We Are Always Watching

by Hunter Shea

  Was that really the case? Did the Guardians seize the moment to ramp up their campaign of terror? Or was he attacked by them?

  “West, you able to give me a hand?” James asked. Matt, on his knees, could barely keep his vision straight, much less get his father in the house.

  West, who had been staring at his grandfather with horror, stammered, “Uh, y... yeah, yeah.”

  James did most of the lifting, with West being his spotter. Abraham snorted, mumbled something, but otherwise didn’t awake. Once they got him inside, they came back for Matt.

  “You okay, man?” James asked, hooking his hand under his armpit and lifting him up. His old friend had multiplied. Matt concentrated on the James to his right.

  “It’s just my vertigo. It’ll settle down.”

  At least I hope.

  His father was on the couch, a ratty blanket draped over him. He snored, oblivious to everything. Matt had a sudden urge to throttle him.

  “Now can we call the police?” West asked, pacing in the hallway.

  Matt reached out, motioning for his son to come close so he could lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We’re not just sitting by anymore. That I can promise you.”

  “Maybe we should just pack everything up and go. If they want to watch over the house, let them,” West said. “Once Grandpa Abraham sees that note, I don’t think he’ll even want to stay.”

  I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Matt thought. If their threat is real, the house will turn into a bonfire, and there’s no way my father will let that happen.

  “Once your grandfather wakes up, I’m going to have a very serious talk with him. And I think it’s best we wait until your mother gets home to tell her about this. If we call her now, she’s just going to panic, and she’s two states away. You understand?"

  West nodded without hesitation. Good, they were on the same page. A rare occurrence lately.

  “I’ll grab the note and pitchforks,” James said. He had plastic bags over his hands. When Matt looked at him, he replied, “I don’t want to ruin any prints.”

  Every molecule in Matt’s being screamed to be sensible and alert every authority in a ten-mile radius. It was the only sane thing to do.

  So why had Abraham insisted they never do so? He had made that very clear to him the day he broke his nose. “I can’t guarantee everyone’s safety if you go for outside help.” The thinly veiled threat had chilled him.

  DON’T YOU LEAVE AGAIN. YOU DO THAT, HE DIES, AND WE TEAR DOWN THAT WHICH WE’VE GUARDED FOR SO LONG.

  Now he knew, this wasn’t the first time the Guardians had been so outright menacing. There was more to this than even he, who had lived with it for eighteen years, had ever realized.

  He planned to get every last detail out of his father when he woke up from his drunken slumber.

  ***

  West sat at the kitchen table, the sweat on his flesh craving the stray breezes that flitted through the window and open door. His father and James were out back, talking too low for him to hear. They kept looking over the field, no doubt searching for any sign that someone was nearby, watching them.

  When James stretched his arms over his head, his windbreaker lifted just enough for West to spot the holster and gun clipped to his belt. Seeing the weapon didn’t frighten him. Quite the opposite. It gave him comfort. The big, bearded man looked like he could take on a bear. With a gun, he could surely handle the Guardian freaks if they dared show themselves.

  But they wouldn’t. They were shadow people. Decades of stealthily stalking the family gave them a kind of superpower. Intangible as ghosts, they were imbued with a sick compulsion to alter the Ridley family’s reality, traipsing into the physical world just long enough to leave their stain.

  Not that he believed they were ghosts. Not in the traditional sense, anyway.

  He heard coughing in the living room. Looking out the screen door, he noticed his father hadn’t heard. West got up and went to his grandfather. The old man looked like hell refried, warmed over and left to coagulate in the sun.

  “Grab me a beer, will you, short stuff,” he rasped, resting on an elbow and rubbing his head.

  “A beer?” It was morning and Grandpa Abraham stunk like a barroom floor. Why on Earth would he want a beer? “Wouldn’t you rather have coffee or water?”

  He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Not if I want to feel better, no. Just one. That’s all I ask.”

  His head flopped back down on a stack of stained, flat throw pillows.

  Getting the beer from the refrigerator, West considered letting his father know he was awake.

  Not yet.

  Ever since he found his grandfather and read the note, something had been brewing in his mind – a dark, potentially dangerous question that only Grandpa Abraham could answer. Maybe now, when he was in a delicate condition, his defenses down, he would provide an answer, or at least the hint of one.

  “Here you go.”

  Grandpa Abraham sat up with a deep groan. The hair on the back of his head was crusted with dried blood. He drank half the can in one long gulp.

  “Christ, my head is pounding. Where’s your father?”

  “Outside. You fell last night and cracked your head.”

  He raised a gray, bushy eyebrow, then reached for the source of the pain, wincing.

  “I really did a number on myself.” He finished the rest of the beer, dropping the can on the floor where it rolled under the couch.

  “Did someone attack you?” West decided it was best to just be straight with the man. His grandfather was not one for hemming and hawing.

  Laying back down, he said, “Not that I recall, unless you mean Jack.”

  West’s heart fluttered. “Jack? Jack who?”

  The corner of Grandpa Abraham’s lip curled in a weak smile. “Daniels. He’s a guy I know from Tennessee.”

