Laura could hear the cat purr, completely oblivious to Susan’s opinion of him. A good lesson, Laura thought. Lizzy was entranced, as Anubis probably intended. When he had thoroughly charmed her, he moved on to Amanda. Within five minutes, Susan’s opinion of cats no longer mattered.
“Can he sleep in here with us, Mom?” Amanda scratched him under the chin.
“Leave your door open and he’ll come and go. He likes to patrol the house.”
Lizzy laughed, and sat down next to the cat on Amanda’s bed. “He’s a watch cat!”
“What’s for dinner?” Amanda asked.
“Mike’s coming by a little bit later on and is taking us all out. You can pick the place, as long as it’s not very expensive.”
“Pizza?”
“Sure, we can do pizza, if that’s what you both want.”
The girls nodded. “In the meantime,” Laura said, “I’ve got some soda and stuff out in the kitchen. I want you two to think of this as your home. So do whatever you’d do at home.”
Laura paused. “Just stay out of the cellar, okay?”
“Why?”
“No real reason – it’s messy and cold and spidery down there. And there’s nothing of interest – just the litter box, the washer and dryer, and boxes of junk left over from the move. Plus the stairs are kind of treacherous and the lights are funny. There’s plenty of stuff to keep you occupied up here and you girls are old enough to stay out of places you don’t need to be, right?”
Lizzy nodded and Amanda made her standard “whatever” reply. “Can we watch television?”
“Whatever,” Laura said with a small laugh and the girls headed out to the living room, leaving Anubis behind. He looked up at her and blinked.
“I wonder,” she said quietly to him, “whether I should have said anything about the cellar at all. Now it’s a forbidden thing which might make it more interesting.”
The cat had no answer, so Laura gave him a final pat and headed out the living room to join the girls.
Chapter Fourteen
Tony had made arrangements to have the girls picked up each morning and driven to school, saying their school, a private academy, didn’t allow them many days off without good cause. Fortunately, the school was closed the last two days of the week for teacher in-service and Laura was able to adjust her work schedule accordingly.
Pizza night had gone well, with Mike making almost as big an impression with the girls as the cat had. Cassie had been unable to accompany them; she’d had to leave the house entirely to go stay with her sister’s family for about a week, while her sister recovered from emergency surgery. Cassie might not get along with her sister or want to live with her, but in a crisis family was family.
Tuesday had been a rotten day for Laura. Predictions of a snow storm to occur later on that evening had everyone in the area hitting the grocery store for food and supplies. Although she didn’t smoke, she took her break outside, just to clear her head. “Why is it,” she said to one of the young men who bagged the groceries at her register, “that people buy eggs, milk, bread and toilet paper when a storm is coming?”
The boy nodded and laughed. “Yeah, no kidding. Like they’re all just dying to make breakfast or something. French toast, maybe.”
Snow warnings also seemed to make people grumpier than usual, especially when they happened as early in the season as this. By the time Laura had finished her shift, she’d been yelled at, accused of ringing up an order wrong, blamed for the high prices and called stupid. She felt ready to throw something. Instead, she picked up some emergency provisions herself, although hers consisted of a few two-liter bottles of soda, some orange juice, a box of cereal, milk, and a family-sized macaroni and cheese dinner.
As she had every day after work, Laura walked past the liquor store. Ordinarily, she would quicken her pace, and leave it behind her – out of sight, out of mind – but today it was so cold and the bags were so heavy, that she stopped under the awning above the door. She set the bags down on the ground and flexed her fingers, looking into the window. The craving washing over her was so strong she wondered it didn’t knock her down. She had the cash; she should just go in and buy a little bottle, a little drop of something to put into coffee on a cold winter day, a reward for working hard and walking home. Laura took a deep breath and put a hand to the door, then jumped back as if she’d been burned. She stepped back, put her hand in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone, hitting the speed dial number for Renee.
“Hello?”
The relief Laura felt at the sound of her voice felt almost as strong as the craving. “Renee? It’s me. Laura.”
