Something inside warned me to remain anonymous and save us both a lot of grief. I’d decided from now on I’d be more cautious about revealing my psychic abilities. If I were smart I’d ignore them altogether and try to lead an ordinary life. Try to forget what I’d been. I had to, not only for my sake but for my son’s. He deserved a normal childhood.
“Anything look familiar yet, Mom?” Jeremy questioned as the day wore on. He was taking in everything, his eyes wide. “How about that?” Pointing his finger at various local landmarks. “That?”
“Afraid not.” I searched the passing countryside as anxious as he to begin recognizing things. “It’s been a long time since I was in these parts. I was a kid when we lived here and a teenager when we left. I guess I never paid much attention.” I didn’t tell him I’d had too much else on my mind back in those days.
He was silent for a long time, his face pressed against the frosted window as his eyes devoured the sights. We stopped at a quaint roadside cafe for supper and ate hamburgers smothered in pickles and cheese. No side dishes. No dessert. I was cautious with the money this time. Jeremy wasn’t very hungry and I wondered if he was overly excited or merely tired. Or both.
We ate quickly and continued on our way. There was an unspoken urgency between us to get where we were going. He seemed as nervous as I the closer we got to our new home.
“I wonder what it looks like,” he mused. The sun began its slow descent and the sky was tinted with feathery shades of oranges and winter pinks. I hadn’t seen such a beautiful sunset in years. The clouds had transformed from ugly grays and blacks, to misty pastels flying above the earth like tropical birds. The temperature hovered close to freezing and thin coats of ice were forming around the tree limbs, the telephone poles and wires, and in patches across the highway. Lovely, but dangerous; so I slowed down. Random puddles had turned into glass.
“What what looks like?”
“Your old house.”
It took me a second to get what house he was referring to. “Where I grew up, you mean?”
“Yeah, can we go by it, please, Mom, before we go to our new house?” He grinned in the twilight, lightly touching my hand. “I’d love to see where my old mom grew up.” He was fascinated with the past. My past. Anyone’s past. History. Though a child himself, he loved old things.
I avoided his gaze. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I’d never spoken to Jeremy about my old homestead or about my family and what had happened there those long years ago. I’d thought I was protecting him. He didn’t know about Suncrest. Sure, I’d told him about the happiest parts of my childhood and my brothers and sisters but I hadn’t told him about the murders, not in so many words. He only knew they’d died and there was no one left but Jimmy and me. He’d seemed to instinctively understand my hesitation, the pain inside, and hadn’t pried too much. He vaguely remembered my mom and dad.
They died when he was about four.
More than anything in the world, I was leery of revisiting the rambling brick house on the edge of the woods. It was too close. At least my grandmother’s house was a distance away from the woods where the bodies had been found; far enough away from the haunted fields of my childhood home.
I didn’t want to go back to my old house.
“Please, Mom?” he begged. “You’ve told me so much about it. I want to see it.” I looked at my son and saw the stubborn set of his chin and felt my heart sink. He was so determined, but he was only a child and could never understand.
Sooner or later I’d have to face it. I couldn’t be afraid forever. Not if we were going to live in Suncrest, even for a short while. I had to see if things had changed so I’d know what to do. This was as good a time as any. It wasn’t dark yet and, if I remembered correctly, the house was up ahead a mile or two away.
“Okay,” I agreed. “We’re going to drive past it anyway, so you’ll see it.” My mouth was cotton-dry and my heart began thudding wildly under my coat. What would it be like, seeing it again?
I wasn’t a helpless child any longer. I could take care of myself, couldn’t I?
“Great. How much farther?”
“Should be right up ahead.” Stiff from the hours of driving, I was tired. It was later than I’d planned on arriving. It was twilight, a dangerous time on Suncrest. “We’ll drive by slowly. It’ll be dark soon and we need to get where we’re going. We can’t waste time gawking or lollygagging, understand?” I knew my tone was harsh, but I couldn’t help it. I felt strange, unsettled being close to the old place.
It’s all right. All right, I told myself. Drive by. The windows are closed. The doors are locked. Drive by fast and nothing can hurt us. Nothing.
I felt suddenly nauseous as we grew closer. The woods were around us now and on the horizon an echoing nightmare began to take shape. The lay of the land was too familiar. I was cold, but I was sweating. The driveway. The fields. The hulking sinister trees.
I screeched the car to a stop, spinning the wheels in the mud and ice, my eyes riveted ahead through the twilight’s fading light. I couldn’t believe it.
“Mom, what’s the matter?” Jeremy had been thrown towards the dash by the sudden stop and he looked over at me with wide confused eyes. “Why’d you stop so quick? I about crashed into the window, for gosh sakes. Mom?” He shoved at my shoulder trying to make me hear him.
“We’re here, then? Where’s the house?” he asked, looking at me. “Are you all right, Mom?” His voice was suddenly frightened. He knew about my visions, even if he didn’t understand them. He knew sometimes I had them awake.
“I don’t believe it.”
“Mom!”
“The house was here, son.” I’d found my voice. “I swear it was. It’s gone. My God,” I mumbled. Putting my hand to my throat I stared at the spot where the old brick house had once stood.
