Black Creek Crossing

by John Saul

  It hadn’t helped that he’d always been so shy he could barely bring himself to talk to anyone who didn’t speak to him first.

  Or that he’d always been small—even most of the girls in his class were taller than he was.

  Or that he’d hated sports.

  So while the rest of the boys played soccer, softball, football, and hockey, first in the Pee Wee League, then Little League, then on school teams, he had played alone. During the winter months, he lost himself in the books in the old Carnegie Library, which had dominated the north side of the town commons for more than a hundred years; when the weather was good, he’d explore the woods that surrounded the little town.

  But no matter how much exploring he did, he always found himself coming back to Black Creek and the Crossing. He knew almost every inch of the area—where the best swimming hole was, in which pools trout were most likely to be lurking, which rocks were the turtles’ favorites for sunning on summer days. He’d caught turtles and frogs and polliwogs, and every variety of fish that lived in the stream, and taken them home to put in aquariums and terrariums. Once, he’d taken an old enamel bowl and put it in the backyard, filled it with stream water and grasses he’d pulled from the stream bed, then stocked it with polliwogs and waited for them to metamorphose into frogs. He hadn’t thought it would take long, since they’d already been sprouting legs when he caught them, but two months later, as summer was fading into fall, they hadn’t changed at all, and deciding the bowl was just too small for them, he took them back to the stream.

  Of course, he knew about the murder that had occurred in the old house at the Crossing—everyone in town did. He’d heard the stories about why the man had killed his wife and child, but he knew they were just stories. When Chad Jackson had first told him that the man had gone crazy and killed his wife, and that everybody who ever lived in that house afterward went crazy too, Seth had asked his mother about it.

  She’d laughed when he repeated Chad’s tale, and told Seth that people had been telling stories about that house for as long as anyone could remember, and he should just ignore them.

  Instead, he’d gone out Black Creek Road the next day and stood exactly where he was now, gazing at the house across the street.

  Though the lot it stood on wasn’t particularly large—maybe half an acre—there weren’t any houses on the lots next to it, or the lots next to those. Nor were there any houses at all on the side of the street where he stood. In fact, there weren’t more than five houses on the whole stretch of Black Creek Road that lay between there and town.

  All of them were old, but Seth knew the one at the Crossing was the oldest. It was small, and practically square, and had no front porch—only a stoop with an ugly metal awning over it. There were shutters at the windows, but they were all sagging and didn’t look like they’d close even if anyone wanted them to. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was just an old house, lacking even the smallest interesting design detail. Not like the wonderful big Colonial, Georgian, and Victorian mansions strung along Prospect Street, or the smaller versions with the same kind of architecture that filled Roundtree’s side streets.

  But this house—and what had happened within its walls—held a strange fascination for Seth, and time after time, year after year, he found himself coming back to gaze at the nondescript building as if something in the structure might explain the terrible events that had taken place inside. It was as if the house itself didn’t look very happy—if a house could look happy—and now, with the For Sale sign stuck in the unkempt front yard yet again, Seth thought it actually looked sad.

  Sad, but no different than it looked earlier in the day.

  And there was nothing unusual about the second story window. Nothing except the killing of the little girl who had once lived behind it.

  Taking his camera out of the pocket of his jacket, he took a few more shots in the fading light. In one of them, a glimmer of the setting sun found its way through the branches of the maple forest and caught the second story window perfectly. If he’d caught the moment, and the picture came out right, the upper window should contain at least a partial reflection of the setting sun.

  As dusk began to settle, Seth finally started back toward the center of town, silently praying that his father wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t tried to join Chad Jackson’s softball game.

  As he approached the pizza parlor, he saw Zack Fletcher and some of his friends crowded around one of the outside tables, and he crossed the street before any of them saw him.

  Better to turn away and pretend they didn’t see him than walk right by and have them pretend they didn’t see him.

  Two blocks later he turned on Church Street, and a couple of minutes after that he was in front of his own house. He was about to climb the steps to the front porch when he looked up at the house and cocked his head. Then, instead of going in, he crossed the street and turned around to look at it from farther away.

  If he pretended the houses next door weren’t there, and the big oak tree in the front yard was gone, and took away the front porch, his house looked almost like the one out on Black Creek Road.

  His was bigger—much bigger—and newer, and its shutters weren’t sagging, and it had a front porch instead of just three steps to a stoop, but otherwise they didn’t seem much different.

  Maybe that was why he’d always been so intrigued by the house near the stream, he thought. It looked like a smaller, worn-out version of his own home.

  The last light of evening faded away, and as darkness gathered around him, Seth hurried back across the street.

  That night, just before he went to bed, Seth slid the memory card from the camera into his computer and opened the file containing the pictures he’d taken that afternoon. A moment later the monitor was filled with the image of the house at Black Creek Crossing, with the reflection of the setting sun caught in the second story window.

  Except that in the picture, it didn’t look like the setting sun at all.

  Nor did it look like a flame was coming from the window.

