The Cornelius Saga Boxed Set

by Tanya R. Taylor

  "I called Emergency Services already," a woman who was among a group of onlookers assured the Pettlers.

  "Thank you," Diane Pettler replied. "We're all just lucky to be alive, especially our son." She looked up at the young man with disdain who had caused all that trouble for them.

  "I'm really sorry," he said. "I hope he'll be all right. I'll come with you to the hospital."

  Cara was now there on the pavement with them, observing the hugely-gratifying scene before her.

  "You're lucky I didn't kill you, you stupid boy! That'll teach you to mess with my family." She said casually.

  Harry, in sheer agony, had not even noticed her nor heard a word she had uttered.

  Cara started down the sidewalk whistling as she went along.

  8

  _________________

  Rosie dashed out of the car. Their car was the only vehicle pulling up in front of the school at that hour of the morning.

  "Dang it!" Mira sucked her teeth as she noticed the time. Rosie was nearly a half-hour late due to a traffic accident they encountered on the highway.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," Rosie said to her teacher, handing her the late pass she retrieved from the office.

  "Good morning Rosie. Please take your seat," Mrs. Hall replied solemnly.

  As Rosie headed for her desk, she noticed that not only was Nicole apparently absent, but there was another empty desk near the back of the room — Harry Pettler's.

  She placed her backpack beneath her desk and sat down. Cara was now sitting in Nicole's seat.

  Rosie glanced her way. "Hi," she whispered without grabbing the attention of the others in the class.

  "Hi," Cara answered.

  "Rosie…" Mrs. Hall started.

  "Yes, ma'am?"

  "The class has already been informed, but I'm afraid I must share more bad news with you today."

  Rosie's heart was beginning to drop. She felt anxiety rushing in laced with fear.

  "Harry Pettler has had an accident yesterday. He was hit by a bicycle at full speed and suffered a broken arm and some other injuries. He'll be off from school for a few days, I suppose."

  "And what about Nicole?" Rosie asked innocently.

  "I'm not sure she'll be returning. Her parents pulled her out of school after the incident yesterday and the schoolboard is investigating how she suffered that terrible blow to her head. Unfortunately, no one in this class was able to offer any explanation that made the least bit of sense and her parents are not prepared to accept what they've heard thus far. So, I encourage every one of you - if you saw what happened to Nicole yesterday to be honest and come to me so that we can get to the bottom of this."

  The room was silent, other than for Mrs. Hall's dispiriting admonition.

  Rosie had an uneasy feeling. She noticed that Cara appeared happy-go-lucky and rather nonchalant about everything that had happened lately. She almost seemed… glad.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Mira and Rosie stopped at a deli on the way home. They sat at a table in a corner of the room and ate sandwiches with fruit punch sodas.

  "Mom, why is everyone in my class getting hurt?" Rosie asked after failing to bring it up during the drive there.

  "Has someone else been hurt since the little girl you told me about?" Mira took a sip of her soda.

  "This boy named Harry. He was Paul's friend. He hated me too."

  Rosie was looking at her mother as if pleading for a logical explanation.

  Mira gazed back with curiosity. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  "At lunch today, Cara called me her sister. She said that you will be her mother really soon."

  Mira grimaced. "I will be her mother soon, but she called you her sister already?"

  Rosie nodded.

  "Why can’t other people see her, Mom? I can see her; you can see her. Why can't other people I know see her? None of the children at school even notices she's there. I know that's why Harry called me crazy because he didn't see her neither and I was there talking to her. Maybe I am crazy."

  "No, you're not," Mira said. "You have a special gift, honey. It's nothing to be ashamed of. When I was a teenager, I became aware that I could see things that some people could not see. I understood it as a gift when it involved helping a very beautiful young lady find peace after many, many years of wandering around all alone in dark places. Because my experience was so beautiful back then — although at first it was quite scary — I readily embraced it as the gift that it is. You should embrace yours too. In time, you'll be able to help people like I helped that angel of a lady."

