Sally sighed. “Because I’m pregnant, Ramon.”
“What?”
“I suspected, but I only found out for sure this morning,” she said. “As sure as I can be without seeing a doctor. But I didn’t want Stanley to know.”
“Why not? He could help!”
“He’d want me to stay,” Sally said. “He feels guilty for some reason and wants to help. But I need to make this decision on my own. And I don’t think I should stay—could stay.”
“Good. Trust your instincts,” Mary said. “Don’t have the baby here. I believe this place is cursed for you.”
“Cursed?” Castiel asked.
“Because of what happened to Dave?” Sam asked, not quite rhetorically, as he sensed something else factored into the old woman’s newfound conviction that Sally should leave as soon as possible.
“Yes,” she said and took a deep breath. “And because of what happened long ago.”
“What are you talking about?” Sally asked.
The old woman walked over to the nearest wingchair and lowered herself into it, gripping the padded arms for support. “My aunt, Malaya Mercado,” she said. “She left the Philippines before any of our family. Married an American G.I., a medic, after World War II and moved to Indiana.”
“Aunt Malaya?” Sally said. “I never knew that. I remember someone in the family saying she left the Philippines when she was young, but not much else. She really lived in Indiana?”
“Briefly,” the grandmother said solemnly. “Moved to her husband’s hometown. When I heard you were moving here with David, I looked for it on a map. Somewhere in southern Indiana. Carson County—or maybe it was Carter City. Memory’s not as sharp as it was. I thought the town might be close to Braden Heights, but couldn’t find either of those names on the map.”
“You mentioned she stayed in Indiana briefly,” Sam said, hoping to steer the conversation toward the source of the old woman’s misgivings.
“No, I said she lived in Indiana briefly.”
“She died here,” Castiel guessed.
Mary nodded. “Malaya was expecting when she came to Indiana,” she said. “Hoped to start a new family here with her husband, but there were complications during childbirth. Hemorrhaging. She lost too much blood.”
“And her baby?” Sam asked hesitantly, expecting the worst.
Mary smiled briefly. “Beautiful child, from the few pictures I saw. But willful and disobedient, like she resented the hole in her life, not having a mother, and it angered her.”
“What happened?” Sally asked.
“All we know is what little filtered back to us from her father,” Mary said. “Riza never contacted anyone on our side of the family. We must have seemed half a world away, and I suppose we were. Anyway, her father told us she met a boy who was no good for her, from the wrong side of the tracks, as they used to say. He disapproved. Naturally, for a rebellious teenaged girl, that was all the encouragement she needed. One thing led to another and she got herself in a family way. Her father threatened to separate them, send her to live with us and never see that boy again. You can imagine what happened.”
“She ran away,” Sam guessed.
“Her and the boy,” the old woman said. “Before she left, she promised him he would never see her again, or the baby. And she kept her word. I often wonder what happened to little Riza. If she eventually found happiness… or more heartache.” She sighed, still gripping the padded armrests as she looked up at her standing granddaughter. “You see, Dalisay? That is why you must leave this cursed place. There is only death and sadness for pregnant Mercado women here. First Malaya, then Riza, and now losing your David… history is repeating itself. It’s already started. If you stay, more sadness will come for you.”
An uneasy silence fell across the room. Until Sam’s cell phone rang. He excused himself and walked away from the group to take the call.
“This is Agent Rutherford.”
“Hello, Agent,” said a familiar woman’s voice. Before he could identify the caller, she spared him the trouble. “This is Dr. Vanessa Hartwell from LMC.”
“Hello, Dr. Hartwell,” Sam said. “Of course, I remember you.”
At the mention of the doctor’s name, Castiel crossed the room to stand near Sam, a look of concern in his eyes.
“Agent, have you ever had the feeling that strange things were happening all around you without your knowledge?”
“All the time,” Sam said honestly. “I don’t like not knowing. That’s why I got into this business. What’s up?”
