Knock Knock

by S. P. Miskowski

  The more recent one, a boy named Winston, had disappeared from his bed in the middle of the night. A search party had given up after three days without a real clue. Now the stories were making their way from one household to another: the boy was abused and had run away to escape his mother, who was unbalanced; the boy had been abducted by a pedophile who was traveling through Skillute; he had been out playing late at night when he was taken by aliens who wanted him for their experiments on human DNA. The longer he was missing the more outlandish the speculation became.

  Marietta's intuitions gave her no information she could use to help locate the children. Only her knowledge of Connie Sara told her that the girl was responsible, and that she was too clever to be caught. The two missing children would never be found.

  In the quiet evening, she sometimes thought of John Colquitt, and how she had wanted him to die. Maybe she wished it, and maybe she allowed the conditions that made it come about, but she had no guarantee that he would die. Things happened and she could foresee only a fraction of those things, and urge them along. There were so many accidents, so many possibilities. She couldn't account for those, or for changes of heart. The man had possessed freewill. He might have acted differently toward Marietta, or he might not have been such a loudmouth at work, and that could have changed everything.

  People could have changes of heart. She never had, about John Colquitt. She remained pleased with his absence, more so as she got older. She tried to say this to Henry once, when he was a boy. He had pestered her all day to tell him about his daddy, and she was ashamed by how easily she dashed his fantasy.

  "I wasn't sad when they told me he was dead," she told Henry. "He wasn't a good man."

  The boy had looked at her. He went on looking at her, saying nothing, until she told him to stop. Then he started locking his bedroom door at night, and he did this until he was in high school. She couldn't understand it.

  Henry was twenty-five when he said:

  "You know I'm praying for you, don't you, mother?"

  That was how Marietta saw that Henry was nothing to do with her. He was a plain person, who tried to do good works. She took note of his sweet nature and she was certain: He was nothing to do with her. He had come about and had grown up as he did only because Marietta had rid herself of John Colquitt when she had the chance. When Marietta had given birth all alone in the house where she remained after Delphine and John died, she had taken no chances.

  Knowing all that Delphine had told her about Flora and the Knox family, Marietta had weighed the possibilities. She had gazed down at her twins: Henry lost in slumber, and the other one, the girl her aunt had warned her about. The girl who would come back any way she could. The hateful thing Delphine had kept at bay with her potions and rituals and warnings had come to make itself at home with Marietta. It had lived off of her, had taken its blood from her and its flesh.

  That time it had chosen Marietta, but luckily she had recognized it and she had known that she had no choice. It stared back at her with its hungry expression. It looked so smug, because it didn't know that she knew the truth. Later it screamed with fury, but no one heard it.

  In the weeks that followed she overfed Henry until he was sick, and then pumped the milk he wouldn't take into a bottle. She had so much milk she had to throw some of it away every day. This was a constant reminder of what she had done.

  She had placed the infant in a metal toolbox and burned it in the yard, just as she had burned John's possessions. She had to let it go, just as she'd had to let John go. The flames licked the box clean inside and out, and it was over. She left the bones and ashes in the toolbox and buried it in the ground next to John's truck, under the blackberry bushes. Years later when she moved in with Henry she had a fence built around that bit of land, to keep away trespassers.

  All of it was necessary. All of it was a sacrifice she had to make. Otherwise, Henry would never have been the man that he was. Given his nature, he wouldn't have survived. She had done Henry a good turn, eliminating the dangers from his life. If the twin had lived, it would have killed Henry one day, out of spite. If John had lived, Henry might have been like him, or he might have been much worse when John was done with him.

  Marietta noted with pleasure that the adult Henry was nothing like John Colquitt and nothing like her. For one thing, Henry would never have entertained the idea, or even the hint of an idea, of killing a child.

  Kojak

  Marietta told her daughter-in-law she had one of her sick headaches. This brought a guarantee that she wouldn't be disturbed. She prepared a cup of ginger tea and retired to her bed.

