“I decided to save some money since the house is just sitting there empty,” she revealed. “I gave our landlord notice already and Steve and I will be moving back home in a few weeks.”
Belinda had shifted her focus towards the TV again.
“I see,” Toby replied. “Well, I’m sorry that no one here thinks Dad’s headstone is very important. I wish I had the twenty-five hundred bucks because he deserves better than this. With our baby on the way, I have to set aside whatever I can, so I can’t afford it on my own.”
“How far along is Jonie?” Rachelle asked.
“A few months.”
She smiled. “Finally, you’re gonna be a father. That’s awesome.”
“Thanks,” Toby replied.
He looked at John whose thoughts seemed to have quickly drifted off in another direction and at Belinda who’d pretty much tuned out everyone in the room.
“I guess I’ll be on my way then.” Toby stood up, seeing no point in hanging around there any longer.
“Leaving so soon?” John woke up out of his reverie.
“Yep.”
“All right then. Just shut the door behind you, okay?”
Toby nodded, said good night to everyone and headed for the door.
“Toby…” he heard a soft voice behind him.
John’s wife, Pam, was descending the staircase.
“Oh! Hi, Pam,” he said, on turning.
“I haven’t seen you in ages. How have you been?” She hurried over to him. Pam was tall, slender and wore her beautiful blonde hair in a neat ponytail.
“I’m doing fine. How are you?”
“I’m well, thanks. And how’s your lovely wife?”
Belinda turned her head for a moment, then cut her eye at her sister-in-law.
“She’s doing great,” Toby replied. “We’re expecting a baby girl in January.”
“That’s fantastic!” Pam said. “Well, do give Jonie my regards.”
“I will, thanks.”
As Toby proceeded to the door, Pam apologized to John and the others for her intrusion, then went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of hot chocolate.
Toby shut the door behind him and headed for his car. Sitting at the steering wheel, the conversation inside the house replayed in his mind.
“I can’t believe them,” he muttered, switching on the engine. “I’m gonna get that headstone for you, Dad. I’ll find the money somehow. I promise, I will.”
5
_________________
Two weeks later…
After setting a pot of soup on the stove, Rachelle went to her room and lay across the bed. Shifting on her side, she reached over to the nightstand for a book she’d been reading from the night before. Steve was late getting in from work that evening, but had called to let his mom know he was on his way.
Soon, Rachelle heard a tinkling sound, such as that of wind chimes. Grimacing, she listened carefully, then slowly eased up off the bed with the book still in hand. As she walked into the hallway, she had a strange feeling on the inside, particularly since she didn’t own wind chimes.
Stepping into the living room, the tinkling sound seemed even closer. “Hello…” she called, unsure of whether or not to expect an answer.
She looked through the front window and scanned the yard. Everywhere appeared quiet as dusk had settled in over the neighborhood. She checked the front door and confirmed it was locked.
“What is that?” she muttered, just before catching something out of the corner of her eye. The light in the hallway was now flickering. Rachelle stood still for a moment staring at the ceiling light, and soon she heard a familiar sound in the only bathroom in the apartment. It was as if someone had yanked back the shower curtain—something she’d done scores of times before. Frightened, she dashed into the kitchen, dropped her book on the counter and pulled out a large knife from the top drawer. She then cautiously proceeded into the hallway toward the bathroom.
“Who’s there?” she asked. “Steve… is that you?”
Rachelle knew that Steve religiously called out to her the moment he walked in the door, so the possibility that someone was in their apartment other than him, troubled her.
There was no answer and the tinkling sound had not let up.
“I’m warning whoever is in here to get out right now! I have a weapon and I’m not afraid to use it!”
But she was terrified.
Rachelle was five-feet-five, one hundred and ten pounds and Belinda sometimes teased that she was afraid of her own shadow. That’s why Belinda found it so easy to “control” her. The sisters had always been close, but not in the way most people would define close. Belinda had to be in charge of everything and only those who were subservient to some acceptable degree were worthy of tagging along with her and being in her inner circle. Rachelle knew she was nothing more than a doormat to her older sister, but their mother had encouraged such a strange relationship.
Her hand trembling, Rachelle gripped the handle of the knife as tightly as she could, when suddenly, the apartment became eerily quiet. She was two steps away from the door when she mustered up the nerve to step forward quickly and look inside of the room, only to find it completely empty. She’d kept her eyes on the vicinity of the doorway the entire time she was approaching the bathroom and no one had left it. What she’d heard was baffling. She looked across the hallway into her own room, then opened the door to Steve’s and walked inside.
There was no one to be seen.
Turning around to leave, she shook her head. “I must be losing my mind!” She went back into the kitchen to check on the pot, then decided to sit in the living room until Steve arrived.
Twenty minutes later, he walked in.
“Hi, Mom,” he uttered, tiredly.
“Hey, honey! How was work?” Rachelle asked, setting aside the book she’d resumed reading.
“Same as usual. I hate that place and everyone in it.”
