The light outside wavered, the color of lemon water, and began to fade with the coming dusk. The midday temperature was still uncomfortably warm, but by nightfall it was mild.
"No need," said Lydia.
She shook out the thermometer and placed it under his tongue.
"I had one of those Dempsey kids pick up what we needed from Misty Mart. We're stocked up."
She smiled down at him. She was wearing a yellow smock embroidered with red and yellow flowers. In the last rays of sunlight from the high window in the bedroom, she was the picture of summer: glorious, golden, her skin slightly tanned and her dark hair sparkling.
"Poor little things, those kids love to run errands. They'll do anything for five dollars. We never have to go shopping again."
She laughed and brushed the hair back from his forehead. Her fingers were cool and slender with slightly bulging knuckles that only made them seem more fragile.
"You know," she whispered. "There's no hurry. We can sell this house any time we want. We could even stay here. We could live here all winter, if we want. It's cozy and beautiful."
He was so lucky. Everything he could want was here, after all. And one day soon their baby would join them. It was all just perfect, he felt, as he drifted off again.
When Greg woke up he didn't know what day it was. He felt that he had been sleeping for years. His head throbbed. He was shaking as he stood up and pushed himself away from the bed. The sheets were sodden with sweat.
"Lydia!" He called, but there was no answer.
He noted that it was odd to wake up and not find her waiting by the bed. She always seemed to be there, patiently nursing him through this.
It was awful, the worst flu he'd ever had. He wasn't vomiting since that first night, or sniffling or sneezing. The symptoms were fatigue and confusion, and an all-over ache. He had sore throat and swollen glands, sore muscles. Nothing made it better, or worse. His illness just went on and on.
Now, suddenly, he was tired of being tired. He felt bored, and restless. For the first time since he had come down with the bug (right after visiting the Colquitts, as Lydia had reminded him more than once) he allowed his desire for a change of scenery to override his lethargy. He walked unsteadily from the bedroom to the front door and opened it.
The shock of sunlight swept over and blinded him. The heat felt so good on his skin, he opened the security door and stepped out onto the tiny porch.
The tulips were still blooming. How odd, he thought. A slippery breeze ran through the wooden windmills in the yard. The maple, the emerald grass, and the lush fir trees, the dark shaded ground under a line of hemlock trees, light glancing off the ferns, the beauty of it all made him swoon. He felt, for once, that he could spend his whole life on this very spot.
When he felt the need to sit down and turned to go back inside, he saw the envelope. It was manuscript-size, sealed, lying on the mat next to the door. There was no marking on the outside, no name. He looked around the yard and the driveway, the road. No one was there.
He tore open the envelope and found several pages of handwriting. He sat down on the porch and started reading what seemed to be a fairy tale. He read the story of someone named William Knox and his wife Harriet and the baby girl they adopted, a girl who burned down their home and died in the fire along with Mrs. Knox. At the end of the story Greg found this message:
"You may not know what to make of all this. I'm not sure you'll take the advice of an older person who seems so different from your friends and other people you trust and rely on. I hope you will think, though, of all that has happened since you've been here.
"Growing up, most kids thought of Miss Knocks as a fairy tale, meant to keep us scared out of the woods where we might get into mischief. I was just a girl when my aunt told me that the story of Harriet and Flora was true and had happened right here where we all lived. The girl had rested until my friends and I came along. We didn't wake her up on purpose, but that doesn't matter.
"I wasn't sure what to make of my aunt's rituals and precautions, until I saw the thing come back. I saw it with my own eyes.
"When Ethel Sanders' daughter was born, I knew the girl was something bad that came back, not to make peace but to cause damage and to take what she felt had been stolen. I thought Connie Sara's dying settled things, but I was wrong.
"Beverly, your wife's birth mother, kept something she ought to have thrown away. That may be the reason she died. Then you and your wife came, and now I see there was a plan all along. I also know it's a bad thing to keep this from you. It's too late for your wife and maybe too late for your child. You have to face this although it's hard, but I can't let this thing kill you for no good reason. I've searched my conscience and now I've told you what you need to know.