“Hey, sweetie. How are you today? Are you enjoying having your daughters visit?”
Laura sighed. “I’m standing outside the liquor store. I’ve had the most horrible day and a drink would go down so good right now. Is it so terrible of me to want to go in and get something?”
“It’s normal, Laura. But it would be bad for you. And you know that. Want me to come and pick you up?”
Laura thought about that. “I’m not too far from home, I can make it. Hold on a second, okay?” She dug around in her purse and found the cell phone headset and plugged it in. After getting the gear into place, she picked up her bags again. “Are you still there?”
“Always. What’s happening?”
“I’m walking away. Talk to me while I walk home.”
Renee asked questions about the girls’ visit and they set up a coffee date for later in the week. By the time Laura was a block away from her house, the craving, while not completely gone, had subdued. Softened. Laura held control, just the way it should be. She thanked Renee, clicked off the phone and stopped for a second to adjust her hold on the plastic handles of the bags. Then she trudged the rest of the way home, scuffling her feet through piles of frozen leaves sitting on the sidewalks. A few small flakes of snow started falling when she put her key in the door. The girls had made plans to stay for a while after school each day while they were here, so they didn’t need to come home to an empty house. Plus, Laura remembered that Mike had trouble with the lock and didn’t want either Lizzy or Amanda stuck outside waiting for her to arrive.
The house was freezing inside, as usual. A look at the thermostat confirmed her suspicion that the heater had not run all day. “Damn circuit breakers,” she said as she unlocked the cellar door and flipped on the light. She sighed. “I do not want to go down those stairs right now.” Anubis came over to her and butted up against her leg. “Yeah, you heard me right, Bonehead. I don’t want to go down there. But I have to. Come with me?”
Laura started down the stairs, trailed by the black cat. “What a good boy,” she said, “and what a smart kitty. You understand every word I say, don’t you?” She flipped the circuit breaker for the furnace and it clicked on, hissing and sighing and finally rumbling into action. “Stay on this time, dammit.” Remembering the talk she’d had with the electrician the other day, she gave a little chuckle. “And you ghosts quit playing with it!”
She regretted the words almost before she’d finished saying them. Somehow even joking about that situation freaked her out. The hair on her arms and on the back of her neck tingled and stood on end. “Okay,” she whispered, “I’m leaving,” and ran up the stairs as quickly as possible, slamming the door when she reached the upstairs and throwing both deadbolts.
Anubis came through the cat door and gave her a dirty look. “Sorry I left you down there, baby, but…” He reached up, pawed her leg, and she picked him up, snuggling him, burying her face in his rich warm fur. “How about some dinner?”
After Laura and the girls had eaten, they settled in the living room with cups of cocoa and played a few board games until the cat, attracted by the sound of the dice, started moving the playing pieces. Finally he scooped a paw around Lizzy’s piece and pulled it over to the finishing line.
“I win!”
Amanda twisted her mouth. “Not really, nitwit.”
&n
bsp; “Don’t call your sister names,” Laura said absently. “And it’s late anyway – time for bed.”
“But,” Lizzy protested, “we probably don’t have school tomorrow.” Both girls had been watching the weather reports on and off for most of the night, anticipating a snow day.
“We’ll see about that tomorrow.”
By the time Amanda and Lizzy got settled in, Laura’s nerves were jangling. The constant bickering bothered her, although she knew that it was normal for children of their ages. Developmentally, Amanda was so much further along than Lizzy; their interests were so totally different, it was no wonder they didn’t get along. But enough is enough, Laura thought. I don’t need this after battling with the job and the cravings all day. She ached with tiredness; she’d give her right arm for just one little Valium. Or a nice shot of scotch.
She took a deep breath, then several more. That relaxed her. Still she didn’t know how much longer she could deal with everything. “One day at a time,” she murmured to herself on her way back to wish the girls a good night. “One day at a time.” She gave a little snort. Too bad they don’t have a saying to cover the nights. The nights are far worse than the days ever are.
