The Waiting

by Joe Hart

  “What?”

  He flicked on the light, drawing back a fist, ready to throw it.

  The hall was empty.

  Shaun’s door was in the same position as earlier, or so it looked. Evan rushed into the room, his fist still held high. The light flooded the space enough for Evan to see it was empty except for the boy and his bed. He slept on, not moving but for the rise and fall of his chest.

  “Evan, what’s going on?”

  He turned. Selena was standing in the hallway, her hair sticking out in several places, her eyes bleary.

  “I, I thought I saw something, someone.”

  “You saw someone? In the house?”

  “Yeah, it was there in the room. It held my hand.” The memory of the thing’s grip made him convulse, and he rubbed his palm on his pants leg.

  “Held your hand? Evan, you’re not making sense.”

  “It was there, right there,” he said, moving past her and into the hall. He pointed toward the bed, looking at the floor, hoping for a telltale sign of the thing’s passage. “I went to hold your hand, and it wasn’t yours. It was something else. It ...”

  His dropped his head as Selena came closer.

  “I think you may have been dreaming,” she said, touching his shoulder.

  “I wasn’t dreaming, I was awake. I know I was awake.”

  “Are you sure? I’ve had a few clients with night terrors that they swear are as real as waking life.”

  “This wasn’t a night terror,” Evan said, shrugging off her hand.

  He moved into the hallway again and stood, sniffing the air. A faint hint of rot lingered.

  “Do you smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  “That smell. It’s like something rotten, spoiled meat. Here, come here.”

  He motioned her into the hall, then pulled her closer to the living room. “Do you smell it?”

  Selena raised her face and inhaled a few times. She frowned.

  “No, I don’t. All I smell is last night’s dinner.”

  Evan closed his eyes, opened them, and walked to the living room. He looked at the dark lake, no light on its surface yet, only a black cloth beyond the trees.

  “Let me ask you this,” Selena said, moving to the couch. “Was I the first one you told about your wife, what she asked you to do?”

  Evan didn’t answer for a long time, and then finally said, “Yes.”

  “Do you know what kind of stress comes with a burden like that? Keeping it all inside, letting it whittle away at you?”

  He didn’t say anything, just let her talk.

  “Releasing something like that can cause stress too, you know. It’s like pulling out a knife that’s been keeping a wound from bleeding. When you do, there’s trauma.”

  “You know, I’d like to believe that, I really would.” His voice sounded strange, far away, not his own. “I want to think stress, the past, is what’s doing this, but I’m not sure, and that’s the worst part. Not being sure is worse than anything else. You’re on a high wire knowing you’re going to fall, but not which way.”

  “I’m sure it’s stress.”

  “Well, that makes one of us.”

  “What you’re experiencing is perfectly normal.”

  He coughed laughter. “Nothing in the last four years has been normal.”

  The faint inklings of the treetops across the water became visible. The sun was rising, throwing its radiance out like a candle in another room.

  “The how is fine, I can relate to that, understand it,” Evan said, after a while. “The how is measurable, calculable, it’s numbers and math. It’s the why ...” His hand bunched into a fist and shook at his side. “The why is what gets me. It’s what makes me dream at night and wonder during the day. It never makes sense, and what really pisses me off is, there is no answer to that one.” He spun, seeing and not seeing her. “That’s the biggest joke there is, and it doesn’t have a punch line.”

  Evan walked toward the kitchen, meaning to put on some coffee, but instead went to the basement door, pulling it open and descending before Selena could say anything more.

  25

  He sat in the basement staring at the clock.

  The fucking clock. Its black skin, its quiet contemplation. Serene and uncaring.

  “Damn you.”

  The air was cold, and he shivered, his skin rippling. He could almost see the air he breathed out. Could that be? Evan stood and moved to it, staring up at its height, feeling like he was in front of an avalanche. Power. That’s what the air tasted like. An electric coppery tang, almost like simmering blood.