“Not sure if it relates to your case,” Hartwell said mysteriously, “but there’s something I need to tell you—well, show you. But I can’t really show you because technically it’s gone, but… I think it would be best if you could come here and see—or not see—for yourself.”
“I’ll go,” Castiel said, having heard enough over the receiver to make his decision. “You stay here. Wait for De—Agent Banks.”
Sam pressed the mute button. “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” Castiel said. He turned to the others and excused himself, slipping quietly out the door before Ramon could open it for him.
Sam switched off mute. “Agent Collins is on his way there now.”
“Thank you.”
While Sam took the call, Sally had begun to pace behind the sofa, hugging herself as if to ward off a chill. As he rejoined the group, she asked, “Was that about Dave’s attacker?”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “It might be related.”
She nodded in resignation, perhaps accepting the possibility she might never get closure for the murder of her husband. Looking toward her grandmother, she placed a hand on her abdomen and said, “Leaving here won’t bring back David. Either way, this baby will never know her father. And there’s already a hole in her life, before she’s born. Just like Riza. Maybe it’s too late…”
“That is dangerous thinking,” Mary said. “You are this baby’s hope and future. You must light the way for her—but not here. This place will always want to pull you into darkness.”
“Maybe she’s right, Sal,” Ramon said. “You should go.”
Sally looked at Sam, as if seeking an objective opinion from outside the family. Though Sam couldn’t tell her what to do with her life, he could try to keep her safe from the immediate threat. “Look, I don’t know if this place is cursed,” Sam admitted, though he wouldn’t rule it out. “But whoever is responsible for killing your husband is still out there. A real, tangible threat. If you want a fresh start, in this instance, a change of scenery might not be a bad thing.”
Sally nodded thoughtfully and rubbed her palms together. “Guess I better start packing.”
TWENTY-ONE
“So this town wasn’t always called Braden Heights?” Dean asked groundskeeper-for-hire Arthur Keating.
“No, sir,” Keating said, scratching the underside of his jaw through his patchy gray beard. “Probably have to go back to the late sixties, early seventies to find references to Braden Heights by its original name, Larkin’s Korner. That’s Korner with a K.”
“That free local paper, The Corner Press,” Dean said. “Named after the original town name?”
“Yes, sir,” Keating said. “But you’re not likely to find many in town make that connection. Second or third generation families. And some of those probably never knew, since the paper refused to adopt the K spelling. Original editor couldn’t abide the intentional misspelling in the town name.”
“Other than the goofy spelling,” Dean said, “why’d they change the name? You mentioned a tragedy…?”
Having stood for a while, Keating took a step back to lean against the riding mower. He crossed his arms over his chest and nodded. “Most of the land around here was owned by Ruth Larkin’s family. Still is, I imagine, except for some parcels of land they’ve sold to the town or private developers. The construction going on around town? Wherever you see that, you’re most likely looking at lots the Larkin family owned prev
iously. Was a time the Larkins were the prominent family in this area, but they cleared out in the early sixties, after the tragedy. But who could blame them?”
Dean contained his impatience. For a man who professed not to trade in gossip, Keating sure seemed to revel in the telling of it. “And this tragedy…?”
“Right,” Keating said. “Ruth Larkin’s son, Calvin Nodd, a doctor no less, snapped. Maybe it started in the war, after the things he saw over there. Heard he had regular nightmares, the wake up screaming and drenched in sweat type of night terrors. Or maybe the Larkin family played that stuff up later to garner sympathy for the man.
“Anyway, he came home in one piece, which was better than some. And he brought a new bride with him. For a while, he seemed happy. But he was home less than a year when his wife died in childbirth. Baby girl survived, though. Nodd became something of a hermit after that, avoiding contact with most folks, but he raised that girl on his own. Don’t imagine he was a model father, damaged as he was. As you might expect, that little girl ran a bit wild. Years later, sixty-two it must have been, she gets herself knocked up and runs off with a drifter boyfriend. Rebels of a feather, I guess. Doc Nodd never heard from her again.”
