“God has always communicated through dreams and angels and in visions. Granted, it’s rare today, but it does happen. God can do the impossible, and Satan has always been the great imitator.”
I slumped back onto the bench, my brain still telling me to run, but my legs would no longer hold me. Arms filled with lead hung useless at my sides.
I had nowhere to go, no one else to turn to. I had used up all my options and still the answers hid from me. What were the ghost boys?
Pastor Steve placed a hand on my shoulder. As he began to pray, panic choked me. With wild eyes, I darted around the shadowy park, seeking escape, but seeing instead blackness behind every tree. If there was ever a time when the Holy Spirit needed to groan to God on my behalf, this was it.
“Lord, be with my brother Bill. Help him to understand the vision he saw in the attic. Help him to discern if it was from you or Satan. If it was from you, Father, help him understand what he is to do.”
Peace washed over me, through me, filled me. The inner voice went silent.
What if God had sent Steve to help me understand the ghost boys? He needed to know about Barbara.
“I have to go, Bill. I hate to leave Lisa alone for too long.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
Rubbing my hand across the bristle of hair on top of my head, I looked at Steve and wondered how he would take what I had to tell him. Would he turn his back on me as my sister had done? We headed through the shaded jungle-like path toward the parking lot.
“When I first saw the ghosts,” I said, “I have to admit I was afraid. And confused. I didn’t believe in ghosts, and yet I had seen something I couldn’t explain.
“Then I met someone, by accident. I met her at the bookstore when I…well…I mistook some kid for Jimmy.”
Steve was still walking with me, but I knew the real test was yet to come. The next part was the hardest, but I had to tell him if he was going to help me. I stopped walking, the parking lot still out of sight behind the tangle of overgrowth ahead. “The person I met, she’s a psychic.”
Steve’s eyebrows raised just a hint.
“I don’t believe in psychics…at least I didn’t then… no, I still don’t.” I was getting confused. “I’m not sure why I agreed to meet with her. She wanted to contact the spirit of Jimmy. The whole process was strange, and I was uncomfortable at first, but after about the third try I got used to it.”
“And did you contact Jimmy’s spirit?”
“No. I didn’t really expect to. But she was a nice lady, and I enjoyed spending time with her. We talked about our families and what we did for fun. The last time I was in this park was with Barbara, and I almost let a spirit enter me.”
Pastor Steve grabbed my arm, his face directly in mine. “She was here? Bill, why didn’t you tell me this before? And you let a spirit enter you?”
“It didn’t. I stopped it.”
“You need to talk, brother. You may be in more trouble than I thought.”
“It’s a long story.” I started to walk. “When Barbara suggested she couldn’t contact the spirit because she was so far from where I had seen him, I invited her to Darlington.”
“And did she contact a spirit when she was here?”
“She may have contacted the second boy.” How could I describe what I had seen and felt? The terror of that night, and all that had happened since, flowed through me. I ached for light, only a few steps ahead.
“We had barely gotten into the attic when it started. She actually looked different. This voice came out of her, like it was huge and had to force its way out through her throat. I felt like I was confronting the devil himself, except I was looking at Barbara, or what used to be Barbara.”
“What did the voice say?”
“I don’t know. It was some strange gibberish.”
“How did Barbara explain it?”
“She said sometimes a stronger spirit needs to be heard. I tried to explain how frightened I was, how she had changed. She claimed to understand, that she had reacted just like me the first time she saw her mother contact a spirit.”
I searched Steve’s eyes. “Man, this was more than contacting a spirit. I could swear she was possessed by whatever was in her. I don’t ever want to see that again.”
We had reached the clearing. In spite of the heat, I lifted my face to the sun, reveled in its warmth. Pastor Steve stared at me, his face reflecting a mixture of fear and urgency.
The sun was scorching, and the frame of Steve’s old Chevy felt like fire against my arm. I didn’t move from the heat.
“I’m confused about Barbara. She’s a Christian, Steve. She goes to church every Sunday, and she prays. She said her gift is from God, something He gave her to help other people.”
“Bill, listen to me. Barbara’s wrong. Not all churches are the same. You know that. Not all ministers preach the gospel, or even believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. Did you ever go to Barbara’s church?”
“Sure, one Sunday right before I came back here.”
“And?”
“It was different.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t feel like I had worshiped. I felt more like I had been to a lodge meeting or something. Barbara said I just needed to get used to it. I wanted her to go to my church but there wasn’t time.”
“Did you ever ask yourself where Barbara’s experiences came from?”
I hung my head, knowing I should have. “I guess at first not much happened, so I didn’t need to question anything. When she got to Darlington, things happened so fast. She was only here a day and a half.”
“Do you believe Barbara had a supernatural experience in the attic, or do you think she was playing a game with you?”
“Faking it? No way could anyone fake what I saw.”
“Then you’re saying Barbara was controlled by something else. There are only two options: God or Satan.”
“But I…”
“Face it Bill, Barbara was inhabited by a demon.”
Reality over what I had been involved in, and perhaps was still involved in, and how easily I had slipped into the occult, frightened me. I had not questioned any of the strange things that had happened. One built on the next, each benign, but together deadly.
