by Pamela Cowan
SOMETHING IN
THE DARK
Pamela Cowan
Copyright © 2012 Pamela Cowan
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to victory over our fears and to Val (Cherokee) my fearless friend.
And God saw the light, that it was good,
and God divided the light from the darkness.
Genesis 1:4
PROLOGUE
Building No. 246, US Army Family Housing,
Pattonville, West Germany
“I don’t want to play,” Austin said.
"Sure you do,” her brother, Muncie, insisted. “Come on. All you have to do is sit inside, right here in this spot," he patted the ground inside the doorway, obliterating the tic-tac-toe game she’d drawn in the dirt earlier. "We'll shut the door and the lights will come on. You just have to look around and see what's in there. Then, after we count to ten, we'll open the door and let you out and you'll tell us what you saw.”
"You promise you'll open it right back up?" Austin asked.
"We promise," said Muncie and his friend Brian, both solemnly crossing the area above their hearts.
"And you promise you'll play hopscotch?" she asked doubtfully.
"We promise," said the boys.
"Well, okay,” she agreed reluctantly, glaring at them to let them know they’d better.
Austin let them half-lift, half-push her through the doorway. The dirt floor was soft and powdery. It made her sneeze.
While the boys went back to work unwinding the wire that held the door open, Austin began clearing away the bits of rubbish around her, tossing empty soda bottles and crumpled bits of newspaper deeper into the impenetrable maw of the hole in the wall.
The place was really creepy and dirty. Maybe she should tell them she’d changed her mind, that they didn't have to bother untwisting the rest of the wire.
It was too late. The weight of the huge metal door finished the job for them. The strands sprang apart with a hissing sound, one sharp end slicing Brian’s cheek. Then, the door slammed shut with a sound like thunder that echoed down the long hallway.
Austin gasped, shocked by the noise and the sudden darkness. Immediately she began to count. “One, two, three.” She couldn't hear anything. Were they there? “Four, five, six." She didn't hear them moving, or counting, or anything. “Seven, eight, nine, ten.” Well, maybe she was counting too fast. She counted again–then again.
She started to get angry. Creeps. Boys were creeps. They liked to push you down, and break your things, and tell lies about you. She wouldn't ever play with them again. They probably weren't even really going to play hopscotch. They only said that so she'd sit in this dark, dirty hole. There weren't any lights. There wasn't any secret room. It was all a big fat lie. If they lied about that–maybe they lied about letting her out too.
She blinked her eyes. Were her eyes open? She thought they were, but it was so dark they must be closed. Putting her hands to her face, she felt her eyelids quiver.
Open or closed, the dark was just the same. She felt the dampness at the corners of her eyes. They were tears, but she wasn't ready to cry, at least not just yet. She was a big girl, after all. She counted again.
“One, two.” What if they didn't come back? Her mom would be mad. Her dad would be mad too. They would ask her brother where she was. But what if her brother was afraid to say? What if he thought he'd get in trouble if he told them she was in the hole-in-the-wall? What if he never told anybody? She cried a little bit. It made her feel better. Then a new thought struck.
Maybe her mom and dad would think she was strangulated, like that girl on the television that she heard her daddy say got kidnapped, and strangulated, and dead. That girl was six years old. Horrible things happened to children nowadays. That's what her mom and dad said. Horrible things like getting put in holes.
Crouched, shivering in the dark, Austin knocked on the heavy iron door until her knuckles ached and she had to stop. At least the pain was a distraction, a reassurance that there was something other than darkness, even if she was too young to put those feelings into words. After awhile, not knowing what else to do, she knocked on the door again, first rapping with her knuckles, then with her balled fists, and finally, with the palms of her hands. Smack, smack went her hands. Just like patty cake. Slap, slap, slap.
She pressed her face against the door. It was icy cold against her flushed, tear-streaked face. “Mommy. Mommy," she called. "I'm in here. I'm right in here."
No one heard. Minutes that seemed like hours later, Austin’s throat was sore, her voice a raw, rasping whisper. She was exhausted–with a deep, ragged breath she sank to the floor. She pressed herself against the door, as close to outside as she could get. Without thought, her thumb slipped into her mouth, a habit she had outgrown by the time she was three. She closed her eyes and did the only thing left–she waited.
After awhile, once her heart had slowed and her sobs had subsided to an occasional hiccup, she began to hear--something. It was a very small noise. She only seemed able to catch it in between breaths. She held her breath to see if she could hear it. Yes, there it was. It sounded like–like someone breathing.
Austin’s eyes flew wide with alarm. She took a long but shallow breath and held it. She heard it again. Someone was breathing. Someone–or something–was in here with her. Maybe it had always been here, hiding in the shadows where the light couldn't reach. Maybe it was a man, the man who made that girl dead. Maybe it was a big rat. Muncie had a fake rubber rat. It was creepy, with its long naked, whippy tail and its fat pointy teeth. He was always throwing it on her lap so she would jump up and yell.
“Rats will eat your face off,” Muncie had told her. “Bite off your nose and eat your eyeballs.”
Austin put her hands over her face. From her small, strained throat came tiny, broken whimpers.
