But then it hit her. She knew what she had to do. She had to comfort that little one. No matter what her mistakes in the past were, that baby deserved to be taken care of. Carried night after night by a man? What did men know about babies that were hurting? Nothing, that's what! The poor baby, out there in the night air. It was cool by that pond; she'd felt the breeze herself. The baby must be cold.
Susan jumped out of bed and stiffly made her way to the living room. Grabbing her sewing kit she sat on the couch and dumped the scraps of material out in front of her. For the next fourteen hours she sewed. She didn't stop to eat, didn't stop to drink, didn't even stop to pee. She just created. The rag blanket came together before her eyes, an explosion of colors, patterns, and textures. The pieces fit together like a crazy jigsaw without an image. Her stitches were big and clumsy, the pieces of threads different colors because the spools were all samples.
She remembered things. As she sewed she remembered the good times as well as the bad. It hadn't all been bad, right? Her son loved her. He called her at least once a week. They'd danced at the wedding.
She remembered the love, the patience, the sweetness of his little breath on her cheek during those nights he'd climbed into bed with her. She remembered the feel of his soft skin as she'd applied antiseptic to his cuts and scrapes, of the icing on his nose when he helped her bake. It was the little pieces that made up a lifetime, the little moments. Not the big ones. Big moments, after all, are just a string of little incidents.
When she was finished she held the tiny blanket up in the air and studied it. It was a godawful mess but she'd made it, the first thing she'd ever truly created for somebody else. When she discovered she was missing a piece she looked down at her own nightgown and cut out a perfect square. She quickly sewed it to the others and then used the flat sheet on her bed as the backing.
It was finished.
The baby cried.
SUSAN SLEPT FOR NEARLY TWENTY-FOUR HOURS. She slept through calls from her son, from Lucy, and from Windstream who was threatening to turn off her cable. (Not that she minded. She only watched three channels out of five hundred.) When she woke up again, it was dark. It was like she'd missed daylight altogether.
She drove back to the park a woman on a mission. The little blanket was folded up neatly in the seat beside her, small enough for an infant.
The park was quiet when she pulled up. Dinner was over and the restaurant was closed. The parking lot was still full, probably from overnight guests, but she didn't see a soul as she strode to the pond. Standing by the water's edge, the little blanket tucked under her arms, she watched the water. The air was thick again, strangled. It didn't take her long to hear the sigh behind her. He was there, carrying his forever bundle in his arms. It wasn't moving, of course. It was already dead.
She'd been amazed at how well the pieces fit together, the pieces of material she'd found. It was as though they'd been made for each other. As the wind picked up and forced her hair around her face and her dress skirt in the air, she lifted the tiny parcel over her head and with a giant exhale thrust it forward and up. It flew through the air as if on wings, the colors glimmering in the moonlight. It went much farther than she'd expected and almost hovered for a moment, levitating over the water. Then, gently, it lowered itself to the surface. Susan spent a minute watching it float, soaking itself from the backside up.
The air cleared, the figure behind her dissipated as she'd known it would. He would be back, his mission was not over. But the baby was quiet.
Inside her, Susan felt a missing piece click into place.
For the rest of the story, and to know what happened to the baby and who the man at the pond was, check out
Shaker Town, Book 4 in Taryn’s Camera
available on Amazon in print and Kindle.
The Devi l’s House
A Companion Story to
Windwood Farm
* * *
Rebecca Patrick-Howard
In Windwood Farm, Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera, Taryn encounters an elderly gentleman in a restaurant on Vidalia’s Main Street. The succeeding scene commences:
“So does everyone think it’s haunted then?” she asked, figuring that she might as well use the situation to her advantage.
“Anyone who has any sense at all,” an elderly gentleman called from the other side of the restaurant. “You don’t want to be messing with what goes on in that place, I tell you that. There’s some real action out there. I’m seventy-five years old and I seen something there once that I’ll never share with nobody.”
Now, in the following story, we’ll finally learn what happened to the elderly gentleman on that fatal night in 1958…
Squeezed into the backseat as he was, Jerry could hardly move.
But he wasn’t about to complain. Gerilyn’s skirts might have been piled so high they tickled his nose, but he could feel the warmth from her leg and thigh against his own, and that sensation was about the closest to Heaven as he’d ever been.
“Food! I need food,” Jimmy panted from the driver’s seat directly in front of him.
“You’re always hungry,” Susan retorted. Jerry could feel her rolling her eyes, even if he couldn’t see them.
“Hey, I have an idea,” Gerilyn spoke up from beside him.
She’d barely said a word all evening. She had only asked for a vanilla Coke at the movies and demurred when he’d offered her his jacket on the walk back to the car. Now that she was talking, everyone listened.
“What’s up, buttercup?” Susan giggled, her auburn ringlets bobbing with her laughter.
“Instead of eating, let’s go to the Devil’s House,” Gerilyn suggested wickedly.
Susan shivered dramatically and clapped her hands together like she did in her cheers, but her steady boyfriend was not quite as enthused.
“Aw man,” Jimmy groaned. “But I gotta hole in my stomach as big as an elephant. Something's gotta fill it soon.”
