by Dan Padavona
“No. Not until we make sure that she isn't going into shock. Evan, take her shoes off.”
While Evan worked the sneakers off Mary's feet, Rory stretched her shirt collar to loosen it. When Evan straightened the blanket, Mary reached into her pocket to retrieve a small, gold cross. She clutched it to her chest until her knuckles turned white. Renee raised her eyebrows and looked at Evan.
“Let's give her a few minutes to rest,” Rory said.
They gave Mary space. After a few minutes, her breathing improved, and the color returned to her face. The low drone of the refrigerator carried out of the kitchen. Red lights flashed across the window as an emergency vehicle followed the curve around Standish onto Spruce.
“I don't think it is shock, but she came mighty close,” Rory said.
“Mary, what happened?” Evan asked.
Mary's eyes darted among the members of the group. Her mouth moved silently, as though she could not recall how to form words.
“Easy now,” Rory said.
“Th-th-there was a break-in at my house tonight,” Mary said.
“Oh, my God!” Renee exclaimed.
“I thought I heard suh-someone outside the house. When I went to the basement to grab my rifle, I found the basement window open.”
Renee nodded and put her hand over Mary’s.
“I thought I’d checked the entire basement. But I forgot the…the alcove. Under the stairs. It must have been in there the whole time,” she said.
Her eyes trailed off, wide and faraway.
“It was in the basement?” Rory asked. “Like an animal?”
“I thought it was a man,” Mary said.
As Mary’s breathing quickened, Renee’s eyes flashed at Evan’s.
“It chased me upstairs. I shot it. Five, maybe six times but it..it wouldn't die...”
Rory looked at Evan doubtfully, but Evan watched Mary with growing intensity.
“I know what this sounds like. That I have lost my mind or that I had some sort of nightmare. But I know what I saw.”
Mary's face was an awful pallid again, like the cream on top of plain yogurt. Her mouth trembled but the words had stopped working for her again.
“It's okay, Mary,” Renee said. “We're here. You're safe now. Take your time.”
Her hands wrapped around the cross in a death grip. She breathed deeply and the trembling gradually lessened.
“It wasn’t a man. It was too big to be a man. Its head…it touched the ceiling. I couldn't hurt it. And...”
As Mary trailed off into whispers they could not hear, her eyes pleaded with them to believe.
“You were dreaming,” Rory said.
“It was no dream,” Mary said. The harshness in her voice shook them. “And it was no drunken hallucination either.”
Renee patted Mary's arm and told her that everything would be all right, but the woman would have none of it.
“Its eyes weren't human. It was looking…looking right through me. I could feel it inside me.”
The forest engulfs me in blackness. There is no light, no sound, no life. And I see the boy. Its bloody eyes seeking and hungry.
As Evan's nightmare welled up inside of him, the conglomeration of its memories froze him in place. He could feel the stagnant, stale air within the gnarled overgrowth. He could smell the fetid decay, like spoiled food.
In a way that neither could explain, Mary and Evan were momentarily connected. He believed Mary, and their eyes met.
“This was the only thing that made it stop.”
When she held the cross in front of the stunned group, the room light caught its dull, worn surface, and it glimmered more brightly than the ambient illumination should have allowed. They all saw it, then immediately put it out of their minds. All except for Evan.
Shadows stirred at the edge of the room light. Randy stood against the hallway wall, listening to the hushed tones of their voices. It would be so easy to slip away now. He might not get another chance. But he could hear the soft sounds of Benny's breathing in the next room. He wouldn’t leave without his brother.
“I can't even tell you the last time I went to church. And before tonight I couldn't say that I believed in God, let alone Evil.”
She could see the looks on their faces. Their denial. All but Evan, whose eyes burned with intensity.
“Please, Renee. You know me better than anyone in this room. You have to believe that what I tell you is true.”
“I believe that you believe,” Renee said, her eyes doubtful and questioning.
“That's not enough,” Mary said. She was angry now. “I'm not superstitious. I'm not even religious. If you had seen it...If you had seen its eyes...its face...”
“This isn’t going anywhere,” Rory said. “I know you don't want to hear it, but you had a goddamn nightmare. And a right nasty one at that. It obviously scared the hell out of—”
“It was no nightmare!”
Renee tried to console her, but Mary pushed her away in anger.
“For how many years have you all known me? Have I ever said anything which led you to question my sanity? Do I lack the lucidity to tell the difference between reality and a dream?”
“No,” Renee said, and Rory nodded in agreement.
“If you don't want to believe me, then come with me to Randolph Road. Come see the bullet holes. Come see the doors ripped from their hinges and try to explain how I could have done it myself. Come and see, if you don't believe.”
Mary swung her legs off the couch. Rory placed his hands on her shoulders to keep her still. She pushed them away and stood before them.
“It won't take but fifteen minutes. Take me there. Now.”
“The roads are too dangerous,” Rory said.
“The roads are the least of our concerns if that thing is still out there. Drive me there, and let's be done with this ridiculous inquisition.”
Rory looked at Evan.
“What do you think?”
