by Jes Young
Pop set the phone down with a sigh. “And what would we tell them, Tabitha? That you’ve had a vision of your sister’s death?” He said vision like it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “If we call the police now, when your word is the only evidence of the crime, they will either think you are suffering from delusions or else that you are responsible for all the disappearances that have plagued our family as of late.”
Francis said, “He’s right, Tab.”
“If there was anything they could do for Rivers,” Pop added, “I would have called them immediately.” I looked at George and he nodded in agreement. “But this is a problem we are better equipped to handle ourselves.”
I wish I could say I demanded he call the police or that I used my own perfectly good dialing fingers to call them myself, but that’s not who I was then. I may have resented it or disagreed with him, but to me Pop’s word was still the last one. When he said don’t, I didn’t.
“In the morning,” he continued, “You and George will go to work as usual while the rest of us search the grounds. Once we have found something to report, I will call the police. Until then, as difficult as you may find it, you will have to trust that I am only doing what I must to protect you from them.”
“It’s not the police I’m afraid of.” I ignored Robbin’s out stretched hand, walked from the room and down the hall to the front door. Ripping it open, I went out into the night.
I know, I know. It is hard to believe I’m that stupid.
*********
I tromped down the grassy slope between Witchwood Manor and the gatekeeper’s cottage blinded by tears and shame, certain I’d failed Rivers when she needed me most, hating myself for being alive when she was not.
“Wait.”
I looked back over my shoulder to see Robbin hurrying down the front steps of the Manor. I wasn’t surprised to see him there – if anything I was a little surprised by how long it had taken him to come after me.
“I’m fine.” I tried to make my voice steady so he wouldn’t know I was crying. “Go back to the Manor.”
“Come on babe,” he called from behind me. “You know I can’t do that. Just wait for me.”
I didn’t slow down but I didn’t have to. In no time at all he ran up behind me and grabbed my waist, slinging me up onto his back without even breaking his stride.
“Please put me down and go back to the Manor.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not going to let you risk your life walking around alone in the dark because you feel bad about something that’s not your fault. You want to storm out of the room? Fine with me but you’d better take me with you.”
After a few minutes I relaxed against him, letting myself enjoy the feeling of being so close to his perfectly muscled body. I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
Robbin and I had been dating since junior high school but, at his insistence, we’d never done much more than kiss. When I asked him why he didn’t want more he would always gently change the topic. Most of the time I let him get away with it. It seemed untoward to pester him into sleeping with me and everyone knows begging isn’t sexy. Once in a while I’d get brave or stupid or some dizzying combination of the two and try again, but my attempts at seduction never worked. I’d pretty much resigned myself to the idea of being one of those rare brides who can legitimately wear white to her wedding but that night I was sad and scared and I wanted him to love me more than I wanted my pride. I decided to give it another try.
I pressed close to him, kissing his neck and ear, delighting at the little shiver I felt run up his spine. I wasn’t surprised when he set me down on my own feet and I wasn’t deterred either. I put my hand on his cheek and stepped close to him. I stood on tiptoes and brushed my lips against his. He let me kiss him for a second before he pulled away, pushing me back at the same time. “That’s enough.”
Embarrassed, I took another step away from him, pulling the house key from my pocket.
“It’s just that your grandfather trusts me to look after you.” He followed me across the front porch to the door. “And you’re upset. I’d be taking advantage of.…”
My hands were shaking so hard I couldn’t get the key into the lock. “Do you realize if it had been me tonight instead of Rivers I would have died a twenty-four year old virgin?” My voice cracked a little and the jangling keys fell from my hand. “Just tell me, is there something wrong with me? Don’t you think I’m pretty? Don’t you want . . . me?”
“You think I don’t want you?”
He grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around and slamming my body against his. The sweet, gentle Robbin I’d always known was gone, replaced by someone whose need was a palpable thing pressing hot and hard between us. There was something dark and wild in his eyes. Something desperate. He glared at me for a breathless moment before his mouth crashed against mine.
“Don’t ever think I don’t want you,” he growled. “You are all I want.”
He rolled his tongue over my lips, between them, darting into my mouth and away. He pushed his body against mine, each thrust of his hips deepening the ache growing inside me. I wanted to touch him, every part of him, before he came to his senses and pushed me away as he had so many times before.
His breath came in uneven bursts as I slipped my hand under his jacket, feeling the heat of his skin, the muscles of his back moving underneath my hand. I ran cautious fingers along the waistband of his jeans. With a sharp intake of breath he closed his eyes, letting me caress him.
“I want you, Robbin. Please.”
Without warning, he pushed me away. “This can’t happen.” He grabbed the keys from where they’d fallen and unlocked the door. “Nothing else is going to happen. Now get in the house,” he rasped.
Those were the last words he spoke to me all night.