“If I didn’t know you any better, I’d be seriously worried about your mental state.”
He grinned as he headed over to the fridge. “You don’t have to worry about me going off the deep end and doing something stupid. They’re a bunch of jerks, but they’re not worth it.”
“Good thinking.” She got up. “Why don’t you go get freshened up? And I’ll serve the food.”
“Great idea because I’m starved!”
As he headed to his room with a glass of water, Rachelle thought she heard that odd tinkling sound again. But if she did, within seconds, it had stopped. She was truly beginning to wonder if it was all in her head.
Steve returned to the dining room minutes later and sat at the table. Rachelle was bringing over the sodas.
He looked up at her suspiciously. “Are you okay, Mom?”
She sat down across from him. “Sure. Why do you ask?”
“You look like you have something on your mind, that’s all.”
Twirling the metal spoon around her soup, she sighed. “It’s just that I heard some strange sounds in here before you got home…”
“What kind of sounds?”
“Like wind chimes or something. Then in the bathroom, it sounded like someone was yanking back the shower curtain, but when I checked, no one was there.”
Steve grinned. “You’ve been watching some horror movies lately, huh?”
“I would laugh too if I had, but this was really odd,” she said. “I looked around and couldn’t find an explanation for what I’d heard.”
Steve took a gulp of his ginger ale. “Maybe the stress of losing granddad is playing on your mind. They say losing a loved one can be quite traumatic.”
“I don’t think that’s it,” she replied, quickly. “Dad and I weren’t very close, so I doubt his passing would’ve stressed me out to the point that I’m hearing things.”
“With the human mind you just don’t know. We think about things subconsciously, not realizing it’s affecting us physically. After all, he’s still your
dad—even if you two didn’t really have a close bond.”
Rachelle shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”
Rachelle and Steve had both turned in well before midnight. Rachelle had managed to drift off to sleep a little before 10:00 PM, which was not unusual for her.
Within the hour, a dark shadow shot past the front of her bed and proceeded over to the closet area.
“Rachelle…” a familiar voice woke her out of her sound sleep.
She pitched up. “Dad…is that you?”
There was no mistaking his voice. Completely alert, she sat up and switched on the side lamp, then quickly glanced around the room.
“Rachelle…” the voice went again, rather slowly.
She was panicked now.
“Dad…it’s me. What do you want? Aren’t you…dead?”
She knew she couldn’t really be hearing the distinct voice of her deceased father—or could she?”
“Rachelle…”
She stood to her feet, determined to find out where her father was. For thirty-nine years, she’d never once heard imaginary voices, and as crazy as her experience was that night, she wasn’t going to talk herself into thinking that suddenly she could hear voices and other sounds that weren’t real. Yet, the thought of what might be happening to her was frightening as she recalled something an acquaintance had once said, rather nonchalantly, “If a person is crazy, he doesn’t know it.” Could this be Rachelle’s case? First the tinkling and rattling sounds—now her dead father’s voice jolting her from a sound sleep.
Checking her closet was the first thing she thought to do. Certainly, there was nowhere in the room for someone to hide other than there or under the bed. Both places checked out.
The round wall clock mounted several feet above the foot of her bed indicated it was exactly one o’clock. She’d picked up the clock from a flea market booth approximately a year earlier and what attracted her to it was that it had multicolored lights which ran along the perimeter and a faintly illuminated back board.
Rachelle made her way into the hallway, flipping on the light switch a few feet away from her bedroom door. The stridulating of crickets seeped through the open windows and echoed inside the apartment.
Steve’s room was in utter darkness, but by means of the dimly lit incandescent light streaming in from the adjacent hallway, Rachelle could see that he was fast asleep. She eased the door shut and headed over to the bathroom. The blue curtain, which completely hid the bathtub, caught her eye, but only because of that sound she’d heard earlier. Could it be that someone is hiding behind that dreadful curtain and is waiting for me to pull it back? She wondered. She proceeded towards it carefully, ready to run out of there the moment something decided to startle her. Standing in front, she took a deep breath in, slowly raised her right hand and a second later, she yanked back the curtain.
Her hand met her chest with profound relief as the bathtub was empty. Within that moment, she was really beginning to doubt herself, then she heard it again…but this time, there was more.
“Rachelle…when are you coming to see me?”
Her heart sunk. Those were the exact words her dad had spoken to her just days before he passed away. She immediately slumped onto the floor and wept.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come, Dad! I shouldn’t have listened to Belinda. I’m so sorry!”
She drew her knees up against her chest and rested her head between them. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have listened. Now, you’re not resting in peace.”
She didn’t realize her weeping was so loud until Steve hurried into the bathroom.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” He knelt beside her.
“It’s Dad! He’s here!” she said, looking into her son’s eyes.
“What’re you talking about, Mom? Granddad is dead.”
She shook her head, vehemently. “He’s not at rest. He’s here, I tell you! I heard his voice with my own two ears!”
