There was something in his face as he watched her leaving the room. She didn’t quite know what it was.
One by one, she climbed the steps, up into the hallway that led to her old bedroom. The need to sort her things out was no more than an excuse. She hadn’t brought much with her. She never did. And after tomorrow night, she had no plans to extend her stay for any longer than she had to. Just enough to see her through the ritual. That was all.
Her old room was just the same as it was every year: neat, ordered, kept as if she had never left it, and full of memories that crept from the corners to greet her every year. The room would always be there, waiting, at least until her parents had gone and whatever eventually happened to the house when that time came changed it. She stood for a couple of seconds in the doorway, chewing her lip, and then, with a sigh, moved over to the bed and opened her pack, laying out the few clothes and toiletries she had brought with her. As she placed them into the drawers, there was noise downstairs. Apparently Johnny had arrived. Voices and the laughter came muffled from the downstairs rooms.
“Where’s Estella? I saw her car outside,” she heard. The response was lost as she closed a drawer and moved back to sit on the bed, looking around at the familiar wallpaper and the patterned rug that sat in the room’s center, the small white desk where she had hunched, doing her homework as a kid. White lace curtains shielded the darkness and rain pattering against the windowpane outside. She had been such a girl growing up, shy, quiet, meek. She shook her head at her own memory of herself. How had she turned out as she had—one failed marriage that had lasted a mere eighteen months, no kids and no real plans to have any. It was almost as if her growing up had been merely marking time and despite her escape, here she was again.
Well, there was nothing for it. Time to go down and greet the brother, to hear about the latest successes of his kids, to make enthusiastic noises about his latest career move. That was the ritual, and this time of year was all about ritual, if nothing else.
Teeth. Pale skin. Wings flapping. A rush of decaying air. Eyes without sight, but seeing right through her. No, not teeth, more like needle-sharp fangs.
Estella started awake, her heart pounding. The darkness was solid. A dream. It was a dream.
They know you, she thought.
Who?
The remnants of the dream still clawed at her chest, her throat, ran skittering through her brain, through draped curtain of fading sleep, her pulse racing. The voice kept whispering, mouthing the words in her memory, hissing through the darkness.
They know you.
She threw back the covers, her breath still coming in short, halting gasps. Calm. She struggled to control her breathing, her pulse, and swung her legs out of the bed, hunching over at the edge, her palms pressed down against the bed’s edge.
Taking a single deeper breath, she stood and padded over to the window. Everything was quiet inside, not even the usual creaks and shifts you’d normally expect to hear in an old house at night. The sweat was starting to cool on her skin and, gradually, her breathing was returning to normal. With one hand, she pulled the curtain to one side to look out to the darkness, to the rain slicked field and the few scraggy trees that clustered at the rear of the house. The naked branches shivered in the intermittent gusts. Her gaze roved across the bleak landscape and then stopped. Her breath caught again. Someone was out there. The barely defined shape stood as a dark smudge, but she could tell. A lighter stain in the darkness marked the face and it was watching her window.
Again, the voice whispered inside her.
They know you. They’re waiting.
Her heart in her throat, she let the curtain fall and rapidly stepped away from the window.
What?
She took another backward step, her hand at her throat.
Soon, came the voice.
Soon . . .
After a virtually sleepless night, Estella stumbled through most of the following day in a semi-daze. She’d managed to doze in the early hours of the morning, but it was hardly sleep. All through the morning, she heard that single word, echoing silently. Images of the figure in the darkness haunted her. In the early afternoon, she managed to catch an hour or so on the couch, but only dozing. The clattering and noises drifting through from the kitchen barely cut through the haze, nor did the continued back and forth between Johnny and her father. Once or twice, her father drifted into the living room, looking at her with a concerned expression on his face. There was something else in his expression, but in her current state, she had no energy or any real desire to try to fathom what it was. As the day staggered towards evening and the ritual dinner, if anything, the feeling of moving through a syrupy haze increased.
