by Ron Ripley
The older Spanish man nodded. “You’re not kidding. Listen, if there’s a problem, you just call us right back up. Ain’t got a place for you to stay, but we sure as hell can take you away from here.”
“Thanks,” Connor said.
“Anytime,” the cabbie replied, flashing him a smile full of gold teeth. “You call us up, you ask for José Roche. I’ll take care of you.”
Connor chuckled, smiled without effort, and said, “Thank you.”
José grinned, shifted the cab into drive, and pulled away. As the vehicle turned onto Adams Street, music poured out of the car’s open windows, and José began to sing along.
Connor kept his eyes on the cab and away from the cemetery. He took a deep breath and stared at the house again.
He had tried to call from the facility, and then from the transfer station when he got off the bus. José had even let him use his cellphone when they were on their way from the cab company’s dispatch office.
Each time, the phone had been busy.
Which meant his father had either taken it off the hook or was on the longest call in history.
Connor swallowed, heard and felt a dry click in his throat, and forced his feet to carry him up the slight slant of the driveway. His eyes darted from left to right, settling first on the empty cans of Natural Ice beer in boxes by the front of the Mustang, then on old, broken bottles of wine.
When he reached the stairs that led up to the porch, Connor hesitated. Licking his lips, he took hold of the railing and stepped up. The ancient wood screamed beneath his foot and a dog barked from within the house. As he continued up to the porch, the dog’s voice grew louder, the barking intensifying until a gruff, bitter voice yelled for the animal to shut up.
The voice brought Connor to a stop.
It was his father’s, and it brought back memories Connor had long forgotten.
Chapter 5: Something Feels Wrong, August 25th, 1980
Connor’s mother had been dead for almost a year.
It had been a terrible time.
“Connor!”
His father’s voice bellowed up the stairs, and in the tone, Connor could hear the wine and the beer. The man went to bed drunk and started the day the same way.
And his hands swung freer as the day went by.
In less than six months, Connor had suffered two broken fingers and more black eyes than he had excuses for. But he had learned to be quicker, and how to judge his father’s moods. He had also discovered how to feed and wash himself and to clean his clothes. When life became unbearable, and his father too drunk or too violent, Connor slipped away to Mrs. Lavoie’s house.
She would feed him and clean him, and give him the mothering he still desperately needed.
All of this drifted through Connor’s mind as he hustled down the stairs. He kept a wary eye out for his father, passing through the dining room and into the kitchen.
His father sat in his chair at the head of the table. A cigarette burned between his first and second fingers. His eyes were bloodshot, and his dark brown hair was spiked with streaks of white.
Connor didn’t pause as he walked into the room, knowing that if he did so, his father would take it as a sign of weakness and lash out at him. Instead, Connor went to the table, grabbed a chair, and dragged it across the floor to the counter. He scrambled up onto the seat, and opened the cupboard to take down the oatmeal and a bowl. His father watched him as Connor made breakfast for both of them.
“There’s no work for me today,” his father said.
Connor glanced at him, the man’s pale face puffy with lack of sleep. The stubble of several days’ growth of beard added to his haggard appearance. He wore the same clothes as he had for the previous two days and Connor could feel the violence emanating from the man.
Connor would need to get out of the house soon.
His hands trembled as he poured the oatmeal.
“What are you afraid of?” his father hissed.
“Nothing,” Connor answered. His voice was calm and gentle, contrary to the fear ripping through him.
“There’s something wrong here,” his father said, getting to his feet with some difficulty.
Out of the corner of his eye, Connor saw the man glance about the room.
“It’s not right,” his father continued, “do you feel it?”
Connor was going to remain silent when he realized his father was right.
There was something wrong; it filled the air. A strange, oppressive layer was added to the late August heat, and Connor knew it was bad.
It reminded him of the morning his mother had died.
The sensation must have brought a similar memory to his father, for the man stumbled back, reaching out and grasping the edge of the table.
“Something’s here,” his father whimpered. Then he turned and fled from the room.
Connor’s hands shook so badly he couldn’t hold onto the oatmeal container any longer. He put it on the counter and climbed down off the chair. When he did so, he looked over to the side door and let out a moan.
The ghost fox that had killed his mother stood in the kitchen, sitting on its haunches. Its mouth was open, making it seem as if it were smiling at him. The tail twitched, passing through the door and coming back into the kitchen.
Connor couldn’t move as he watched it stand up and step towards him. A single, delicate paw was in the air when there was a knock on the door’s glass pane.
Connor managed to tear his eyes away from the fox to see who was there and saw Mrs. Lavoie. She smiled at him, but then the smile faltered when she noticed the fox.
Connor had confessed to her what he had seen in the cemetery the morning of his mother’s death. Mrs. Lavoie had shushed him, told him it was nothing more than a terrible creation to deal with his mother’s sudden passing.
But in Mrs. Lavoie’s wide, expressive eyes, Connor saw that she understood he had told her the truth. The fox had been real. It was not a creation to help him accept his mother’s death.
