The Presence

by Shady Grim

  “What do we do?”

  “We have to find her,” I answered and started to quietly call for her. “Rachel, where are you? Come on, I’m not kidding around. I think there’s someone out there.” No answer. “Rachel, we have to go.” I could hear her laughing quietly, but I couldn’t find her. She loved to make people search for her while she watched them. She always laughed in a high-pitched nervous giggle when she watched people looking for her. The more frustrated or worried the seeker was, the more uncontrollable her laughter would become. I didn’t understand it when I was small, and I generally regarded it as I did most of Rae’s quirks–as irritating and nothing more. As I grew older and analyzed her behavior a little more, I thought that she must have felt herself some sort of puppeteer when she observed people frantically searching for her. There was nothing more intoxicating to Rachel than power and to be in total control of someone or something, whether in reality or fantasy, must’ve been overwhelmingly gratifying for her. She would’ve made an excellent tyrant.

  “Just leave ‘er,” said Ethan, staying very close to me and nervously darting his eyes around. Another snap and it sounded even closer.

  “We can’t leave her. What about her mom?” My parents had always taught me to never separate from the group and never to leave anyone behind. It seemed cowardly to me to leave Rachel alone. Whatever my true feelings for her were, I felt a sense of duty to try and protect her even if it was at my own expense. I would’ve felt the same way about a total stranger. It was just unthinkable to leave anyone, even an animal, to face a foe alone. It was the depth of cowardice and, according to my upbringing, there was no lower form of life than a coward.

  “She’d leave yeh in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t bother ‘er one bit if we both get killed as long as she’s okay. I hate ‘er anyway, let’s just leave.”

  “It’s not right to leave someone behind.”

  “We don’t know what’s out there. It could be a demon or a witch or somethin’. Bad witches do their spells in the woods and stuff, yeh know. Maybe it needs us for a blood sacrifice. Or maybe it’ll use our bodies to bring other demons to life.”

  “It’s just some sicko, Ethan, and we can’t leave her to face him alone.” Ethan was panicking. He needed something to keep his mind occupied, so I sent him to look for some sound sticks that we could use as clubs. “If you don’t come out now, I’m leaving you.”

  “Yeah right, the great and noble Heather would never leave a friend behind. Yeh think yer like Robin Hood or somethin’.” I heard her voice coming from the dense bush that I was standing next to. For a split second I was angry with myself for not finding her when she was so close to me. As quickly as that thought emerged, another one rose and squashed it. If I couldn’t find her when she was so close to me and making noise, how was I going to find the owner of those footsteps? How would we defend ourselves against the unseen? The realization made my blood run cold.

  “Why didn’t you come out when I called you?” I demanded as she crawled out from under the bush and dusted herself off.

  “It was funny watchin’ yeh two run around like nuts.” Her answer was accompanied by a contented sigh. Before I managed a comeback, Ethan returned carrying two heavy branches about three feet long and handed one to me.

  “Where’s mine?” pouted Rachel.

  “Go to hell!” snapped Ethan.

  “Fuck you!” she yelled back and was about to hit him, but stopped abruptly when I shouted at her.

  “Shut up! Whoever is out there is making a lot of noise and getting way too close. I can hear where the noises are coming from, but I can’t see anything.” Even with all the noise of breaking twigs and crunching leaves, we couldn’t see anything. There was no visible movement, no shadows, nothing at all but noise.

  “Follow me,” said Ethan, “I remember the way back, but we better run.” As soon as his legs were able to support his infant body, Ethan was running. He could run like a deer and never got winded.

  “I can’t run as fast as you,” I said.

  “I’ll hold yer hand and pull yeh,” he answered as he wrapped his hand around my wrist.

  “Okay, but if he grabs me don’t stop, just keep running.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t leave yeh and I won’t let go.”

  “Sorry to break up all the love, kids, but I’m not gonna run anywhere,” declared Rachel, putting her hands on her hips in defiance.

  “Can’t you hear that? Somebody’s out there and they’re coming straight for us,” I said in bewildered desperation.

  “So what?” she said, poking her face onto mine.

