Night Wraith

by Christopher Fulbright

  Carly started chuckling on the other end of the line.

  “What?” Abi asked.

  “I’ve heard this rant before. Like it or not, you’re stuck doing this stupid crap until graduation. Might as well find a way to get the job done.”

  “So, is this all you called me for—to fill in for my absentee mother?” Abi laughed, but the tone of her voice betrayed her pain.

  “I just care about you, Abi.”

  “I know you do. Sorry, I shouldn’t be such a butt.” Abi changed the subject, trying hard not to concentrate on what her absentee mother might be doing right now. “You can save all this sappy shit for later, anyway. Are you still coming over tonight to work on our science project?”

  “Yeah, but I have to wait for Dad to get home before I leave.”

  “Okay, well, give me a call soon as he gets there and I’ll see if I can get the truck to come get you.”

  “Awesome, thanks.”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Waiting for Ethan to call.”

  “Ah.” Abi rolled her eyes. She almost added, I should’ve known, but she didn’t want to be catty. Or sound pitiful.

  “Well, I’ll let you finish the paper. I’ll look it over when I get there later if you want.”

  “Cool.”

  “Oh, and hey, Abi? Don’t let that crap Sadie McSluttie said to you this morning get to you. She’s got issues. Dad says she sounds like she’s got a bee up her butt, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.”

  “I’m guessing she’s had more than that up her butt,” Abi said.

  “Oooh,” Carly said and laughed.

  Abi grinned but when the scene in the hall with Sadie flashed in her memory, she winced. Bitch. Sadie had made her life hell for the last four or five years now. Just thinking of her and her mindless drones made her want to puke. Never mind barbarians, where was a bus when you needed one?

  “Well, I just wanted to call and make sure we were still on for tonight. I’d better go in case Ethan calls.”

  “Okay, Care-bear. See you later.”

  “’kay. Bye.”

  “Bye.” Abi ended the call. She tossed the phone back onto her bed and crawled onto the beanbag chair again.

  She stared at the notebook paper until her eyes nearly crossed. When she closed her eyes she could still see the little blue lines stretching horizontally across white paper. Shaking her head, she jotted a few more sentences, and then pushed herself from the floor. She walked to her computer, titled a new document, and began typing the paper from her handwritten draft.

  An hour later she hit print and watched as the computer printer began shooting out the pages of double-spaced type. Somewhere on page three, a knock sounded on her bedroom door.

  Abi swallowed hard. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Dad.” He didn’t open the door. His voice sounded hesitant, awkward.

  “I’m doing homework.” As if that would help.

  “I brought you a glass of milk and a cookie. They’re not homemade or anything, just store bought.”

  She could hear him shifting around in the hall. “Yeah, okay.”

  The door opened a crack and he slipped the glass and a napkin with two crumbling cookies onto her dresser. “You need any hel—”

  “I’ve got it, Dad,” Abi said, her voice a little angrier than she intended. “I mean, thanks, but I’m just waiting for my homework to print. It’s finished, so no need for any help. Thanks for the offer though.”

  Her dad looked at the ground, not making eye contact with her. “Okay, then.” He closed the door with a click. Abi listened to make sure he continued through the hall—away from her door.

  She looked at the milk and cookies with mixed emotion. A knot formed in her stomach. He’s bringing me milk and cookies like I’m a little girl or something. Why doesn’t he just go away? Why doesn’t he go look for a job?

  She knew why he didn’t go look for a job. Because he was too damn busy looking for himself in the bottom of a bottle of gin.

  Abi got up from her desk and retrieved the milk and cookies. She ate them as the last sheet of paper shot from the printer. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she shuffled the pages together, stapled the corner, and stuck them in her folder. The floor shook with the pounding of a hammer. She heard her dad cursing downstairs. Was he trying to hang a frame? From the sound of it, he was trying to dismantle the entire wall.