"Don't ask yourself to believe me. All I ask is that you step outside of your house, beyond the threshold, where you can see things the way you have to, and look at your wife as she is. Find some way to do that. It's the only thing you have to do. Then you'll decide for yourself."
Greg finished reading the manuscript and tore it in half. He was certain now: Marietta Colquitt was completely insane. She had no right to interfere with his family, and when he was well enough to drive again he would go to see the sheriff. Skillute wasn't far enough off the beaten track that he couldn't get a restraining order.
Imagine that bitch coming up to his home and leaving this thing on his doorstep! What if Lydia had read it?
Greg would fight to keep this hag away from his wife and his baby. First he would call Henry and give him a warning to get control of his mother or he was going to the sheriff. No. First he would tell Lydia that she was never to see or speak with Marietta again. Then he would call Henry. Then he would speak with the sheriff.
He would talk with Lydia. He wouldn't tell her about the manuscript. He would just say that he had given it a lot of thought. He was sure there was something seriously wrong with the Colquitts. It was best if he and Lydia avoided their neighbors.
They would be heading back to Seattle as soon as he could turn the sale of the house over to a real estate agent. He didn't care any more about getting the best price. All he wanted was to get his family out of this place.
No matter what Greg had to do, take out a loan, sell the house for far less than it was worth, it didn't matter. They had to get back to the city, where the crazy people were easy to recognize from a distance. He longed for the eccentricities of the man who lived down the hall in their old apartment building and announced the start of every spring by donning a taffeta dress and walking his Chihuahuas in the park.
Greg dragged himself indoors. In the living room, he shredded the manuscript and tossed the pieces behind the grate in the fireplace. Then he went back to the door and peered out. The sun drifted behind luminous clouds.
He felt a desperate need for another dose of fresh air. He went outside and stepped gingerly onto the grass, which felt stiff and dry between his toes. The windmills and all the other yard ornaments lay in a heap in the far corner of the yard. He was sure he had seen them in their usual places, earlier. Lydia must have taken them down, thinking that a more neutral look would help sell the place.
He looked down. Now that he stood on the grass he noticed it was dying. He had taken it for granted, expected it to be the way it was when they moved in. Why would it look like this? Lydia said she was taking care of the yard while he was sick. He must be imagining things. He was delirious. The story he'd read came back to him full force and made him nauseated again.
He heard the back door slam shut. He walked unsteadily beside the outer wall of the house, to the crook where the living room joined the kitchen, and stopped. From inside came the sound of humming. He could hear Lydia humming a tune in the kitchen. He knew she wasn't in the house when he stepped outside, so she must have just gone back in. He had assumed she was out back, taking a walk in the woods while he read that horrible story from Marietta. The car was parked in the driveway, and Lydia
wouldn't have taken it anyway. She said she was paying a neighbor's kids to do her shopping. She said the car wasn't working, probably needed a tune-up when Greg was feeling better.
He took a few steps closer to the window, and then found himself crouching. Not hiding, he thought. Not because he was hiding. Only because he knew what he was doing was foolish. It was the fever, his illness. He was confused, he told himself.
Lydia's humming grew a little louder when Greg reached the open window, directly above him. A tune from high school, a ballad that sounded silly and disconnected pouring from an open window in the middle of the day, surrounded by the dying lawn and the trees and sultry clouds.
Marietta Colquitt was a nuisance and a witch. He was only proving it, because when he did what she said and nothing happened, he would have the edge. He could tell her to leave his family alone, and she wouldn't find any sympathy with Lydia. So without thinking, like diving into a pool, he stood up and peered into the kitchen window.