  He put out a hand and touched the clock’s front. His arm went numb to the elbow, and he opened his mouth to gasp but stopped, letting the thrum travel through him.

  Power.

  Enough to scorch the outline on the wall. Enough to chill the air. He wasn’t imagining that. Power to change things, to make them right. He tried to pull his hand back, but it seemed glued there. The clock could explode at any second, he was sure of it, explode and blow him all the way across the room. It could—

  The feeling returned to his arm. He let it drop to his side, his eyes staring past the clock, through it.

  “It was there the whole time.”

  His eyes traveled up to the clock’s face, and he saw the position of the hands, a startled thrill running through him. A hand on the two, two hands on the zero, one hand on the eight. The year before Shaun’s accident—2008. Had he changed that the day before? No. A ripple of fear and wonder went through him as he remembered looking at the clock as soon as he’d come down to the basement. It had been at 1919 less than an hour ago.

  Evan backpedaled, pausing to grab a flat-blade screwdriver from the workbench before flying up the stairs, three at a time, and bursting into the kitchen. Selena, sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in her hand, recoiled. Coffee spilled over the rim when she jerked, and she winced, setting the cup down.

  “Evan, what—”

  “Can you stay here with Shaun for me, just for an hour or so?”

  “Sure, I—”

  But he was gone, running toward the door, grabbing the key ring from the table near the entry.

  “Evan, where are you going?”

  “I’ll be right back. It’s okay now, I know where it is.”

  He shut the door and ran down the dew-slicked bank toward the dock, a grin pulling hard at his features as he went.

  ~

  It misted the entire way to Kluge House, the van’s wipers on intermittent as the day gained more and more gray light, which filled up the land with its cool embrace. The trees that passed on either side were matchsticks, burned in the early day, their crippled branches bent and misshapen against the gunmetal sky.

  Evan drove across the small bridge, hearing the tires thunk on the ancient boards, knowing if fate was against him they would break now and leave him stranded. They held, and he emerged in the open yard a minute later.

  The door creaked louder than the first time they’d been there, its shriek cutting through him, shaking him from the manic wave he’d rode from the island. The house was a tomb, a crypt of memories stale with history and secrets. Except now he knew one of them, its most precious of all.

  The stairs complained under his weight, but he continued up until he stood in the master bedroom, the windows to the east silver squares of light, the floor slanted with dissolving shadows. The clock’s outline looked darker today, more pronounced. Evan walked to it, tracing its borders again, and pivoted, facing the opposite wall. He moved in a straight line and stopped in front of the painting, staring at the hole in the canvas.

  Without hesitation, he pulled the screwdriver from his back pocket and slipped it into the hole. The driver’s tip disappeared, and he listened, knowing what he would hear.

  The tool’s progress stopped with a little clink of metal.

  Smiling, Evan tore at the painting, peeling the dried canvas back from the hole and exposing mil
dewed wallpaper. The key for the clock was embedded in the wall, its tip driven into the wood from the force that expelled it over ninety years before, splinters in a sharp crown around its black steel. With careful movements, he slipped the tip of the screwdriver into the key’s decorative grip and levered it free of the wall. It let out a short squeak, like a mouse being crushed, and popped into his hand.

  Its thickness and heft surprised him.

  Heavy with power.

  Without another look around the room, Evan walked out and went down the stairs, leaving the house to mutter its creaks and groans alone.

  ~

  When Evan pulled back into the parking lot of Collins Outfitters, he parked the van and shut it off, considering what would happen to it after he went back to the island, what would happen to it if they were able to go back. Would it sit here in the present and rust until Jacob had it towed away? Would it vanish the moment they did? Would Jacob forget they were ever here? Would Selena?

  The implications of what he was about to attempt landed upon him like a giant bird of prey. Any assertions about what might happen fell away. He knew nothing about what would be waiting for them. Instead of a malleable past, it might be different. Alien. Unforgiving and unchangeable. An image of a blank wasteland of time, grim as the morning mist, settled before his mind’s eye. An ash-covered stretch that he and Shaun might wander until they died of thirst or starvation. Did the past tolerate visitors?

