by Mark Lukens
“You said some of the other nurses seemed frightened, like they were scared of something. You said one of them claimed this house was haunted and she’d seen a ghost.”
Rita shrugged. “A big house like this, some people’s imagination runs away with them.”
Pam nodded, but she had seen something in Rita’s expression for a moment: doubt and nervousness.
“Have you seen anything strange in this house?” Pam asked.
“No.”
Pam was quiet for a moment, and then she asked the next question quickly, hoping to catch Rita off guard. “Is there anything I should know about Maria?”
“No. She takes very good care of your dad.”
But it seemed like Rita wanted to say something else, but she was holding back.
“If there’s ever anything you need to tell me, I hope you wouldn’t hesitate to let me know.”
“Of course, Miss Pam.”
Pam waited a moment longer in case Rita wanted to share something, but Rita wasn’t volunteering anything.
“Well, I need to get going,” Pam told her. “You sure you don’t mind keeping an eye on Sarah while I’m gone?”
“No, not at all.” Rita was smiling again, seemingly relieved that the conversation had changed.
Pam was sure that Rita knew something about Maria—she could feel it in her gut. Whatever it was, something was making Rita nervous. At first Pam had believed that she had been sleepwalking and went outside to dig up something in the dirt, her dolls perhaps. Maybe she had remembered in her sleep where she had buried them as a child. But maybe she hadn’t found them while sleepwalking, and she had woken up and imagined them there in her bed for a moment.
But after her father mentioned the dolls, she began to wonder about Maria again. It had been Maria who had come into her bedroom to wake her up from a nightmare, the one about her father attacking her. And Pam had been so certain she had locked her bedroom door that night.
She had so much to talk to Dr. Stanton about, she thought as she left the house and walked to her 4-Runner that was still parked in front of the house in the circular driveway. She had her purse with her and the small, leather-bound journal was tucked down inside.
She got in her Toyota and started it. She drove down the long driveway to the metal gate that began to swing open for her after she passed the motion sensor.
SEVENTEEN
Dr. Stanton answered his phone right away at four o’clock on the dot. He apologized for not being able to talk to her sooner, but he had a full caseload today.
“No, that’s okay. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I’m sorry … I just … just needed someone to talk to for a few minutes.”
“What’s wrong, Pam?” His voice had changed from a neutral politeness to his “doctor’s” voice.
“It’s just that some strange things have been happening here at my dad’s house the last few days.”
“What things?”
Pam opened up her notebook and told Dr. Stanton about seeing her dad standing at his bedroom window when she and Sarah had been playing in the backyard. She told him about waking up with the muddy Barbie dolls in her bed. She told him about what her dad had told her, asking if she had liked the dolls her mom had left for her. She told him about her suspicions about Maria. She told him about the old man she’d seen in the woods. She told him about her vivid and strange nightmares. Once she opened the gates, all of the words came spilling out so fast.
After she was done, there was silence on the phone.
“Dr. Stanton, you still there?”
“Yes, Pam. I know it’s difficult being back there, and I can imagine it’s very difficult seeing your father on his deathbed. I can imagine the stress you’re under. You may have had some lapses in reality, possibly seeing hallucinations. And maybe these hallucinations and the dreams you’ve been having mean that you’re beginning to break through to some of your repressed memories, the ones you say that have always been eluding you, the ones that swim just under the surface.”
“Yeah,” Pam answered him. She sat in her 4-Runner, parked in front of one of the parks in the town square. This small town looked like a town that Norman Rockwell had captured in one of his paintings. It was a town that could’ve been featured in a Twilight Zone episode as the “perfect little town.” The day was warm, but a strong wind was whipping up and there was a nasty-looking thunderstorm brewing on the horizon, and the storm was moving in fast.
“But I’ve never sleepwalked before,” Pam said into the phone. “Not that I can remember anyway. And some of these things that I’ve possibly hallucinated—the dolls in my bed, locking the bedroom door, maybe misinterpreting my father’s words … I wonder if they might be real.”
“I know these things may seem real, Pam, but if something traumatic happened to you in the past, your mind may be fighting those buried memories the only way it knows how.”
“It’s this place that’s messing with me, my father’s house … I shouldn’t have come back here.”
“Maybe you needed to go back there.”
“I’ve been back here plenty of times, and nothing like this ever happened before.”
“Maybe now you’re at the point where you’re ready to deal with the buried memories. Maybe you shouldn’t fight them. Maybe you should just let them come to the surface.”
Pam thought of the pale thing just underneath the dark water in her mind, the thing just floating there, just far enough underneath the water so she couldn’t make out the details.
“I know it’s difficult for you, Pam. And I know it’s scary. But if you ever want to move on, then you need to stick it out and try to remember what happened. Just let the memories come to you, and then the answers will follow. I’m sure of it.”
