The Calling

by Robert Swartwood

  • • •

  WHEN I LEFT my grandmother’s trailer later around ten o’clock, I intended to see Moses. I wanted to ask him if it was really him who’d called in the assassination threat. So as I stepped out into the cool summer night—the breeze and the insects quiet—I started to turn left to head toward his RV when movement caught my attention up toward Half Creek Road.

  I turned at once and saw a shadow entering the Rec House. And even though I knew it was impossible, one name materialized in my mind.

  Joey.

  I wasted no time in sprinting up the drive. When I got to the screen door and opened it (no racket this time) I paused, now second-guessing myself. Had I really seen anything? Or was it just my overstressed imagination? For all I knew Samael waited inside, that perpetual shadow in the corner, ready to give me the choice I wasn’t quite yet prepared to make.

  I stepped inside and flicked on the lights.

  Thankfully this time the power worked. The six bulbs in the ceiling lit up right away, only one in the corner flickering off and on before it stayed strong. The Rec House’s interior looked the same as it did the first time I entered. The gaming tables all sat untouched, the clutter still resting on top of the ping-pong table. Even the yellow remote control car lay upside down on the floor.

  “Joey?”

  I spoke his name before realizing I’d even opened my mouth, and immediately I felt stupid. I knew better. Of course I knew better. I’d sat beside him when he died. I’d gone with his father to pick up his ashes. But still ... hadn’t I seen something enter this place?

  “Joey, are you there?”

  There was no answer.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I told the empty room. “I can’t do this by myself. Your dad’s trying to help me but I ... I’m scared. Can you help? Do you know what’s really going to happen?”

  The silence continued. I stood there for a very long time, waiting for anything at all. Even if that one bulb began flickering again I would have been satisfied—though how I would have taken it as a sign, I had no clue. Finally I gave up. Nothing was going to happen.

  I started back outside, my hand hovering over the light switch, when a soft voice inside my head whispered you should read it when you get the chance and I paused. Standing there, I remembered both my dream and the day Joey had brought me here before visiting the Beckett House. I remembered what he’d showed me, how he’d been looking at me with his dark solemn eyes that for a moment I wondered just what was really going on inside his head.

  Thinking this now, I turned and looked across the Rec House. Stared at the wall where pictures of the Porter family stared back. In the center was Mrs. Porter’s framed obituary.

  “All right, Joey,” I whispered, starting forward. “What’s this all about?”

  Five minutes later I found myself in the deserted gravel parking lot of Shepherd’s Books. I’d run the entire way down Half Creek Road. A cramp had formed in my side. I stood before the bookstore/house, half-bent over as I tried catching my breath. I stared up at the dark empty windows.

  He was in there somewhere—there was no doubt in my mind about that—yet I didn’t know what to do about it. I considered banging on the door, but there was no guarantee he’d answer. I thought about breaking and entering, of shoving my way inside and running up to the second floor and finding him cowered in a corner, as he realized I’d finally figured it out. But what would I say to him? Would I hit him, slap him around? Maybe I wouldn’t do anything because it had been my own stupid fault in the first place. I’d been too naïve and trusting and now there was no turning back.

  Besides, I told myself as I started back up the road, it’s no use anyway. Had I known earlier in the game maybe it would have made a difference. But now it was too late. Much too late.

  Chapter 27

  It was almost three o’clock in the morning when I heard her outside.

  I’d been lying in bed since midnight, after staring at the picture of my parents for nearly an hour. I kept trying to use whatever gift Joey had given me to figure out who’d murdered them, but it was no use. I could glimpse into meaningless areas of people’s lives—like what their favorite colors were and how often they clipped their toenails—but when it came down to actually seeing something I cared about and needed to know, nothing came.

  Finally I set the picture aside and turned off the light. I tried to sleep, but I was too wrapped up in my thoughts of Samael and the thirty-four lives and what tomorrow had in store. I kept turning over and over in bed, settling first on my left side, then on my right, then on my stomach and finally on my back, before doing the positions all over again. I flipped my pillow at least a half dozen times, hoping for the cool side but never satisfied with what I got. I wondered if Moses was asleep. I figured he probably was, as he was used to dealing with these situations, to all the pressure, that getting a good night’s rest was second nature.

  As I flipped my pillow back over I heard footsteps outside. I froze. My mind ran through the different possibilities of who it could be—Moses, Grandma, Samael, my parents’ murderer, my parents themselves, again in that twisted W. W. Jacobs version—when suddenly the footsteps stopped. Besides my watch ticking next to the bed and the insects outside, there was silence.

  Then the footsteps started again. After a moment I realized they were now heading away, so I jumped out of bed and went to the door. I wore only my boxers and T-shirt but didn’t care as I stepped outside.

  She had only gone a few steps up the drive. When she heard my door opening she paused. Her back was to me for the longest time, before finally she turned. In the moonlight I saw her pale face and the tears that lined her cheeks.

  I whispered, “Sarah?”