“Must have been hard for him.”
“Yes, sir,” Keating said. “Comes home from the war traumatized. Back then they didn’t recognize PTSD or that kind of thing, but I imagine he had major head issues. Then his wife dies in childbirth less than a year after they’re married. Finally, his daughter flips him the bird and runs off carrying a grandchild he’ll never see. That there is one big downward spiral.”
“A spiral that ended with him snapping?”
“Supposedly, he tried to strangle one of his patients, during childbirth no less. Almost killed her and the baby. Would have, if not for the attending nurse. Doc Nodd skipped town before the case went to trial. And just like his daughter, he was never heard from again.”
“Why ‘supposedly’?” Dean asked. “Isn’t this a matter of record?”
“Well, some of it is and some of it isn’t,” Keating hedged. “Rumor had it the Larkins paid off the woman’s family and the nurse and maybe a few others to keep quiet about the whole incident. And by ‘paid’ I mean paid handsomely. The papers published some vague nonsense about Doc Nodd having some kind of episode, war-related psychological damage overcoming him for one terrible moment. They brought up the death of his wife, abandonment by his only child, and so on. Mother and child were fine. Maybe her family even believed it was an unfortunate episode. They left soon after the incident so they wouldn’t be around to answer any troubling questions.”
“If the Larkins paid off everyone involved,” Dean said, “how’d you find out this information?”
“Information might be too strong a word for what I know,” Keating said. “Like I told you before, this is rumors, whispers passed around. You can’t buy off a whole town’s silence. So and so knew one bit of it, someone else knew another piece of it. You hear enough, you start to put those puzzle pieces together. It was an old-fashioned cover up, by all accounts, but it’s not like the Larkins had to cover up an actual murder, although they might have tried, if it had come to that.”
“That the end of it?”
“Once the dust settled, it seemed like the doctor and his entire family had dropped off the face of the earth, but the Larkins’ sterling reputation had suffered a bit of tarnish. Wasn’t much longer before they pulled up stakes. Still owned much of the land, mind you, but they were nowhere to be found. Heard at the time that they’d relocated to Europe, but that’s about as specific a location as I ever heard. Few years later, the town changed its name. To honor a local war hero, or so they said. Only us old-timers know the real reason. It’s taken all this time, but it looks like the Larkins—whoever is left among them and wherever they are these days—are finally selling off any land they still own around here.”
Dean calculated that if the disappearing Doctor Nodd was still alive, he’d be ninety, possibly older. Certainly in no condition to brutally murder and eviscerate four healthy young men, even if he could have extricated himself from a fatal car crash unwitnessed. But he could be responsible for unleashing whatever had committed the murders. While his mental gears turned, Dean said, “That’s quite a story.”
“And every word of it true,” Keating said. “Of course, we’ll probably never know about the Riza copycats.”
“Wait—copycats?”
“Five other local girls who got themselves in a family way and left town, just like the Doc’s girl. Not sure if they thought it was a romantic notion, leaving behind the small town for the big city. Most folks blamed the recession, lack of jobs and opportunity. Rough times, certainly. Nobody could blame them for leaving, wanting something better. Of course, my own feeling on the matter is the big city’s more likely to chew you up and spit you out. But there’s a reason they got that expression, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Some people got to find out for themselves different don’t mean better.”
“What happened to the copycats?”
“Their families never heard from those girls again. Not one of the five came crawling back. Damn poor odds, right? Always thought that was mighty peculiar.”
“Yes,” Dean said. “It is.”
“Well, sir, if you don’t mind, I need to finish up here.”
“Thanks for your help, Arthur,” Dean said, shaking the man’s hand before he climbed back up on his riding mower.
The engine fired up as Dean hurried back to the Holcomb residence.
TWENTY-TWO
Exhausted, Melissa Barrows crept down the stairs and collapsed on the sofa beside her husband. “She’s asleep,” Melissa mumbled. “Finally.”