  “I don’t believe this. Are you nuts? Do you want to die? I don’t think whoever is out there is going to be very nice, Rae.” I was attempting to reason with the least reasonable person I’d ever known, and wasting valuable time doing it.

  “For God’s sake, Heather, just leave ‘er behind!” yelled Ethan as he roughly pulled me away from her.

  “If yeh walk fast instead of runnin’, I’ll come with yeh.”

  “No way! We’re outta here!” cried Ethan, tugging on my arm.

  “Wait, she’s got a point. If we run, one of us could trip up the other. Let’s wait until we’re almost home before we start running. That way we’ll be able to keep track of where the noise is coming from.” He knew that I was trying to placate her, and he wasn’t happy about it, but he agreed. Rachel did follow along with us, but she did everything she could to slow us down. She stiffened her legs and dragged her feet in a manner that we called her “Frankenstein walk.” It was something she frequently did when she wanted to be coaxed. When we tried to pull her by her arms, she tried to kick and bite at us. She even sat on the ground at one point. When we tried to pull her up, she spat at and bit us and laughed at how desperate we were becoming. All the while, we could hear the heavy footsteps getting closer. Whoever it was had given up trying to be quiet and just tromped along the trail, toying with us. When we finally reached the fork in the trail, Rachel argued with us over which way to go.

  “I think it’s this one,” said Ethan.

  “You’re not sure?” I asked, feeling a sudden sense of panic well up.

  “It’s the one on the right,” stated Rachel.

  “No, it’s this one. I’m sure,” argued Ethan, while nodding his head in affirmation of his certainty.

  “No, it’s not! That one will take us back the way we came,” insisted Rachel.

  “Wait a minute,” I interjected. “Ethan, didn’t you say earlier that if we kept the water on our left, we’ll find our way home?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “This one follows the water. It’ll take us back. Come on, we have to move faster. He’s almost on top of us.”

  We could tell that whoever it was, was directly behind us on the trail not more than a few yards away. He was so close that Rachel was frightened into following us. Ethan took hold of my wrist again and bolted down the trail with Rachel close behind. We could hear the sound of heavy, and what seemed to me like booted, footsteps pounding the dirt behind us. He was closing in on us. I kept looking back to see if Rachel was still behind. I could hear her repeating, “Oh, God! Oh, God!” but I had to see if she was close enough to me. Ethan jerked on my wrist without looking back and yelled at me to stop because I was slowing him down. “Yer gonna trip me! Stop lookin’ back!”

  I’ll never forget the look on Rachel’s face when she realized that she too was in mortal danger. Her eyes were wide with fear, and she had an expression of profound shock on her face. I’m not sure which was the greater surprise for her, but I’m willing to venture an educated guess. Obviously she was in fear for her life, but she had expected that Ethan and I would put her life before ours. She hadn’t planned on us leaving her behind and that, I believe, was the greater jolt for her. She miscalculated her strategy, something which she thought she could never do. Rachel didn’t make such mistakes. She thought that she knew us well enough to predict our movements, but no one
ever knew Ethan and I as well as we knew each other. Rachel well knew that I preferred to dig in my heels and face my fears, and so she mistakenly assumed that I would stay to defend her, and that Ethan would stay out of loyalty to me. She could then make a hasty and safe escape, leaving us to face the consequences. She based her calculations on past experiences, which had led me to take the role of leader, and she had, therefore, incorrectly assumed that I was the superior of the two. But we had never before encountered a situation where Ethan’s brand of reasoning was more prudent than mine. What she had failed to factor in was the respect that Ethan and I had for each other. Neither of us saw the other as being superior, in fact, we both extolled the gifts of the other and regarded them to be of mutual benefit. Rachel was unaware of, and not privy to, the silent conversations we could exchange with each other in a single glance. She could never grasp that we considered each other equals based on quality of character alone, the idea of solidarity being abhorrent to her. Her glaring error having backfired, she was forced to seek the safety of our company.

