Fingers in the Mist

by O'Dell Hutchison

  “Be careful,” I say. “If you step on something you could twist your ankle, or worse, fall and hit your head.”

  I hear him picking things up and placing them back into the box. “I found some candles.”

  “Do you have anything to light them with?”

  “I have a lighter.” I hear a flick, and a soft orange glow lights up his face. The candle jumps to life, giving him at least a little bit of light.

  “Why didn’t you use the lighter earlier? It would have made it so much easier to get down here.”

  “I forgot I had it until I found the candles,” he says sheepishly.

  He lights two more, placing one of them in a votive holder that sits on the shelf. He hands one to me and takes the other with him. We’re in a large room with a desk and piles of old boxes and books. A mop bucket and other cleaning supplies sit against the wall by the door, and huge bookcases line the far back.

  “Here we go,” he says, picking up the first-aid kit. He hands me his candle and kneels down to pull up the leg on my yoga pants.

  “Holy shit.”

  I turn my leg to assess the damage. Blood covers my entire calf and runs down my ankle, soaking my sock. He takes an alcohol pad and wipes away the blood. It stings like crazy.

  “Are those teeth marks?” he says, when he’s wiped most of the blood away. “Something tried to take a bite out of your leg.”

  I look at the deep lacerations lining the back of my calf. The bite pattern is definitely not human.

  “Those things must have some nasty mouths,” he says.

  “I didn’t see the mouth. I just saw these long, crazy, boney hands and the outline of their bodies.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s ever actually seen one of them and lived to tell about it.”

  “Well, I saw enough, and I don’t want to see more,” I say, shivering at the memory.

  “We’ll need to stay here tonight. We should probably go back upstairs so we can hear the bells in the morning. You can’t hear anything down here.”

  He finishes bandaging my leg, and we gather a few more candles. Trevor searches the huge room for more supplies while I take a look around. I know it’s supposed to be a storage room, but it’s set up kind of like a bunker. I walk to the far end of the room, searching through boxes to see whether there is anything we can use to get us through the night. My stomach rumbles, and I curse myself for not eating the leftover pot roast when I had the chance.

  “Is there any food in this place?” I don’t expect there to be, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.

  “There’s a vending machine upstairs in the break room, but it won’t work without power. Lucky for us, I have a key.”

  “I’m starving.” I glance at the huge shelves before me. They reach from the floor to the ceiling, each one filled with large, leather books that stand in a dusty line. Out of curiosity, I pull one down. It’s heavy, and I can’t balance it with just one arm. It falls to the floor, exposing the first page. It looks like a scrapbook. The thick, dark letters written across the top of the page read: The year of our Lord—2004.

  “What did you find?” Trevor appears beside me holding a large box of matches and a couple of blankets.

  “I’m not sure. This shelf is filled with these books. They all look the same.”

  “Probably just old archives of the town’s history or something.” He stoops down and thumbs through the pages. “Boring stuff. They probably stuck these down here because no one would actually want to read them.”

  The first several pages contain handwritten notes and a few newspaper clippings. He stops, his hand freezing in midair as he moves to turn the page. Even in the weak light emitted from his candle, I can see that his face has gone white.

  “What’s wrong?” I glance over his shoulder at the photos of seven children. All of them appear to be candid shots, or cut from family portraits. Then, I notice the name: Sarah Perkins.

  “Is that your sister?”

  “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “And these are the six other kids who were taken the last time the Redeemers came.”

  “How old was she when they took her?”

  “Eight.”

  Eight. The same age as Mitch. “So, these books are a history of the Redeemers?” I ask, grabbing another book. This time I brace myself for the weight so it doesn’t topple down onto Trevor’s head. The front page reads: The year of our Lord—1981

  “We should get back upstairs. Aren’t you hungry?” he asks, closing the book and picking it up.

  “Yeah, but I want to look through these. Will you bring them upstairs?”

  He grabs both books, piling them in his arms. I grab the blankets and matches and follow him to the lobby. He places the books on one of the reading tables, and then rigs a pencil holder with some paperclips to hold our candles.

  “You’re a regular MacGyver.”

  “I’m very resourceful,” he says with a smile. “What do you want to eat? I’ll go grab a few things from the break room.”

  “Well, I’d really like Chinese takeout, but I doubt they have that, so I’ll take whatever.” I sit at the table, stretching my wounded leg in front of me, and reach for the first book in the pile.

  “I’ll be right back,” he says before withdrawing into a room behind the main desk.

  Thumbing through the books, I notice that they both share the same format: The date on the first page, several pages of handwriting, and then a page of photos of seven kids. After the group page, there’s an individual picture of the first person taken with their bio written beneath it. On the facing page is a description of the family’s sin. I flip to Sarah’s page and my eyes fly over the words written there.

  The Perkins family was marked with sin on June 20, 2003 when five-year-old Trevor Perkins shot and killed thirty-four-year-old Hank Freeman.