He meant to catch a glimpse and go right back into the house, where he would kiss Lydia and fall into her arms and tell her the hilarious story of the crazy, irritating woman who played him for a fool. Instead he froze, unable to move in any direction while he felt the metallic surge of bile rise in his throat.
The red cotton dress with black stitching belonged to Lydia, and the slender arms and shaggy brown hair. Everything else about her bore only a passing resemblance to his wife. The skin was gray, almost purple, shot through with darkened veins and bulging at joints that seemed ready to burst through the skin's surface. This was some animal, a living thing trying to pass itself off as Lydia.
It dropped a knife onto the floor. The knife skidded across the checkerboard linoleum and hit the far wall. The thing reached, and reached, and reached its arm, stretching all the way across the kitchen floor to grasp the knife and yank it back to the counter.
It made a sputtering noise, like a drowning laugh. It dipped its claws into a casserole with green fungus growing on top. Flies crawled over the rotting food, and hovered in the air. Greg could hear the buzz and drone of the flies from where he stood.
The thing turned away, and started searching for something in the drawers, without bothering to close them. It dragged out more and more silverware and kitchen utensils, and threw them on the floor in frustration. It let out a long sigh and angrily shook its head.
From this angle Greg saw that the thing was bleeding. A cloud-shaped scarlet stain was imprinted on the back of the dress that belonged to Lydia, and a long, glistening cord hung down like a tail, its end coated in dust and grime from sweeping along the floor whenever it moved. With the bile churning in his throat, Greg realized that it wasn't a tail but an umbilical cord.
He collapsed onto the ground on his ass, and sat there, breathing, his pulse pounding in his neck. He tried to take a deep breath, but this made him sob. He threw himself forward onto his hands and knees and scuttled around the side of the house, dirt and weeds catching between his fingers and cutting his skin.
When he reached the back corner he began to heave, but nothing came up. He felt his stomach muscles contract, and he retched up a viscous brown clot onto the grass. He tore at the grass nearby and held it up, to make sure it was dead. The lawn was nothing but yellow and brown scruff with intermittent tangles of twisted weeds. Around the back steps there lay piles of rotting food, broken dishes and glasses.
Inside the kitchen the humming had stopped. Something was moving, with a growling noise, working its way through the house toward the back door.
Soaked to the bone with cold sweat, Greg was running. He fell twice and kept moving on all fours until he could grab hold of leaves and pull himself upright. He caught a licorice fern and stripped it, getting a deep gash across the palm of his hand. His bare feet were cut and bleeding. Every step stung like a lash, but he kept running. Behind him he could hear the snap of twigs and the rustle of leaves, and he didn't dare look back.
"Gre-g-g-g!"
The sound of his name echoed around him. He pressed on. His heart ached and his lungs felt constricted.
"Gre-g-g-g! Where are you?"
The voice thrummed like a machine or a mass of insects, not like a human being, not like his Lydia. It wanted him, wanted to get inside him.
"Gre-g-g-g! Come ba-ck!"
He was vaguely aware of thirst, and acutely aware of cuts on his face and hands and forearms as he tore his way through shrubs and trees, up through a bank of flat rocks, and on. He never looked back. He never considered stopping.
He didn't feel the ground give, or think of falling. He fell so suddenly and swiftly, all he knew was the rush of blistering branches all around him. He heard his clothing rip while he slid down a trough of mud, his feet scrambling wildly for purchase, sliding down, covered in mud and sliding down, helplessly. He hit a hard surface with a sick-making crunch.
He was dazed, then grateful not to be falling, and just as this idea formed in his mind, he heard and felt the crack of wood giving away under him. Both his arms hit something solid, breaking at the elbows with a shattering sound as he plunged into absolute darkness.
Greg had no way to measure how much time went by while he lay in the filth and mud, cold creeping damply through his clothes. The air was so fetid, so nauseating he had for a moment the sense of being turned inside out, of wearing all the blood and organs of his body exposed. He gagged but there was nothing in his stomach now, not even bile. He listened for any sign to tell him where he was. There was only a drip, and the awful twitching of worms in the slime all around him.