  She started forward immediately, sobbing, wiping her eyes as she met me and placed her arms around me. She hugged me tight. At first I didn’t know what to do and just stood there hesitant, my one arm holding open the screen door while my other arm hung useless at my side. She continued to weep, her body jerking against mine with each individual sob, and instinctively I placed my arm around her and held her, until her sobbing subsided enough so I could lean back and see her face.

  “Sarah, what’s wrong?”

  “I ... I’m sorry, but I ... I had a bad dream.”

  “That’s all right. There’s no need to be sorry.”

  She continued to weep, pressing her face into my shoulder. After a while I got her to settle down and invited her inside. The trailer was cramped enough for just me but we managed to sit on the bed. She continued to sniff back tears, and I found some tissues and placed them in her hand.

  I asked her again what was wrong.

  She looked up at me, her blue eyes piercing in the dark. She made a long sigh and began to speak between hiccups.

  “It was ... a nightmare. But it ... it felt so real. I was giving ... birth to my baby ... but when ... when it was born ... my baby was ... it was dead.” Shaking her head, wiping more tears from her eyes. “God, it was ... awful. That’s the last ... thing in the world ... I’d want. Anything but ... my baby. Anything but ... my child.”

  I wanted to tell her that it was okay, that she needn’t worry about anything because it was just a dream. But for some reason I knew I couldn’t do that. She would sense my lies faster than my grandmother, and lies were the last thing she needed.

  I remembered the question I’d considered asking her yesterday as we sat talking on the picnic table. The question that would never be voiced, no matter what happened. Have you considered an abortion? Of course she’d considered it, even if it was for an instant, but now I had a better idea just what kind of answer I would have received had I asked.

  The year before there was a girl in my high school who had gotten pregnant, who everyone had called trailer trash behind her back, and I remembered lying awake some nights in bed thinking about her. Thinking about the life she would now have because of a simple mistake. And because of her, I now saw Sarah in a whole differen
t light.

  Sarah too was a girl who, in all respects, was trailer trash. But was it destined from the moment she was born, or had she brought it upon herself? At what point in her journey of life had she lost her way and started down this new path? In five years where would she be, considering that nothing happened to her baby and she did her best to raise it on her own? Before, with the girl from school, I had imagined her eventually getting married with the guy from her neighborhood who had impregnated her, so that everything worked out in the end. But I had been fooling myself, because a part of me actually took pity on her. Now, realistically, I wondered what kind of life Sarah would have if she planned to raise the baby on her own, with no help at all from anyone else. Would she have to drop out of high school? If not, if she actually managed to graduate, would she consider taking college courses? There was no real career for a woman like her, except one waiting tables at Luanne’s or Harvey’s Tavern. She’d live in Bridgton her entire life, maybe date a guy from Horseheads or Elmira or even Ithaca, a guy in his twenties and already working toward becoming an alcoholic.

  I started thinking about what would happen next, how the guy might get her pregnant and they’d eventually marry, but before I could I remembered Sarah again, not the girl of endless tragic possibilities but the girl who once saw herself doing so much more than having a baby before she even graduated high school. I realized I knew none of her desires, none of her ambitions in life, because the moment she realized she was pregnant they had all been tossed out the window.

  She sniffed again, wiping her eyes, and looked up at me. “Do you mind ... if I stayed here? Just for a little? I don’t want ... to be alone.”

  I nodded and told her of course. I pushed myself back against the wall, so that she would have more room on the bed. She leaned in against me and I put my arm around her, placed her head on my chest. Then we just lay there in silence, the only sounds our slow steady breathing.

  Minutes passed, and as I held her, my chin resting on her head, I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep when she softly said my name.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  She sniffed once more. “Can you promise me something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t let anything happen to my baby.”

  Softly I shushed her. “Sarah, it was only a dream. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Promise me, Chris.”

  An image of her naked, being taken from behind by some faceless guy, came flashing through my mind as I remembered that morning’s nightmare. Only I hadn’t given it any thought then, because the real Sarah hadn’t said that yet, she hadn’t asked me to promise her anything.

  “Chris?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Please, can you promise me?”

  It was the last thing I wanted to do, the very last, but I had no choice. It was meaningless, of course it was, but a promise was a promise and though I’d been a liar I had never been one to go back on my word when I meant it. Though I asked myself just how could I promise the safety of her unborn child? What powers did I hold that could determine whether it grew healthy or died prenatal?

  It was crazy, completely insane, but this was what she wanted to hear—what she needed to hear—and so I relented and whispered, “I promise.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She took my hand, gave it a slight squeeze.

  She was asleep within five minutes, but it would be another hour before I drifted off, afraid of nightmares real and imagined—and not being able to tell the difference between them both.

  Chapter 28

  In the morning I opened my eyes to find Moses standing over me.

  “What time is it?” I asked, yawning.

  “Almost nine o’clock.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Only a few minutes.”

  I sat up and rubbed at my eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I figured right now you need all the rest you can get. Besides, I would have waited outside but your door was half-open. I know it might not mean anything with Samael, but considering what we’re up against it’d be best to stay safe at all times. For a second there I—”

  But he didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to.

