Kline looked at her and felt his heart stop. Her face looked the way it used to before the strokes. Only sadder. Her mouth was open, like someone who had just remembered something. Or someone who is suddenly puzzled by something she thought she understood but now realizes she was all wrong.
“Sadie?” he whispered, feeling a lump in his throat. “Sadie? What is it?” No answer. “Honey?”
“Why didn’t we believe her?” she whispered, her voice steady and determined. But still sad. “Why didn’t we believe what she told us?”
Kline waited, saying nothing, afraid that his slightest motion might break the spell.
“I know it was peculiar,” Sadie went on. “what she told us. But still, she was our little girl. We should have believed her.”
Kline nodded, his eyes still fixed on her. “Yes,” he whispered. “I know.”
“Remember. . . remember what she said right before she went up to heaven? What she told us about the angel?” She looked at him, her eyes full of tears. “You should have believed her, but you didn’t. And... I couldn’t, either.” With each word her voice became firmer, almost strident. Sadie looked back down. “It’s too late, isn’t it?” Then she licked her thin lips and began to sing. Not the way she sang when she wandered down the dark halls at night, but the way she used to sing. Maybe the voice was wearier, but otherwise it was the same:
Lo, He comes with clouds descending
Once for favored sinners slain.
Thousand, thousand saints attending
Swell the triumph of his train Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
God appears on earth to reign,
God appears on earth to reign.
She stopped, a frown coming over her face. “It’s not going to be like that, is it?”
“I don’t know anymore, Sadie.” Kline was frightened now. For a moment he had his wife back, but what she was saying scared him.
“Maybe we expected too much of Him.”
“Of who, Sadie?”
“Of Jesus,” she said. “Maybe He has come again. Many, many times. Only we didn’t know it. Because...because we didn’t know what to look for. We wanted the clouds descending, the saints attending. We wanted triumph. But...would that be Jesus?”
Kline shook his head. “I don’t know anymore,” he said again.
“Maybe He’ll keep on coming until we understand.”
“Understand what?” Kline asked slowly.
“That Jesus can’t reign on earth. He can only be... crucified. Because . . . because . . .”
“Because what, Sadie?”
“Because,” she said. Though this time it was not leading to anything else. It was a statement by itself.
She sat there, then shook her head. “I’m tired,” she whispered. “So tired.”
Kline waited in silence, watching her. She pushed herself back from the table, leaving the sandwich untouched, then walked out of the kitchen into the dark hallway.
“Sadie?” he called out. Reaching down, he adjusted his leg brace and hobbled after her, moving as fast as he could. “Please, don’t go yet, Sadie. Please.”
But she did not stop, did not even turn around. He followed her to the steps, clutching the bottom of the banister. “Please,” he called to her, “don’t. . . don’t leave.”
But again she whispered. “I’m so tired.”
He watched her as she began up the stairway to the second floor of the old house, to the room where she slept.
“Honey, you know I can’t come up there. Please, stay down here tonight. Please.”
But the stairs were empty.
Kline stood there; then, pushing himself from the banister, he slowly clanked back into his dark bedroom. Loosening his leg brace, he sat down on the edge of his bed.
He stared at the floor, elbows on his knees.
Slowly he eased himself back, laying his head on the pillow.
He listened to the footsteps overhead.
Then, holding his breath, he strained to catch the other sound drifting down.
It was a hymn. Although he could catch only a few wisps of melody, it was enough for him to recognize it:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains. . . .
16
Beulah gasped, jerking her head up sharply from the pillow.
She stared into the dark room, her mouth open. Hunching her shoulders, she shivered. Straining to sit up as far as she could, she reached down and lifted up the covers from the lower part of her body, squinting into the darkness underneath them, trying to see her own legs. But there wasn’t enough light.
Reaching down, groaning with the strain, she began to feel under her gown, first the upper part of her legs, then her knees, feeling desperately for the things. Then lower, as far as she could reach, she patted her skin.
They weren’t there.
She blinked. For a moment, she had thought it was starting up again, the way it had for the past week. Each time she would wake and find the lower part of her body covered with them, so thick there was not so much as a fingertip of skin left exposed. And, waking up just then, she thought she had felt the same cold clamminess down there as in the dreams.
Feeling a little more, just to make sure, Beulah eased back onto her pillow, propping it up a little bit behind her.
She pinched herself on the fat underhang of her arm, to see if she was really awake. She felt the sting; she was awake, all right.
Swallowing, she felt that her throat was dry. She was thirsty. Reaching over instinctively, she went to grab the top of her cane, the one she used to call Amy. But her hand grasped at thin air. Turning over as far as she could on her side, she blinked at the wall next to the bed.
The cane wasn’t there.
It had fallen, she told herself. Fallen on the floor beside the bed. Trying to see where it had slipped down to, Beulah strained to get as close to the edge of the bed as she could, looking down to the floor. But she could see only part of it, and even then it was too dark to make anything out.
Still, she told herself, it had to be right down by the side of the bed, between the bed and the nightstand.
“Amy?” she called out, her voice hoarse and rasping. “Amy, get up here!”