  Instead, it looked exactly as if the entire house were on fire, its upper floor engulfed in flames.

  Chapter 6

  YRA SULLIVAN ROSE STIFFLY TO HER FEET. HER rosary beads still twined through the fingers of her left hand, she silently repeated the last of the prayers one more time as she moved from the pew out into the aisle and toward the main door. She was halfway up the aisle when she abruptly changed her mind, and crossed over to the left side of the church and the statue of St. Joseph. Lighting a candle, she dropped once more to her knees, and though the rosary beads were still in her hands, it wasn’t the rosary prayers that tumbled softly from her barely moving lips.

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Make it work. Make this be the right one.”

  Getting to her feet once more, she hurried on out the main door of the church. Father Raphaello had told her she could cut through the chancery behind the altar and use the back door to make it easier to cut through the hedge to her house, but she never had. Taking the shortcut from the rectory was one thing. Taking it from the church was quite another.

  She thought that would be disrespectful, and she was certain that if she showed any form of disrespect at all, none of the saints would ever answer her prayers.

  This morning, though, it seemed that things were going to be different. Marty hadn’t awakened by the time she got home, and when he finally came downstairs half an hour later, the smell of bacon and fresh coffee filled the kitchen, and she put his oatmeal in front of him even before he asked for it.

  Nor did he seem to be quite as hung over as he should have been, given his condition when he came home the night before. In fact, he’d come home drunk every night since he’d been fired, and then gotten up each morning with bloodshot eyes, foul breath, and an even fouler temper. She’d been praying about it all week, though, and this morning the Holy Mother finally seemed to be answering her prayers. Now, if St. Joseph would onl
y come through, too—

  She cut the thought short, reminding herself that all she could do was open her heart to the saints, and then leave it to the Holy Spirit to know what was best for her. “Prayers are never unanswered,” Father Raphaello had told her. “It’s just that sometimes the answer is no.” Myra had listened carefully as he explained that it was a sin of pride to think that either God or the Holy Mother, or even the saints, were bound to give her something merely because she had asked for it. “Virtue takes many forms,” he said, “and often the gift of grace is given to those whose burdens seem otherwise too heavy to bear.” The priest had been talking about Marty then, and how God would grant her the grace to please the man she’d married, no matter how hard it might sometimes get. But she was pretty sure Father Raphaello would give her the same advice about the house too. Whatever happened with the house they were going to see today, she would understand that it was God’s will.

  Still, when Angel came in for breakfast and Marty didn’t start in with his usual carping at her, Myra couldn’t help but let a little ray of optimism touch her soul; perhaps today was going to be the day when things began to get better for all of them.

  Marty Sullivan pulled the battered Chevelle that had served as the family car since before Angel had been born to a rattling stop in front of 122 Black Creek Road. Joni Fletcher’s brand new Volvo was already there, and Marty’s lips twisted into a sneer as he eyed it. “Don’t see why people think those are so hot,” he observed. “Bet it won’t hold up anywhere near as good as old Gracie, here.”

  Myra, already getting out of the car to greet her sister, ignored the remark. Joni was coming down the front steps of the house.

  Angel, still sitting in the backseat of the Chevelle, barely heard her father. A house, she thought. It’s a real house—not even a duplex. And even better, it was all by itself in the middle of a small lawn surrounded by a forest of maple trees, with the nearest neighbors so far away you couldn’t even see them. Well, maybe you could see them, but you wouldn’t hear them at all, which meant that for the first time in her life she wouldn’t have to worry that no matter how low she turned the volume on her radio, the neighbors were going to complain.

  And then her father would yell at her, and then—

  She shut down the next thought before it could form in her mind and forced her attention back to the house. There were some things it was better just not to think about.

  “Well, don’t just sit there,” her father growled. “Might as well see what it is got her prayin’ so early this morning.” Getting out of the car he eyed the structure balefully, and as Angel scrambled out of the backseat, she could almost hear him thinking up arguments against the house.

  “I think it’s beautiful,” she declared, believing that even though it wasn’t true, the house she saw in her mind’s eye existed somewhere beneath the tired facade she now beheld. All it needed was a straight roof beam, a fresh coat of paint, and new shutters, and it could be even prettier than she imagined.

  “You think lots of stuff,” Marty Sullivan growled. “Thinkin’ it don’t make it so.”

  By the time Angel and her father got to the front door, Myra and Joni were already inside.

  “It’s not big,” Angel heard her aunt saying. “But it’s certainly big enough for the three of you.”

  “And it’s a lot bigger than what we have now,” Myra said, her sharp eyes taking in the empty living room. It echoed the simple rectangular form of the house itself, with a fieldstone-faced fireplace in the southern wall. The firebox was small, the bricks that lined it blackened by decades of flames, and above it, set into the stone facade, there was a rough-hewn oak mantel.