  A rap of knuckles on his driver’s window shocked him, and he jumped in the seat. Turning his head, he found Jacob staring at him through the misted glass, a wide-brimmed hat pulled down close to his eyes. Evan tried to smile, then climbed out of the van.

  “Mornin’, boyo, yer up early.”

  “Yeah, didn’t see you when I came through.”

  “Yeh, took breakfast with me wife this mornin’. She likes me ta cook least once a week.”

  Evan nodded and watched as an older golden lab rounded the front of the van and sat beside Jacob’s feet. He stared at the dog, feeling his jaw loosen.

  “Somethin’ the matter?”

  “Is that your dog?”

  Jacob glanced down at the lab. “Oh yeh, her name’s Messy, on accounta how hard she was ta potty train.”

  He patted the old dog on the head, and she licked her chops once and began to pant. Jacob looked at Evan again.

  “Ya sure yer okay?”

  “Yeah, I could’ve sworn I saw a dog almost exactly like her the other day.”

  “Wasn’t a picture out at the Fin, was it?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, I jest wondered if maybe ya seen one of Dan’s pictures. See, we each got a pup from the same litter, both love ta duck hunt and all that. Picked ’em up outside a town almost thirteen years ago from a gal who used ta breed ’em. Ol’ Mess here was a right fine retriever up till her hip went bad a year or so ago.”

  “Dan had a dog like her?” Evan asked. In his mind he saw the golden lab sliding its bloody hind end through the grass, its baleful look before it vanished into the trees.

  “Oh yeh, name was Honey B. Beautiful dog, she was, outstandin’ hunter.”

  “Did something happen to her?” Evan asked. The ground was unsteady beneath his feet, and he wondered if it was there at all.

  Jacob gave him a funny look, something between puzzlement and distrust.

  “What makes ya ask that, boyo?”

  “Did something happen to her legs?”

  “Aye. I believe it was some sorta accident, if I remember properly. Dan was particular broken up about it. Pup was only a few years old then. Died right there on the island, and Dan buried her down behind the house, ’neath a big pine.”

  Evan put a hand out to steady himself on the van, the cold, wet steel bringing him back like a slap. Jacob had asked something, and he looked at him as though from the opposite end of a long tunnel.

  “What?”

  “Are ya okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “All right. I hate ta run, boyo, but I’m supposed ta be out on the lake soon. Rotten business on a day like today,” Jacob said, shooting a look at the sky.

  “Why, what’s going on?”

  “That young girl that killed herself? Well, her father went missin’ a few days ago. Someone on the opposite side of the lake found his boat beached up in some weeds, empty, with the anchor rope cut. They’re fearin’ the worst, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Yeh, terrible business. Poor Tessa’s a mess, medicated ta the gills.”

  Evan thought he might faint. His muscles were jelly, his bones brittle clay.

  “Where’s Shauny this mornin’? I never see the two of ya apart.”

  “He’s with, uh ...” Evan was sure he would vomit all over Jacob’s shoes. “He’s with Selena Belgaurd, the psychologist.”

  Jacob frowned. “Psychologist?”

  “Yeah, she’s got a practice on the other end of town, near the park.”

  Jacob shook his head. “Only shrink I know of is old Doc Delly, and he’s been shut down a number of years now, mumbles ’n’ drools more’n anythin’ these days. Kinda ironic.”

  A cold finger traced its way down Evan’s back, something monstrous rising in his mind.

  “You’re joking, right? I have her card. She said her father and you had a falling-out over some land deal years ago.”

  Jacob remained silent, watching Evan like an animal on display at the zoo chewing at a weak spot in the fence. Evan dug out his wallet, his hand shaking so badly it took him the better part of a minute to find Selena’s card. When he pulled it free, he felt a click, like a cord coming unplugged somewhere in his mind. It echoed to the point that he could hear nothing else as he stared at the soiled piece of paper with Selena’s handwriting on it, the other side blank except for a few dark stains.