When had I chosen death?
When had I lost my sense of reason?
26
A feeling of watchfulness hung over Darlington. Pastor Steve’s arrest had affected everyone. The sun still rose in the mornings and the weeds grew, but an emotional dark cloud smothered our town.
Pastor Steve, for the most part, hid out at home. After receiving a death threat the day after he was released from jail, he stopped answering his phone. The police drove by his house regularly; there wasn’t anything more they could do.
I worried for the young couple’s safety. Too many people practiced the concept of an eye for an eye, and even though Steve was not convicted, a trial was an unnecessary formality for some.
Everything depended on the test results of the blanket. Steve would then be officially cleared. Or would he? I still didn’t know if Satan could manipulate molecules to replicate those found in the attic.
Trina wanted to invite Steve and Lisa to the house for dinner, but so far, I was able to convince her that it was unsafe for them to be out. In reality, I didn’t want Steve in the house with the demon. Hard telling what might happen.
I had become a puppet, and someone else controlled the strings.
The second cup of morning coffee failed to energize me. Ted and Trina, staring at me from across the table, had the same look of ‘why bother’ on their faces. The day stood heavy before us.
Sandra arrived and joined our lethargy. Even with her optimistic attitude, conversation lagged.
There was nothing we could do for Pastor Steve. My mind could only wrap around other problems for so long before it shut down. I had given up my daily rounds. Once we found the skeleton, the sensations in the kitchen n
o longer happened. The rounds felt like an effort of futility; the demon could be anywhere, and that unnerved me.
The inactivity of waiting was driving us all crazy. We needed a distraction.
“How about we re-visit the cave?” I suggested.
“Why not,” Ted replied. “We should do something.”
No one moved.
“Ya’ll know we’ll need more light,” Sandra said, sharing her first real smile of the day.
Ted shifted his lanky body, his eyes alert. “I have something we can use in the workshop.”
While Trina and Sandra washed the coffee cups, I wiped the table. Ted returned with three utility lights.
After moving the cabinet, we peered into the dark hole. I had not expected the feeling of anxiety to return. After all, I had made four trips into the cave with the police officers. But my hands were damp and not too steady as I grabbed one of the three lights off the floor. It was so dark in the hole. So black.
Trina plugged the cord into the outlet on the opposite wall.
I hesitated. Trina, Ted, and Sandra deserved to be warned of potential danger, but how? Hey guys, you might hear a creepy moaning, or see a dark frightening figure. My anticipation of the demon’s appearance grew with each day. How long would it stay hidden? What was its agenda? I had seen its dark shadow in the attic and felt its presence. The demon was here somewhere, waiting, and I needed them to be alert without scaring them to death.
“There could be bats,” I hissed over my shoulder to Ted, as he followed me down the stairs.
“More likely you’ll find snakes,” he replied.
Snakes.
I stopped and Ted ran into my shoulder. I grabbed onto the rock wall trying to regain my balance.
“What kind of snakes?”
“I don’t know.” His unconcerned voice frustrated me. “Big ones, I know that. While you were gone, Trina and I saw a snake stretched across the foundation of the house. Thin as a pencil and black. We measured the space later, and it was forty inches.”
“Where did it go?”
“I didn’t pay any attention; I went back to painting.”
“I know one thing,” Trina added from behind Ted, “we don’t have as many of those little lizards as we used to.”
“It sounds like a ribbon snake,” added Sandra. “They’re harmless. They eat mice and other things, like lizards and Palmetto bugs. There’re good to have around.”
They might be good to have around, but I would prefer not to meet one face-to-face, especially in the tight space and semi-gloom of the cave. But a snake was better than a demon.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I lifted the bar that held the lower door closed and then pulled the door open. Even though the cave had been exposed half a dozen times over the past few days, the air still smelled stale. I glanced at the corner where we had found the skeleton. My stomach clenched as I imagined the horror of being locked in the dark to die here alone. Would we ever know who the man was, or how he came to be locked in the cave in Sandra’s husband’s ancestral home?
Black snakes. Black space. Black mood.
Holding the light in front of me like a cross to ward off evil, I moved a few feet into the cave. My gaze roamed over the floor, or what little I could see of it. Then I held the lamp high and examined the ceiling. Even with the two hundred watt bulb, pockets of darkness remained. The protruding roots made me feel like I was buried alive.
Something softly dropped onto my arm. I jerked, dropping the light. The bulb broke, leaving us entombed in darkness.
Sandra squealed. I heard footsteps moving toward the door.
“Let’s get out of here,” I croaked.
Back in the kitchen, Trina held her sides, laughing. “Dad, you were so funny!”
I stared at her.
“It was sand! I saw some fall right before you dropped the light.”
Her laugh was contagious.
“All right, laugh,” I said, pretending to be angry, “but when you get bit by a snake and end up with rabies, don’t come crying to me.”
“Snakes don’t have rabies,” Ted said.
“There might be one that does,” I responded.
“It was just so funny!” Trina repeated.