She waited, listening, but there was no response from downstairs. Not any sound at all.
She called out again, a couple of times. Then, murmuring under her breath, Beulah lay back down flat on her back and letting her arm go dangling over the side of the bed, strained to reach the floor. Owing to the old-fashioned design of the bed, sitting high up the way it did, there was still an inch or so between her fingertip and the floor. She strained and moved her hand blindly but felt nothing.
“AMY!” she called out, still flat on her back. “AMY! You get up here right now, you—”
Beulah suddenly stopped, her mouth wide open, caught in mid-scream. She blinked, her lips quivering. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face.
She had touched something on the floor. Something wet and cold and soft. She pulled her hand back. It was covered with them.
Frantically she shook her hand, then reached over and turned the light on. They were all over her hand and wrist, oozing up her arm.
That was when she saw it.
The walls seemed to be moving, undulating in the shadows. And not just the walls, but also the bedposts, her dresser, her nightstand, the lampshade, the quilt—they were moving, churning, teeming with the gray, oozing things. She lifted up the quilt. They were on either side of her, too.
Suddenly she heard the sound of cloth tearing, ripping. She looked up, stared up at the canopy of her bed. It was sagging down under the weight of a huge and shapeless mass, like it was filled with rainwat
er. The tear was right over her head. And, one by one at first, then in piles and heaps, they began to tumble out, falling through the rip in the canopy, falling onto Beulah. She opened her mouth to scream again and felt the sudden sickening plop as a thing fell against her lips, curling at the touch, rolling back down against her tongue.
She choked and reached into her mouth, pulling the thing out. But her hand was covered with them now, too. A thing in her mouth uncurled, dangling right in front of her face. She looked at it. It wasn’t a leech.
It was a finger. A human finger, severed at the bottom joint. She dropped it, then lifted up and looked at the things on the bed. It was crawling with them. All the same. Every one of them the same.
Suddenly she felt it. Something grabbed a hold of her right leg and she felt herself sliding down toward the end of the bed, her huge body collapsing onto the floor. She went to grab hold of something, but the floor was covered with the same things, inches deep. She tried to look up, to see what had taken hold of her, feeling the pressure and the imprint of a single hand. But all she could see was the closet, its door open, and the darkness inside. It was pulling her into it. And not just into the closet, but deeper, until she knew that her leg was being pulled into the attic space through the little door. “I ain’t going to fit,” she said with a gasp. “I ain’t going to—”
17
Amy sat up in bed.
The scream had lasted only a second. And, as Amy sat there rubbing her eyes, she wasn’t even sure she had heard anything at all.
“Beulah?” she called out, reaching over to the little nightstand and clicking on the lamp. Wincing from the sudden bright light, Amy stood up and went over to where she had laid out her robe. She put it on quickly, tying the belt, then looked up at the cracked plaster on the ceiling, waiting for Beulah to begin knocking against her floor with the cane. But there was nothing. Not a sound.
“Beulah?” Amy called out again, louder this time, cocking her ear.
Still nothing.
She stood there. The sound must have been part of a dream, but she couldn’t remember if she had been dreaming about anything in the first place.
A wisp of a memory rose. A woman’s cry for help. Amy shivered.
“Beulah? You all right?”
Amy hurried to the steps, then stopped and began to climb them slowly, looking back down behind her at every other step.
“Beulah?” she whispered.
Amy stopped right at the last step and stared down to the far end of the dark, bleak corridor toward Beulah’s room. She let go of the rail and went up the last step, walking down the hall until she came to a halt only a few feet in front of Beulah’s room. She frowned. The door was slightly open.
“Beulah? You call me a while back? Something wrong?”
Amy stood there another moment, her heart beginning to race faster and faster. “Beulah? You ain’t sick, are you?”
She stopped short. Blinking, she pushed the door the rest of the way and stared into the room. She stepped over toward the bed, then suddenly stopped. She stared at the empty pillow, at the twisted sheets and coverlets, at the quilt that had been thrown to one side of the bed. It was empty.
She went to the edge of the bed, her mouth open. But underneath the coverlet were just the crumpled sheets. Suddenly a thought came to her: Beulah must have rolled over somehow, rolled over and fallen off on the other side. Hurrying around the foot of the bed, Amy peeked into the narrow space on the other side, between the bed and the wall. She kneeled down and patted the floor, since it was too dark to see anything. But the floor was empty, too. Amy was at a total loss. “Beulah?”
Amy walked slowly around the room, almost on tiptoe, peeking into every corner, looking behind the dresser and opening the drawers, much as if Beulah had lost a glove that might have slipped into any tiny crevice. She got down on her hands and knees and looked underneath the bed. But there was still not a trace of Beulah.
Amy got back up and went into the hallway. She looked from one end of it to the other. She just couldn’t understand it. Beulah had not moved from that bed in years. For as long as Amy had been there, the most Beulah had been able to do under her own power was to lift her head and move her arms.