  Abi sighed. She sat on the edge of her bed surveying her room and accidentally kicked a pile of books near her foot. The witchcraft book she found at the library flashed gold embossed letters under the snow-white light gleaming through her window: Finding Your Inner Witch. Abi laughed. Hokey title for a book, but whatever. She grabbed it and propped herself up on pillows to read. She scanned the table of contents, the echoes of her father’s swear words coming up through the vents. The first half of the book was history, lots of stuff she’d read in other books. The second half dealt with rudimentary curses and blessings, ending in an announcement that Volume II was coming in the summer. Abi made a mental note to look for the second volume when she turned in this book at the library.

  Boom. Boom. The thrumming vibrations sounded like distant cannon fire.

  Good grief, she thought, was he banging a hole into the wall? Her mother was going to kill him when she got home. Provided she came home.

  Abi concentrated on the text, scanning the first chapter of curses. None of them were serious—small stuff like car trouble, stomach ache, and clumsiness. The sort of curse you could put on someone without anything appearing suspicious.

  Abi’s eyebrows rose in thought.

  Softly, she read the words on the page aloud, inserting her dad’s name into the NAME HERE slot. The directions included saying the chant three times—or thrice, of course, because that was witchier— and shedding three drops of blood to seal the request. Seemed mundane and safe enough. Nothing scary. Nothing too vindictive or evil.

  Abi pulled a safety pin out of her jewelry box on her bedside table. She repeated the curse twice more and poked her finger with the pin. Not sure where to put the blood, she squeezed three drops onto a used Kleenex she found under her pillow.

  There was a loud hammer-bang, followed by her father’s scream, and some louder racket like something big falling down. His yell, “Fucking hell!” filled the house as Abi wadded the blood-spotted Kleenex and tossed it into the trash can near her desk.

  She rushed downstairs to find the big metal ladder tipped backward, a head-sized hole in the wall, and her father sprawled on the floor clutching his battered thumb in his shirttail, which was now seeping a crimson spot.

  “Smashed my goddamn thumb,” he said. He rocked himself, holding his bleeding hand in his shirt.

  “Are you okay?” Abi said, voice cracking.

  “Do I fucking look like I’m okay?” Her dad sat up, peeling the cotton shirt from his bashed thumb and looked at it squeamishly. “Oh, shit!” He quickly stuck the hand back into the folds of his shirt.

  “Is it bad?”

  “I think I can see my bone.” He stood. “Shit, it hurts. I’ll have to go over to Doc Faucett’s and see if he can stitch me up.”

  “They might be closed.” She glanced at the clock on the wall, forgetting that it didn’t work. It had to be almost five. “Want me to drive you over?”

  “No.” He said it like she’d just suggested the most ridiculous thing in the world. He felt around in his pocket with his good hand for his keys.

  “Okay, then. You better take a towel or something so you don’t bleed all over the truck.” Abi tossed her hair over her shoulder, stinging from the implied statement of uselessness her dad had flung in her direction, and went upstairs, back to her room. She closed the door behind her and sat on her bed, breathing hard.

>   Had that spell worked?

  She listened as her dad’s truck peeled out of the driveway. He hit the trashcans on his way onto the street. A couple of neighborhood dogs barked in protest at the clanging of the metal, and then the sound of the truck faded into the evening air.

  The spell worked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Gavin thought if the clock on the station wall moved any slower it would be going backwards. Being chief of a five-man police department meant only three things more than it meant for his officers; a little bit more pay, a lot more hours, and the buck stopped with him. Today he would gladly have traded it all for an afternoon with a cold beer. After half the day Sunday on the phone to kids who were reportedly at the party Saturday night, he spent the rest of the day driving around to all of their houses to take statements and talk to upset parents. The final blow had been fielding calls from the parents of Raylee Condit and Mason Harrison after delivering the news that their children would never come home again. He’d rolled into the house late last night to find Karen asleep on the couch in front of the glimmering TV, with Carly asleep upstairs. He awoke Karen gently. She asked how things had gone and he admitted it had been lousy. She left with his promise that they would meet sometime this week for dinner.