Mrs. Lavoie took a step back. The fox let out a high, pleased yip, and turned away from Connor.
“No,” Connor whispered.
The fox’s tail swung lazily to the left and then to the right before it passed in silence through the door.
Mrs. Lavoie’s scream of terror was hardly muffled by the thick wood of the door.
Chapter 6: Knocking on the Side Door, August 2nd, 2016
The fact that Cody Michael Mann was still alive was proof to Connor that there was no justice in the world. Connor felt, rather passionately, that his father should have died in the cemetery instead of his mother. And if not instead of his mother, then he should have taken the place of Mrs. Lavoie.
His father was alive though, and Connor would have to make the best of a wretched situation.
Connor waited until the unseen dog quieted down, then knocked on the door. The dog let out a series of howls and barks that caused a torrent of profanity to spill from his father’s mouth.
“Who the hell is it?” Cody demanded on the other side of the door.
“Connor.”
Silence greeted him.
“You’re a liar,” his father said without conviction.
“Open the door,” Connor said. He felt the old anger building up. The rage he had never been able to quench when he was in his father’s presence.
“Connor’s in a home,” his father said, “some place where his mother’s family stuffed him.”
Connor punched the door, the skin on his knuckles splitting and blood splashing out over the faded paint.
“Open the damned door,” Connor snarled through clenched teeth.
A heartbeat later, the sound of locks being turned filled the air. The door opened a crack to reveal darkness. A deep growl emanated from the house, and the dog pushed forward, its nose wet and glistening in the gap between the door and frame.
“Get back, Rex,” Connor’s father said, and the dog’s snout vanished.
“H
ell,” his father whispered, “it is you.”
The door didn’t open any further.
“Let me in.” Connor knew his voice was cold, just as he knew his father was remembering the last time they had met outside of the facility.
“Probably not a good idea,” his father said after a moment, a tremor in his voice. “Place is a mess. You know.”
“Never bothered you when I was a kid,” Connor snapped. “Open up. Now.”
Part of him wanted to smash the door in. He knew he could. The anger would let him. But there was the dog to consider. He was more concerned with any damage it might cause him than the other way around. The police were another matter as well. His father might call them if he had a working phone, and then Connor would end up in jail.
And that wasn’t any guarantee of protection from the daylight.
He shuddered as he thought of it, and in a heartbeat, he was plunged into the memory of that morning, of his mother’s murder at the hands of the shape-shifting ghost. Connor recalled the terror and the helplessness he had felt when Mrs. Lavoie had been slain by the same creature.
He knew jail wouldn’t be a safe refuge either.
Far from it.
Connor didn’t think any place was.
Before he could demand entry again, his father opened the door fully, revealing himself and the dog.
The dog was a German Shepherd. Pure black and magnificent. Connor had read a great deal about all manner of subjects in his years in the facility, and at one time, he had been obsessed with dogs. The Shepherd before him had none of the inter-breeding frailties found in the American Kennel Club requirements. There would be no hip problems with the dog before him.
It watched him, brown eyes focused and alert.
Connor smiled at the dog and was pleased to see its tail thump.
His father caused Connor’s smile to falter, not only from his hatred of the man but his physical condition as well.
Decades of alcoholism had caused his father’s stomach to push out the threadbare fabric of his shirt, the liver swollen. His skin was pale, his hair white tinged with yellow. Red splotches, proverbial ‘gin blossoms,’ covered his nose and spread across his cheeks. His clothes consisted of a stained and filthy V-neck undershirt with a pair of shredded boxer-shorts. His feet were gnarled, the toenails the color of yellow parchment and curling inward.
While Connor’s hatred for the man didn’t vanish, it did lessen as he saw what was left of his boyhood terror.
“You look terrible,” Connor said, and he stepped inside the house. The smell of dog urine, filth, and decay washed over him. Connor held back a gag. His nose, long accustomed to the sterile, clean smell of the facility, was in shock at the feral odor of the house.
“Damn,” Connor said with difficulty, “you need to open a few windows and air this place out.”
His father shook his head, a frantic motion that made him look like a man with a neurological disorder, and he muttered, “He’ll get in. I can’t let him in. I can’t let any of them in.”
Connor turned, wanting to ask what the man was babbling about, but his attention was drawn to the lintel as his father slammed the door shut and secured the locks. Dozens of old horseshoes were nailed onto the lintel, and then down either side. Across the threshold were at least a hundred, if not more, ancient, coffin-head nails. They were hammered in a haphazard fashion, each one crossed over another, then twisted, so they met up with the horseshoes on either side of the frame.
Connor looked at his father and wondered if the man had gone insane.
He was surprised that he found no pleasure in the idea. The creature before him was not a beast. Merely a miserable, wretched image of a man.
He was, Connor realized, nothing to fear. If anything, the man should be taken as a warning, an example of what alcohol and cowardice can do to a person.
Connor turned and looked at Rex. The dog returned the look, his ears upright, his eyes alert. Connor closed his free hand into a fist and extended it to Rex, allowing the dog to smell him. When the Shepherd’s tail thumped, and the dog got up and left the room, Connor lowered his hand.