His arms were broken and he couldn't reach, but he tried to move an inch or two from side to side. A sharp pain struck his right side. He struggled to free his feet from the muck while sidling over. He thought he must have landed on tree roots or fallen branches. He tried to rock sideways but the pain shooting from his arms into his chest made it impossible. He rested in agony with his head back in the cold filth. His eyes took in the skull and scant remnants of skin and hair next to his face. He screamed, and the more he tried to stifle screaming, the more the trapped sound choked him. Tears ran down his face and he began to sob.
Greg called out in the depths of this place, begging for mercy, for light, for God. Like an answered prayer, suddenly a light opened above him. It was faint, weak as a distant whimper, but as he watched it grew brighter until he could see what he knew to be actual sunlight shining down, full and flashing with a golden haze.
In this burst of late afternoon light, he had time to see two things clearly: the rotting corpse of a child lying rent and crushed beside him, so decayed she must have been long dead, and the man wearing overalls and a dirty baseball cap, standing above him in the glow of this glorious day with a rifle pointed down directly at his head.
Burt
The rifle blast knocked Burt down. When his head cleared he crawled over to the hole and peered deep inside.
The devil was down there. He knew this the way he knew his own name. He knew it the way he knew how to breathe. Only he couldn't say how he knew, or when he had begun to know. He had done the right thing. He had put the devil down. This was what he was supposed to do. He told himself these things. He told himself to stop crying.
He sat on his ass in the clearing, before the pile of cedar shingles he had built as an altar. When he had gathered up enough, she had come back to him: His beauty, his baby, his child Connie Sara. In the soft pile of wood he could still make out two of the signs with "Connie Sara Way" painted on them.
If he sat like this, quiet, next to the hole in the ground, while the blood flowed from the devil down there, down into the roots and the mud and filth, his child would come to him again, and she would stay. He was sure of this. Only one more thing needed to be done.
He wiped the tears off his face. He picked up the rifle and set it at an angle, braced against the ground with the barrel pointed up at his chin. He worked the angle until he could reach the trigger. When he was ready he looked up at
the sky. A branch high above shivered and the sharp-edged leaves looked like dancing angels. Burt smiled. A strand of saliva ran down the side of his jaw just before the trigger clicked and the rifle blew his face away.
Marietta
The husband was dead. She had seen his face in the mud and slime. She had known this would be the end of everything, and she couldn't make it stop without a sacrifice. There was no spell she knew that would accomplish this.
She asked to borrow the car and when Henry wanted to know where she was going, she said Misty Mart. This ritual was nothing to do with Henry and Alicia. They would never understand. With all of their prayers and kindness to others, they would never believe her if she told them the truth. Only Marietta knew what to do.
She parked the car on the road and opened the trunk. She walked the rest of the way carrying the heavy canister steady so it didn't splash.
The familiar path, the walk up the driveway to Beverly's house, brought too many memories of her friends. Their rides to Long Beach and the secrets they shared, even the ones they knew but didn't speak out loud. All of their life together seemed to gather about Marietta like a cloak. It gave her strength. She let that strength carry her as she spread the trail of gasoline all the way around the outside of the house.
When she was done she stood on the parched grass and gazed up the front steps and across the tiny porch. She regarded the security door, propped open with the welcome mat. The front door stood wide open. This was an invitation she would no longer resist. There was no reason to hold back, now.
She couldn't see into the living room, but she could hear a restless breathing, an agitation, inside. It must be hidden in the shadows just beyond the threshold, waiting.
Marietta held the canister in both hands. The trail of gas had been enough to encircle the bungalow. Now she splashed a thin stream across the porch. With a sharp breath she upended the nearly empty canister and let the last of the noxious liquid pour over her shoulders and her clothes. She took the wooden matches from her pocket and struck three of them together.
Knock Knock Page 24