  West recalled the bottle of whiskey with the black label on the picnic table. How could he make jokes?

  Because he doesn’t know what happened after he passed out.

  West went to the kitchen, slipped his hand in a grocery bag, picked up the note, and one of the pitchforks.

  “The Guardians did something to you.”

  That got his eyes to open all the way.

  “I found you in the yard. They had your arms and legs pinned to the ground with pitchforks. And there was this note.”

  He held it close enough for his grandfather to see, but was careful not to let him touch it and spoil any evidence. Grandpa Abraham squinted, his lips moving as he read.

  His face, the pallor of fresh milk, paled even further. He looked at the pitchfork, then his hands, checking for wounds.

  “Dad wants to talk to you about it. I think this time he’s going to call the cops. Before he does, I wanted to ask you something.”

  West paused, holding his breath, waiting for his grandfather to tell him to hit the road.

  When he didn’t, he pressed on, feeling like a bombardier. “Did… did the Guardians drown Stella?”

  The hands slid down his face.

  “What did you say?”

  West tried to swallow but his mouth and throat were dry as wool.

  “Did Stella drown by accident, or did they do it?”

  He was terrified of the answer. He’d had a niggling suspicion ever since he learned of the Guardians, but part of him couldn’t fathom his grandfather keeping the family in harm’s way after such a thing.

  Now, with the threats spelled out in this morning’s note, he was filled with a sickening surety that the Guardians had spilled Ridley blood in the past. That and the threat of more violence would be the only reason his grandfather had refused to make the stalking public.

  Grandpa Abraham’s face contorted with an overwhelming sadness.

  “I loved my girl more than you could ever imagine. I hope you never know what it’s like to lose a child. Especially a daughter.”

  I was right! Does Dad know? If he doesn’t, he’s going to fl
ip out.

  He was beginning to regret asking, but it was too late now.

  “Stella, as beautiful as she was… she was different from other kids. We had a hard time keeping her under control. She’d be smiling one moment, then burst into these… these fits. Plus, she grew so fast. She was so strong. I was a young, grown man and I could hardly control her when she got like that. The doctors urged us to see these specialists, but we couldn’t afford it. So, your grandmother and I did the best we could.” He sat up, motioning for West to take a seat in his lounger. “When she got angry, most of the time for no reason, she’d lash out, break things, and run away. For those moments, as long as they lasted, she was another person – reckless, violent, wild. That day… that day, she’d had one of her fits and ran from the house. We knew it was best to let her be. We had to give her space and time to let it all out. Sometimes, we could hear her shouting in the field. The words that would come out of her mouth. Your grandmother blamed me for teaching them to her. She wasn’t wrong.”

  His eyes glassed over, one fat tear teetering on the edge of his lid.

  “Her fits wouldn’t last long. Five, ten minutes. They wore her out, and she could never remember what got her going to begin with. The day she… passed… she didn’t come back. Your grandmother and I ran in opposite directions, calling for her, searching all of her hiding places. She especially liked to be in the barn. But she wasn’t there that day. I prayed she was, but God never hears me.”

  West said, “Is that the barn out on the edge of the field?”

  “What’s left of it.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Collapsed in a storm a few years after Stella passed. Your grandmother asked me to leave it, not to rebuild it or have the wood carted away. To her, it all contained some part of Stella.”

  He took a deep breath, coughed, and licked his dry lips. The tear snaked through the grooves of his face. “Thank God I was the one who found her. She was face down in the water. I turned her over, tried to get her to breathe. But I was too late. She was gone. I covered her with my shirt and carried her to the house. Your grandmother heard me open the door and came running. The sight of Stella nearly broke her for good right there. It nearly broke both of us.”

  Grandpa Abraham was silent for a long moment, as if reliving every agonizing second of that day.

  West’s chest felt full, his nerves raw. He wanted to hear the rest, and he wanted to run from the house, getting as far from the story as possible.

  “Like I said, when she got angry like that, she was reckless. I think she must have tripped and fallen into the water, face down, knocking herself out. There were no signs of a struggle, no marks on her body.”

  “But what about the note I found?” West asked.

  He hadn’t seen the note hidden in the children’s book in the trunk since he’d shown it to his father. Something about it had felt like hazardous waste. He’d spent many nights wondering if it had been put back in the trunk… in his room, fouling the atmosphere with its implied horror.

  WE WATCHED YOU, MONSTER. WE KNOW AND WE ARE ANGRY.

  His grandfather shook his head. “No, that was just Fuckhead Faulkner trying to ruin your mother. In the end, I guess those bastards did.”

  “So, the Guardians didn’t do anything to Stella?”

  “They didn’t.”

  He stood up, the bones in his back and knees popping. Picking up the pitchfork, he examined the handle.

  “But they did murder your grandmother.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Debi had been shocked to get the call from Matt telling her to come to the farmhouse and not the Super 8 after work. He’d sounded angry, but not with her. “I need you here,” he’d said. There was a hint of desperation in his voice. He was holding something back. She was glad he’d called her when she was on the bus. If he’d done so earlier while she was in the office, she wasn’t sure what she would have done.