Tonight Laura had no problem falling asleep, as if the exertions of her day had balanced out the frustrations. She remembered starting one of her deep breathing exercises and then she was gone, deep into a sound sleep. Part of the problem with sleeping so well, though, was that it allowed the mind to dream. As Laura’s did.
Everything starts out well enough – the day in the dream is sunny and warm. Worries about the furnace and the circuit breaker problems are a whole year away. She and the girls and Mike are having a picnic, at the same place he took her that day before rehab. She fixes herself a plate full of the best smelling food, but Mike takes it away from her. “No time to eat, babe,” he says in the dream. “The storm is coming.”
Laura looks up to the sky, surprised he would say such a thing. Not a cloud in sight. She shakes her head. And the rain starts, pouring down out of a cloudless sky. Before she realizes what is happening, the lovely park they’d been in turns into a gully filled with rushing water. First one girl, then the other is carried away by the growing torrent. Mike holds on to her. “Save the girls,” she screams, barely audible over the roaring water. “Too late,” he says, and lets go, allowing the rushing water to carry him away. Her head goes under the water and when she comes back up to the surface, she’s no longer outside. She is, instead, in the cellar of her house. The water is draining away, leaving the bodies of Mike and the girls behind. “No! You can’t have them. Give them back!”
She has no idea to whom she speaks. But there is an answer. A whisper. Then many whispers. A door opens up in the concrete block cellar wall. Greenish fog comes pouring out, covering the floor, twining its way up Laura’s legs, slowly, almost sensually. She sighs, all the anger and grief pulled out of her, as if the fog, and the shapes she now sees in that fog, sap her of strength. It feels so good to relax, so easy to just let it all go. The whispers grow louder. “Yes, let it go, Laura. Come with us. We can all be together. We can take you too. There’s room for more…”
Laura shot straight up in bed, gasping for air. Her nightgown soaked with sweat, she blinked in the darkness. “Damn,” she said, rubbing her hand over her eyes. “I guess I can thank the Valium withdrawal for that one.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed, thinking she’d watch a little television and sleep on the couch, but something didn’t feel right. She stopped short, listening. There, on the very edge of her hearing, was the whispering. The source of her dream. “Girls,” she called out, “quiet down in there. You woke me up.”
The whispering stopped, leaving an odd sharpness in the air. That also didn’t feel right to Laura. Normally, the girls wouldn’t listen right away and there would be giggling. Instead, silence. She got out of bed, quietly opening her door and choking back a scream. There, at the cellar door stood the figure of a little girl. It’s Lizzy, she realized, and let out a breath, glad she restrained her initial reaction. As she approached the girl, she saw she stood up on her tiptoes attempting to reach the uppermost deadbolt. Lizzy turned, her eyes glazed and staring. It had been a while since Laura had witnessed one of Lizzy’s night terrors, but obviously that was what this was. Lizzy’s lips were moving. Laura got closer, so she could hear, even though her speech during these episodes was normally gibberish.
Not this time. “There’s room for more,” Lizzy whispered. “They say there’s room for more, Mommy, but I don’t want to go.”
Laura started back for a second. Were she and Lizzy sharing the same dream? How could that be possible? She repressed her own rush of fear out of concern for her daughter. Lightly Laura touched her on the cheek, then wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulders. She could feel Lizzy quivering through the heavy flannel of her pajamas. “It’s okay, sweetheart, you don’t have to go. You can stay here with me.”
“Mommy?” Lizzy gave a little shiver and blinked her eyes. “You’re here? Are you okay?”
Laura gave a shaky laugh. “I’m fine, baby. You were having one of your bad dreams. Are you okay? And where else would I be?”
Lizzy’s eyes rolled to the cellar door. “Down there, with them.”
“Who, Lizzy?”
“I don’t know, Mommy. It’s just a dream.”
Laura led her out to the kitchen. “I’ll heat you up a little bit of cocoa and then we’ll get a blanket and snuggle up on the couch. How would that be?”