  We could see the clearing at the edge of the trail, and it spurred us to run faster. The steps were now so close that it sounded like he was going to overtake us before we reached home. I felt myself gripping the club in my hand a little tighter. “There’s the house!” shouted Ethan. As soon as our feet touched the grass of the clearing, the footsteps behind us were silenced, but we didn’t stop running until we literally ran into the front door. We called frantically for my parents, who came running out to us. It wasn’t until my father went running toward the trees that we realized Rachel wasn’t with us. My mother rushed us in the door and telephoned the police. There were people coming and going for days, asking us all sorts of questions. There were volunteers of all kinds helping the police search the woods. Some of the locals even brought their dogs to help them, but it was no use. We never saw her again: we never saw anything. They found a small piece of her shirt torn and hanging on the bush where she’d been hiding from us. There was no other trace of her or her kidnapper. Ethan never lost his opinion that it was some nether-worldly being that chased us that day, but I have always felt that it was just one more criminal who managed to escape justice.

  Chapter Two

  Royal sat at his plain, homemade, wooden desk in his stark attic bedroom drawing the plant he’d found while out hunting rabbits for the family the day before. He had amassed several volumes of journals depicting hand-drawn plants and herbs at various times of the year, and also their uses with a focus on medicinal preparation. He kept all of his journals in a self-made leather satchel, which he kept with him at all times. His mother had a profound interest in plant uses and taught her son a rigorous home curriculum. His father, a very weathered-looking handyman and avid hunter also put the boy through his paces. At eighteen, he was already showing signs of weathering on his own face and body. Although of very slight build and barely average height, he had well-defined muscularity and the strength of a fully grown man more than double his size.

  As he leaned over his journal and tried to concentrate on his work, Royal could feel “The Presence” standing behind him. He called it The Presence because it was always with him, and he didn’t know another name for it. When he was little, his mother told him it was the Lord watching over him, protecting him. He believed her when he was little. As he grew older and began to understand and trust his own senses, he stopped believing her. The Presence didn’t feel protective at all, nor did it reassure him in any way. Its proximity made him feel ill-at-ease. It was always there, just behind him, wherever he went; but he could never see it when he turned around. He tried a few times to look at it using a hand mirror, but all he could see behind him was the bedroom door.

  By the age of thirteen, Royal realized that The Presence couldn’t always tell when he was awake or asleep. Late one evening, Royal awoke from a dream of someone calling to him. He’d experienced the same dream every night for as long as he could remember. Instead of waking with a start as he normally did, he just opened his eyes without moving the rest of his body. He saw the shadowy form of a very large man standing at the foot of his bed. He initially thought that it was his father, but the head of this man nearly touched the ceiling. Royal’s father was a big man, but certainly not that big. He sat bolt upright and its form disappeared, but he could sense that someone was still there. That’s when he began calling it The Presence.

  Once Royal realized that The Presence wasn’t the omnipotent God that his mother had claimed, its attitude toward him changed. The feel of The Presence changed. The strange uncomfortable sensation forever lurking at his back turned into something more sinister. Royal once felt perpetually watched, now he felt hunted. There had always been strange noises and unidentifiable footsteps around the house, but now they sounded much louder and more distinct, like The Presence was deliberately taunting him. Royal often heard the sound of breath in his ear, or the sound of heavy breathing coming from another part of the room that he occupied. Quiet unintelligible murmurings from an invisible group of people sometimes sounded as if they were directly next to him, and other times sounded like they were in a nearby room. He regularly heard footsteps pacing in the hall when everyone was asleep. Sometimes the footsteps sounded like the heavy footfalls of a very large man, and other times Royal heard the sound of a single hoof clapping on the bare-wood floor.

  More disturbing still was the way his mother began to treat him after he told her about the dark figure standing at the foot of his bed. She could never be described as a warm or loving woman, but she looked upon her eldest son with a certain measure of pride. Her treatment of him conveyed a strong sense of expectation. Royal had no idea exactly what it was his mother expected of him, but the perception was there nonetheless. That sense of expectancy he’d known since infancy quite rapidly changed to restrained mistrust. The pride she’d once shown changed to a subtle hatred. Royal’s younger brothers, who’d previously never been more than extra children in their parents’ eyes, suddenly became the recipients of their mother’s devoted attention. She didn’t look upon either of them with the pride that she once showed Royal, and her countenance conveyed a deep sense of desperation about their futures rather than the confident expectation she once possessed regarding Royal.

