by Hunter Shea
In the mind of Frank Daniels, that just made her more appealing. His comments and sly glances over the following weeks made her skin crawl.
She almost whooped out loud with joy the day she’d heard he was setting up shop in the Chicago office to be closer to his wife and kids, who lived in Oak Park.
Good riddance.
But her joy was short lived and the bastard was back.
And now there was this to deal with.
“How could you have not told me?”
Matt sighed, refusing to look up at her. “I honestly thought this shit was over.”
“Even after West and I found those notes and what was on the mirror? Christ! Are you and your father insane? Whoever is doing this was in the house. Were you not the least bit concerned about the welfare of your child?”
“They never did anything to us before.”
“They?”
“They. Him. Her. We don’t know. They’re just words, Deb. They want to scare us. It didn’t work when I was a kid, and it won’t now.”
Debi wrung her hands together. She felt betrayed. This was crazy. How could Matt not bring up the fact that some psychos had been writing strange, possibly threatening messages in his father’s house for decades? She had the sudden urge to slap her husband as hard as she could.
Hold it together.
She snatched her work skirt from the floor, flinging it into the open closet.
“Goddamn you!” she hissed. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“And where will we go? A hotel? I know what’s in our account. We have enough to last four, five days tops. Then what?”
She rounded on him.
“I don’t need you to tell me what’s in our bank account. I’m the only one putting money in it!”
She knew it would hurt him, even throw him into a rage, but she could care less. Right now, she wanted her words to burn him like a branding iron.
“Go screw yourself,” he spat.
“Don’t you dare turn this on me, Matthew. I’m not the one who put us in a dangerous situation.”
Matt practically leapt off the bed, shouting, “Dangerous? Dangerous? I lived through it. So did my parents. You think I’d expose West to something that could hurt him?”
Debi clawed at the underside of her hair. She felt like pulling her scalp away to relieve the pressure in her head. “Honestly? I don’t know anymore. You’re so wrapped up in your own world of misery, I don’t think you’re even aware he and I are around most of the time.”
Matt staggered, flopping back onto the bed. He slammed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Jesus, Deb, I can’t do this.”
“Of course you can’t,” she spat. “Anything more than tip-toeing around you is too much. Well, too fucking bad. I’m not backing down this time. You better figure out a way to get us out of here, fast.”
He blindly lashed out, wrapping his hand around the alarm clock. Yanking it out of the wall, he threw it across the room, cracking the glass display in half.
“You think I want any of this? Huh? You think I chose to be this way? When I left here, I promised myself I’d never, ever come back. Yet here I am, more helpless than I was when I was a kid. This isn’t easy for me, either.”
There were tears in his eyes. He clutched his stomach, rolling onto his side.
As mad as she was, Debi also wanted to reach out to him. Normally, that’s how their arguments ended. Matt’s condition would trump all. He was a victim after all.
But he was wrong about one thing. He could choose the way he handled his life after the accident. He didn’t have to be the victim forever. Oh, how she’d tried and tried to help him rise above his condition, to control it instead of the other way around. She wept in quiet corners of the house for years, praying to God to give her husband the strength he needed to remake himself.
Debi lowered her voice, stopping herself from lying next to him. “What hurts me, Matt, is the fact that you never told me. And now I’m wondering what else you’re not saying. We should call the police. I don’t care how long this has been going on. It needs to end now. Your father let it go on, but you’re not him. These Guardian psychos need to be caught.”
Matt opened his eyes, filmy with tears. “It’s not that simple.”
***
The knock on West’s door startled him. He’d been listening to his parents argue for the better part of half an hour. Only over the last couple of minutes had they grown silent. He wondered if his mother was about to come in, ordering him to pack a bag because they were leaving, like a family fleeing a haunted house in the middle of the night. He thought of that scene in The Amityville Horror, when the father finally snapped out of his possessed fugue and dragged the family out of the house, running back inside to rescue their dog.
West didn’t have a dog. Less to worry about if, and when, they fled.
“Come in.”
To his surprise, Grandpa Abraham opened the door. He was peeling the skin off an apple with what looked to be a military knife. The blade was wide and deadly, curving to a pointed tip, perfect for skewering the enemy.
“They always fight like this?” he said, standing in the open doorway.
West closed the book that had been propped on his chest since the arguing started.
“Sometimes.”
His grandfather let the end of the peel drop to the floor. He carved a slice, bringing it to his mouth on the edge of the knife. “Used to be, a wife knew her place.”
West was about to say something to defend his mother when his grandfather pointed the knife toward him. “Don’t go getting your shorts up your crack. Your mother is different. She’s tough. A real fighter. You may think I’m some old fool, but I respect that. I’d tell her what I told you, that there’s nothing to worry about. You and I both know, she’s not going to believe a word I say.”
“Can you blame her?”
An odd smile played on Grandpa Abraham’s lips.
“I guess I can’t. Do you believe me?”