“I think something happened out there. And I think the sooner we figure out what happened, the sooner we can decide what to do about it,” Evan said.
Rory sighed.
“Right. Wake the boy, and we'll all go together. Nobody stays alone ‘til we figure this out.”
Evan poured himself a glass of water in the kitchen. His hands were trembling when Renee appeared and shut the door behind her. Water dripped from the faucet, solitary and hollow.
“You know something that you're not telling us,” she said.
She searched his face, and he looked away.
“It was something Mary said. When she talked about the eyes. Everyone looked at her like she had lost her mind. Everyone except you, that is.”
He shook his head and gazed through her, past the walls, across the threshold of dream and reality.
“You’ll think I’m insane, too,” he said.
“Try me.”
His face contorted, and then he was stricken with the same chill as Mary had been, hearing the words in his mind but unable to pull them to his lips. As her eyes softened, he believed he could tell her anything.
“1967. I was ten years old when a boy disappeared in Storberry. He hadn't been the first. We all knew the stories of people disappearing into the forest on the edge of town. But he was the first that we knew. He was a classmate. I even sat behind him in Miss Butler's math class.”
“Nedson?”
“Yeah, Brian Nedson. How on earth did you know that?”
“You're not the only one in this town interested in ghost stories. One of my student workers—”
“It's no ghost story,” he said, and his eyes were windows to a fiery landscape. “He was as real as you and me.”
“I'm sorry. That's not what I meant—”
“You don't disappear into the forest and come back a few months later with a few scrapes and bruises. Especially if you’re ten years old. Hell, we all knew he was as good as dead after a few days.”
“What does this have
to do with Mary's story?”
“First week of September, two days before school started. I was coming home from a friend's house on the south side of town. It was getting late, so I decided to cut through the edge of the forest to save time. I knew it was a stupid idea. But I was thinking about not getting home until after dark and getting grounded. So I just did it.
“You have no idea how thick and dark that forest is until you get inside of it. And by then it’s too late. I lost track of the sun. I panicked when I should have just stopped and gotten my bearings. Next thing I know I'm running in a circle and seeing the same fallen tree, the same bramble, the same everything. And it's getting darker.”
“Jesus, you must have been terrified.”
“I didn’t think I was ever going to find my way out of there. I was going to die in that place. And then I heard footsteps through the leaves. That should have scared me even more. I mean, no one goes into that forest at night. But I'm thinking it's a hunter or something, and I start yelling in the direction of the sound.
“Then there is this awful smell, like road kill or rotten meat, and the whole forest goes still.”
As Evan paused, unsure if he wanted to continue, the quiet murmur of conversation followed through the door. Renee put her hand on his arm, dread creeping up her back like a black spider.
“I see this…kid…stumbling at me through the trees. It's too dark to see his face, but he gets closer and it's him. It's Brian Nedson.”
“How could you be sure?”
“I went to school with him for five or six years. His face was plastered on signs all over town for an entire summer. It was him, all right. And I'm thinking I've found Brian Nedson, and I'm going to be some sort of hero. He's smiling at me, like he knew I would come for him all along.
“I just want to turn and run, because something's wrong. It's him, but it isn't him. He's got this ear-to-ear grin, like I just walked into a trap. I want to run. But I'm too scared. I can't move. And I see his eyes. His eyes. They aren't human. They're like burning coals…or blood. He's right in front of me, and I finally snap out of it and run.”
Evan’s body trembled. His stomach roiled in nausea.
“I ran and I ran, until I couldn't breathe. Somehow, by dumb luck, I just ran out of the forest into the meadow. I didn't even look back. I just kept running until I was home and in bed with the covers over my head. And I've never gone near that forest since.”
“Evan, you were only ten. I'm sure you were terrified of being lost, and your imagination—”
“I didn't imagine anything. I know what I saw, and somehow I think I know what Mary saw, too. I know how insane it sounds. I don't know what happened to this town tonight, but I think the forest has something to do with it.”
“Evan—”
“You asked me what I knew, and I told you. I don't expect you or anyone else to believe it. Let's not say anymore.”
Though Renee couldn’t bring herself to believe that Evan was accurately recalling his nightmare in the forest, she found herself buried in the deepest pit of fear she had ever known.
“Evan, why did you really come back to Storberry?”
“We're going to Randolph Road. Then you can all decide for yourselves.”
Eight
As Jen slept next to him on the living room couch, Tom drifted into dream.
It was a strange dream, the kind that demands attention yet produces no obvious explanation.
He was seated at his desk in Mr. Arrington's world history class, and the stale smell of chalk hung in the air.
A girl stood at the front of the class with her back to the empty rows. As he squirmed in her chair, her fingernails raked down the chalk board, and the irritation threatened to drive him into madness.
He wondered why they were the only two people in the room. No classmates, no teacher. Two thin strands of dusty light washed over the big oak teacher's desk. Tom could tell by the light's bloody streaks that the day drifted toward extinction.
He screamed for her to stop, and she raked the chalkboard again. Then her head started to slowly turn. He knew this girl. If he could just see her face. If he could just see—
He awoke with an unshakable chill. For a moment he thought he heard the sound again, as the vapors of dream evaporated into the ether, but there was only the hiss of static from the television.