Finally, the time arrived for dinner. To Estella, it seemed as if it had taken a century. The traditional dinner gong rang through the house, her father’s hand enacting the ritual. Dinner was early, giving time for them to get through most of it before any of the town’s children might show up for their own seasonal ritual.
Soon.
Together, they took their places at the dining room table, sitting quietly as her mother started ferrying the steaming platters out of the kitchen. The scents of good home cooking swirling into the room with each new plate. Once that was done with, her mother took her place at the table and her father filled each of their glasses in turn and then, moving back to the head of the table stood in place, his own glass raised high.
“To the tradition,” he said. “Long may it last.” One by one, he met each of their eyes, Estella’s last. He paused there, his gaze fixed as if observing.
Together, they raised their own glasses, repeating the words. “To the tradition.”
Estella sipped tentatively, not really committed to the toast. Her father looked at her with a slight frown, then glanced across at her mother, who gave a slight nod.
Just at that moment, there came a knock at the door.
“Geez, they’re a bit early aren’t they?” said Johnny.
Her father sat heavily letting out a deep breath. Carefully he placed his glass back down. “It’s not kids,” he said. He bit his lip, glanced once at Estella and then spoke. “It’s time,” he said. “Linda, you’d better let him in.”
Her mother pushed her chair back and with a nod and a slight expression of resignation on her face, stood and quickly left the room.
“Who?” said Johnny. “Who is it?”
Her father lifted a hand to still him. His gaze was fixed on Estella—deep, piercing, his eyes no longer watery, his features firm. “It is time, Estella.”
At the sound of someone entering the room behind her, she turned. Her mother stood in the doorway with a man next to her. It was Old Martin.
“What’s he doing here?” said Johnny.
Old Martin’s gaze fixed Estella, just like her father’s.
“It is time,” he said. “They know you. They are waiting.” The words were simple, the voice muddy, but filled with something else. They were the words from her nightmare. It had been Old Martin standing out there in the darkness. She knew it now.
Johnny had gone silent.
Old Martin reached out a hand. “Come,” he said.
“Estella, you must go with him now.” Her father’s voice.
Her mother stood in the doorway, not moving, not saying anything.
Without knowing why or how she knew, she understood that her father’s words were indisputable.
“Come,” said Old Martin. “They are waiting.”
Slowly, slowly, Estella pushed back her chair, stood and reached out her hand.
Ahead, looming jagged against the sky, the old church, gray stone made white and black with age, the roof collapsed, slates tumbled, burnt rafters stabbing black against the blackness. Estella had not been up here for years. She barely remembered it, but somehow, the memory was there, strong, insistent, just as Old Martin’s hand drawing her forward was. To one side lay the graveyard, headstones leaning, ancient stone crosses mottled with lichen.
A mound, a sunken hollow, pooling water, and a confusion of weeds and grass gone wild. The fence, once solid, had rusted through in places, brown and encrusted with years. All of these sights, these snapshot images burned now within her vision, in her mind.
Still old Martin drew her forward.
“There,” he said. “There. Here is the place.”
He stopped gesturing at the empty darkness, the broken place where people had once congregated.
It was dark, yet it was not. A pale luminescence painted the edges, the lines with dull light.
Martin urged her forward.
“They know you,” he said, his voice breathy with his excitement. “It is now. They wait.”
“But what . . . ?” said Estella.
“Shhhh,” said Martin. “Shhhhhh.”
He dropped her hand and stepped back.
She felt it then, the stirring, the movement in her blood and her bones. Here, now. Here was the doorway. No longer was it soon. It was here. It was now. She was no longer marking time.
Estella looked up, her breath stilled and caught. Her blood sang in her ears.
The angels had come, though you could hardly call them angels.