  "Karlen, right?" Rosie sought confirmation.

  "Yes, Karlen." Mira smiled.

  "Maybe I can help Cara," Rosie proposed.

  "Maybe, but honey, not everyone we see that others can't are as friendly and nice as Karlen was."

  "You mean like Mister Koney?"

  Mira nodded. "You've got it. So, until I find out who your friend Cara really is, I want you to stay away from her for a while, okay?"

  "I can't, Mom," Rosie quickly replied. "If I do that, she'll be mad and I don't want her to be mad at me or at you or Nana." The child was clearly worried.

  Mira was suddenly in deep thought. "Are you finished eating?" she asked a minute later as Rosie swooped down the remainder of her soda. A quarter of her sandwich was left on the plate.

  "Uh huh."

  "Let's get you home then. You can keep Mom's company while I make a quick dash."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Nowhere special. I'll be back before you know it."

  Mira assembled the paper plates and cups on the tray and tossed the trash into the bin on their way out.

  * * *

  At five o'clock Mira and Rosie pulled into the yard. Sara's car was already in the drive-way.

  "Nana's here!" Rosie exclaimed.

  "She probably didn't make that trip to the market after work like she said she would," Mira surmised.

  Rosie ran out of the car and into the house. When Mira got inside, she saw her mother in the kitchen pouring a glass of water. She was still in her nurse's uniform.

  "Hi, Mom," she said.

  "Hi, Sweet Pea. Pumpkin said you guys grabbed a sandwich, huh?"

  "Yes, just a little something to hold us until dinnertime."

  "Okay. I hope my little pumpkin's appetite hasn't been spoiled!" Sara tickled Rosie's belly. The child giggled.

  "Are you kidding? We know better than that," Mira returned, quite seriously. Sara gave her a slightly reprimanding look.

  "Mom, I need to make a dash somewhere."

  "Oh?" Sara noticed Mira was rapidly blinking an eye out of Rosie's view. "Okay, we'll see you when you get back then."

  Mira gave Rosie a goodbye hug. "See you later, honey bun."

  9

  _________________

  Mira parked adjacent to the sidewalk in front of Bobby's house. She surmised that he had not yet arrived home from work since his truck was not in the yard. Peering over from behind the steering wheel at the neighbor's house, she saw the Straptopuluses' sedan sitting in their driveway. An unnerving sensation swept over her like a tsunami — the same feeling she got the day she and Rosie pulled up to see Bobby's place for the first time. The Straptopuluses home held an inexplicable eeriness that pulled her.

  Mira got out of the car and quietly shut the door, then made her way over to the front porch. After taking a deep breath in, she rang the doorbell.

  Immediately, she heard a rustling inside and fairly loud whispers, then moments later, the door creaked open.

  "May I help you?" A woman asked.

  "Hi. Are you Mrs. Straptopulus? I'm Mira, your neighbor Bobby's friend."

  "Oh? Yes, I am." The woman was very thin and her face long and sucked in. "Well, what can I do for you?" she asked.

  "I was wondering if I can have a word with you and your husband, if you don't mind."

  "Uh, um…" Mrs. Straptopulus glanced behind, then she looked at
Mira again. "I'm afraid this isn't a good time, but may I ask what this is in reference to?"

  "Your daughter."

  The woman's eyes widened with shock. "My daughter?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Young lady, I'm afraid you have us confused with someone else."

  "Mrs. Straptopulus, I know this is a touchy matter and I can't imagine what it's like to lose a child, but I have to tell you that your daughter is not at rest."

  "You're mistaken! You're confused!" The woman charged.

  "My daughter has been seeing and playing with your daughter in the back yard and she has now followed her to school."

  "I… I don't know what you're talking about. I really must go now." She started to close the door.

  "Ma'am, I believe your daughter is hurting people — children. I really need to speak with you about this before things get any worse." Mira hoped she recognized the urgency in her voice.

  The door was shut in Mira's face.

  "There you are!" Bobby met her as she started down the walkway.