  “Okay, I’ve got candy bars, Doritos, Ruffles, Trail Mix, and soda. It’s a regular buffet up in here,” Trevor says as he walks around the corner, his arms filled with junk food.

  “Awesome.” I slam the book closed before he can see what I’d read. He killed someone? No way. Not Trevor. Surely, it was an accident. He was five when it happened.

  “Find anything good?”

  I shake my head as I casually slide that book to the bottom of the pile and reach for the other.

  “1981? People must have been taken for wearing too much neon,” he jokes.

  “The eighties were a very decadent time.”

  He flips to the page containing all the pictures, and my breath catches when my eyes fall on one specific photo.

  Angeline Crawford.

  My mother.

  Chapter Nine

  The girl in the photo is no more than ten years old, but I recognize her immediately. She looks exactly as I did when I was ten. I’ve seen this photo before. My mother kept it in a box with a few things of my grandmother’s after she passed away.

  “Who is that?” Trevor asks, looking over my shoulder.

  “My mother,” I whisper, unable to take my eyes off her face.

  “It can’t be. This is a book of everyone the Redeemers took in 1981, correct?”

  “It appears to be.” I didn’t even know my mom lived here.

  “Then it can’t be your mother. The Redeemers don’t just let people go.”

  “But, it’s her. Crawford is my mother’s maiden name.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Someone with your mother’s name that looks like her.”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s her. I know this picture. The arm of the person who they cut out belongs to my grandmother. Mom kept this same picture in a box in her dresser. I’ve looked at it a hundred times.”

  “Then that would mean your mother managed to escape. That never happens.” He sits across from me, confusion creasing his brow.

  “I didn’t even know my mom lived in Highland Falls. She told me that she met my dad in college.”

/>   None of this makes sense. My mother lived here and the Redeemers took her? Not only that, but she lived through it? I need answers, but I have no idea where to find them. Anytime I even mention my mother around my dad he changes the subject faster than he flips between football games on TV. I’m sure my grandmother will be of no help. She hated my mom. Both of my mother’s parents are dead, which doesn’t really matter because I wouldn’t be able to call them anyway due to the current electrical situation—or lack thereof.

  I close the book and push it across the table. “I’m going back downstairs.” I grab the candle and stand, wincing at the pain in my calf.

  “You need to eat something first.”

  I’d forgotten how famished I was. Seeing the picture totally threw me off. After throwing back a few bags of chips, a candy bar, and a Pepsi, Trevor and I head back to the basement. When we get there I realize that I have no idea what I’m looking for. There are so many boxes and shelves of books I don’t know where to start.

  “Where are the newspapers?” I ask.

  “Old newspaper articles were converted to microfilm, but without power, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Shit,” I say. “Could this be any more difficult?”

  “There are history books around here somewhere, but none of them mention the Redeemers. We can’t have outsiders knowing our secrets,” he says, a hint of sarcasm to his voice.

  I go to the boxes stacked on the floor by the back wall and begin tearing through them, but I find nothing other than old magazines and worn romance novels. After what feels like hours, we come up with nothing.

  “I’m exhausted,” he says, collapsing against a box of old children’s books. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything down here.”

  I know he’s probably right, even though I hate to admit it. He offers me a hand to help me up and I reluctantly take it, following him to the stairs.

  I grab a blanket and lie down. The air in the room is stuffy, yet cool, and I have a hard time getting warm.

  “Are you cold?” Trevor’s voice is groggy, and I wonder if I woke him with all my fidgeting.

  “A little.”

  Without another word, he rolls over and puts his arm around me. Heat prickles my body, more from excitement than anything. I try to slow my breathing to match his, the faint beating of his heart against my back lulling me to sleep.

  Just as I’m about to drift off, a loud banging comes from the front door. The sound is like an explosion, and I immediately jolt awake. Trevor sits up, not as freaked out as I am, but obviously startled.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  Before Trevor can answer, the banging comes again and someone screams.

  “Help me! Is anyone in there? Please.”

  It’s a man’s voice, but I can’t place who it belongs to. I stand and rush to the door. Trevor reaches out a hand to stop me, but I dodge it. I grab the lock, but before I can open the door Trevor slams himself into it.

  “You can’t open the door.”

  “Why not? Someone is out there. They’re in trouble.” I try to push him out of the way, but he refuses to budge.

  “We don’t know that for sure. It could be the Redeemers. They mess with you, trying to get you to come outside.”

  “Hello?” the terrified voice calls. “Is someone in there? Please, help me. They took my baby.”

  I move to the window overlooking the front of the library. Through the dark and the haze I can barely see the outline of a man, about six-foot, pressed against the door. He must see me standing in the window, because he rushes over. It’s Mr. Edwards.

  “Trevor! It’s okay, it’s Mr. Edwards. Let him in.”

  “We can’t. His family was marked.”

  “We can’t just let him stay out there.” His reluctance to help sickens me. “Trevor! Open the door. We have to help him.”