Jay Caselberg was born in a country town in Australia and then traveled extensively while growing up. Returning to Australia, he had a successful sojourn in the groves of academe but, just before turning in his doctoral dissertation, stepped out into the workforce and was soon based in London. From that time on, he traveled extensively throughout Europe and Africa. He started writing in 1996 as James A. Hartley and later under his own name. Caselberg currently lives in Germany and works in the consulting industry on international projects. His short fiction has appeared in periodicals such as Crimewave, Electric Velocipede, and Interzone, and anthologies as diverse as Dead Red Heart, Powers of Detection: Tales of Mystery and Fantasy, and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases. His horror novel Empties has just been published.
QUADRUPLE WHAMMY
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Jenkins and Wadley were sitting in an area called The Canteen. Used by nurses and staff, it was a small room behind the admissions desk with two microwaves, a pair of coffee-makers, an electric samovar filled with hot water next to a bowl of tea bags, a three-quarter size refrigerator, a half-sized sink, and a small television patched into the hospital’s cable service; just at present it was showing one of The Incredible Hulk movies with the sound turned off. The room had a slightly greenish cast from the old-fashioned recessed lighting, as unflattering as it was hard on the eyes. At the moment the two men were quite alone, having shown up early, prepared for what Jenkins had called “The double whammy night: Halloween and a full moon!” They wore scrubs, having secured their coats in their lockers.
“Triple whammy: it’s Saturday.”
“That, too,” Jenkins allowed.
“Still pretty quiet so far,” said Wadley, a young African-American only recently out of college, rangy, clever, and ambitious; he sounded a bit disappointed.
“It’ll get busier, Jamal—don’t get ahead of yourself. By eight we should have our hands full, if this year is anything like last year.” Jenkins got up and refilled his coffee cup from the caffeinated pot; he was more than a decade older than Wadley, an experienced X-ray technician with a host of good reports in his file and a passion for old horror movies; his first name was Chastain, but no one ever used it. “Which,” he added after a thoughtful pause, “I hope it isn’t. Newsvans in the parking lot. No thank you.”
“Yeah,” Wadley said. “Well, my sister’s kids are going trick-or-treating for the first time tonight. Making the rounds in the neighborhood. Should be okay. Couple of adults going with them.”
“Good idea. These days they may get tricked instead of treated.”
“And not just kids,” Wadley said.
“You mean like year before last when someone spiked the Golden Hills Country Club punch with LSD? Or last year when the Cavalier Club went up in flames? That was a bit over the top, wasn’t it? And that bus accident didn’t help. SUV versus bus, what a mess. You worked on the victims, didn’t you?” Jenkins asked, just before Alan Samson came in: he was in his early thirties, blond-haired and green-eyed, a pediatric nurse who looked like a football player, with big shoulders, a sturdy torso, and legs like tree-trunks; his voice was low and comfortable. “Hey there. I thought you were through for the day.”
Samson’s outwardly imperturbable manner was characteristically unruffled. “Overtime,” he said at his most laconic.
“You planning to take care of the teenagers, along with the kids?” Wadley asked, trying to urge Samson into a discussion.
“Whatever Spink wants; she arranged for me,” was Samson’s abbreviated answer, leaving out the negotiating that her request required. He took his cup down from the shelf, filled it with hot water and dropped a teabag from his breast pocket into it.
“And what about Chin and Wieznieki?” Jenkins inquired as Samson sat down opposite him; Chin was the cardiologist on duty, Wieznieki was the orthopedist.
“Spink is pediatrics; so am I. If she doesn’t need me tonight, I can take other cases, just like you, Jamal.” It was impossible to tell if this calculated needling aggravated or amused him.
“There are five Docs on call tonight, and three extra on the floor,” Jenkins remarked. “Almost as expensive as New Year’s.”
“Serves the suits right if we don’t get much action, and them paying all this overtime.” Wadley often saw the hospital as being stocked with two separate forces that constantly rubbed against each other, not like companions, but more like tectonic plates, their disputes jarring Herbert Blythedale Memorial Hospital between them at irregular intervals.