“No they won't”, her mom had told her. “Your brother is teasing you.” But moms lied. Moms told you shots didn't hurt, and if you're nice to him your brother won't pick on you, and your dad will be home in time to tell you a bedtime story. Still, she would give anything if her mom would come soon. But her mom didn’t.
Chapter 1
Nineteen years later, on a dark autumn morning, Austin heard the hinges on the front gate squeal. The sound sent a shiver down her spine. She shook off the sensation irritably. She wasn’t that little girl anymore. Those hours spent in darkness were far behind, and yet the scars of that day continued to haunt her. The sound of a shutting door, a closed space such as an elevator and worst of all, finding herself in the dark, were all triggers that sent her into the same mindless panic.
Well, there was nothing sinister about hearing her own front gate. All it meant was that Josh, one of her employees, had arrived. She swallowed the rest of her coffee and shrugged into her flannel-lined rain jacket.
Looking out through the picture window, she noted how gray the sky was, clouds heavy with rain or snow. The sun seemed to rise more slowly than usual, as if the haze of mist was too heavy to push away.
She decided it was going to be a miserably cold day. Well, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. She screwed down the top of the thermos she’d earlier filled with scalding, heavily sugared coffee, grabbed her leather gloves, the ring of keys from the table, and opened the door.
She thought of inviting Josh inside to warm up, but knew
the earlier they got started the earlier they’d get done.
Josh was chaining his mountain bike to a gatepost, a stocking cap pulled over his ears, his cheeks red from the wind and his ride. Faded jeans encased long slender legs and the layers of turtleneck, flannel shirt, and corduroy jacket made him look bulkier than he was. Pale fingers struggled with the padlock, but he persisted, fumbling with it until finally it snapped into place.
"I don't know why you do that," Austin said. "It's not like anyone will steal it. You're not in the big city anymore, Dorothy."
"That's Toto to you,” he replied, giving the padlock a tug to be sure it was locked. “Anyway, you trust people too much."
"Well, you make up for it by not trusting them at all. For a nineteen-year-old, you do a great imitation of a very cynical and paranoid old man."
Josh didn't disagree. They looked up at the sound of a truck clattering down the winding road that curved past Austin's house. Cars went by Austin’s rather isolated house occasionally, but it was only seven o’clock.
Austin said, "It must be Paco." You could set your watch by her foreman's arrival. Sometimes she actually wished Paco weren't so prompt. It made it hard to pretend she was the driving force behind the success of Blue Spruce Landscaping.
He pulled in and parked his truck alongside hers. During the summer Austin hired extra help and ran three crews, using both of her pickups and Paco’s. It was getting close to snow season, lawns were going dormant, so they were only working out of one truck and getting by with one crew made up of Paco, Josh and, on their heaviest days, Austin.
Paco strode across the driveway, carrying his lunch pail in one hand, a pair of heavy leather work gloves in the other. "Good morning,” he greeted them both. Are we ready to go?"
"We're ready." Austin said. She unlocked the truck’s passenger door, and Paco climbed in and slid to the middle of the bench seat. Josh climbed in beside him and Austin walked around and got in on the driver's side. As she started the pickup she said, "I hope I can remember how to back this thing up."
No one responded. They were used to her morning mantra. She put the truck in reverse and twisted to see behind her as she backed it, and the long trailer full of landscaping equipment, out of the wide driveway.
"Damn it's cold," Josh said, rubbing his hands together. He reached across Paco and turned on the heater.
"There he goes again," said Austin. "You think he'll ever learn?"
"Not likely," said Paco. "Every morning I have the frozen wind on my knees because Josh cannot wait."
"Ahh, bunch of whiners," said Josh, still rubbing his hands together. It’ll keep the window from frosting up.”
Austin shivered. Since buying the nursery, she hadn't worked the lawn maintenance side of the business very often. Thursday mornings, and when she covered for someone who was out sick, were about the only times that she got away from the store.
The steering wheel was icy, and because the truck’s engine hadn’t warmed up yet, so was the steady blast of air from the heater. Being uncomfortable was no surprise to any of them. For the next six to ten hours they would be at the mercy of the weather. They would probably freeze, roast, get soaking wet, or all three. By the end of any given day they were also guaranteed to have new blisters, scratches, bruises, bug bites, bee stings, and calluses.
Austin's neatly brushed hair, dark chestnut, with sun- bleached copper strands, was currently twisted into a smooth tight bun at the back of her neck. By day’s end it would be a loose, lopsided knot with stray strands twisted around it and wisps standing on end. Her faded jeans would be grass-stained and speckled with the heavy clay mud that would also cover her steel-toed boots. She would be tired, sore, dirty, and hungry.
She missed it. Some days she wished she hadn’t bought the nursery and that she could just keep on forever working outside, not just watching the seasons change but feeling it on her skin and in her bones. Of course a lot of people would argue that working in a nursery was working outside, but Austin wouldn’t have agreed. She felt she spent far too much time in the office dealing with paperwork, or in the sheds and green houses, closed in, while she planted the flowers that would grace someone’s yard.