The girl nodded.
“Who knows,” Laura joked softly, “maybe there’s actually something good on to watch.”
There wasn’t, but it didn’t matter. Curled up next to her mother on the sofa, wrapped tightly in a warm blanket, Lizzy slept. Peacefully this time. Laura sat awake, jumping at each and every creak and sound in the house. Outside the snow fell, hissing softly as it coated the trees and the grass and the street.
“No school tomorrow then,” she whispered, pulling the curtain shut after she gauged the amount of snowfall. “But I’ll still have to work. I don’t want to leave them home alone. Something here seems very wrong.”
If Cassie were here, she might be able to help. Laura hadn’t wanted to believe her before, thinking all of her fears and misgivings about the house were silly and ridiculous. But now, as the house became more and more chilling, she wondered. What do I do if she’s right?
Chapter Fifteen
With the light of day, Laura felt differently. There had to be a logical reason why she and Lizzy were having the same dream. The obvious conclusion was not ghosts in her house. “Maybe,” she said quietly to the cat sitting on the arm of the couch, “maybe she was talking in her sleep and I heard the words, working them into my dream.” Stranger things have happened, she thought, everyone has those dreams where they hear a bell or a buzzing and wake up to find that their alarm clock noise had filtered in.
She gently eased Lizzy’s head off of her lap, where the girl had finally settled in to sleep and got up from the couch, tucking a pillow under her daughter’s head and pulling the blanket up around her neck. Laura went over to the thermostat and tapped on it, sighing. “Freezing again,” she said, “I’m going to call a real electrician today.
She turned on the television and put it on mute, flipping to the news. School closings were being listed and sure enough the girls’ school made the top of the list. Laura shook her head. “Bad timing,” she muttered to herself as she first turned on the coffee machine then threw the deadbolts on the cellar door, trudging down the stairs restart the furnace. “Just stop it,” she said, throwing the circuit breaker back to on, unsure if she was talking to the machinery and wiring or the ghosts. “Yeah, right,” she said as the furnace kicked back on. “Ghosts. That’s just ridiculous.” But somewhere in the back of her mind she heard one of the lecturers at rehab. Denial is the first stage…
She shook her head again as she closed the door and locked it. Laura st
ill didn’t want to leave the girls home alone today, but wasn’t sure what to say if she called off. She didn’t want to lie and say she was sick; nor did she want to say something like, “I can’t come in, I had a nightmare.” Or: “My daughter had a nightmare.” And she certainly wasn’t going to say “I have ghosts in my house and I can’t leave the girls alone.” That last one made her chuckle. She picked up her phone and dialed Mike’s cell number. At the very least, he could stop by and check on Lizzy and Amanda around lunch time.
He answered on the second ring, his voice professional, his manner terse. “Gallagher.”
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey, you.” Laura smiled. She liked the way he said that, somehow he managed to make those two simple words sound very special.
“I wondered if you could stop by the house sometime today and make sure the girls are okay. They don’t have school, but I still have to work.”
“Tell you what,” Mike said, “I can go one better than that. I’m working a split shift today, so I’m off at twelve and don’t go back until four. I can just stay at the house and wait until you get home.”
Laura felt a huge rush of relief. “That would be wonderful, Mike. Thank you. We had a bad night.”
Mike’s voice grew sharp. “What happened?”
“I had a nightmare and Lizzy had a nightmare and the two of us spent most of the night sacked out on the couch. The furnace circuit breaker is still not working.”
“I have a buddy who is a real electrician, not some dumb schmuck handyman like that other guy you had. Where’d you find him, anyway?”
“Carolyn, one of my neighbors, recommended him.”
“Well, he charged you way too much and didn’t do a damn thing to fix things. I’ll get my friend to stop over this afternoon and we’ll see what we can do. I’m not all that handy around the house, but I can follow instructions.”
Laura sighed. “That really would be great, Mike, and I’d be so grateful.”
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