  He’d come in early this morning, too, leaving while Carly was still in the shower getting ready for school. He’d racked up a solid 32 hours in three days. Now he was shutting down. If not physically, then definitely mentally. He knew the feeling and Oliver could see it, and it had gotten to the point that he wasn’t going to be a damn bit of good to anyone if he didn’t go home, take a shower, and have some downtime before he came back at this again with a fresh perspective.

  “Go on home, Gavin,” Oliver said, making the observation official. “We can hold down the fort till you get back. Thomas should be in around five.”

  Gavin stared at the calendar and tried not to think too much about the fact that October 16 was this Friday. Elizabeth’s picture was in the bottom right desk drawer, stuffed between some files, still in its frame. Its presence tugged at his thoughts like an undertow. He refused to reach down and heed the instinct. The picture had been in there for just a little over a year, and right now, it struck him as a terrible betrayal. He’d put her away in order to go on with his life. And while his head knew it was nothing of the sort, his heart ached at her memory, yearned for her touch, and wanted him very much to reach down and pull out that picture and look into her eyes again.

  He knew what had opened this dark grave and got him staring back into the abyss of her absence—it had been the reaction of Maggie Condit after he told her they’d found Raylee dead and needed to prepare her for the official identification of her child. It had been the shock of disbelief, the litany of questions about how could they be sure, her defiant trip to the county morgue that ended with her walking slowly from the icebox. The chief had stood for a moment, brim of his hat in his hands, and then walked up next to her cautiously.

  “Ms. Condit?”

  When she had turned to him, the look in her eyes struck a dark note inside him. Hollowed out, cut to the soul, and filled with the blackest grief a parent could know.

  It awakened in him all the feelings of loss and grief and anger he’d been suppressing this past week, trying not to think about the upcoming anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, willing away the memories of finding her that cold day, slumped in the corner of their bedroom, the chair in front of her vanity overturned, the wall beside her awash with her brains—

  “Chief?” Oliver sat on the corner of his desk. “You all right, boss?”

  Gavin blinked at him, coming back to the moment. He took a deep breath and rubbed his face. “You’re right, Oliver. I think I need some sleep. Probably a good idea if I get out of here.”

  “You bet. Like I said, Officer Thomas and I can hold down the fort.”

  “I appreciate it.” Gavin stood and slipped on his jacket.

  “You gonna be okay to drive?”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  Oliver patted his shoulder and gave him a smile that said he knew more than his friend would say aloud.

  “We’ll see you later, boss.”

  Gavin walked out of the main office into the front reception area where Rhonda sat at the dispatcher’s station. A sheet of bulletproof glass separated her from the lobby. Her smile was contagious, and he wearily returned it.

  “Headed out, Chief?”

  “For a while. Be back in the morning.”

  “Good for you. You could use a break.” Rhonda ran fingers through her long red hair. “I ran into Karen a couple of weeks ago at City Market and she couldn’t say enough about you. Maybe a night with her would put some of your worries to rest. Let her come over and take care of you a bit.”

  Gavin tried not to let his smile falter too much. He nodded. “Maybe so, Rhonda.”

  “You need a woman in your life to maintain a healthy balance.”

  “Have a good evening, Rhonda.”

  “Take care, Chief.”

  He walked out the front door of the substation into a wall of cold that caught in his lungs. Clouds darkened the sun, leaving the afternoon wintry gray, with stray drifting flakes of snow. He hopped in his truck and let the engine run, warming it up until heat issued from the vents and began to melt the ice formed on the windshield. He sat in the blasting air, watching the water run, and then swiped it away with the wipers.

  He couldn’t shake the haunting vision of pain on Maggie Condit’s face. When he looked into the rear view mirror, he saw a similar trace of loss in his own eyes.