“I don’t know,” West said, not backing down from his sharp gaze. He felt as if his grandfather was measuring him up, looking for signs of weakness. Not telling an obvious truth would be a weakness. So why not let the man know he didn’t fully trust his assessment of the Guardian’s intentions?
“Well, that’s only because you don’t know me. You’re my kin. I protect my own, just like my father protected me. It’s what men do, son.”
Grandpa Abraham hammered his point home by driving the knife into the wall, letting it hang there, the handle vibrating slightly. It went through a picture from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
He ate the rest of his apple, studying the pictures on the walls. “Fuckhead Faulkner might shit himself if he saw this room. You really like all this blood and guts stuff, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you’re the one we should all be afraid of, not the Guardians.”
The smile died on his face. He stared at West for an interminable minute, not moving, not blinking.
West’s bowels protested, begging for release. He felt like a specimen in a petri dish, a diseased cell being scrutinized by a scientist intent on wiping it out. All he wanted to do was run past the man to the bathroom, but that was not going to happen.
Grandpa Abraham broke the tension when he burst out laughing. “You should have seen your face, short stuff! I know this old mug isn’t much to look at, especially when I give the evil eye.”
“That was a pretty convincing evil eye.” The knot of tension unfolded in West’s gut. His grandfather’s smile was a mile wide.
“Years of practice. If you can stop someone with a look, it saves wear and tear on your fists. But there’s one thing you should know. You don’t need to be scared of me. Ever. I’ll never be your favorite person in the world, but I won’t be your enemy. And Fuckhead Guardian Faulkner is a lot like that little guy.” He pointed to the corner of the ceiling over the dresser where a lone
fly buzzed, bouncing against the wall as if it could zip through wood and plaster.
“A pest is just that, a nuisance. Don’t give it nonevermind. You got that?”
West gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Good.”
His grandfather clutched the knife handle, pulling it free from the wall, leaving a gaping slash mark across Leatherface’s neck. He chuckled all the way down the hall to his room. West finally exhaled when he heard his bedroom door close.
***
His parents continued arguing in fits and starts until sometime before midnight. At one point, he’d heard Grandpa Abraham pound on the floor and shout, “Give it a rest, already!”
They’d settled down not long after that.
Even though West hadn’t been involved in the fight himself, he felt as exhausted as a boxer after ten rounds. Sleep grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him to the dark without the slightest protest.
The belching of a battered engine woke him up. He shuffled to the window, opening the screen so he could see around to the front of the house. A quick inspection revealed that there were no new notes scrawled in shit under his window. Grandpa Abraham was behind the wheel of a Dodge pickup truck. When West had first spotted the truck, hulking next to bales of diseased hay, he’d assumed it was a rusted wreck.
Guess it’s not as dead as I thought.
The wheels spun, kicking up tufts of grass and dirt, spattering against the house.
West was relieved he was gone. He couldn’t shake the image of his grandfather jamming that knife into his wall.
“You’re my kin. I protect my own, just like my father protected me. It’s what men do, son.”
Who the heck called their family kin? It was weird, just like everything else here.
Showering and changing – he had to look and smell his best if he was going to see Faith – he padded downstairs. His mother had cleaned his sneakers, leaving them by the front door.
“Thanks, Mom.” He slipped his feet into the black and red hightops.
“What are you up to today?” his father called out from the kitchen. He leaned in his chair so West could see him. “I made bacon if you want some.”
Ah, the day after a blowup. His father was usually at his nicest then. Or maybe this was his way of making up for the way he’d yelled at him a couple of days ago. It didn’t matter. West was starving and just hearing the word bacon was enough to start his stomach growling.
“Cool,” he said as casually as he could muster.
“I left out the butter so it melts easier on your toast.”
West dropped two pieces of bread in the toaster and poured a glass of orange juice. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had made bacon. The man was a master – crispy and perfect every time. His roommates in college had even nicknamed him Mr. Bacon. He was in charge of making it on a hotplate for his dorm’s floor for a whole year.
“Sleep well?”
“Okay, I guess,” West said, downing the first glass of juice. It had been a sticky night. He woke up dehydrated.
“Look, I’m sorry about all the… you know… last night,” his father said. “Your mother was right. I should have told you both about this house.”
West looked down at his clean sneakers. “So was Grandpa Abraham trying to tell me in his own weird way about those messages when he said the place was haunted?”
“I honestly have no idea what goes on in that man’s head.” His father sipped at his coffee. He looked clear today. It was the only way to describe it. The usual fog that enveloped him was missing, at least for now.
The toast popped up. West snatched them in mid air, slabbed butter on them, and folded each slice over two pieces of bacon.
“So you grew up with all that Guardian stuff?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” He looked ashamed to admit it.
At least he doesn’t seem scared.
West had to ask him something that had been loitering around the back of his mind. “You never found out who did it, right?”