  The night before, she had broken the teeth off the blackened jawbone with a pair of pliers. Then she waited.

  The first tooth she placed in the tree that the girl climbed almost every afternoon at the same time. The girl would climb up to get a good look around and scout for prey.

  The second tooth Marietta placed in the grass near the tree, where the last of the day's light would strike it like a black pearl. Each one after that she placed a few yards away, a gleaming treasure to be gathered and gathered until the girl reached the dusty spot across the road where Marietta wanted her to be.

  Marietta drank the ginger tea and lay down on her bed. It was time now and she couldn't force it to happen. She could only wait and see what the girl would do, as she had waited to see what John would do. She lay still. Her joints ached and her face felt swollen. Blanking her mind, she let her jaw go slack again and again, but soon the grinding of teeth, soon the whimper, and the necessary evil she had allowed.

  Her mind raced over tracks in dust, lit sidewise with a falling sun. Claws thick as talons, black against the ground. Dirt damp with drops of saliva. Quiet when the light fell down, and the master slept, and it knew because the master made sleep noises. She had crept along and put her hands on the dog, and he let her pet him.

  Her. Hands patting. Her again. Rumble and clink.

  "Good boy," said Marietta. "It's all right now. Stay. Good boy."

  She had gone quickly, just as she heard the screen door to Burt and Ethel's house slam shut. Now she heard it again in her mind.

  In the quiet she listened with her thoughts. Vaguely it came to her, then closer:

  Rumble and clink. Chain rattling. Rumble and clink.

  Her. Warm sound. Hum sound. Gone.

  Dark comes in. Fences. Trees. No rabbit yet. Up is dark, blank and dark.

  That. Salt. Dirt. That coming. Rocks and sticks. Smell that. Salt. That comes.

  "Look at you, Kojak, ugly stupid thing. You'll die soon, and get buried right here."

  Patting ground. That. Picking ground. That smell. Salt. Saliva.

  The girl looking up from her handful of broken, blackened teeth, collected across yard and road and yard again. Hate in her mean eyes.

  Mouth wet. Salt. That.

  Marietta rolled over and worked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Saw the very air, the night starting, a star cutting the sky. Mouth unhinged, body yearning to lunge, to run, regardless of the chain, the clink, the snap to come. Sinews expanding.

  Run! Leap!

  The girl's hateful eyes narrowing on the animal, sneering and waiting for the metallic snap that will never come.

  Clink and rumble. Roll of chain. Rumble of chain falling on dirt. Free! Free!

  The girl screaming, falling, hateful, obscene screaming, spittle from her mouth, her eyes giving in to fear, and fear giving way to pain.

  That falls. Now!

  Sinews tearing. A slobbering sound. The girl shrieking.

  Blood metal and salt. Meat. Teeth warm in flesh. Tearing. Bones bright in the meat.

  Screaming every vile thing, and begging, begging, cursing the animal to damnation. Jasper's front door flung wide open and his eyes searching, not believing, and shock dawning slowly across his face. Disappearing back into the house with the girl's screams shattering the night.

  Rip and pull. Blood muzzle. Blood meat. Li
cking. Salt skin tearing.

  Blood soaking into his fur. Sopping with gore. Blood on his claws and eyes and tongue. Hearing but not hearing his master shouting his name, only once, before the sky-breaking shot.

  In the Clearing

  Ethel and Burt stood side by side at the grave. They watched the small white coffin being lowered into the earth. They didn't touch, not even to hold hands. They didn't weep.

  Ethel knew her husband was broken. Everything was gone. The years of being afraid had cleaned them out. They had nothing more to offer one another. They hadn't been close in so long. It didn't matter any more.

  While Henry's voice droned on about a hereafter Ethel didn't believe in, a swift, cold breeze struck her. She turned her head away from the cemetery and saw a patch of filtered light nearby.

  Ethel's first thought was that her daughter Connie Sara had returned and was standing in the clearing. She wore the yellow silk skirt and the embroidered blouse Ethel had sewn, but they were streaked with dirt and blood. Her hair hung in wet strands across her shoulders.