  “I’m told it’s original,” Joni Fletcher said, crossing to the mantel and stroking its ancient patina with gentle fingers, almost as if she were stroking the soft fur of a mink coat. “I can’t swear to it, of course—the house has changed hands so many times and had so much done to it that it’s hard to tell what’s original.”

  “That’s the real thing,” Marty Sullivan declared, striking the mantel with enough force to make Joni snatch her hand away. “Can’t get oak like that anymore. And you can believe it’s twice as big as it looks—there’s gotta be more’n half of it buried in that stone.”

  Angel saw her mother and aunt glance at each other. Her aunt winked, and when her mother crossed her fingers, Angel did too.

  They went through the rest of the house, which consisted of the living room in front downstairs, a dining room and kitchen at the back, and three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. There was a basement below the house, which was a single cavernous chamber walled with concrete, and the huge oaken timbers were clearly visible above, timbers that Marty was certain were as ancient as the one that formed the mantel.

  “Probably came from the same tree,” he declared, prodding at one of them with the tip of his jackknife. “But the concrete’s starting to rot. Gonna cost a bundle to fix that.” He fell silent for a moment, then shrugged. “’Course, I could build the forms myself, and maybe even mix the concrete.”

  While her parents and aunt fell into a discussion of just how much work the house might require and what it might cost to accomplish it, Angel went back up to the second floor. The stairs, built in a narrow well between the kitchen and the dining room, led straight up to the second floor landing. The three bedrooms were of varying size, with the largest one occupying the southern wall. It was long and narrow, with a second fireplace to give it heat, and Angel could see by the worn areas on the pine floor that the bed had stood at the back, leaving enough room at the front for a table and a pair of chairs.

  The other two rooms were smaller, separated by the bathroom, and Angel went first into the one at the back of the house. Its windows faced north and east, which meant the sun would pour into it every morning just like it did in her room in Eastbury. But even though she had always loved the morning sun, she kept thinking about the other room.

  The one at the front of the house.

  It was the smallest of the three bedrooms, and shared a wall with the big room that would be her parents’, and the front window faced west, so she’d never get to see the sunrise or have her room flooded with light when she woke up. But there was still something about the room that tugged at her.

  But what?

  There was nothing special about it, really. In fact, as she looked at it more closely, it was easily the ugliest room in the house. Its walls were covered with faded wallpaper with a floral pattern Angel thought must have looked worse when new than it did now. There were cheap lace curtains hanging at the windows, and they were dirty, and most of them were torn too.

  There was one little closet that didn’t even have a light inside.

  Frowning, she went back to the other room, which was larger, and brighter, and had a bigger closet.

  A much better room.

  So why did she like the other one so much?

  Her frown deepening, she went back to the smaller room, closed the door, moved slowly around to look at it from every angle. Finally, she sank down to sit on the floor, her back to the wall, her knees drawn up against her chest with her arms wrapped around them.

  And all at once she knew why she liked the little room. Because it’s just like me, she thought. It’s ugly, and it’s gawky, and nobody else will ever like it. But she would. It would be her room, and she’d love it. And it would love her.

  “Well, you certainly were right,” Angel heard her mother saying as she came back down from the second floor. “It would do just fine for us.” Angel paused at the bottom of the stairs as she felt a tingle of anticipation, then her mother spoke again, with a wistful tone that made her excitement fade as quickly as it had come. “But I just don’t see how we can afford it.”

  “For heaven’s sakes, Myra,” Joni Fletcher replied, her tone that of a big sister patiently explaining something to a deliberately dense younger sibling. “Don’t be a defeatist—where there’s a will, there’s a
way.”

  Myra sighed. “I wish I could see how. I suppose the price might be fine for someone else, but I don’t see how we can swing it with Marty out of work and—” Her words died on her lips as Angel entered the room. “Maybe we should talk about this later,” she suggested, her eyes darting pointedly toward her daughter.

  “I’m not a baby, Mom,” Angel said, flushing. “I know Dad doesn’t have a job right now.”

  “I can get a job,” Marty Sullivan said, his eyes fixing on his daughter almost as if he thought it was her fault that he wasn’t working. “But I’m not gonna work for some ass—”

  “Marty!” Myra broke in, her lips compressing in disapproval.

  “Jeez, Myra—” Marty began, but seeing his wife’s expression turn even cooler, he quickly changed the subject. “This is a good house,” he declared, reaching out to gently touch the oak of the mantel, much as Joni Fletcher had earlier. “And a hell of a price.”

  For a moment Myra seemed about to complain about her husband’s language yet again, but then decided there was a more pressing problem at hand. “But it’s still too much for us,” she reminded him.

  “I told you, the price isn’t fixed,” Joni said, a little too quickly.

  Myra eyed her sister suspiciously. “Why would that be? It’s already so far below anything else on the market . . .” Her voice trailed off as she tried to read her sister’s face, and realized it was the same expression she’d had when they were kids and there was something Joni didn’t want to tell their parents. “What is it, Joni?” she asked. “You might as well tell me what’s going on now—I can see by your face you’re going to have to do it sooner or later anyway.”