“You’ve got a black hole in your stomach,” Susan retorted. “It will never be filled. Come on; we always eat after the movies! Let’s do something different tonight. Geri and I have to be home in an hour anyway. It won’t take that long. Then you two can go stuff your faces all you want.”
“I don’t know,” Jerry found himself saying slowly.
He’d heard stories about the Devil’s House; everyone had. A year before, several kids from the graduating class of 1957 had gone out there one night on a dare. It was three days before graduation and they’d been seeking an adventure, one last hurrah before they scattered for the Army, college, and full-time jobs.
There’d been ten of them in all. The escapade had not gone as planned, to say the least. Kendall Richey, quarterback, lost his voice and couldn’t speak for nearly a month. His doctor couldn’t tell him why. Denise House, the cheerleader at the top of the half-time pyramid, reportedly gave up her summer job so that she could go to an out-of-state hospital for “rest.” (They knew she wasn’t in trouble because she’d come back two months later with a figure that hadn’t changed in the slightest.) Annette Clark had broken her leg.
Nobody would talk about what happened.
That autumn, however, in the locker room after a football game Jerry’d overheard her younger brother whispering about the awful thing they’d seen and how his sister was never going to be the same again.
The news had not piqued Jerry’s curiosity of the old place.
Jimmy adjusted the rearview mirror and glanced back at Jerry. Their eyes met in the mirror, and Jimmy waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “What say you, Jerry my man? You want to take the girls someplace really frightening? Give ‘em a good scare?”
Actually, Jerry did not want to take the girls someplace “frightening”. He’d been hearing about the Devil’s House since he was a little kid and had no desire to visit it. Nobody in their right mind would. He’d heard that people who went there and stayed more than a few minutes walked out and never felt the same again.
“Aw, come on Jerry,” Geri cooed, nuzzling up against him. She lightly touched his hand–a hand that was resting on his knee and perilously close to the region that was very interested in what was going on. Then she smiled in the darkness.
It was only their third date but he thought it might really be going somewhere. She’d let him kiss her at the show and he’d put his arm around her and kept it there for awhile, even after it had fallen asleep and pained him.
“What the heck,” he laughed uneasily, hoping she couldn’t smell the sweat that was beading along his brow. “Let’s go!”
At one time the old place on Snowden Lane had been called Windwood Farm. Now everyone just referred to it with the name that Jerry hoped didn’t accurately describe it–the Devi’s House.
A long time ago, an old man and his daughter had lived there. She’d died after a long illness, though, and he’d passed away not long after. Jerry never knew either one of them–that had been before his time. He’d heard that she was engaged to one of the Fitzgerald’s. He did know them. Although they weren’t exactly the kind of people his parents ran around with; the Fitzgeralds were far too rich to mingle with the common folks.
Now Windwood Farm was coming apart at the seams, a spooky old house with grass that grew up to your knees, shards of glass hanging in the broken windows, and doors coming off their hinges. It could’ve been a real beaut of a house, a big stone structure with a sprawling front porch and long private road leading up to it…
But the ghosts kept people away.
The drive through Vidalia’s downtown had been a jovial one, with all four teenagers laughing and singing loudly with the radio. Main Street was hopping and they’d waved and called out to their friends as they’d passed. Jerry’d been proud sitting up straight next to Gerilyn, one of the prettiest girls in school. She’d even gotten a few whistles as they’d cruised down the road.
As Jimmy’s car slowed down on Snowden Lane, however, a subdued hush came over the sedan’s occupants.
It was a pitch-black night. The sky was overcast, blotting out the stars, and the moon’s glow barely reached the Earth’s surface. Jimmy’s headlights brightened the way as they bounced over the ruts in the road, the tunnel of light before them pale and waxy.
Gerilyn scooted in closer to Jerry than she’d ever gotten before and allowed him to drape his arm around her again. When she nuzzled his cheek with her own, he straightened with pride and puffed his chest out a little.
Maybe this isn’t so bad after all, he thought with a grin.
It was already proving to be much better than the monster movie they’d just watched.
Jimmy turned the radio down when the old house finally came into view. “There she is,” he announced cheerfully, although there was a slight crack in his voice.
Susan must have heard it as well because she glanced over her shoulder to Gerilyn and Jerry in the back. “I think someone’s a scaredy-cat,” she whispered loudly.
“I ain’t afraid,” Jimmy boasted, sounding annoyed.
“Well, can you blame him?” Gerilyn asked. “It is a creepy old place.”
Jimmy had to admit it was. He couldn’t see all of the house from where he sat but what he could see, illuminated by the headlights, looked like something out of a Hammer film.
The gray stone house towered before them, imposing and demanding. To Jerry, the windows looked like greedy eyes; the shards of glass that still remained glittered like dark pupils gazing out on those who trespassed. The front door, standing wide open, slowly moved back and forth on its hinges in the breeze.
The house was waiting for them.
Somewhere in the summer night air an owl hooted. The familiar sound was not comforting–it was a warning.
“This is as close as I can get,” Jimmy said. “I don’t want to get stuck. We’ll have to walk if you want to go up there to it.”