  “You best get around,” Moses said. “I’ll wait outside.”

  He left and I sat there for another minute, wondering just how long Sarah had stayed before I asked myself whether she had even been there in the first place. Lately I’d been having dreams that felt real and maybe that was just another. But I pinched my T-shirt to my nose and smelled Sarah there, the scent of her hair and skin, and knew it had been real.

  I took a quick shower and dressed into jeans and a red polo shirt and then stepped outside. The sky was clear, only a few clouds hanging off near the horizon, and the sun seemed to shine down brighter than ever. Moses sat in the same chair his son had sat in only days before, though it felt like months.

  He nodded and smiled at the sky as he stood up. “I think that’s a good sign.”

  “What is?”

  “The sky. They’d been calling for rain all week but now look how clear it is. Maybe it’s an omen.”

  We stopped by my grandmother’s, Moses waiting outside while I went in to check on her. I hadn’t decided yet what excuse I would give her of where I was going, and as it turned out I didn’t need one. She was still in bed, snoring quietly, so I wrote her a note that said I went out with Moses and would be back later.

  Before I got into Moses’s car I took one glance off The Hill down into the valley where the white church rested, the heart of Bridgton behind it. It was almost nine-thirty on a beautiful Saturday morning and it seemed like no one was up yet, like the entire trailer park was still sound asleep.

  Or dead, my mind murmured. Dead like Mrs. Roberts with flies covering their bodies and crawling into their mouths and noses and ears.

  “Stop it,” I whispered, opening the car’s passenger door.

  “What was that?” Moses asked.

  I swallowed. “Should I bring the ... Joey’s present?”

  “What do you think?”

  I shook my head and climbed inside.

  We had just passed the Rec House and were turning right when I murmured, “Oh, yeah.”

  Moses glanced at me, took his foot off the gas. “What?”

  Too late now, I thought, remembering what I’d seen inside the cinderblock building last night. I told Moses to just keep going. Then we drove down the hill, picking up speed. As Shepherd’s Books came around the bend, I pointed.

  “You see that place?”

  It was there for only a second or two before we drove by.

  “The bookstore? Yeah, what about it? It’s been closed for the past week, if not longer.”

  “That’s right. And for the past week I’ve been thinking the man who lives there is Lewis Shepherd, the owner.”

  Moses said, “But he’s not.”

  “No, he’s not. In fact, Lewis Shepherd’s been dead nearly two years. He was drunk when driving home and ended up hitting Mrs. Porter while she was jogging. She died instantly. He died a few hours later.”

  “I heard she was killed in an accident. Where did you find this out?”

  “Her obituary’s posted in the Rec House, as a kind of memorial I guess. Joey mentioned it to me almost a week ago. He told me to read it when I got the chance, but of course I didn’t, and it doesn’t make sense. I mean, why wouldn’t he just have me read it then and there instead of having me wait like this?”

  “Maybe because he knew you weren’t ready to find out just yet. Or maybe because it wasn’t time. I don’t know the reason, Christopher, but what’s this all about?”

  “He’s Gerald Alcott. Paul Alcott’s son. My grandfather said that he was still living in Bridgton the last time he checked. He’d found out news on James Bidwell and Richard Weiss, but nothing on Gerald. Who knows, maybe he went into hiding, but in the obituary it mentioned Gerald. About how he was the passenge
r in the truck when Lewis Shepherd hit Mrs. Porter. Shepherd ended up dying but Gerald walked away with only a broken wrist and a new bookstore left in his name.” I shook my head. “Damn it, Moses, he was playing me.”

  “He told you he was Lewis Shepherd?”

  “Shook my hand and everything.”

  “You know what that means, don’t you.”

  “Yeah I do. It means Samael got to him already. They must have made a deal. He probably realized his father’s curse and got scared and begged for his life. Shit!”

  I smacked the dashboard hard, just once, feeling the anger that I’d felt last night while I stared at the dark empty house. It lasted only a few seconds and then I went back to staring out the window again. We had passed through town and were now out on 13, headed toward Horseheads.

  “Feel any better?”

  I said nothing.

  “Look, Christopher, I understand where you’re coming from, but don’t let it get to you. It’s in the past. Right now we need to worry about the present. We’ll deal with Alcott later.”

  I heard his words but didn’t answer and kept staring out the window. While I knew Moses understood my frustration to an extent, he didn’t understand fully. In my mind I saw Gerald Alcott making a deal with Samael and then trekking down to Lanton. Waiting outside my house until it was well past midnight, late enough where everyone would be asleep, and then breaking in through a door or window, making sure to leave no signs of him behind. Walking up the stairs, stepping over the eighth step that he somehow knew always creaked, then passing by my room with hardly a thought of me inside. (I, of course, would have just gotten home an hour or so earlier, passed out on my bed from partying.) He probably cut my parents’ throats first, to keep them from screaming out, and once the blood poured from each of them he began going to work. Slicing here, tearing there, until they were nothing more than butchered meat. Then, before leaving, he took their blood and painted a cross on my bedroom door.