  The temperature in the room dropped suddenly, and Royal could see his breath. He shivered to shake off the cold. He knew that it was The Presence’s doing. He didn’t know if The Presence did it to frighten him, or simply to show that it was powerful enough to create such changes. Either way, Royal ignored it. He leaned back in his chair and lifted a silver locket from beneath his shirt. His mother had given him the locket for his tenth birthday; it once belonged to Royal’s birth mother and contained both hers and his natural father’s pictures. The Presence loathed the locket. Royal could feel it move away from him as he gently stroked his birth mother’s picture with his index finger. Royal smiled to himself, which further enraged The Presence. He wondered if The Presence could strangle him in his sleep.

  Royal had always known that he was adopted. His mother made sure he knew who he was and where he’d come from. His family name would have been Robbins. He liked the name, but wasn’t sure if he would’ve liked the family. His mother told him that his birth mother died shortly after he was born. She’d died of a heart attack. Her physician warned her not to have a child because of her weak heart, but she was desperate to give her husband an heir. She insisted on having her child at home, which was a foolish, albeit romantic, mistake. Had she been in the hospital for her delivery, she might have survived. Mother said that his birth mother was weak and selfish, and that the house he’d been born in was unnatural. It radiated an unwholesome energy and needed to be destroyed. His biological father was a despicable man because he’d abandoned Royal. He wanted nothing to do with his infant son after the death of his wife. He’d disappeared, leaving his son, his home and property, and the town of Twilight Falls. Royal was grateful that Lizbet Fitzgerald took him as
her own.

  “Boy!” Royal heard his mother shout and knew by intuition rather than hearing that she had pounded the floor with her homemade yew walking stick. She was in perfect health and needed no stick to help her, but was never more than arm’s reach from it at all times. “Come down here now!” He often wondered to himself why she had ever bothered to name him since she so seldom called him by name. Royal thought perhaps social convention disapproved too strongly of her giving an infant a descriptive title rather than a proper name. He neatly put his journal and drawing materials back into his satchel and speedily made his way downstairs. It was unwise to keep Mother waiting. He moved swiftly and silently down two flights of stairs to meet his mother’s stern countenance.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Walk your brothers home from school. Your father is too busy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Royal turned and bolted up the stairs to retrieve his satchel and descended just as quickly and just as silently as before and exited his home. It was a three-mile walk to the elementary school that his brothers attended.

  Theirs was a modest home, unadorned both inside and out. Royal’s mother saw no purpose to decorative items, save the homemade cross that hung on the wall in the parlor, which was made of blackthorn because Herbert liked the look of the wood. The house was an old one and didn’t have electricity. It was heated by fireplaces and lit by candles. Lizbet insisted on keeping her antique wood-burning stove for cooking. She did allow her husband, Herbert, to improve the outdoor plumbing system just to please him. The improvements he implemented made it much easier to hand-pump water from their well. Herbert was a native of Twilight Falls, Lizbet was not. She was a tall imperious woman with a slim but obviously powerful build and a stern intelligent face. Herbert was a tall thickly built man with an equally stern but less intelligent face. The family owned one acre of land that was visible from the lightly traveled country road that passed it. The entire front of the property was a huge herb garden dutifully maintained by Mrs. Fitzgerald and her oldest son. The rear of the home was kept clear for growing vegetables. They had no neighbors as their property was surrounded by county-owned woodland. Mr. Fitzgerald had far more talent than ambition and so earned a meager living as a part-time handyman, which wasn’t the best choice of occupation in a rural community that, for the most part, did its own handiwork. Lizbet permitted Herbert to own a pickup truck for work-related purposes. The family hunted for and grew the majority of their food, and made all of their own clothes. The only passions of Mr. Fitzgerald’s life were in the pleasing of his wife and the hunting and butchering of animals. Mrs. Fitzgerald’s passions were more difficult to define.