yardwork. Mrs. Bloomquist had passed away a few years before, and the man had the same sadness that Kyle still carried in him quietly. They seemed to have an understanding.
“Hello, Veronica,” the old man called, high-kneeing it out of the trees. She smiled as he moved toward her, one arm still stretched up to grasp an apple.
“Hey, Mr. Bloomquist,” she answered, twisting to release the fruit. The skin was a bright green with blooms of red.
“Ahhh,” he said, coming to a stop next to her. “My wife used to come here and pick these, when no one owned the house. She used to make apple pie every Saturday night. We’d eat it for breakfast on Sunday with homemade whipped cream.”
He smiled gently, and Veronica couldn’t help smiling back. “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she admitted, bringing the apple to her face to breathe in its scent.
“You haven’t seen my cat anywhere, have you?” he asked, bracing a hand on her shoulder so he could adjust his boots. It turned out, the stray hadn’t been a stray after all.
“The boys just saw her this morning. She comes around to watch the kitten through the back door, so I’m sure she’s roaming somewhere.”
“Good. She’s getting old; I try to keep an eye out for her. Especially with more houses going in down the street. The traffic will pick up.”
“There’s more houses going in?”
“Yup, the town just sold off eight parcels. They should be starting construction once they do a walk-through of the property.”
“Speaking of which,” Veronica said, turning toward him, “the boys were out walking around our property the other day and they found…a gravestone out on the back acre. Would you happen to have any idea what that’s about?”
Veronica was trying to keep the unease out of her voice. She knew that older towns, especially down south, tended to have a lot of random burial grounds. Families would create their own plots on their land. But it wasn’t something that the realtor had notified her of, and she’d walked out there with the boys when they’d come running home to tell her all about it.
The gravestone had been so worn that she’d sent Robbie back to the house for a pencil and paper so they could make a rubbing. Esther McGregor had died very young, and was remembered fondly as a daughter of the McGregor’s’.
Mr. Bloomquist tilted his head this way and that, lowering himself carefully to a large boulder nearby. Veronica broke the skin of the apple with her thumbnail, and its scent was sharp in the air; it wasn’t ripe yet. She had at least another week before she’d be making apple pie.
“Actually, there’s an old story,” he began. “The whole reason the plantation got sold in the first place was because of a bout of bad luck. The family that owned it died out rather quickly – the father first, and then the daughter, and the mother followed shortly after out of grief. But the dau
ghter’s death was the saddest. She took her own life that night of her wedding, and that’s why the line never continued.”
“Was her name Esther?” Veronica asked, not realizing that she was holding her breath. Mr. Bloomquist shook his head.
“I wouldn’t know. But the man she married got the plantation, and he was cruel. When the farmhands left because of how he treated them, he tried to use slaves. They all ran off. Or most of them did, anyway. The ones he caught were punished too severely.” He shook his head sadly. “There was an uprising shortly after that. From what I understand, the surrounding farmers didn’t even pursue justice – they let the slaves leave, and the town inherited the plantation instead. They started breaking the land up about ten years ago.” He tilted his head toward the house. “That’s how you ended up here.”
There was a sudden burst of loud noise as the boys came careening through the tall grass toward them.
“Mr. Bloomquist!” Tommy shouted, “We found your cat! She’s out under our shed. She caught something, and she won’t come out.”
Mr. Bloomquist stood and sighed. “Probably another mole. That’s the last thing I need,” he grumbled, starting off toward the shed with the boys roiling at his heels.
Veronica smiled as she watched them go. She’d talk to Kyle later tonight when he got off of work – he was pulling together, but still having a hard time, still seeing the girl occasionally. One type of grief was distracting from another.
Chapter Nine
Within a few weeks, the construction company was rolling into town in huge trucks that sparked Tommy’s imagination. Suddenly, he couldn’t get enough of mechanics and asked his mom if she could show him how to change the oil in her car, which was something she wasn’t comfortable doing.
“Maybe when you’re a little older you can learn, and do it for me,” she offered, glancing nervously at the old Honda in the driveway. Tommy pouted, but was easily distracted by Kyle, who asked him if he wanted to kick the soccer ball around out back.