Chapter Two
As we walked through the lobby at the Bennett Falls Bank, George smiled and greeted the loan officers, tellers, and customer service team members, asking after spouses and children by name. Watching him, so friendly and relaxed, you never would have guessed he was having anything other than an ordinary, murder-free day. I, on the other hand, looked like someone who had spent much of the night crying – probably because I was.
“I don’t know why we’re even here,” I said, stopping with him in front of his office door.
“I don’t know about you, but I work here.” He pointed to a silver nameplate mounted on his door before pushing it open.
Before Molly’s death turned my cousins into BFB’s most dedicated (and useless) employees, Pop, Becky, and I were the only Bennetts who worked at the bank. It wasn’t until afterwards that George and Francis started coming in too. They claimed to be taking an interest in Pop’s business but all they did was shuffle papers and follow me around. Rivers said Matt followed her around at home too. The three of them denied it, but I knew we were being watched.
“We won’t be here long,” George whispered after making sure there was no one else around to hear. “Can you keep it together for just a little longer?” I could tell that he was worried about me by the way he bit his bottom lip.
“I can try.”
I stood at Window 6 for the rest of the morning, making mindless conversation with customers as I cashed their checks and wrote down their account balances. I smiled and nodded in the right places, but I had no idea what they were saying. My heart wasn’t in it when I handed lollipops to their children. It was 11:45 by the time Francis came in. He looked so sad, so stricken. When I saw him coming across the lobby I said, “Oh my God, what happened?” as if I didn’t know.
He shook his head. “It’s Rivers, Tab. She’s . . . there’s been an accident. We have to get home.”
Before I could even turn to look for them, George came up behind me with my jacket and purse. Together, my cousins ushered me to the waiting car. Francis went around to the driver’s side while George opened my door for me. “Drive carefully,” he said, t
apping the roof.
Francis wasn’t capable of driving any other way. He checked his mirror and then turned to make sure no one was coming before pulling slowly onto the road. He did the speed limit and not a mile an hour more, with his hands firmly planted at ten and two the whole way home. He was steady and solid and deliberate. That was his way whether he was driving or chewing or mowing the lawn.
He’d taken up brooding recently. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him smile. He was always scowling at someone now, always ornery and argumentative. It was Pop’s fault. He’d always put too much on Francis, expected too much.
“Quit staring at me,” he said.
“I’m not.” He looked tired. His handsome face was unshaven and pale. His shirt was wrinkled and the knees of his pants were grass stained. I knew he’d been out in the woods all night and most of the morning. Obviously, he hadn’t found time to sleep or shower yet.
“You are,” he said. “Look out the window or something.”
I pictured him walking the grounds of Witchwood Manor, searching for a fresh grave under a dark sky.
“Where did you find her?”
He hesitated for a minute before he answered. “By the wall between the Manor and the deep forest.”
“Oh.”
On the north side of Witchwood Manor, the deep forest, as we’d always called it, went back and back for miles until eventually meeting up with state parkland that went back further still. When we were kids Rivers and I had been forbidden to play there. Not that we would have. It was too dark and the trees grew too close together, twisting around each other in an attempt to reach the sun. It looked like a fairy tale forest – the kind where witches and wolves are waiting to gobble you up whole.
“How did you find her?” I asked hesitantly.
“How did you know she was dead?” he replied without missing a beat.
“I wish I didn’t,” I admitted. “I just did.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Same.”
“I can’t decide whose super power sucks harder. Is it worse to be able to see but not help them while they die or to only be able to find them once they have?”
“I’d say it’s a toss up.”
We drove through the gates at Witchwood Manor just as the ambulance and police cars were starting down the long drive from the house. Their lights were flashing but there were no sirens. It was too late for that. Francis put his hand on my shoulder, breaking one of his cardinal rules of driving to comfort me.
“Don’t they want to talk to us?”
“It’s not necessary,” he said.
Pop was standing alone by the front door. He was clutching a handkerchief to his mouth in what would have been funny way under more lighthearted circumstances.
The night before I thought he seemed unaffected by the tragedy unfolding around him, but the pain in his wide blue eyes as he stood watching the ambulance leave Witchwood Manor told a different story.
Chapter Three
I looked up from the book I was reading and saw it. This light. Like the sun. Like a star. But brighter. Only instead of shielding my eyes from the glow, I found myself peering into it. Searching for something. I went to the window and watched it grow bright and bright and brighter still. There was something so familiar about it – but terrifying too.
As the light spread, I began to feel warm. Hot. A tingle spread across my skin like a flush, prickling like hives. I wanted it. God, how I wanted it. This light. To touch my skin. To hold me close. I can’t explain how desperate I was to reach it, how intense the need to feel it shining on me suddenly became. The next thing I knew I was running across the yard, ignoring the promise I’d made to stay inside unless someone was going out with me, heading toward the stone wall that surrounded the Manor and held the deep forest at bay.