“It never crossed my mind they could have torn down the old place,” I mumbled more to myself than to Jeremy. “Or burnt it down.”
“Jeremy, no don’t!”
My son had shoved open the door and jumped out of the car. He was running towards the empty skyline and the site where once a formidable house had been. A wave of fear struck me at the discovery. The site of my innermost nightmares no longer existed. Then I was terrified Jeremy was out there alone so near to the woods.
I slid from behind the wheel and followed him at a brisk pace, my hands shoved into my coat pockets, playing with the torn linings inside. I kept my eyes on the small bobbing figure ahead of me. Jeremy had stopped in front of the cherry tree and swung around to face me, his hands held out and a perplexed smile lurking on his lips.
It was freezing and the rain had begun again, but this time it was dancing ice particles that swirled around our heads. The wind howled and angrily whipped my hair across my face. I yanked a heavy woolen cap from my pocket and tugged it down over my head, covering my ears. I walked up to where my son stood staring at the burnt-out shell of my old home and the waving trees of the distant woods beyond. He was watching something.
I would not allow my teeth to chatter. I would not show my despair or the intimidating, violent emotions I was feeling the closer I came to the ruins. I stepped up and laid a hand firmly on my son’s shoulder.
He seemed troubled and studied me with a stunned expression in his eyes, as if he couldn’t put what he felt into words; yet I felt the shock as our gaze met and inwardly I cringed.
He’d felt it, too.
He took my hand and we bucked the wind as it screamed around us. The sun was nearly gone and the world glittered with its blanket of ice. Without a word I led him to the car where we would be safe and warm. For a moment, I was afraid he’d hesitate and pull away, but I smiled at him and the spell was broken. We made our way carefully back to the car.
My bones felt like the dead branches and ragged lumps of burned timber
s and bricks littered across the site. My mind was vividly aware of the overpowering scent of roses and I was reminded of a long ago summer storm…and the voices. I was bombarded, mesmerized, by uninvited memories. I had to fight to walk away. They tugged and nipped at my retreat as we hurried towards the car.
“Sarah! Where are you?”
I froze. The whispers and giggles were so familiar. And far away in the distance, as if they were frolicking with the treetops or the rolling, angry clouds above, I could hear more childish voices: “Allie. Allie come in free. Allie, Allie all in free. Sarah come home.”
Sad laughter drifted around me. I looked at Jeremy and knew he couldn’t hear them. Or the laughter. Only I could.
I halted, one hand on the car door handle and the other still tightly around Jeremy’s. I pivoted around to stare at the burned shell of my old home and I listened.
Nothing now. Nothing.
More than anything I had the strongest urge to run away from this cursed place; to keep running and never look back or stop until I was hundreds of miles away.
Why had I returned? How could I have been so stupid?
“Mom?” Jeremy’s face was ghostly pale in the faint light, his nose twitching like a scared rabbit. “What’s that smell?” he whispered. “Do you smell it, Mom? Do you?”
Of course he’d know what it was. I’d planted rose bushes outside the apartment.
“Roses, son, they’re roses.”
I hugged him and shoved him into my side of the car, sliding in beside him. I started it and turned on the lights.
“But it’s only March, Mother.” He shivered in his coat he’d wrapped up around his face and nose, snuggling in the fur collar.
“I know.” I turned the car around, got it back on the highway and aimed in the right direction.
“Let’s go home.” It slipped out before I could stop myself.
“Home?” Jeremy sighed. I could see he was exhausted, cold and bewildered by what he’d just experienced. “Home isn’t here. We don’t have a home, not anymore.” His voice was tinged with despair.
“We have a…”
“No, we don’t. It’s probably like back there. Nothing.” He fell silent, brooding in his corner; cutting himself off from me as he’d done so often since his father had left. It was beginning to worry me, those sullen silences.
I was weary, too, and didn’t feel like arguing. Didn’t want to admit he could be right. If my childhood home was in ruins then perhaps my grandmother’s house was as well. I didn’t want to think about it. If it was gone, too, I honestly didn’t know what we were going to do.
Pricking me with every breath I took was the nagging suspicion that I never—never—should have come back.
That somehow, sometime soon, I’d be very, very sorry I had.
Chapter Six
Grandmother’s old house was still there.
In the night’s expanding gloom, sitting in the warm car, I studied it as best I could. I lit up a badly needed cigarette and stared. Jeremy slept beside me, curled into a tight ball that grunted and muttered occasionally. I debated if I should wake him to see it or not.
It’d been so long I’d almost forgotten how huge it was.
The house was one of those bastardized Victorian styles which couldn’t be comfortably squeezed into any particular category, because so much had been altered and added through the years. My grandfather hadn’t been able to tolerate anything in its purest form; he’d had to muck with it. Sitting there taking it all in, I didn’t need bright light. I remembered the house very well. A huge, two-story frame with a ridiculously ornate, tiered portico in the front, held up by two, tall, white columns, made the house look like it belonged on a southern plantation instead of in the middle of a sleepy small Midwestern town. The tall, narrow windows were made of rare curved glass. Pointed iron fences surrounded the place, making it look like a cemetery.
