The Window

by Glenn Rolfe

  Carrie stood between them.

  “Carrie, please,” James said. “Step aside and let me finish this.”

  “Do you want to kill me?” she said. It was her voice, but it wasn’t her. Her eyes were rolled into the back of her head. This was another of the demon’s desperate tricks.

  “James, I love you.” Blood seeped from her nose.

  Listen to your little girlfriend, James. I won’t give you or her another chance.

  Domineus was killing her somehow, right before his eyes.

  James pushed Carrie aside, lifted the chair, and charged. Carrie, the demon’s puppet, grabbed his arm.

  Kevin began to moan behind them. The demon was too strong.

  Blood was now running from Carrie’s nose like a faucet.

  “Please, help me. God, please help us,” James said, tears in his eyes blurred his vision.

  Carrie’s grasp loosened. The blood slowed.

  No, the demon’s voice dried in his head.

  Over Domineus’s shoulder James saw the reason.

  Kyrus, the eyeless soul shadow was on the demon’s back, clawing at his burning orbs.

  Carrie’s brown eyes rolled into place as she released him and dropped to the floor.

  “Jamey Boy, do…it…now…” Kevin said.

  Kyrus’s blackened gaze turned to James.

  Thank you, James mouthed.

  “You betray me?” Domineus cried.

  Sanikus’s spirit joined her son’s in the window.

  “You are the one responsible for betrayal,” she said, clawing into the demon’s chest.

  Rays of white light burst free from where his family tore at him.

  “No! NOOOOOO!”

  “God, forgive us,” Sanikus wept. She went for the demon’s blackened heart.

  “Do it now, James,” Kevin said.

  As the white light bloomed from the impossible visions reflecting in the window, James surged ahead and swung the chair. The window shattered. The white light blew out into the night as the glass fell to the lawn. James dropped the chair as he lost his balance and caught himself on the shard-filled sill. Glass punctured his palms. The sliver sticking through his right hand came a good four inches up through the skin between his thumb and forefinger.

  Fighting the dizziness calling to him, James clenched his eyes shut tight and screamed as he ripped his right hand free.

  “Arrrrrrggghh!”

  Clutching his hand to his chest, he turned, dropped down, and placed his hand on Carrie’s chest. She was alive.

  Breathing heavy, his body and mind weak from the battle, he knew it wasn’t over. He had to banish Domineus once and for all.

  His gaze found his father’s body again. He wanted to go to him, but knew it was too late for his dad. Tears threatened to spill, but he wiped at them, and did his best to not think about that. There would be time to grieve, but first, he needed to make sure these monsters were gone for good.

  He stood, went to the junk drawer, and fetched a flashlight, and then moved to the drawer with dish towels. He grabbed one of the ratty, thin ones and wrapped it around his wounded hand as best he could.

  He reached for his cell phone, but it was gone, lost it in all the commotion.

  He knelt next to Kevin. “I’m going to finish this. Can you hold on until I get back?”

  Kevin nodded. The front right side of his head, above the purpled flesh of his eye, looked caved in. If James didn’t make this quick, he feared he might lose someone else.

  “Hold on, pal. Hold on.”

  He went to the front door and turned on the outside light. Opening the door, he stepped down the stairs; he could feel the blood from his wounded hand soaking the front of his shirt as the flesh between his thumb and forefinger pulsed. He flicked on the little red flashlight and searched the grass for every shard he could find. He had to have them all. Kevin told him the way to banish the demons was to break the reflective surface they appeared in while the demon’s reflection was in it, trapping the damned things. He had to have every piece and bury them. He wondered as he collected the shards if he was forever damning Kyrus, too. He hoped not.

  “James?”

  Carrie was up in the window.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “I think so.”

  She looked like she might cry.

  “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. Listen, I need your help. Can you grab me something for me to put all the pieces of the window in? There’s shopping bags and trash bags under the sink.

  She disappeared.

  He began piling all the shards he could find with his flashlight in the grass.

  Carrie returned to the window holding a black trash bag.

  “Kevin,” she started. Her lips quivered.

  He stood and took the bag. “I know. He’s hurt pretty bad.”

  It suddenly struck him that no one was standing outside watching them. Nobody had come to see what the hell was going on. No cops. No nosey neighbors.

  “Can you pull up all of those shards stuck in the sill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Be careful,” he said, as he leaned down and dropped his pile of glass into the bag. “I think I got all them down here. I’ll call an ambulance for Kevin.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then, we’re going to leave, and fast.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Grace Baptist Church is just a couple roads over. They have a little cemetery out back. Kevin never found out what to do with the broken glass in the German story he read, but I think we should bury them on holy ground. That feels right.”

  James gave the lawn one last scan making sure he had every piece. Satisfied, he handed Carrie the bag and ran around to the door. He entered the house and picked up the seldom used landline, grateful for a dial tone. After a few seconds, he made the call. The operator came on the line. He told her they needed help, gave her his name and address, and said to hurry. She wanted him to remain on the line until help arrived, but he hung up.

  The cops and ambulance would be here quick. The police station was maybe ten minutes away; the hospital was just a little further.