  In the dappled light between them Ethel could see the girl's eyes. They were darker than she remembered. The familiar, sullen expression was Connie Sara's, and the delicate circles beneath her eyes. There were no wounds on her face and throat, where the animal had torn her, but her skin was impossibly pale, slick and resistant to the rain that had soaked her clothes.

  Ethel couldn't tell if the bruised lips were drawn into a smile or a grimace but she knew that whatever stood before her, staring with stark blue eyes and holding its arms outstretched, was not her child. It had never belonged to her. It had never come from her, but had only passed through her.

  What she couldn't say, what she couldn't comprehend, were the bits of blackened teeth and fractured jawbone found on the ground around her daughter's body. She didn't want to know how or why this had come to be. This thing from her childhood had returned and she didn't want to know more. There was no possible answer that she could live with.

  She held her arms tight across her chest and took a deep breath. She looked away from the thing standing nearby in the light.

  "Over and done," she said.

  Then she turned and started walking. She walked down the graveled path to her car. Without speaking to anyone, and while Burt watched her with a stricken, pathetic resignation, she started the engine and backed out of the parking spot along the path. By the time she reached the first freeway entrance, in Kelso, she was doing fifty-five miles an hour, and she didn't care where she was going.

  Beverly

  Beverly had told a lie. Now she was paying for it in a form Rex would have called "sweat equity." She had pulled every piece of furniture in the house away from its usual spot, to run a vacuum cleaner over the linoleum and carpet. She had dusted the drapes, valances and blinds. She had wiped down the counters and walls, dozens of knick-knacks, even the poker and shovel hanging by the fireplace. This was ordinarily her least favorite task. She disliked the metallic click and grate of the tools when they struck one another.

  She washed all of the windows in the house, even the glass and aluminum security door. That was another nasty job. In fact, she couldn't recall the last time she'd wiped down the security door. It was a chore that she avoided with a wide range of excuses. But the cold, gritty water she squeezed from the sponge into the sink after the awful task was done gave her a click of satisfaction. Here was real, visible scum removed from her home and washed down the drain.

  Late in the afternoon, she paused to admire how much she was accomplishing. The moment she sat down, she felt a wave of irritation as distinct as nausea. She had to keep moving. She plumped the sofa cushions, forcing her imagination back to the goal: A clean house, a sparkling house. That was the best she could do. Everything else was beyond her control, now.

  Did the living room need a bright color scheme, instead of alternating beige and olive drab? Now that she thought about it, she also questioned turquoise in a bedroom with only one window, near the ceiling, over the mahogany headboard. The house was too small and confining for the color combinations Beverly had fallen in love with at the paint store last year.

  The bungalow was L-shaped, cradled on two sides by the woods. A kitchen window faced the yard and the road. The living room window faced only the yard with its tulip beds, Japanese maple, and wooden geese. A half-mile on the road snaked, then straightened, and finally split in two directions, but this wasn't visible from Beverly's house. She had the benefit of being in the thickest part of the remaining forest. Here cedar and hemlock trees grew in abundance and the road was dark as midnight on winter afternoons. At least seven months out of the year a gray dome of clouds mimicked the sky. Even now, in the spring, drizzle fell on the entire valley more than half the week.

  Several times since Rex died Beverly had considered a move south to Oregon, or even California. She had never been to California. Rex had disapproved of the state on principle, and since he'd been gone Beverly had not been bold enough to travel alone. Her sense of California came from TV and magazines, but she realized the place couldn't be nearly as glamorous or as exciting as it seemed.

  The house that had once felt snug now threatened to smother its only occupant. The place needed more work to open it out, maybe a bay window or a skylight. She also wanted to take the advice of a sales clerk who recommended a combination of canary, bright white, and bamboo. Maybe a bit of cranberry trim. That would be a real project, though. She would have to hire her husband's illiterate cousins to come over and help again.