“Is my room clean?” he asked. “Or does it look like the rest of the place?”
His father cleared his throat, looked down at the floor and muttered, “Don’t know.”
“Pretty simple question there, dad,” Connor said, unwilling to remove the disdain for the title out of his voice.
His father flinched, but he still didn’t elaborate on why he didn’t know about the status of the bedroom.
“It’s a yes or no question,” Connor continued. “It either is, or it isn’t, a pig sty.”
“I don’t know,” the man mumbled. “I don’t go up there.”
It took Connor a moment to process the statement.
“What? How can you not go up there? The shower’s up there. Your bedroom’s up there.” Connor shook his head in disbelief.
“I use the first-floor bathroom to get cleaned up,” his father said, “and I sleep in my chair. Rex has the couch.”
Too shocked to speak, Connor pushed past the man, through the filth of the kitchen and into the den. That room stank worse than the kitchen. It smelled of sweat and sickness, stale air and desperation. Connor grimaced, turned the corner into the small hallway and stopped.
A framework had been set up in front of what had been an open staircase. In the framing was a door made of beaten iron sheets riveted together. His father had followed him and hung back, wringing his hands.
“Why?” Connor asked. “What’s the point of this?”
“Keeps them out,” his father whispered.
“You said that about the side door,” Connor said, frowning. “Who exactly are you trying to keep out?”
“The fox and his friends,” the man answered.
Connor dropped his bag to the floor, his breath catching in his throat. Hatred boiled up inside of him. For decades, his father, on the rare occasion when they had seen one another, had denied the existence of the fox. Or of anything Connor had experienced.
“The fox,” Connor repeated. He let the word roll off his tongue, enjoyed the bitter taste of it in his mouth. Found pleasure in the blaze which erupted in his mind.
“The fox,” he said again, then asked, “and his friends?”
His father answered with an almost imperceptible nod.
“They’ve been back?” Connor asked, the question difficult to ask as his chest tightened.
“Every year. I see them around the house, and in the cemetery. There are always more,” his father whimpered.
Connor bent down, picked up his bag, and said, “Let’s hope they’re not coming in the morning. I need to sleep.”
“You have to leave,” his father said, his voice rising. “You can’t stay here.”
“There’s no other place for me,” Connor answered. He reached out and took hold of the slim, improvised latch that secured the door to the frame.
“Then sleep down here,” his father said. “You’ll be safe. I have all the windows and doors secure.”
Connor looked at his father, felt the hate and disappointment rise to the surface, and said, “Better to die up there, father, than to be in this room with you.”
His father made no reply as Connor let himself into the stairwell. As he climbed up the stairs, he heard the door close behind him, and the latch click into place.
Connor’s steps carried him into his past, and the nightmare of his future.
Chapter 7: Pine Grove and the Dawn, August 3rd, 2016
The room was dusty and nothing more.
Connor had found a towel in the linen closet and wiped the dust of decades from his belongings. Star Wars figures and Hardy Boys books, Matchbox and Hotwheel cars. A closet full of old clothes that his mother had folded.
Connor opened his windows and then flipped the mattress on his twin bed. His years in the facility had instilled in him a desire for cleanliness and order. Before he would sleep, Connor
needed to make certain the room was as clean as possible.
Once the dust had settled from the mattress, he wiped everything down again, tossed the towel into the rattan hamper, and found a set of old Star Wars sheets. They were stiff and had a mingled odor of age and mild decay about them, but they were clean.
He made the bed and stared at it, realizing that his mother was the last one to touch the sheets. To fold them and put them away, never suspecting that the next time Connor used them she would have been murdered in Pine Grove Cemetery.
Connor wiped the tears from his eyes and went to look out the window that faced the cemetery. He looked out at the few headstones illuminated by the red lights the Catholics favored for religious decorations. In the darkness beyond those isolated, glowing graves, was his mother.
They had buried her in the same cemetery she had been killed in, although no one but Connor knew it.
Mrs. Lavoie learned it was true, Connor thought bitterly. Seems like my father has as well.
He looked out the dirty window for a moment longer, then turned away, and picked up his bag. For a moment, he rummaged around in it, found his medication, and took out two instead of one of the sleeping pills. Connor didn’t think he would be able to sleep with only half a dose.
He took a plastic bottle of tepid water, popped the pills into his mouth, and swallowed them. They left behind an aftertaste of chalk, but they could have tasted like sewer water for all he cared. Sleep was an elusive element in his life.
Putting the water bottle back into the bag, he went over to the bed. Connor stripped down and folded his clothes, placing them on his chair before he climbed into bed. The smell of the sheets washed over him, the fabric rough and cool against his skin. His bed felt too small; his last memory of it when he had been less than half his current size.
Connor yawned, stretched, and rolled over. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of his mother.
The sound of a squeak caused his eyes to snap open, and he sat up, blinking at the bright sunlight streaming into the room.