Steve slumped on the floor next to her. “Mom, you need to get a hold of yourself. Are you listening to how you sound right now?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Steve, but I’m not crazy. Dad spoke to me and what he said tonight was one of the last things he’d said to me on the phone.” She paused. “Before that, I hadn’t seen him in a couple of months—you probably saw him more than I did! A few days before he passed away, he’d asked me when I was coming to see him. I told him I’d be by soon, but I never went.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m not trying to cast the blame elsewhere, but you know me and your aunt Belinda hang out sometimes after I get off from work and have a few beers with friends. I just never made seeing Dad much of a priority, probably because Belinda wasn’t very interested. And the last time I spoke with him, she talked me out of seeing him because we had plans that day. I could’ve seen him the next day, but for some reason, I just didn’t.”
Steve sighed. “Mom, I always told you Aunt Belinda’s bad news. She’s a self-centered leech who only uses you. She’s your sister, but you know she doesn’t give a damn about you—you’re not up to her status. That’s why she treats Uncle John better. He has the money, the expensive cars, the big house—everything she defines as success. What do you have? Nothing. She only keeps you around to control you because no one who has a strong head on their shoulder will put up with her nonsense!”
He got up off the floor. “You never listened all those times when I told you you need to find something in life that can occupy your time in a positive way. All you and Aunt Belinda do is drink, and you watch her make a complete spectacle out of herself nearly every time she does it because she can’t hold her liquor and you don’t have the guts to speak up to her or at the very least, avoid her.”
“I know how Belinda is, but I put up with her because Mom wanted us to be close,” Rachelle replied.
“Grandma wanted you to be subservient to Aunt Belinda, regardless of how she treated you. So, if Grandma told you to jump off a bridge because that’s what Aunt Belinda wants, would you do it?”
With tears still in her eyes, she muttered, “Of course not!”
“Why am I not so sure about that?” He extended his hand to help her up. “Your family is messed up. That’s why Uncle Toby keeps to himself and I don’t blame him.”
“I don’t either.” Rachelle got up, slowly.
“He’s so different from everyone else. Regardless of what they say about him, I, personally, have never had a problem with him.”
“Neither have I.”
Steve looked into his mother’s eyes. “You’ll be fine, Mom. You’re just under a lot of stress, that’s all. Granddad is dead; we all saw his body lowered into the grave. So, he’s not here talking to you. It’s just all in your mind, okay? As time goes on, you’ll feel better.”
“Okay.” She nodded.
“Let me help you back to bed.”
* * * *
Same night - 4:12 A.M.
Toby had dreamt about his father several times since he’d died and that night was no different. In almost each dream, they had a conversation about something seemingly insignificant like the weather, food store prices going up, or something odd that John or Belinda might’ve done. But that night, Toby dreamt that he went to the cemetery and everywhere he turned, he saw a headstone above the graves. Yet, when he looked down at his father’s, it was overgrown with tall weeds surrounding the concrete slab, laden with dust and maggots. Then, he saw a shriveled, pasty hand protrude from the concrete slab and he awoke soaked in sweat.
“Honey, are you all right?” Jonie put her hand on his shoulder as Toby sat straight up.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He nodded. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Jonie turned on her side and soon drifted back off to sleep while Toby sat there for a few minutes before lying down again. He dreaded closing his eyes only to be propelled back to a nightmare he’d just managed to climb o
ut of.
6
_________________
The drive to Cindy’s Creations took a mere forty minutes from Belinda’s house. Belinda was decked out in one of her many latest fashions; this time—a black and silver fitted jeans with a matching sleeveless blouse that stopped at her navel. She knew she’d arrived, especially after she was able to construct her apartments by swindling Ralph Weatherspoon—the fool who’d literally fallen head over heels in love with her. After getting him to pump a good chunk of his money into her building project, she told him she felt smothered and needed some space. Two weeks later, she dropped him cold turkey after an argument she’d deliberately incited. That was Belinda’s way of getting things done. She had no use for any man outside of her brother John since she didn’t care too much for Toby. Toby was just different—perhaps, outside of their league was a better way to put it.
Belinda was trying out the new red nail polish she’d purchased a couple of days earlier while out shopping with Rachelle. Actually, she was shopping and Rachelle was tagging along.
She picked up her cell from the passenger seat and dialed Rachelle’s number.
Rachelle answered after the first ring.
“What are you up to?” Belinda asked her.
“Nothing much. Sounds like you’re on the road.”
“On my way to Cindy. My hair is in desperate need of a wash and fresh style. I don’t know why you don’t get that son of yours to pay for you to see Cindy at least twice a month. That hairstylist of yours needs to close her shop. That’s how awful she is.”
“Jane’s fine,” Rachelle responded, softly. “Besides, Steve’s saving for a down payment on a house. He takes care of enough bills around here already.”
“Whatever you say. You keep cloaking that boy and making excuses for him. See how it works out for you in a couple of years.”
Rachelle sighed.
“What’s wrong with you? You sound off,” Belinda said.
Headstone: The Curse Page 3