  * * *

  Gavin was almost home when he found himself taking the shortcut over Washington Hill, slowing down as he rolled by the old house of Vanessa Maeveen.

  In his mind’s eye he recalled how it looked six years ago when it had been The Celebration, a metaphysical bookstore and herbal supply shop the woman ran with Davis Crowley. It hadn’t been quite so long ago, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the way the place had fallen into disrepair. After Davis Crowley had disappeared, the transformation was almost immediate. Old Miss Maeveen closed up shop, hung thick curtains over the windows, let the evergreens and foliage take over the yard, and hadn’t been seen much since. It seemed as if even the earth had taken part in her reclusion, buckling the old sidewalk, thorn bushes and vines hanging so thick you wouldn’t have been able to pass along the front walk without stooping to cross the broken slabs of concrete.

  Gavin searched the windows as he rolled by and felt that old familiar feeling creeping in around the edges. Anger and suspicion issuing from his deep well of grief; he still felt in his heart that Crowley had been partly responsible for Elizabeth’s suicide, that he’d somehow driven her to it.

  So, here you are again. Does it solve anything? Does it make the past hurt any less?

  He shouldn’t have come by here. He’d avoided Washington Hill for the past three years because it had become an obsession for him, continually driving by and watching, waiting to catch a glimpse, some kind of sign that Crowley had returned. But all he’d ever seen was evidence of old Miss Maeveen’s further descent into eccentricity and isolation.

  What has she been doing in there all these years?

  And on the heels of that question, the one that finally let him drive on without a look back in the rear view mirror: What difference does it make?

  He drove down the hill toward home.

  * * *

  The house was still beneath a blanket of quiet when he arrived. He stripped off his jacket and turned up the central heat, then went to the firebox and started a small fire to help dispel the chill right away. While the fire caught, he went out back to the woodpile and knocked snow off a few more logs, then brought them inside to dry for the next round. He filled the wood box in a couple of trips,
then took off his boots and sat on the hearth, staring into the flames.

  Gavin’s instinct was to call Oliver and see if he’d bothered to check up on Miss Maeveen at all in the past year.

  There’s nothing you can do for Elizabeth, now, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. What about those kids? Don’t they deserve some thought right now?

  Which of course wasn’t fair—not that he was ever fair to himself —because he’d spent the past two solid days thinking about those kids. But since every last kid who’d been at the party saw the same glow and not a soul was near the back of that truck when the killings happened, they weren’t any wiser. Hard to say if the kids had agreed on a story to cover for someone because they hadn’t liked Raylee and Mason, but that didn’t ring true in the interviews.

  Gavin took a deep breath and stared into the flames. He picked up another log and threw it onto the fire now that the flames were high. It hissed and sizzled, cooking the ice out of the wood.

  He felt a blast of cold air swirl around his feet. He thought he must not have closed the back door all the way, so he looked up, expecting to see that it had come open.

  The back door was closed.

  A shadow slipped across the doorway to the kitchen. He caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye.

  Gavin stood.

  “Carly?” he called.

  Slowly, Gavin went into the kitchen. He stood at the threshold and looked around the room. It was exactly as he’d left it early this morning. Carly had put away all of the dishes Karen washed on Sunday. All that remained in the sink was his coffee cup and a small plate he’d used for eggs. Thinking that something must have passed by the window to create the illusion, he was almost able to relax, but an underlying tension stayed with him. When a clump of snow fell from the eaves beyond the bay windows in the breakfast nook, he was startled, bracing himself on the edge of the countertop.

  “Jesus.” Rubbing the bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb, Gavin leaned against the countertop, taking another deep breath that quavered from his lungs, threatening to make him break and do something he didn’t want to do. He went to the cabinet above the range, pulled open the door, and removed the dusty bottle of Wild Turkey 101. His instinct was to drink straight from the bottle, but he decided to be civilized about it and poured an inch or so into the bottom of a glass, which he took into the living room.