“Be nice to have it go that way,” Jenkins agreed doubtfully, sipping his coffee. “But the night’s young, and anything can happen.” He chuckled.
“The shift will change in about fifteen minutes,” Samson remarked to no one in particular.
Lois Barnes, the head of ER nurses for the night, stuck her head into The Canteen. “Any of you seen Annamarie Smith? Or Nancy Flanders? They’re late, and that isn’t like them. And tonight of all nights.” She glanced at her watch. “Well?”
The three men told her no.
“If you do, remind Smith she needs to be at the reception desk right now,” she said, and withdrew.
“Annamarie is usually a little early,” said Jenkins, evincing no concern at this minor tardiness.
“She’s got three kids—she may be taking care of them, getting ready for trick-or-treating, or they might need to join up with other kids.” Wadley thought this over. “Maybe there’s more traffic than usual.”
“There was a stabbing down on Claussen Avenue,” said Wadley. “Some kid was wearing a costume in a rival gang’s colors.”
“All of the above tonight,” said Samson, drinking his tea.
They fell into an uneasy silence, each feeling disquieted by a disruption in routine on a night like this. Wadley was the first to get up from the table; he gave his mug a cursory washing in the small sink, then set it out on the counter to dry. “I’m off. See you at break.”
“Yeah,” Jenkins said, stretching. “I’ll be out of here in a couple of minutes. Tell Pomeroy I’m coming; she gets antsy. She likes to be out of here as near on six as she can, but won’t leave until I sign in officially.”
Samson made a sound that seemed to indicate something similar while contemplatively blowing on his tea.
Wadley had barely left when Megan Hastings came in, her forty-year-old face looking a good bit older; she walked as if her feet hurt. “Just got a half-dozen partyers in. They were on a forty-foot cabin cruiser, more than twenty guests aboard, and the skipper rammed it into Boromeo’s Wharf; about ten went into the drink. The Coast Guard got them all out, but they’re cold, wet, and bruised, most of them, though the host of the evening got a gash on his arm, and one of his guests has a concussion; there are p
robably other minor injuries.”
“I didn’t hear sirens,” said Samson.
“Most came in by private car; the fire department wants to hold as many ambulances in reserve that they can. The EMTs said most of the injuries from the partyers weren’t serious and the guys were okay to drive. They all signed off on their driving, and agreed to get medical help within twenty-four hours if they didn’t come here before going home. The gash and concussion came in the ambulance together, no siren, and another four arrived by car. They’re all in costume.” She sighed. “I can’t wait to get home. It’s building up; I can feel it. They’re gonna need you, Jenkins.”
Not wanting to get into a discussion about Hastings’ feelings, “See you on Tuesday,” said Jenkins, shoving himself up from his chair. “Have a nice rest-of-the-weekend.”
“You, too,” she said, opening the refrigerator for the last of her sandwich.
Samson studied her. “How is it in the waiting room?”
“It was about average, but with the boat party, it’s gonna be busy for a while: X-rays and some guys waiting to drive the injured home.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “They’re all dressed as pirates, the swashbuckling kind.”
“Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum pirates, or cutthroat?” Samson asked.
“Yo-ho-ho, by the look of them,” Hastings said. “Like they all want to be Johnny Depp.”
“Just guys?”
Hastings shrugged. “It was that kind of party; you know.”
Samson nodded and stepped out of The Canteen, working his way through the change-of-shift crowd at the admissions desk, pausing long enough to sign in officially, then going on to the Pediatrics office, taking a moment to make sure his undershirt was properly tucked into the trousers of his blue-green scrubs. He could hear a child crying, more in anger than fear or pain, which he took to be a good sign. In the corridor he passed a bedraggled young man in an outfit of wet leather pantaloons tucked into high, cuffed boots. What manner of shirt he wore was concealed by a blanket wrapped around his shoulders; the fellow had a bandage on his right hand, probably from scraped knuckles, Samson thought, as he turned into Linda Spink’s office. “Happy Halloween.”
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