  I never want to see that farmhouse again, unless it’s to pack our stuff, she thought, watching a state trooper blow past the bus in the left lane, lights flashing. The Delaware Water Gap Bridge was coming up soon, the twisting river to her left. She spotted a red and green tour bus in the distance. She and Matt had taken the Water Gap trolley tour on a vacation to the Poconos before West was born. They hadn’t visited his parents then, even though they’d been close by. She never questioned his decision to separate from them. He wasn’t the first person to have a shitty childhood. She loved him and respected his feelings on the subject.

  Now she knew firsthand how bad it was, and she didn’t blame him one bit.

  And for the first time since the accident, it seemed as if they were on the same side. It felt good to be in synch, despite the horrid circumstances. Maybe, when they were finally out of here and back on solid ground, they could rekindle what they’d lost.

  God, she hoped so.

  She got off the bus three exits past Buttermilk Creek to get her car, which had been parked close to the Super 8. Traffic was light and she made good time getting to the farmhouse. If there had been an accident or roadwork, she might have lost it, being so close.

  West and Matt sat in folding chairs outside the front of the house. She stomped on the brakes, running out of the car without turning the engine off.

  Matt held her close. His body was coiled tight as a tripwire.

  “Are you both okay?” she asked.

  West didn’t look to be in the hugging mood. No, he looked… haunted. Her chest tightened at the sight of his sunken eyes.

  “Yeah, we’re good. Well, maybe good is stretching it. I thought it would be better if we talked outside.”

  “Where’s James?”

  “I told him to go home.”

  “What happened?” She could feel her blood pressure cresting. Any suspense just might kill her.

  “The Guardians left a note on Grandpa Abraham last night,” West said. “They had him pinned to the ground with pitchforks.”

  Debi couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  Why the hell wasn’t the house swarming with police?

  Matt held her hand. They sat down.

  He said, “My father had passed out drunk. West was with him when he woke up later in the house. He… he asked some very delicate questions. Questions my father answered, probably aloud for the first time.”

  “Were you with West?”

  “I didn’t call Dad in because I thought maybe he’d talk to me,” West said.

  Matt told her about how they’d found his father, showed her the note. Her stomach dropped. “West asked him if the Guardians murdered my sister. Truth be told, when I got older, I wondered the same thing, but I knew asking him wouldn’t get me anything but a beating.”

  “Oh my God, did they?”

  Matt shook his head. “No. According to him, she drowned. She had… issues. I think if she were alive today, they’d probably diagnose her with a form of autism or something like it, coupled with a thyroid or glandular disease. It mustn’t have been easy for them. My mother used to hint at it, but I never picked up on it. When I’d throw a temper tantrum, she’d say, ‘You have noting on your dear sister, young man.’ She could be pretty wild.”

  “So, if they didn’t hurt your sister, what did they do?”

  West sauntered away, giving them a little space. He picked a blackened stick from the diseased tree and poked at the ground.

  Matt took a deep breath, his eyes reddening.

  “He said they killed my mother.”

  Debi’s heart stopped.

  “But… but she’d been so sick. That doesn’t make any sense. Did your father lie about her illness?”

  “No, she was sick. Remember I stopped to visit her a month before she… there wasn’t much left of her then. It was only a matter of time.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “She knew the end was coming. She told my father it was time to break their silence about the Guardians. He wouldn’t hear of it. She said she’d call the author
ities. She was worried that the harassment wouldn’t stop with them. That whoever lived in the house would suffer the way we all did. My father wouldn’t give her a dying wish. He even went so far as to remove the phone from their bedroom. The only other phone was downstairs, and by that point, she was bedridden.”

  Matt was trembling, and for once, Debi knew it wasn’t from the vertigo. It’s as if the revelation had thrust it into remission, at least until he could get everything out. West kept his eyes to the ground, but she knew he was listening.

  “If she couldn’t tell anyone, why would the Guardians kill her?” she asked, rubbing Matt’s arm.

  “A few neighbors came to visit. Women she’d known at church. They wanted to say their goodbyes. My father thinks she told one of them, and somehow word got around. This is a small town after all. Once it filtered to the goddamn Guardians, they snuck into the house when my father was out. She’d been on oxygen. It looks like they simply removed her from her bed and her oxygen, leaving her on the floor to die.”

  She saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the aluminum arms of the chair.

  “But if he wasn’t there, how did he know it was the Guardians?”

  “They so much as told him it was them. A lesson to be taught for not following the rules.”

  “Matt, this can’t stay within the family anymore. You know that.”

  He sagged into the seat. “That’s the problem. The moment we make a move, they’re going to kill my father.” He leaned so close, she could feel his lips on her ear. “And I’m worried it won’t stop there.”

  She took a quick look at West. He pretended he wasn’t interested to know they were saying. “Then we all get in the truck and drive the hell away from here. Right now.”

  Matt grabbed her hand and they got up from the chairs. She followed him to the car, out of West’s earshot.

  “Right now, I don’t think we can take a chance,” he said, looking nervously over her shoulder. The deepening sense of paranoia clouded his gaze.

  “But why? We can leave right this minute and never look back.”