Jen's head rested on his shoulder. The videotape had long since ended, and the television screen was filled with snow that danced across the walls like swarming wasps. As he rubbed the grit from his eyes, he wondered how long they had been asleep. The clock on the wall said it was after midnight. Where were Jen's parents?
Suddenly he was gripped by panic. His mother would be furious with him for not checking in with her. He was surprised she wasn't pounding on the door. Certainly she was at home—anger approaching the boiling point.
“Jen.”
When he shook her gently, she moaned and rolled over on the couch in a ball. She wore a contented smile, and as her chest rose and fell with each relaxed breath, he thought she looked like an angel.
He didn't want to leave her alone, for he had promised her that he would stay by her side. But he didn't want to wake her. It was better that she rest.
He whispered, “I'll be right back,” and covered her with a blanket.
He was careful not to wake her, but when he pulled on the door the hinges creaked. She mumbled something in her sleep.
He waited in silence until he was certain she hadn't awoken, then he closed the door behind him and slipped into the night.
The night smelled of freshly-cut grass, with a hint of smoke from somewhere on the east side of Storberry. A gloom lay heavy upon the neighborhood. Streetlamps shed pools of ivory at regular intervals, and treacherous murk waited at their borders.
As luck would have it, the one lamp between the Barrows' home and his had failed. It hummed overhead and flickered between black and dim.
The lights were doused inside the houses, except for two distant beacons of life at the end of the block.The growl of chainsaws emanated from the center of town.
The sidewalk drew away in the distance, like a perspective painting, fading to black at the midpoint. Trees overhung the walkway, like hulking monsters. Thick shrubberies were hiding places for the unseen.
The nagging feeling that something was dreadfully wrong with the night struck him with force. Something terrible, something unthinkable had happened. His skin crawled.
As he watched the shadows for signs of danger, his vision failed to penetrate the black. A troubling thought occurred to him.
If a person wanted to commit murder, the perfect time would be in the dead of night when the police were occupied across town, and the lines of communication were crippled. A night like tonight.
There were four houses between his residence and Jen's, and Tom counted each of them as he passed.
He watched darkened windows, half-expecting to see the wide eyes of a lunatic smiling down at him, while his neighbors lay chopped and mangled in their sleep. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, and he kept counting.
Houses passed in the pale cobalt of moon glow. The two-story Kingsley home emerged from behind a clump of poplars. The short walk had seemed to last for an eternity, and Tom exhaled for the first time in a long while. No matter how angry his mother was with him, he was safe.
Once I explain that Jen's parents are still missing, she will understand.
The lights were on inside his house, and a soft illumination at the front door emanated from the back of the house, probably from the kitchen. As he grasped the brass knob, he found that he door was unlocked.
When he entered the hallway he thought he smelled something burning in the kitchen. It was the aroma of meat, something vaguely familiar and harsh. He began to worry that his mother had started to cook and fallen asleep while waiting for him to come home.
“Mom?”
The kitchen door was closed at the
end of the hallway. Donna Kingsley never closed the kitchen door, preferring to keep the walkways open.
A sliver of light spilled from underneath the door, reflecting off the hardwood and fading at Tom's feet.
“Mom? Are you in there?”
No answer. He felt the same chill he had felt in the hill forest and on the darkened second landing of the Barrows’ home
He plunged into cold terror, something black and viscous. Fearing what lurked beyond the door, he stepped closer.
The door seemed to draw nearer, as though he were seeing it in a dream. He saw his hand extend outward, the light around his sneakers growing brighter.
Then the door was in front of him.
“Mom?”
As his hand reached for the door knob, he didn't want to touch it, fearing the brass would scald his skin. The sinister glow engulfed his feet to his ankles and flickered wickedly in white and orange.
An inner voice urged him to turn and run. It begged him not to open the door, but his conscious mind saw the flicker and screamed FIRE!
He grabbed the knob and leaned into the door. The hinges, rusted from disuse, issued an owl's screech.
Light flooded out of the kitchen. Donna Kingsley stood in a bathrobe at the sink with her back to him. She stood slicing carrots on a chopping board. While the fluorescent fixture hummed over the sink, a large pot boiled on the stove, the gas burner wrenched to its highest setting. Orange and blue flames crawled out from under the pot and licked at its sides. The pot water roiled over and caused the flames to snap wickedly.
“Mom? Why didn't you answer me?”
She dropped the knife into the sink and peered into the darkness beyond the back window. For several seconds they stood in silence, and the silence pressed upon him with such weight that he felt he must speak or lose his sanity.
“I'm sorry, I—”
She wheeled around to face him. What Tom saw caused him to fall back into the wall. His mouth quivered, his body paralyzed.
A young girl’s face stared back at him. Her skin was impossibly perfect, like porcelain. He recognized the girl’s face from a picture taken of his mother during her teenage years. The kitchen appliances reflected in the windows against a background of night, yet she was not in the reflection. He rubbed his eyes, and the woman with the doll’s face stalked closer.