  "I saw your car when I pulled up. Didn't imagine you were over here," he said.

  Mira glanced back at the Straptopuluses' house. "I just needed to speak with them about something."

  "What?"

  Mira sighed. "I think their daughter is responsible for what's been happening to Rosie's classmates." She went on to explain.

  "The dead are harmless though. Aren't they?" Bobby replied.

  "I'd think my experience proves that it all depends on who they are."

  "But she's just a kid."

  "Probably a very angry, naughty kid."

  Suddenly, Hugh Straptopulus called out to Mira. He was walking hurriedly across the lawn to meet her. "Could you please come back?" he asked, almost out of breath. His wife was standing off at a distance near the front porch.

  Mira and Bobby stopped in their tracks.

  "You too, Bobby. Please come," Hugh said.

  They followed him back to the house and as they stood on the porch behind him, Hugh said, "I don't know how to prepare you for what you're about to see, so let's just go inside."

  Mira and Bobby looked at each other, then followed Hugh after he opened the door. Myrtle had returned inside before they arrived.

  Mira gasped in the doorway as she and Bobby looked up at the chairs stuck upside down on the ceiling — at least six of them. Furniture in the living room were overturned and the center table was standing upright on one leg while the others suspended in mid-air. They noticed the television set with the big hole in the middle and decorative wall lights all shattered.

  "My God! What happened here?" Mira asked.

  "She did it!" Myrtle answered in a peeved tone of voice from across the room.

  "She's been turning our house upside down every single day for a full year," Hugh revealed. "I can't live like this anymore. She's got it in for us and I dread the thought of what else she might do."

  Bobby was at a loss for words. He had never witnessed anything like that in his twenty-nine years.

  "She's not only been turning this house upside down," Myrtle said, "but she's turned our lives upside down since the day she was born."

  "What do you mean?" Mira asked, shocked by the disclosure.

  "Do you mind if we all sat down?" Hugh interjected.

  Mira glanced around the room wondering which part of it he had in mind. She looked up at the ceiling again, hoping that none of the chairs would fall on their heads.

  "We can go into the master bedroom. We've pretty much gotten that straightened out when we got home," he added.

  Mira and Bobby followed the couple to their room. It was a large space with a king-sized bed and two large bureaus. Thick green curtains covered the windows and hung against white, drab walls. The room felt cold to Mira, but not temperature-wise.

  "Please." Hugh gestured for them to sit at the foot of the bed. "Or would you prefer a chair?"

  "This is fine," Mira replied apprehensively.

  "Yeah, this is cool." Bobby agreed, sitting next to her.

  "Hugh went to the dining room and pulled in a single chair that remained and sat in front of them. Myrtle stood near the door.

  "What did you mean when you said your daughter's turned your lives upside down since she was born?" Mira asked Myrtle.

  Myrtle started pacing the floor with her long, skinny legs and high-heeled black shoes, then she stopped for a moment and looked back at Mira.

  "What's your last name?"

  "Cullen," Mira replied.

  "I gave birth to an evil child, Miss Cullen," Myrtle stated matter-of-factly. Hugh was looking at her in silence. "That little girl was cursed from the moment she entered this earth."

  Mira was sitting with her hands in her lap waiting for the explanation.

  "Let me take you back a little, so you'd understand how this all came about. Many years ago, my grand-aunt Matilda was hung by the neck until she died for being a witch. Yes, a witch! She made things move on their own like how our Cara did."

  "What do you mean?" Mira had to ask.

  "For instance, the fan would go off on its own or the light with her just staring at them. She could open the kitchen cupboard without using her hands. She could pull out a dish without the effort of picking it up…"

  "She could turn down the radio without touching it," Mira added.

  "Yes. Did she do that to you?" Myrtle asked.

  Mira nodded.