“No. We tried for a while, but when we did, things would stop, only to pick back up again when we let our guard down, so to speak. The silver lining in all of it was that we were never physically approached by anyone. It was just a bunch of messages, nothing more. There are some… eccentric types living out here. Your grandfather being one of them. I always suspected he did someone wrong a long time ago. Maybe cheated them in cards or screwed them on a land deal. I know there were a lot of people interested in buying sections of this property, before it got to this sorry state. This town isn’t exactly Hatfield and McCoy territory, though.” He smiled, the crow’s feet crinkling in the corners of his eyes.
“Who are they?”
“Never mind. Before your time.”
“Did you ever think that Grandpa Abraham’s been the one doing it all along? I mean, was he different when you were a kid? Or was he always this way?”
His father’s eyes flitted for a moment. It was usually a precursor to a bad case of the spins, but he took a breath and that seemed to settle things down.
“As I got older, I thought so. When you’re a kid, you think your father is a hero, no matter what he does. After my sister passed away, my mother fell apart for a couple of years and your grandfather was the only thing holding us together. When she got back on her feet, it was as if he’d decided it was his turn to go into a funk. Except his funk never went away. Maybe he’s a little odder and grumpier than he used to be, but not by much. He’s never been an easy person to get along with. Could he be the one behind all of this? I don’t know. I can’t say I’d put it past him. He says this Guardian person has been writing these messages since he was a kid, but I’ve never had a way to verify that. My grandparents passed away before I was born.”
“How did they die?”
West wondered if there was yet another mystery in the family, some dark secret that no one dared speak about. He knew his father’s tells. If he lied, it would be as plain as the quick scratch he’d give under his chin.
“Well, my grandmother got cancer – your grandfather told me she smoked like a chimney, and grandpa had a heart attack not long after when he was working in the field. So when it comes to the Guardians, all I have is the word of my father and mother. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one I put more faith in.”
West downed his breakfast while his father spoke. It had been a long time since they’d had a serious, grown up conversation. He had to admit, it felt nice.
He said, “You know, while you and Mom were fighting, he came to my room to tell me that nothing bad would happen to us.”
“That was actually pretty nice of him,” his father said, looking surprised.
“And then he stuck his knife in my wall, I guess to show me what he’d do to someone that tried to hurt me.”
His father shook his head. “And there’s the Abraham Ridley I know. No yin without a yang from him.”
West thought about telling him that WE SEE YOU was carved in his ceiling, but then he’d probably ask to see it. He didn’t want to risk tearing the Ash Costello poster Faith had given him.
“So, got another day of excitement planned?”
West fought with himself. If he told him he was going to meet a girl from the nearby farm, it would turn into a whole production. Questions would be asked he either couldn’t or wouldn’t want to answer.
“I don’t know. Do some more exploring, read a little, listen to music.”
“I’m sorry we dropped you in the middle of nowhere, kiddo. I know you’d rather be back in New York with Anthony, doing whatever it is the two of you did all day.”
“It’s all right.”
“I might take a little walk myself. Better than being cooped up in here. I keep hoping I’ll wake up one day and everything will be better. You and I can hop in the car and go to a movie, do some horseback riding, just go out and do whatever we want.”
“Horseback riding would be cool. They have that here?�
��
“There are stables and trails everywhere. If you want, your mother and I can take you one weekend.”
“Cool. I’ll hold you to that.”
West cleared the table, leaving the dishes for later. He had a rolled up Horrorhound Magazine in his back pocket, something to keep him busy until Faith got back from summer school.
“I’ll see you at lunch, Dad.”
He watched his father get up without the cane, though he did wobble a bit once he was fully upright. “Have fun, or whatever passes for fun out here.”
West opened the door, took a step and tumbled. He came to a rolling stop in the yard, covered in dirt. His knee barked from slamming into the one patch of the yard that wasn’t cushioned by grass.
“You okay?” His father stood at the screen door.
“I think so,” West said, massaging his knee with one hand while dusting himself off with the other.
“Did that step come loose?”
West looked.
It wasn’t the lone step from the house to the yard.
There was a large stone on the step, with a piece of paper wrapped around it, secured by a thick rubber band.
His heart racing, he picked up the rock, despite assurances from his father and grandfather that there was nothing to be concerned about, but he knew who it was from without even needing to unwrap the band and flatten out the note..
“Let me take a look at it.”His father took the note, casting the rock aside. It hit the ground with a loud thump. West sidled next to his father to read it.
WATCH YOUR STEP. THE WORLD IS FRAUGHT WITH DANGER.
West felt ice spiders prancing around his gut, skittering up and down his back.
“You sure we shouldn’t call the cops or something?” he asked, feeling a chill despite the cloying heat.
His father stuffed the note in his pocket.
“Fucking assholes. Maybe I should stake out a spot one night and finally catch them in the act.”
If you did, then what? West thought. His father had the balance of a newborn foal. If he managed to grab one of the Guardians in the act of leaving another note, he’d be shaken off as easily as flicking dandruff from your shoulder.