The four of them, all seniors at Madison High, dutifully exited the car. Jerry was sorry to feel the warmth of Gerilyn’s body disappear. The night air was chilly, even with his jacket, and he shivered against the coolness.
“So why’s it called the ‘Devil’s House’?” Susan asked once they were all out and leaning against Jimmy’s car, none of them offering to take the first step. Susan was not from Vidalia. She’d only been there a year.
“Cause it’s haunted,” Gerilyn answered.
“No kidding?”
Gerilyn nodded. “We’ve heard the stories all our lives. About people who come here and see ghosts, hear monsters and demons, and even lose their minds.”
Susan snorted, unconvinced.
“I heard the old man who lived here lost his marbles,” Jimmy offered. “My parents remember him and say he was awful.”
“Mine too,” Jerry agreed. “Nobody liked him. Wasn’t exactly a lot of mourning when he died, if you know what I mean.”
Susan shrugged, those curls bouncing again against her school sweater, and moved forward. “Well, it’s just an old house. I’m not afraid of it. Come on, Jimmy, let’s go see what it’s like!”
Jimmy laughed and held out his lighter. “Alright baby, but this is all I have to light our way.”
Together, they joined hands and began sprinting across the lawn, the tall damp grass grazing their knees and the hem of Susan’s skirt as they moved. Gerilyn and Jerry watched the tiny flicker of light go in and out in Jimmy’s hand until they were inside the front door and it vanished altogether.
“What do you say?” Gerilyn asked once the other couple had disappeared into the darkness. “You want to see what it’s all about?”
Jerry shifted his weight nervously from one hip to the other. “Sure, I guess.”
To be honest, it was the last thing he wanted to do but now that Jimmy had gone inside, he couldn’t back out.
Gerilyn held out her hand then. When he grasped it and felt its silkiness and heat, he grinned. It wasn’t going to be so bad, not really.
It was just a house, right?
The small flashlight Jerry always carried with him did little to light up the inside of the old house. Upstairs, he could hear Susan’s faint giggling and Jimmy’s frustrated pleas. He didn’t have to do much thinking to figure out what that was about.
Faintly embarrassed at what they were doing, and the fact that Gerilyn could almost assuredly hear it as well, he struggled to find something to say.
“Dark in here, isn’t it?” Gerilyn asked. “And cold, too.”
“Here, you want my jacket?”
He saw her head nod in the light. Once he had his letterman jacket wrapped around her shoulders and the top button clasped, he turned back around.
It was an ordinary enough room, he supposed. There was an old table, some faded portraits on the wall, and rickety chairs. Mostly, though, the room was empty. Gerilyn stayed close to him, her arm threaded through his, as they walked softly from one room to the next on the first floor, slowly exploring the old house.
“Do you think it’s really haunted?” Gerilyn asked at last.
Even in the darkness he could still see the white, pale streams of air that puffed out from between her lips when she spoke. He was mesmerized by them, intoxicated by the things that had touched her mouth.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Do you?”
“I believe in ghosts,” she said slowly. “So maybe.”
Gerilyn let go of his hand and took a step away from him. “Hello! Is there anyone in here with us?”
Jerry shivered in spite of himself and waited, hoping there wasn’t a reply.
“Hello,” she asked again.
“We shouldn’t do that,” he warned her. “My mama told me not to, that it could bring more.”
“Okay,” she replied softly. She reached out her hand to him again and he took it. It was clammy now, and colder. Her fingers had lost their warmth.
It felt silly for him to think, but something about the stillness and darkness reminded him of being inside a tomb. He felt the uncontrollable urge
to tread lightly, as though he were walking through a cemetery. He thought Gerilyn must have felt the same because she also stepped gently on the creaky old floorboards, like she might be walking over graves.
Upstairs they could hear the occasional sounds of the other couple, but eventually even those noises became a distant echo. They might have belonged to another world.
“Look at this,” Gerilyn paused and pointed toward the parlor. “You think that’s who used to live here?”
Jerry walked to the fireplace and peered closer, shining his light to where she indicated. A framed portrait of a young woman in a patterned dress was in the middle of the mantle. It was the only object that remained. The young woman was very pretty and her broad smile was a happy one.
“Innocent” was the word that flashed through Jerry’s mind and, for some reason, he trembled at the thought.
“Maybe so,” he replied at last. “I don’t know.”
Something caught her attention again because Gerilyn broke free of him and walked over to the window seat a few feet away. She kneeled and gazed at the wood behind it. “Let me see your flashlight,” she whispered.
With the light shining on the place she’d found, they could see a name carved into the wall. “Clara,” Gerilyn read aloud. “That must be the girl who lived here, the one who died.”
“Reckon so,” Jerry agreed, but as he spoke a chill ran down his spine, something so sharp and cold that it took his breath away.
“You feel that?” Gerilyn asked as she straightened and looked around. She shined the light around the room, but neither of them saw anything.
“Just a draft I suppose,” Jerry replied.
He was getting nervous, however, and was ready to leave at any time.
Taryn's Camera: Beginnings: Four Haunting Novellas Page 5