At least I had lightened the mood, and laughter is good for the soul.
“We need a plan,” Sandra said, wiping tears from her eyes. “We can’t all fit in that tiny room at the same time without trampling each other. How about Ted and I go back down and—”
“I will go back down.” I don’t mind being the occasional brunt of a joke, but I refuse to be a chicken. “You two ladies stay up here. Ted and I will bring the trunks to you.”
Ted retrieved the broken lamp. With one out of commission, we still had two, more than enough for the job. I grabbed a lamp off the floor, connected it to the extension cord, and, with forced bravado, headed back down the stairs. Ted followed with the remaining light.
With four hundred watts of illumination, I could see the pattern on the surface of the trunks, even though the coat of sand.
However, behind each stack of trunks, shadows persisted. The tread of our shoes made patterns in the sand on the stone floor. Too late, I realized we had lost an opportunity to check for Mitch’s footprints. Now any evidence he may have left had been trampled and contaminated.
“Should we move the empty trunks to the side, like we did in the attic?” Ted asked. “There isn’t much room down here, but we could stack them against this wall.”
“No sense carrying empty containers upstairs just yet,” I added. “We have enough weight to haul around.”
The room was airless, and the dust we disturbed mixed with sweat and soon coated us in a pasty mud.
It took both of us to carry each trunk up the uneven stairs. I heaved a sigh of relief each time my feet hit the kitchen floor, feeling safe once out of the cave.
When Trina suggested an iced tea break, we moved to the front porch. With each of us coated in various amounts of grime, cobwebs, and dirt, we looked like a sorry bunch. I caught the edge of a curtain move across the street, and wondered what the neighbor was thinking. I reached over and pulled an exceptionally long web off Sandra’s hair.
“Who do you suppose put all of this down there?” Trina asked, sipping her tea.
“Stranger still,” Sandra replied, “is why did they leave it there?”
“Bill, what about that satchel from the cave?” Ted asked.
With Pastor Steve’s arrest, I had forgotten it. “It’s in my room, under the bed.”
“There might be a clue in it,” Trina added. “Maybe the skeleton put the trunks down there, and he died and no one else knew about the cave. What if the stuff belonged to Isabelle and her family, but they didn’t know where it was hidden?”
Sandra brushed at a spot of dirt on her slacks. “All those things do belong to Isabelle in a way, because only family has ever lived here. Unless the trunks were hidden for someone else, all those things belonged to the family at some point.”
We sipped tea, each occupied with our own thoughts.
Once our break was over, Ted and I headed back down the stone stairs while the women unpack the latest trunk—full of flower rimmed plates.
After five more trips, and out of breath, I leaned against the cabinet and wiped the grit from my eyes. Ted’s t-shirt had long ago lost its color. What the dirt hadn’t changed, sweat had. His blonde hair was streaked with gray grit. I had never seen my son-in-law so dirty. It did my spirit good. To his credit, he kept up with me.
“You guys look like you need some water.” Sandra handed a glass to each of us, and we gulped gratefully.
“Sandra, come and see this!” Trina called.
Still clutching my half empty glass of water, I headed to the dining room. In addition to the floral china plates, the table now held old silver pieces, and various bottles and boxes.
Trina stood holding a glass bowl. “Look at this,” she sighed. “It’s so light
it feels like air.”
She lowered the bowl into Sandra’s outstretched hands.
“It’s a wonder it didn’t get broken,” Sandra murmured. Light from the window reflected off the bowl, and a rainbow of color arched across the floor and up the wall. A sensation of loss touched me when Sandra placed the bowl on the table, and the rainbow dissolved.
“There’s more in the trunk,” Trina said, “but I’m too tired right now to be safe handling them. How about a break?”
Our last break had only been an hour ago. Trina shouldn’t need a break yet. I glanced at her and noted her sagging mouth and slumped shoulders. “We’ve had enough fun,” I stated. “Let’s stop for the day.”
Besides my concern for Trina, I had another reason for wanted to quit. The itch that grows in the back of my brain when something is wrong needed scratched. Mitch had not shown up for three days, even though Ted had him scheduled to work. Was he afraid to come back?
27
After supper, Ted and I walked the six blocks to where Mitch lived. “Don’t you think it’s strange that he hasn’t shown up since he bashed me in the head?”
“He must have a reason.”
“He has a reason all right. He’s afraid.”
We walked in silence for the next block, past storefronts and empty offices, employees home for the evening. A yellow cat trotted across the street, turning his eyes in disdain toward the car that braked for him but never increased his pace. Stupid cat.
Having watched the cat safely across the street I turned back to Ted. “What do you know about this roommate of his?”
“Not much. His name’s Jack. He works at the garage with Mitch, and offered Mitch a place to stay when we moved into the house.”
“What’s he like?”
“I‘ve never met him. Mitch said Jack was in the Army and was discharged after being injured in Iraq. He doesn’t talk about him much.”
“He doesn’t talk about anything much.”
We turned down New Street. It was little more than an old alley, narrow and airless, lined mostly with the backs of warehouses. Nothing new about it.
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