Downstairs in the main hallway Amy stopped, looking from the parlor into the dining room, calling out for Beulah at intervals. “Where’d you go to, Beulah?” she said with a whimper, like a little child playing hide-and-seek with somebody who was letting the game go on too long. “You come out now, Beulah.”
Call the sheriff, she told herself. Tell him Beulah’s gone.
Scurrying into the kitchen, Amy switched on the light and went straight to the telephone fastened on the wall by the back door. “Where’d I put Charlie’s number?” She turned around and ran back to the cupboard and started opening the drawers to find the number. Suddenly she stopped.
There were goosebumps all up and down her arms. She looked up at the ceiling. She recognized the sound. It was Beulah’s cane.
The thump came again, louder this time.
Amy went to call out, but the name almost gagged her. Instead, she could only get it out in a broken whisper. “Beulah. . .?”
There was something wrong about it. Amy listened, her goose bumps rising up again in another wave. The thumping was too slow, far too slow. Beulah’s tapping was always rapid and continuous, like the angry beat of a drum.
“Beulah?”
Somehow Beulah must have gotten back into her room. And the strange way she was tapping, it was because she must have hurt herself, so badly she couldn’t even call out, could just barely lift the cane and let it drop.
The door was still open to Beulah’s room.
Amy crept toward it, still hearing the sound of the cane tapping against the floor.
“Beulah, you all right?”
That was when she heard it, low and distinct. “Amy, hon. I done...done hurt myself,” the voice called out, the words spoken in a muffled tone.
Amy didn’t move.
“You come help me, honey. Oh, Amy, I hurt so bad.”
Amy hesitated, then walked to the door of Beulah’s room. She looked inside. The bed was still empty.
“Beulah?”
“Over here, hon.”
But Amy still didn’t see where the voice was coming from. “Where?”
“Here.”
Even though Amy had stepped into the room, Beulah’s voice still, somehow, sounded far away. “I don’t see you, Beulah. Where?” Amy wanted desperately to help.
That was when she noticed something peculiar. The door to Beulah’s closet was standing wide open. “I’m in here,” the voice said with a rasp.
“What you in there for, Beulah?”
“Hiding.”
“From what?” Amy gasped.
“What come to get me. Oh, Amy, I hurt all over. You come and help me, hon. Help me back to bed.”
Amy stepped toward the door of the closet. She stooped down and looked inside. “Beulah?”
Beulah wasn’t there. In the spaces between her row of nightgowns, there was nothing. Nothing at all.
“Where are you?”
“Back here.”
And then Amy realized what Beulah was talking about. It was the little door that led into part of the attic of the old house. “What you doing in there? How’d you—” But Amy stopped. Her eyes opening wide, she watched as Beulah’s arm reached out through the tiny door toward her. Yet not reaching out so much as seeming to uncoil itself.
“Help me, hon.”
Amy shook her head. “How’d you fit in there, Beulah, anyways? It ain’t big enough for all of you.”
“He done pulled me in,” Beulah’s voice said with a gasp. “He’s done got me by the legs, pulling.”
“Who?” Amy said. “Who’s got you?”
But Beulah s
aid nothing. Amy watched, speechless, as the arm kept coming out from the tiny door, reaching farther and farther. But the arm wasn’t fat the way it should have been, the way Beulah’s arm was fat. It was thin and long and it wound out between the gauzy nightgowns.
“Beulah!”
But at that moment Amy felt the thing take hold of her by the foot. Amy screamed, struggling to push the hand away, but its grip was too strong. As her slender body slid back into the darkness of the attic, she heard the voice as it whispered to her, “We are the first fruits. . . the first fruits of them that sleep.”
18
“Alvin?”
Priscilla Anderson blinked and looked around her. She waited. But, after a moment, she realized what she had heard. It must have been on the TV. Somebody must have screamed on the TV. She sat up and looked at the little black-and-white set perched on top of an old chest of drawers. It was one of Tommy Lee’s habits—he could fall asleep only with the TV going. She looked at the show that was on. It was Johnny Carson. She frowned, puzzled. Who would scream on the Johnny Carson show?
Maybe it was Alvin, she thought. He might have had one of his nightmares again, one of his parlor dreams. Priscilla squinted over at Tommy Lee. He was asleep. She eased herself out of bed and put on her pink powder puff bedroom slippers. She walked on tiptoe to the door of the bedroom, then went out into the hallway. She stopped in front of Alvin’s room and quietly eased the door open, though just enough for her to put her eye against the crack.
“Hon?” she whispered.
Pushing the door all the way open, Priscilla stepped inside, looking from the empty bed to the closet, then back again.
Alvin wasn’t anywhere. She turned back around and went out into the hallway and walked down to the bathroom. But it was dark and the door was open.
Hearing the door slam against Alvin’s dresser, Priscilla nearly jumped out of her skin. She raced back to her son’s bedroom and looked around, clutching her chest. “Why, Tommy Lee, you nearly scared me to death. I was—”
“You was in here coddling. That’s what…” But Tommy Lee broke off, glancing down at the empty bed. He stepped over to it and lifted up the cover. “Where’s the boy?”
Deliver Us From Evil Page 25