Pam felt a shudder ripple through her. What could’ve happened to her in the past that was this traumatic? She had asked Dr. Stanton that question before, and he had told her that people dealt with traumas in different ways. What might be traumatic to one person might not be so traumatic to another. We are all put together differently, he had told her, that’s why there are no blanket treatments for psychiatry like there are in other medicines. An infection of the body might need a certain antibiotic. A broken bone might need to be set and put in a cast. But in psychiatry, each patient is different, each mind is different, and how people perceive the world and deal with it is different.
She thanked Dr. Stanton for taking time out of his day to talk to her for a few minutes. She already felt a little better even though she didn’t feel any closer to the answers.
Just let the memories come, and then the answers will follow.
She hung up the phone and sat there for a moment in her vehicle, staring out the windshield at the park underneath the rolling gray clouds. She could see a downpour on the other side of the field, and she saw that it was heading her way.
A knocking noise at her driver’s window startled her and she barely bit back a scream. She turned to the window.
A man stood right beside her 4-Runner, peering into her window. It was the same man she’d seen in the woods by the pond, the same man who had been watching her and Sarah when they were in the rowboat.
EIGHTEEN
“Pam,” the old man said from the other side of the driver’s window.
Pam was about to start her SUV and tell the man to screw off. She was even reaching for her keys dangling out of the ignition. But his voice stopped her.
She knew that voice.
And then she looked at the man again. She knew those eyes, and that face. But it had been such a long time since she had seen him. He looked so much older now.
“Leonard?” she finally said, the name suddenly surfacing in her mind.
He nodded and his wrinkled face broke into a smile.
Pam turned the key in the ignition so she could roll down the driver’s window.
Leonard backed away a step from her car, but he was still smiling as the window rolled al
l the way down.
“Pam,” he said. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen you. Last time you were only this big.” He held his hand out beside him near his waist.
“Yeah,” she answered and nodded, and she couldn’t help smiling. “You were one of my mom’s friends.” It was all coming back to her now. She and her mom would come into town and go to the coffee shop and order chocolate milkshakes. How could she have forgotten about that?
“I sure was,” Leonard said.
“We used to come to your diner and order shakes or a piece of pie.”
Pam glanced out the window across the street. She remembered where the diner was now—right across the street nestled in with the other buildings that lined the main street of the town.
“Not my diner anymore,” Leonard told her as he shoved his hands down into the pockets of his baggy, khaki pants. His smile was gone now. “I had to sell it when Wendy got sick. We just had too many medical bills …”
Wendy, Pam thought. That’s right. She had been Leonard’s wife. Only he always wanted me to call him Leo.
“Leo,” she said.
He broke out into a smile. “You do remember.”
Pam nodded. “What happened with Wendy? Is she …” Pam let her words trail off, not sure how to phrase the question.
Leo’s smile faded away and he nodded grimly. “She died two years ago. Cancer got her.”
“I’m so sorry. My dad has cancer, too. And he got Alzheimer’s a few years back, some rare and aggressive kind. A double whammy, I guess.”
“Yeah, I heard. The whole town knows. I’m sorry.”
But he didn’t sound very sorry or sympathetic.
Pam supposed that the whole town would know about her father. Everyone here had known him.
A thought suddenly occurred to Pam. She didn’t know how to phrase the question. She wanted to ask politely, but she didn’t know how. So she just blurted it out. “Were you on our property yesterday? In the woods?”
Leo didn’t answer right away, but he looked a little ashamed. His expression could change on a dime.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “I saw you drive through town, and Rita kinda let it slip to one of her friends that you and Sarah were coming to stay at your father’s house for a few weeks. And you know how word spreads around here.”
“Like wildfire?”
“No, faster.” And he broke out into a sharp laughter. And then he smiled. “I’m sorry if I startled you yesterday when I was in the woods. I just wanted to come over to your house and talk to you about something. Something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for years. But then I … I don’t know, I guess I chickened out.”
“What is it you wanted to talk about?”
It was beginning to drizzle now, and the storm clouds that had been building on the horizon were right over top of them now.
Leo glanced up at the sky and then smiled at Pam. “Come on with me and I’ll buy you a chocolate milkshake. It won’t be as good as the ones I used to make, but it will still be good.”
Pam hesitated.
“Please, Pam. When I saw you here today in your truck, I knew I needed to knock on your window and talk to you. I told myself that I had to at least try.”
Pam still sat in her 4-Runner, not moving yet.
“There’s something I need to tell you about your mom.”
The words hit Pam like an avalanche and before she even knew what she was doing, she had the window rolled up and the keys in her hand. She got out and hurried across the street to the diner with Leo.
NINETEEN
“It’s starting to rain,” Rita called out to Sarah.
Sarah had been playing in the backyard for a while after they got the prep work done for dinner. Now they had an hour to relax before they started cooking. Sarah asked to play outside and Rita sat on the back patio watching over her.
But it was raining now and Sarah ran up underneath the porch ceiling, squealing from the rain. She sat down next to Rita on the porch swing.
“You’re not too wet,” Rita noticed.
“I’m faster than the raindrops,” Sarah said and giggled.