Rubbing my bleary eyes, and leaning over the steering wheel, I wanted to go to sleep like Jeremy and forget everything.
The dwelling was a dilapidated wreck. Weeds had taken control of the grounds, obliterating the first floor. The paint had peeled off. There were loose boards everywhere. The doors and windows were nailed shut with jagged wooden slats—to keep vandals away I supposed. I wondered about the inside’s condition. How many scrubbings would it take to get the wooden floors shining again? Were there any floors left to mop and polish?
If I weren’t so disgusted and exhausted, I would have felt sorry for the old place. It reminded me of an elderly frail woman who’d let time pare her away to nothing. It made me want to weep. I couldn’t tell who I felt sorrier for, myself or the house.
It looked like a hopeless case.
“Mom? We here?” Jeremy’s voice was drowsy with sleep. He rubbed his eyes and nudged me half-heartedly.
“Yes, we’re here. You want to look?”
“Do I have to?” But he was already peeking from under heavy lids. “Jesus! What I can see looks like a wreck, Mom. Do we really have to live in a dump? It probably has two million termites and they’re all waiting for us so they can attack. You’re not going to make us spend the night in a spook house, are you?” he pleaded, gaping at the house, his eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know.” I relented, giving it serious thought. “It is a lot later than I’d planned to get here. It’s dark and the place doesn’t have electricity or heat yet.”
“Jesus, Mom.” He was wide awake now.
“And everything’s nailed and boarded shut.”
“Mom!”
“Maybe we could find a cheap motel for tonight.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard yet. Let’s go!”
“On the other hand, we have to watch our money and wouldn’t you love ‘camping out’ in a haunted house and ‘roughing it’?”
The scathing look he threw me could have been framed.
“I was only kidding. It’s too late to open up the house now, with no electricity. I thought we’d get here sooner. So, you’re off the hook for tonight.” I restarted the car and after one last glimpse of our new home, I put it into drive and pulled away.
“As much as I hate the thought of spending money, I know we have to get a room somewhere. It’s too darn cold; even if we could get into the house in the dark, we’d freeze.”
Jeremy was either sulking again or he’d fallen asleep again. “We’ll come back in the morning. Things will look better then, you’ll see.” He didn’t answer me. But what he would have said hung in the cold air like frost.
It was after eight and night had dropped its curtain. I wasn’t sure if I could find lodging this late and had no idea where to look. I steered into the first filling station and asked. They told me there was a reasonably priced motel a couple of miles down the road. What they meant by reasonable I didn’t ask. If it had a bed, a heat source, and running water somewhere inside, I’d be satisfied. A warm bath was suddenly the most important thing in my life.
The motel I checked us into was about as large as the gas station. I marveled at the conveniences of electric lights and hot running water once we entered the room, by the looks of the place, I really hadn’t expected them.
Jeremy was half asleep and I directed him to a bed and helped him undress. That was something he never allowed me to do any more, except under the most adverse circumstances. I tucked him in and took my bath. I ended up settling for a lukewarm shower because a shower was all they had and the water wouldn’t get hot anyway. It didn’t make any difference; there were so many bugs in the bathroom, I was glad they didn’t have the time to amass and carry me away.
I slipped into bed next to Jeremy. I’d tried the room’s television and found it didn’t work. Laying there in the dark, I couldn’t help but review the preceding weeks and months.
Depressed, I�
��d decided not to read or do anything else, but go to sleep. Depression affected me that way. If I didn’t want to face life, I went to sleep. Tonight I didn’t want to face anything. Sleep was a great healer…when I didn’t dream.
Tomorrow would be a long day.
But sleep played the crafty scoundrel and eluded me. After an hour of lying perfectly still and pretending to sleep, I gave up. Propping my hands behind my head on the pillow, I stared down at my son. Some sort of flashing light across the highway illuminated his sleeping face in pale green and yellow rays. It made him look like a baby again and I couldn’t resist brushing the hair gently from his face and thinking of the past.
I missed my wedding ring. It’d always reminded me of a daisy made of tiny diamonds. So beautiful. I rubbed my finger where it used to be. It would have glittered in these muted lights and twinkled with a life of its own. It’d also been a talisman for me, signifying security and contentment. The grand prize. Now it lived alone and abandoned in a special compartment of my purse. In a way it was like me. Put away. Forgotten. It outlived its usefulness and had no meaning now. I supposed soon its glitter would fade and I’d bury it deep in my jewelry box.
I smiled into the emptiness and encountered my blurred reflection in the mirror that hung above the cardboard dresser across the room. I quickly looked away. It was an old superstition my grandmother had instilled in me when I was a child and still stubbornly hung on. A person should never look into a mirror in a dim or darkened room because what might gaze back at them wouldn’t be their faces, but the face of a lost spirit, a fiend or a demon. Since the day she’d told me that little gem, I couldn’t look into a mirror in a darkened room. I hated myself for my cowardice but I couldn’t help it.
Evil Stalks the Night Page 7