  "If she was angry, she could throw things at you and hurt you really bad if she wanted to, and boy, did she!" Myrtle continued. "At school, she terrorized the children who she didn't get along with. Many of them who suffered terrible injuries at her hand told their parents that they believed she was a witch — just like my family knows our aunt Matilda was. She threatened to do the vilest things a person can ever imagine - let alone a child her age. What innocent little girl would think of chopping someone's head off and tossing it into a canal? Well, she did! Hugh and I lived in fear of this tyrant of a child for eleven years!"

  "So what happened to her?" Mira probed.

  "She died, of course, but of natural causes," Myrtle explained quickly.

  Hugh glanced at her, then the floor became his focus.

  Bobby noticed and had an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  "How did she die?" Bobby inquired.

  "She simply went to sleep after dinner one night and that was it. She liked to eat porridge for dinner sometimes, instead of what Hugh and I were having and after falling asleep that night, she never woke up. The next morning when Hugh went to wake her for school, she was ice cold. Right, Hugh?"

  "Right." Hugh was still looking down at the floor.

  "So why is she doing this?" Mira asked, waving a hand towards the front area. "Why is she so angry?"

  "I have no idea," Myrtle replied.

  "Maybe she feels we didn't love her or accept her for who she was." Hugh spoke up suddenly and passionately. "Maybe all she could remember of us was being called the devil's child and wicked and all the other things a child should not have to hear."

  Myrtle was glaring at him with what appeared to be unquenchable fury. "So, are you blaming me for something, Hugh?"

  "No. Not at all, dear." He seemed to simmer down in an instant.

  "So, that explains all the noise I heard the other day in this house," Bobby said.

  Hugh nodded. "I didn't know how to tell you that our house was haunted by our own daughter," he somberly admitted.

  "So, how do you deal with this every day?" Mira sought the answer from both of them. "Coming home to a house in this condition?"

  "We simply take our time and put things back in their proper place," Myrtle replied evenly. "There's nothing more that we can do."

  "Have you thought about getting help, like bringing someone in who could, perhaps, help your daughter to move on?" Mira asked.

  Hugh shook his head. "We never did out of embarrassment. This is a small town."

  "And a
superstitious one," Mira submitted. "Maybe your pastor or priest could come in and see what they can do."

  "That's completely out of the question," Myrtle inserted. "One time when Cara was eight, we brought in our pastor to pray for her — to rid her of those demons that have cruelly infiltrated our family line. But that day is a day I will never forget and it took me a while to forgive myself for exposing the good pastor to the evil force that was inside our child."

  "What happened?" Mira was curious.

  Hugh cleared his throat. "When he placed his hands on her head to pray the demons away, his hands started to sizzle as if they were on fire and boils bubbled up on his skin. He was in such pain and agony that he had to be rushed to the Emergency Room. He never had full use of his hands after that. I witnessed what he endured with my own two eyes. Cara was laughing the entire time he was in terrible pain."

  Myrtle was nodding.

  Hugh turned to Mira. "I'm ashamed to say that I was at the door eavesdropping when you stopped by to speak with us. When I heard you say that you believed our daughter was hurting people, especially children, I knew we couldn't let you leave this yard without discussing things with you — as hard as this is for us."

  "I really appreciate that," Mira replied. "The only thing is to now figure out what we can do to help Cara diffuse the anger she has and move on. She has latched on to my daughter Rosie and now to me."

  "Really?" Myrtle looked surprised.

  "She appeared in my car the other day and asked if I would be her mother. She claimed that you both hate her."

  "I don’t hate her," Hugh said. "I've always loved her. I just didn't… understand her."

  Bobby thought he seemed sincere.

  "To be honest with you, even as a grown man who is much larger than she was, I have to admit that I was afraid of her. Myrtle and I both were, but we loved her, nonetheless. She was our daughter."

  "When did you realize she hadn't moved on after she died?" Bobby asked.

  "Three days after her funeral when we started hearing the screeching of the swing in our back yard," Myrtle replied. "When I looked out the bedroom window, it was swinging back and forth as if someone was in it. I watched it for at least five minutes before it finally stopped."