Sarah was such a sweet child, and she reminded Rita of Pam when she was a kid. She looked so much like Pam, it was like looking into the past.
But their looks were where the similarities ended. Pam had always been a very quiet child. She would play with her dolls or color in her books for hours without making a sound. Rita remembered Pam going outside to play, but she couldn’t remember Pam being as energetic as Sarah was, or as outgoing and cheerful.
Of course living under Mr. Westbrook’s roof came with strict rules, and one of those rules was silence. And another rule was that Mr. Westbrook was to be left alone.
Rita thought back to her earlier conversation with Pam and she felt bad. She had wanted to tell Pam what she really thought about Maria. She didn’t know if Maria really put those muddy dolls in Pam’s bed, and she couldn’t figure out why she would even do something like that. But there was something strange about Maria.
And as for Mr. Westbrook telling Pam that her mother was back in the house, that was just Mr. Westbrook getting his memories mixed up again. He had gotten so much worse in the last few months, and with the cancer and all the medications he was taking, Rita was surprised if he even knew where he was anymore.
Her thoughts went back to Maria, and to something Maria had said quite a few times over the last few months. Like some of the other nurses who had quit, Maria had told Rita that there was a ghost haunting the house, and it seemed like she actually believed it. Maybe she had told the other nurses about the ghosts she’d seen and scared them into leaving.
She knew that Maria’s ghost stories probably weren’t too big of a deal to tell Miss Pam about, but she didn’t want to get Maria in any trouble. Miss Pam already seemed to be in a fragile state of mind. Who knew what next little thing could set her off?
Rita pushed those thoughts away and looked at Sarah on the porch swing next to her.
“Your father didn’t want to come here with you and your mother?” she asked Sarah.
The rain was coming down harder now, the raindrops drumming on the roof over the porch, a waterfall streaming down all around them from the edge of the porch’s roof.
Sarah shook her head no and looked down at her feet which she swung back and forth.
Rita remembered Sarah’s father, Doug. He had been with them on a visit a few years back.
“He left,” Sarah blurted out.
That shocked Rita and she felt like she had just gleaned information out of Sarah that she didn’t really want to know. She was sorry she had even brought it up. But then she wondered if Doug leaving Pam had possibly put her in this fragile state—it could be the reason why she’d been acting so crazy lately, maybe having some kind of a meltdown.
Rita felt like she needed to say something to Sarah. “Oh, I’m so sorry, baby.”
Sarah shrugged like it was no big deal to her. That was another difference between Sarah and Pam. Sarah was so much less emotional that Pam was as a child—or even as an adult.
“He was mean to us sometimes,” Sarah said.
Oh Lord—more information that Rita didn’t want to know. Why were people always opening up to her? Maria with her ghost stories, and Pam with her sleepwalking, and now Sarah with this.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Rita said, already trying to think of a way to change the subject.
“I’m not sorry,” Sarah said. “Like I said, he was mean to me and my mom sometimes.” She paused for a moment, and then shrugged like it didn’t matter. “And then he just left.”
Just like Miss Pam’s mother left her, Rita thought.
“I think it’s time to start cooking,” Rita said and stood up. “Do you still want to help me?”
“Yes,” Sarah said and jumped to her feet, her melancholy mood suddenly gone.
TWENTY
Pam sat at the table directly across from Leo. I
t was a corner table, tucked away in the back of the diner. It seemed to be “his” table because the waitress led them past other diners right to this table in the back.
Pam decided to skip the chocolate shake he had offered earlier, and she settled instead on a steaming cup of coffee. The rain outside made her crave something warm. Leo ordered two coffees for them.
“You want something to eat?” Leo asked. “They have good apple pie here. They get the apples right from Wilson’s Orchard up the road, just like I used to.”
“No thanks,” Pam told him. “She wasn’t hungry at all. She just wanted to hear what Leo had to say about her mother.
And it seemed like Leo could read her impatience, so he got right to it.
“Like I told you,” Leo said, “your mother and I were friends.”
Pam nodded. They had established that already. She didn’t know why she was so eager to hear what Leo had to say, it could be something inconsequential, something he felt was important but really it wasn’t. But she couldn’t help feeling like he had something critical to reveal, like there was going to be a break in her memories, a clue that might piece things together for her.
One thing that relieved Pam was that she hadn’t imagined seeing a man in the woods at the edge of the pond yesterday—it had been Leo standing there. That was a good thing that she hadn’t been hallucinating, and maybe it meant that she hadn’t been hallucinating some of the other things she’d seen. And that might mean that she hadn’t been sleepwalking. It might mean that someone had planted the muddy Barbie dolls in her bed.
And the only person who could’ve planted them would’ve been Maria. She must have a key to her room, that’s why she was able to wake her up from her nightmare the other night. And she must’ve brought the dolls to her bed in the middle of the night or early this morning. And then she took them away.
But why?
Rita seemed like she’d wanted to say something about Maria earlier, but then she held back. Maybe what Rita was going to say was another clue that Pam needed in this mystery, something that could help bring her memories to the surface.