  On second thought, it wasn't worth it. It just wasn't. It would cost too much. And the memory of Rodney and Darrell Dempsey traipsing around all day in their scratched-up work boots and overalls gave her a chill.

  Beverly had lied about her reason for skipping the memorial; she wasn't sick at all. Now, instead of relaxing in front of the TV as she had planned, she was cleaning her house top-to-bottom on a Saturday. Sweat equity.

  Rex would have laughed:

  "I swear, Bev! The fifteen things you'll do, just to get out of the one thing you don't want to do!"

  Deep-voiced, a broad-shouldered man with backbone, not like the shiftless Dempsey cousins, Rex had been a good man. She couldn't stop thinking about him, all day. Wouldn't he have laughed at her for avoiding a simple memorial service? Or would he have told her to go, for the sake of her old friends Ethel and Marietta? What would he say if he knew the real reason she didn't want to face Ethel today?

  Anyway, it didn't matter what Rex would have thought. That part of her life was over. Now she was a respectable widow with a decent nest egg. If she had been honest about it, this was how she had always imagined herself: living alone in a nice home that was easy to care for, filling her days with exactly the magazines and TV shows and phone calls and games she wanted. She didn't have to do one thing she didn't feel like doing. She never answered the phone when her bedridden mother called to complain about this or that pain, or some new medication the doctor had prescribed.

  Beverly had even done away with her message machine after Rex died. That was the day she stopped pretending to care how her mother was doing. She had relished the moment when she unplugged the machine for good, knowing she would never again come home to find the droning, whining voice of her mother waiting for her.

  Beverly had lied. She said she wasn't feeling well. The truth was that she couldn't risk the memorial. She couldn't face the sickly-sweet damp of Henry Colquitt's homemade chapel, which was nothing but a white trailer with Astroturf around the outside, or the painted white pine coffin festooned with silver crucifixes and pink silk ribbons. It was too much. One of Beverly's friends might have detected a smile teasing the corners of her lips. Anything might set her off, from the rose-scented candles, to the ivory shag carpet and blond wood benches from IKEA.

  Once she started, she wouldn't be able to stop. She might laugh out loud. And everyone would know that she felt more than relief. She wasn't just glad to be free of Connie
Sara. She was giddy with a pure, awful kind of joy.

  Her face flushed at the idea. Despicable. Terrible. Laughing at the demise of a child. It was a horrible death, horrible. She made up her mind to shut it out, and she did. She turned her mind to something good, or she would if she could think of something good. But there it was, again! She caught herself smiling. She stood in the living room and laughed for a minute, to clear her head. Delirium!

  When she looked out the window she expected to see Connie Sara on the lawn, dancing around, up to no good. She was so used to it, she had to remind herself the girl would never do that again. She was as free of the girl as she was free of her own mother's complaints, more so, because the girl was dead.

  Beverly slapped a stubborn cushion into place on the recliner. She moved a glass figure, a green lady with a parasol, slightly away from the lamp that overshadowed its charm.

  No one else would say so, but surely most of her friends and neighbors on Connie Sara Way felt the same way. The people who lived along this road were quiet cowards. They had never dared to cross the girl, no matter what she did, no matter what they suspected she had done. They called it minding their own business. Well, the girl hadn't torn up their tulip bed and left dead things planted in it. Or maybe she had, and they were just afraid to say so. Or maybe they didn't realize all the terrible things that girl had gotten up to, or the things she would have done if she had grown up.

  Beverly had crossed the girl. Beverly and Marietta, of all the people who knew Connie Sara, had understood what had to be done. That was all. They had done what was necessary.

  Anyway, in truth, Marietta was the one who came up with the idea of luring the girl to her demise. Marietta didn't hate the girl the way Beverly did, but she was the first to say the girl was bad. Something was wrong with her. She wasn't sick. She didn't deserve pity. Someone had to stop her. Marietta swore there was something inside Connie Sara that was evil. She had sworn it, during those long conversations in Beverly's kitchen.