He appeared equally wiped out, slouched on the cushions, one arm thrown over his head, TV remote balanced on his thigh, feet crossed on the coffee table—even though she’d asked him more times than she could count to keep them on the floor. But this time she was too tired to argue. Pick your battles, her mother had advised her before she got married. Same rule applied to raising kids. Of course, for the longest time, Melissa and Kevin feared they’d never have any kids to raise one way or the other.
“Thank God,” Kevin sighed. “Hard to believe something so small has the energy to keep two grown adults up all night, night after night.”
“We should patent her internal fuel cells,” Melissa said, setting the baby monitor on the coffee table and adjusting the volume to the halfway mark. She imagined if she listened closely she could hear little Noelle breathing softly, but all she really heard was the blissful silence of a contented baby.
“You telling me we have a baby cyborg?” Kevin asked in mock surprise. “I specifically ordered the pure human model with a sixteen-hour sleep recharge cycle.”
Melissa snuggled against his chest. “But the cyborg model was a free upgrade,” she said. “And you know I can’t resist a bargain.”
For years they tried to get pregnant the old-fashioned way but had no luck. Rather than accept that a Barrows baby was not meant to be, they decided to get medical help, which led to fertility testing, which segued into several rounds of IVF at the Stanton Fertility Clinic before the stars finally aligned for them. Kevin once joked that the natural act of getting pregnant had taken on the complexity of a NASA mission, years in the making, followed by nine months until touchdown on Planet Newborn. And having Noelle presented a whole new world for them. But it was a world they were eager to explore for the rest of their lives.
“Okay, then,” Kevin said. “I guess we’ll keep her.”
“That’s good,” Melissa said, starting to slur her words. “Because I accidentally threw away the receipt with her box.”
“Jeez, now you’re telling me she was delivered in a box by a truck,” Kevin said. “Here I thought we ordered blanket and stork air mail shipping.”
“Two-day box shipping was free,” she mumbled. “And you know I can’t resist…”
/>
“You can’t sleep yet!”
“Watch me.”
“Thought we were finally going to binge-watch Battlestar Galactica.”
“Binge-watching the back of my eyelids right now,” Melissa said around a jaw-cracking yawn. “Fascinating stuff. You should try…”
“Shame to waste quiet-baby-time sleeping.”
“You had… other ideas?”
“Besides BSG?” Kevin asked. “Maybe one or two.”
“Such as…?” she asked, managing to raise an eyebrow high enough to show her interest was piqued without convincing him she had the requisite enthusiasm to follow through.
“Never mind,” Kevin said. “Mind is willing, but the body is weak. Or is it the other way around? Maybe both.”
“We may already be asleep and dreaming this conversation.”
“Are you dreaming about me? Or am I dreaming about you?”
“Yes,” she said. “Definitely.”
The baby monitor squawked with a startled baby cry.
Melissa’s eyes fluttered open, her head turned toward the speaker on the monitor, waiting.
Kevin tensed, hoping she’d calm herself and settle back into peaceful sleep, but ready for the wailing to commence. His turn to check on her if she woke. And at the moment, he felt like his body was glued to the sofa cushions.
“Should have sprung for the video monitor,” Melissa mumbled.
“You’d watch her 24/7,” Kevin said. “Big Mother.”
“Maybe you should rephrase that.”
“Oh, sorry,” Kevin said, chuckling. “You know what I meant.”
“Whatever. Don’t like it.”
Another baby cry, but this time it cut off abruptly.
“Kevin?”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” Kevin said, suddenly invigorated with nervous energy. Perhaps they were overprotective—some of their friends thought so, especially those with multiple kids—but Noelle was their first child and they had gone through so much to bring her into their lives that any concern became a major concern. Neither one of them had to say the words out loud to know what the other was thinking: sudden infant death syndrome.
Supernatural--Cold Fire Page 15