And then there was the camaraderie. An old-fashioned word, but one she felt justified in using. She missed the shared sense of accomplishment that comes after a day of hard labor, not to mention the water fights, the practical jokes, and the Saturday barbecues, complete with beer and lying contests. Sometimes she even missed the salty, tangy smell of sweat and herbicide that filled the cab of the truck.
They drove toward one of Austin’s favorite parts of town, a somewhat rural area that held average ranch-style homes, most nicely kept, painted in muted shades and sitting on plots of land measured in acres instead of feet. Here and there, a fenced field held a pony or a small herd of goats. There were fruit trees and vegetable gardens, turned and bare for the winter. Somewhere nearby, a rooster crowed.
They arrived at the first job of the day. The yard was a quarter acre of stubby grass surrounded by fir trees and dotted with irregular flowerbeds. It belonged to one of Austin's favorite customers, Granny Birdie.
Austin was grateful that Granny's driveway was straight, and deep enough to pull both the truck and trailer completely off the road. Without needing to speak, the three climbed out of the truck.
Paco and Josh lowered the ramp on the trailer, then Paco drove the riding mower off the back and onto the front lawn. He lowered the blade to the height Granny preferred and began cutting neat swathes. Josh pushed one of two mowers down the ramp and began to mow between the flowerbeds and anywhere else the riding mower wouldn't fit.
Austin climbed into the trailer and unhooked the bungee cord that held the gas-powered trimmer against one of the wooden side rails. She rested it on the ramp, pumped some gas into the carburetor, set the choke, and pulled the start cord three times. As always, the dependable machine came to life with an almost bloodthirsty eagerness. Austin put on the goggles that had been hooked around the machine's handle. She fished a set of earplugs out of the pocket of her flannel shirt, twisted them in place, dulling the roar of machinery, and set to work.
Soon the rhythmic action, sidestep, sweep, sidestep, and the smell of freshly cut grass lulled Austin into a state of pure relaxation. This, she knew, was as close to bliss as you could reach. This was a state of disconnection that was pure connection. Zen and the art of mowing lawns.
Austin and Paco finished at almost the same moment. Josh took one last swipe around the yard's perimeter, picking up whatever stray cuttings Austin's trimmer had left on the lawn. It was this attention to detail that had made Austin's business grow at such a phenomenal rate–at least that's what she believed.
She would never have entertained the notion that it was her kindness to her customers, the patience she showed in taking the time to hear what they had to say, that convinced them to tell their friends and neighbors about her. The fact that she looked damn good in a pair of cutoff shorts and a tank top didn’t hurt either. If she’d had any inkling that she’d sometimes been hired because someone was willing to pay to watch her work, she would have been more amused than offended. She had lost a few jobs because she was “just” a woman. She would have been more than willing to pick up a few for the same reason.
Austin pushed the goggles onto her forehead and rubbed at the red mark they always left on the bridge of her nose. She handed her trimmer to Josh and, as he and Paco put the equipment away, removed the earplugs and climbed the wide steps to Granny's front door.
Chapter 2
Before Austin could knock, Granny opened the door. "First things first," she said with a wide grin. She held a check out to Austin. Only after it was safely folded and in Austin's pocket did Granny continue. "So, what'll it be? I've got zucchini bread or ginger snaps."
"Now Granny, you know you don't have to keep baking for us."
"Honey, I don't bake for you. I bake for me. I only pretend I bake for you." G
ranny slapped her denim-clad thigh and laughed.
Austin couldn't help but laugh too. Granny had that affect on her. Like everything about her, Granny’s laugh was special, so full of life and freely expressed that Austin couldn’t help but join in.
Despite her age which, based on her stories, must be in the eighties at least, Granny was one of the most actively alive people Austin had ever met.
Her hair was smoky gray, with just a few shiny, silver strands. She kept it gathered in a thick-braided coil at the back of her neck. Austin was sure that, brushed out, it would reach the floor. Her skin was baby thin and crisscrossed with wrinkles, especially around her mouth and the corners of her eyes. She invariably wore brightly colored blouses tucked into men’s jeans, which were turned up at the hems, and ironed so they held a razor- sharp crease. Over that she wore a bib apron in bleached white linen, its innumerable pockets bulging with an ever-changing assortment of objects.
"Some of both, I think, cookies and bread," Granny said after she’d finished laughing and caught her breath. "Now you sit down there and take a little break."
"No time, Granny. We have a lot of work today."
"You have a lot of work every day. Trust me honey. Work is something a body never runs short of. Your boys will want to have their smoke. Sit you down while I get those cookies and fetch my pipe. Sit, and mind your elders."
"Yes ma'am," Austin sat down in one of the two Adirondack chairs on Granny’s narrow front porch. Granny was right, of course. Paco and Josh had finished loading the truck and were leaning against it talking and lighting up.
Granny returned with a plastic bread wrapper full of cookies and foil-wrapped packages of zucchini bread. Austin, who'd had her usual two cups of coffee and nothing else for breakfast, took the bag gratefully. Granny tapped her corncob pipe on the porch rail. She took a sack of tobacco from a pocket of her apron then filled, tamped, and lit her pipe. She took her first puff then sat in the chair beside Austin with a contented sigh.