The whole time, some part of me was yelling, go back. Some part of me knew it was a bad idea to be so far from the house; to be so unprotected and so very alone.
You’re going to get yourself killed.
I knew it was a possibility but most of me didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid of anything except losing the light until it collapsed in on itself and abruptly disappeared, leaving me alone at the edge of the woods in a sudden flash of bottom-of-the-well darkness.
As I stumbled forward, my eyes adjusting to the change in light, I realized the world hadn’t suddenly gone dark after all. I could clearly see the ground on the other side of the wall. There was nothing there. I don’t know what I expected to see – a meteor, a stray piece of the Hubble telescope maybe – something to explain the glow I’d seen. Something to make me not totally crazy for standing there.
“I’m totally crazy,” I said.
I heard a noise that sounded like a laugh. I swallowed back a rush of fear and the accompanying scream that crept into my mouth. I looked around but aside from a small black bird standing on the stone wall, there was no one around.
Calm down, I told myself. Turn around and walk slowly – slowly is the key here – back to the Manor.
I heard the laugh again. And then for some reason, panic I guess, I laughed too.
“You are being ridiculous, Tabitha,” I scolded myself.
I forced myself to ignore the feeling of being watched, pretending I didn’t feel that creeping dread that makes you run up the basement stairs even though you’re too old to be afraid of the bogeyman. I turned and started walking, fighting the impulse to run.
The closer I got to the Manor, the more certain I became that someone was following me, staring at me from only a few feet away. I didn’t know how, but I also knew that he was surprised to find me alone, surprised by how easy we were making it for him. He would be happy to kill me. He was looking forward to watching me die.
“I’m sure there’s no one there,” I reassured myself. “Turn around and see for yourself.” But I didn’t turn around. I didn’t move. I knew if I did he would know I knew he was there. He would get to me before I could get to the door. We would fight, he would win, and I would die.
Panic was setting in fast. It was getting hard to breath. Hard to keep from crying. Then two things happened at once that probably, definitely, saved my life. Hundreds of black-winged birds, thousands of them, came flying and swirling through the sky to perch on the bare tree branches all around me at the exact same moment as my cousin Matthew opened the back door and stepped outside. He shushed me with a wave of his hand before I could say how happy I was to see him. He stood with his eyes locked on something in the distance, somewhere far over my head, until I reached his side.
“Do you have a hearing problem I don’t know about?” he snapped. “Didn’t I specifically tell you to stay in the house? What are you even doing out here?”
“I saw something.” I swear I didn’t realize how lame that was going to sound until I said it out loud.
He was furious, his eyes wide and angry. “What did you see out here that was so important you were willing to die for a closer look?”
I knew I couldn’t I describe what I’d seen, what I’d felt, without sounding like I’d completely lost my mind so I said, “I don’t know. It was some kind of light.” As if that was any better.
“Some kind of light?” His voice was full of contempt but I noticed that even though I hadn’t said where I’d seen it, he turned to look at the place where the light had appeared. “When I tell you to stay inside, just do it. Don’t assume you’ll be OK if you decide to take a little stroll. You won’t be. If I’d stayed in the shower five more minutes you’d be drowning in dirt right now, do you understand that? Who else has to die before you see how serious this is?”
My bottom lip quivered as I tried not to cry. He closed his eyes and looked away from me, like he couldn’t stand the sight of me, before he said, “Robbin should be here any minute. Wait for him inside.”
When I opened the screen door the entire flock of black birds rose up together into the sky. The noise of thousands of wings beating at once was louder than thu
nder. I stood by the door to watch them fly away in a tight black cloud.
“Matt, I…” I was going to apologize for not listening to him, tell him I was sorry that my sisters were dead, ask him to stop pushing me away.
He didn’t let me. “Just go inside, OK? And don’t forget to lock the door.”
I was standing by the window, watching Matt as he was swallowed up by the darkness at the edge of the deep forest, when the front door burst open with a bang. I yelped without meaning to.
“Tab?” Robbin called. I could hear the panic and relief in his voice. “Tab? Where are you?”
He was half way up the stairs by the time I got to the foyer. He raced back down to my side and grabbed me and pulled me close, crushing me against his chest in a tight hug. “Are you OK? You look OK.” He pulled me close and then held me away so he could look me over again. “Did you see anything? Did anyone touch you?” I’d never seen Robbin so riled up. He looked dangerous and a little bit scary as I shook my head. “But you knew someone was there, right? You could feel him looking at you. Why were you alone? Where the hell was Matthew? Where is he now? Is he outside?” I nodded. “Don’t be scared. If there’s anything out there he’ll find it and if he does, it will never come back.”