  “You got the last pieces?” he said to her.

  “Yes.”

  She dumped them in the bag.

  He handed her the flashlight, and said, “Meet me around the front. I’m going to grab my dad’s shovel.”

  “Okay.”

  He saw her glance at Kevin.

  “He’s going to be all right,” he said. He knew they both had their doubts. Tears streamed down her cheeks before she turned away and went out the door. Hurrying down the hallway, he refused to look at Hank Jacobs’s body on his bedroom floor. He passed by, also averting his eyes from his dad’s back bedroom.

  Eric.

  He opened the back door to the porch. The shovel handle stood in the corner by the rakes. He snatched the spade and burst out the porch door.

  As he came around the trailer, Carrie stood in the front yard waiting for him.

  “I can’t leave Kevin,” she said.

  “The police and ambulance will be here any second. I need you. With what I did to my hand, I don’t know if I can grip the shovel.”

  She looked at the bloody rag wrapped around his hand.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Let’s hurry,” he said.

  They were halfway down the block when the first sirens sounded. They continued until headlights lit the road.

  “Over here.” James directed Carrie behind the large set of mailboxes at the entrance to the Happy Homes Trailer Park. A cop car with lights flashing and siren blaring, followed by another, flew past.

  “Okay, let’s keep going.”

  Carrie hesitated. She was looking at the trash bag in her hands.

  “Come on, quick.”

  She looked confused as she sat the bag down and began to open it.

  “Carrie, don’t!”

  “What…I…”

  “Don’t look at
it. Come on.”

  “I’m sorry, I felt—”

  “I know. I know,” he said. “I can feel it, too. We need to hurry up and get rid of it.”

  Even broken into pieces, Domineus was still trying to hold on.

  She twisted the bag closed and picked it up.

  They ducked from the side of the road twice more as an ambulance and a third police cruiser went by on their way to the church. They hurried around the side of the building to the set of fenced in gravestones.

  “Where should we do this?” she said.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing toward the back.

  They entered the graveyard and headed to the fence on the far side.

  “Set that down and take this,” James said, holding out the shovel.

  James watched her set the trash bag down, careful not to let any of its contents spill. She took the shovel and stabbed it into the ground just before the fence and pulled up a chunk of grass, soil, and roots. He dropped to his knees and clawed dirt away with his good hand, between Carrie’s swipes with the shovel.

  It took them a good fifteen minutes or so to dig out a two-foot hole. James, both sweaty and dizzy, still bleeding from multiple wounds, held his hand up.

  “That’s good,” he wheezed.

  He hauled the trash bag to the hole and eased it down.

  “Quick, fill it,” he said.

  “Should we say something? Is there a spell or something?”

  “I don’t know, Kevin didn’t say.”

  “I feel like we should…I don’t know…say something, anything,” she said.

  “Okay, okay. You start shoveling and I’ll…I’ll give it a shot.”

  He couldn’t remember any prayers from church, so he decided to wing it. As Carrie threw dirt onto the bagged-up window and its evil secret, he began.

  “Dear father, you’re supposed to be all forgiving. These spirits are in need of that redemption. They are in desperate need of forgiveness. Their pain...their pain is great,” he paused, hearing more sirens. He considered all that they’d been through. “Lord, sometimes… sometimes we’re faced with situations that are too much, too confusing. And we get…” he thought of his father at the hotel, then, in the kitchen… “we get desperate, we get angry, we get lost. Lord, these spirits committed unspeakable sins, but they were once your children, your flock. So, I’m asking you, Lord, what they could not. I’m asking you to forgive them for their sins and for their sins against you. May their spirits finally rest, Lord, and may they rest in peace. Amen.”

  He stood and watched as Carrie patted down the fresh dirt with the shovel. He didn’t know what he expected. A white light? An answer? Instead, they both stood there in the night, bloody and beaten, exhausted.

  Carrie took his good hand and leaned her head against him.

  “Do you think we did it? Do you think it’s over?” she said.

  “Yes.” To him, it felt…over. Wherever the demons had gone, be it Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, he knew they would not be coming back.

  “Come on,” he said.

  He wondered about his dad, about Alison. Were they gone, too?

  He gripped Carrie’s hand, glancing once more at the spot in the holy earth as she pulled him toward the road.

  Red and blue lights swirled from the police cars and ambulances out front of his home. The neighborhood stood at a distance, finally aware that something terrible had occurred.

  With Carrie at his side, he rushed pass Mr. and Mrs. Kramer, pass Missy Hinckley and her boyfriend, Matt Connors, and just out of the reach of an officer at the end of the driveway.

  “Hey, hey,” the officer shouted.

  Rushing to the front porch steps, they were finally stopped.

  “Excuse me, kids—," said the officer at the door.

  “This is my house. My, my dad’s…”

  “Out of the way, out of the way,” came a voice from inside the house.

  The officer hurried down the steps taking James by the arm and pulled him to the side. James watched as two EMT’s brought Kevin out on a stretcher. His eyelids were shut, one beneath a pulpy, plum mass.

  “Kevin?” Carrie said, taking a step forward.