  Jacob gently took it from his fingers, turning it around so he could read it before glancing up at him.

  “This a joke, boyo?”

  “No, why?”

  “This is yer phone number, the number out at the Fin. I’ve called it a hundred times if I’ve called it once. Now what’re you playin’ at?”

  Evan snatched the scrap of paper, turning it over a few times, hoping through sheer will that the business print would appear each time he flipped it.

  “No ... no, this isn’t right. She’s a psychologist over by the park, she’s—” His mind scrambled as though sliding off a sharp cliff. “She was with us the day you stopped by in the boat. We were fishing, remember?”

  Evan waited, watching Jacob straighten up. His lined face became tight, and his eyes narrowed, a glint in them like December sunlight on steel.

  “Boyo, there was no one in that boat but you and yer son.”

  26

  The mist solidified into fog halfway across the lake and clung to his skin like a spider web.

  Evan continued to brush at his arms, knowing full well nothing but moisture was there. There was no wind, and for the first time he wished there was some, to blow away the fog so he would be able to see the Fin. Instead the fog hung in the air, obscuring everything past fifty yards.

  A strange sound floated over the water twice, a chilling keening that rose and fell like the wind he wished for. The third time it came, he realized he was making it, deep in his chest. Tears steadily ran down his cheeks, and had been since Jacob caught him before he fell to the ground. He remembered saying something about calling the police and then running, Messy’s barks following him into the mist.

  A dark shape emerged from the fog, and Evan swerved hard, sure that he’d run up to another boat. Then he saw it was his own dock, as the rest of the island materialized in a looming, grandeur way he would have found majestic any other day. Now, it made him cringe.

  Evan didn’t bother tying the pontoon to the dock. He ran the boat onto land, rocks and sand playing a horrid symphony on the aluminum pontoons. When he leapt out of the boat, his right ankle turned and he sprawled,
a cry of pain coming from him as he braced his hands on rocks and pine needles. His face scraped what he thought was ground, but when he looked up, he saw it was Selena’s canoe.

  Except it was different.

  The canoe had been old before, its hide stained and worn by years and years in the water. Something to be expected from being handed down two generations. The thing that lay before him now would never float. Its sides were broken, with white fungus growing from the cracks. The bottom had a long gouge in it, revealing a smile of darkness. A few dry pine branches, looking like peeled bones, lay on top of it.

  “Oh God.”

  Evan limped up the hill to the house and went inside, the dimmest ember of hope glowing feebly.

  “Shaun! Shaun!”

  He stumbled across the living room, knocking over a floor lamp on his way through.

  “Shaun!”

  Sobbing, he opened the door to Shaun’s room, the ember inside dying at the sight of the empty bed. Evan staggered to his own room, barely pausing to sweep it with his eyes before continuing to the kitchen.

  “Shaun?” A plea now, a prayer.

  The kitchen was empty. When he turned toward the basement, any surprise he should have felt bled out of him with the air in his lungs. The door stood partially open, waiting, beckoning.

  Come see, come see, I can’t wait to show you.

  Evan could hold it no longer. He bent at the waist and threw up on the kitchen floor. Runners of snot hung from his nose, and he fell to his knees, wetting them in his mess. He gagged again, feeling something tickling the base of his throat. Knowing already, he heaved again, his stomach crumpling like an accordion inside him and—

  —forcing the wet lengths of white hair out onto the floor. He let out a shriek and skidded away from the pile of vomit, watching the clumps of hair soak into the bile. He slid to the nearest wall and managed to stand, and forced the basement door open.

  Pure darkness held sway, blacker than a mine at midnight. Evan took the first steps and then remembered the light switch. Flipping it on produced nothing like the glow earlier that morning. It looked like the bulbs were less than half power, flickering below him, their light a sickly yellow that barely drove the shadows down.