  Mr. Edwards beats at the glass. I turn to face him, and that’s when I see the gashes that run down the sides of his face. Blood fills his mouth, and his left eye is missing from its socket.

  “Please,” he cries. “Please help—”

  Before he can finish his sentence, he is ripped from the window by several ghostly hands. The only clue that he was ever there is the blood spattered on the window.

  “Why didn’t you help him?” I say, turning angrily toward Trevor.

  “If we let him in, then we let them in. He was marked. It sucks, but it was for our own good. We could have died, too.” He walks back to the blankets and lies down.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it happened before … last time.” His voice catches, and I think he may be crying. “The night the Redeemers took my sister, my father ran after them, and he was ripped to shreds. They mean it when they say you can’t go outside or open your door except for the safe time after the bells toll. We aren’t allowed to interfere with their work.”

  For some reason this enrages me. “So, you’re saying if I came banging at your door because the Redeemers were after me, you’d just let me stand screaming on the porch until those things ripped me apart?”

  “Don’t talk like that.” He turns his back to me and this makes me even angrier.

  “But it could happen,” I say, stepping over him and crouching down, forcing him to listen to me. “What would you do?”

  “Don’t make me answer that question.”

  “You’d let them take me, wouldn’t you?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to, but … ” his voice trails off.

  “But what?”

  “You don’t get it. Once they’ve marked you, you belong to them. I wouldn’t be able to stop them.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to, or you wouldn’t want to?” I glare at him, all of the pent up frustration I’ve felt bubbling to the surface.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing.” I step over him and go back to my blanket.

  “That is so typical. Always starting something you’re not about to finish.”

  I grab my blanket and sit against the wall. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think? Why is it always about you? What you want. What everyone is willing to do for you.” He stands, his body nothing more than a dark form lurking over me.

  “Oh, so that’s what this is about. You’re punishing me because I kissed you and then left you.”

  “You killed me. I poured my heart out to you and you basically laughed in my face and left town. Then you come back acting like nothing happened. Like you expect things to just go back to the way they were.”

  I laugh in disbelief. “You know, if you’d bothered to talk to me about this like a mature human being, you might realize just how wrong you are. I know I screwed up. I know I hurt you. You have no idea how badly I want to go back and change how everything played out after that summer, but I can’t. Yes, I hoped I could come back and patch things up with you and that maybe we could pick up where we left off, but it’s obvious that’s not going to happen. I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain in the ass. I’ll be sure not to ask you for anything from here on out. If you’re done berating me, I’d like to get some sleep.” I wrap the blanket around myself and lie down with my back against the wall.

  I wait for his response, but it doesn’t come.

  ***

  The bells chime, jolting me from a deep, restless sleep filled with images of lurking figures and flowing blood. I witnessed two deaths in one night. Trevor and I were almost a third and fourth. Six more nights of this. When will my luck run out?

  Trevor rolls over and stretches. He turns to face me and I look away, busying myself by folding my blanket.

  “Did you sleep?” he asks.

  “A little.” Our conversation from the night before still pokes at my head. I don’t want it to be this way, but I have bigger things to worry about.

  “I w
ant you to know that I would come after you if there were any possible way I could save you,” he says. Obviously, the conversation still bothers him as well.

  “It’s okay. I understand.” My tone is cooler than I mean it to be. I toss the blanket onto one of the tables and go to the window. The mist doesn’t appear as heavy or thick, but it’s still dark out.

  “I mean it. I hate thinking it might happen. I could say ‘yes, I would come after you’ if you want me to, but I was trying to be honest.”

  “I know.”

  He walks over and places his hands on my shoulders. “It’s just … it would kill my mom if she lost me, too.”

  “It’s okay. Really. I understand where you are coming from.” The problem is, I really do understand it; I just don’t want to.

  “I’m sorry about what I said last night. I’ve just been so angry with you.”

  I cut him off and walk away from him, taking a seat at the table. “It’s okay. Really. I understand. Things are different now.”

  “You hurt me.” He looks at me with sad eyes that melt my soul.

  “I know I did, and I hate myself for it. I’m sorry—I really am. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “I want to forgive you. I want things to be the way they were before.” He places a finger under my chin and tilts my face toward his, placing a kiss on my forehead. I smile in response, wanting more, but knowing I shouldn’t push my luck.

  We gather the blankets and Trevor rushes downstairs to put them away, doing his best to erase the fact that we were ever here. He takes one of the books from the night before, not realizing that I kept the one from 1981.

  I open the front door and look around to make sure it’s safe. I drop the book off the side of the steps behind some bushes. I plan to rush back and grab it once they dismiss us. I have a feeling that book holds most—if not all—of the answers I need.

  Trevor walks out, closing the door behind him. “We need to come in with everyone else. No one can know we were out last night or that we hid in here. Let’s cut behind the diner and sneak around the grade school, then come up the main street.”