  Her brother lay still as they got him down the steps and headed toward the waiting ambulance. She glanced back at James. He nodded. She had to be with her brother. She turned and said something to the EMT about being his sister and was ushered into the rescue vehicle.

  James turned his attention to the trailer and tried to prepare himself for things to come.

  “Son,” the officer Lt. Kimber, according to the nametag on his jacket, spoke to him. “I’m going to need you to come with me.”

  “Is my father…” he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “I’m sorry.”

  A second body was being hauled out. James stepped forward, praying.

  “Eric?” he said.

  By God, Eric was alive. He opened his eyes and held up his hand as they brought him to the second ambulance.

  “We got one more live one,” another voice said.

  Hank Jacobs’s eyes were open as he was carried by, but they were lost in another dimension. He’d seen the horrors and looked like he was still lost in them. James wondered if any of them would ever be the same.

  “Come on, son,” Lt. Kimber said.

  The older officer’s hand landed on his shoulder. James let him guide him away from the trailer. He didn’t need to go back in there. He already knew. He would never again set foot in his father’s home.

  Epilogue

  James arrived home from school. Finally Friday, it was the first beautiful, warm, long weekend of Spring. Evergreen wasn’t nearly as horrible as thought it would be. He’d made plenty of new friends and had even put a little more effort into his classwork. His English teacher, Ms. Bellson, had taken him under her wing and helped him secure his first published story. It was in the local paper, but still, it was in print.

  As well as everything in Evergreen was going, the standout surprise was Garrett’s change of attitude toward him. His new step-father had softened to the point that James found that he liked the man, and Garrett genuinely seemed to like him, too. They could sit through horror movies together and had on several Friday nights, to the point that they’d made it a thing. It turned out Garrett had a great appreciation for seventies and early eighties movies, like Phantasm, Eaten Alive, Terror Train, and the early Friday the 13th films.

  No one was happier for this than his mom.

  She’d been amazing through everything that came in the aftermath of last summer.

  His father and Alison’s bodies had been discovered in the back bedroom of the trailer. He never asked for details. His father’s funeral had been closed casket. He was ashamed that he skipped Alison’s. She’d been a good friend to him, but he couldn’t attend. He wanted to remember her as she was before.

  Jason Betts, one of Alison’s co-workers, was among the victims pulled from the house. James didn’t know Jason and hadn’t even realized his body was in the back bedroom, only that he’d been the last person Alison had turned to before it all went to hell. He paid the price for trying to help.

  Kevin, Eric, and Hank Jacobs made slow recoveries. Kevin only had vision in one eye now, and he and Hank had become friends. James never would have thought he’d consider Hank a good guy, but after spending a few weekends at Kevin’s house with him and considering how he’d tried to fight the demons, too, Hank was okay in James’s book. Eric suffered a concussion, but his wounds on his back healed, leaving ugly scars as permanent reminders.

  A brief investigation followed James, Carrie, Kevin, Eric, and Hank’s unwavering testimonies, and all offered the impossible truth. The local news was handed the story of a home invasion turned deadly. Police stated that the intruder, an unidentified white male in his thirties, was shot and killed on sight, the fictitious perpetrators name was never released.

  “Hey, kiddo,” James’s mother said. “you all pack
ed?”

  He pulled his bag from the end of his bed and dumped its contents atop his comforter.

  “I hope you plan on picking that up before you go.”

  “I will.”

  His mother leaned against the door frame, gazing at him. She smiled.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing. You just look so much like him.”

  He let the comment sit in the space between them. He knew she said it because she meant it. She also thought it a comforting thing to say. It would be, someday. But it was all too fresh, like pressing on a deep bruise.

  “Well, I’ll give you a few minutes, okay?”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  He picked his text books and the loose papers that had spilled out onto the bed and placed them neatly up on top of his bureau. The picture of Carrie—her gorgeous eyes and smile—stared back at him.

  They were official. It wasn’t easy. He was sure there were guys back home waiting in line for a chance to be with her, and he’d been asked to the dance last month by Kelly Walsh, but neither of them talked about that kind of stuff. They preferred to make the most of their time together, whether that be via Facebook, Skype, phone calls, or like this weekend, when they actually got to get together. Mrs. Betts, or Edna, as she made them call her, had taught them that. To live in the now, and to soak up the magic while it was there. They’d been lucky to come out of last summer alive. He and Carrie had been even luckier to keep the spell that bound them together active. They knew the odds were against a long-distance relationship, especially considering their age, but it seemed to make it all more special. A day may come when she decided it was too much work, but he knew he never would. He wasn’t going to waste their time dreading if’s and when’s. Live for today. It’s all that’s promised.

  He packed clothes and the latest issue of Horror Hound magazine. Despite the true horrors he’d faced, he would never run from what he loved. He grabbed the Bible from his nightstand and placed it in the bag next to his horror magazine.

  Good and evil.

  There was something about that careful balance that motivated him. You could never have one without the other. There was no light without the darkness. It’s all part of the world we live in. The shadows we walk through, and the challenges and the adversity we face. The hope and faith we carry that God will shepherd us through any plague that comes before us.