Evil Stalks the Night

by Kathryn Meyer Griffith

  Could this be the nightmare? If so, I was weary of it. Maybe, I had to die to wake up.

  “Detective, you believe what you want. It doesn’t make a difference one way or another. What will happen, will happen. You can’t stop it, but you’ve been warned. I feel better now I’ve tried.”

  “I appreciate it, Sarah.” He was thoughtful for a moment and touched my hand lightly.

  An electric shock coursed down the length of my fingers and jumped off. He took his hand away, his eyes widening. He’d felt it too. He collected himself. “I’m going to get this maniac off your back. Track him down and put him away in a tiny, dirty cell, the farther away the better. I’m going to get him if it’s the last thing I do. I promise you. He’s not going to cause you more grief. He’s not going to cause anyone any more grief and any help you can offer, I’ll be more than glad to take.”

  It was then I realized he saw us as poor, misdirected victims. We weren’t responsible for what we chose to believe, not after what had happened to us.

  Wasn’t it better that way? Looking into his concerned gaze, I understood he’d really tried to understand. It wasn’t in his cop nature to do so.

  After he’d left, with one last hard glare at the splintered door on his way out, I laughed sadly. “See, Brother.” My sigh was heavy. “No one believes in ghosts and demons but us.”

  “You can’t say you didn’t try, Sis.” His voice was brighter than I’d have expected from the disconsolate look on his face.

  “Nope, you can’t say I didn’t try. So where are we now? Back where we started. Square one.” I was looking but not seeing the door.

  In my mind, arose a floating picture of a dead child among wet leaves dyed red with blood. At first, I thought it was an image of what had already happened. Then with an inward groan, I knew it for what it was. Something yet to come.

  Another image superimposed itself over that one. Jim…his band…a man lying very sick in a motel bed and slowly the images formed themselves into a certain order until I could read them like a message.

  “In a second, Jim, you’re going to get a telephone call.” Was my voice strained? I was still grasping for an understanding of what I’d seen. “You have to go away for a while.”

  His look was dumbstruck. “You’re kidding. You think I’m leaving you and Jeremy alone? I’m not going anywhere. What else do you see? What’s going on?” His eyelids drooped and I thought how little he’d changed since we were kids. Always so protective of me, but a coward at heart. Oh, how he tried to be brave. He just couldn’t seem to pull it off.

  “You’ll go.” I smiled weakly. “You have to go. Nothing’s going to happen to any of us while you’re away.” No, not to us, my heart cried, remembering the other image I’d seen. Not to us. This time. Not now.

  “You mean it’s safe?” He couldn’t fathom what I was telling him. “What…”

  The phone rang, its cry shattering the stillness of the house. Jim didn’t take his eyes off me as he picked it up and spoke to the person on the other end.

  When he hung up, I hated the way he was looking at me.

  “How did you know?” It was a stupid question and he waved his hands at me. “Forget I asked.” He sat down. “I guess you know as much as I do.”

  “No. Enlighten me.”

  “Well, it seems like the substitute lead guitarist I arranged for the band to use while I took time off, is sick. Apparently he was into drugs and the guys found him zonked out of his brain this morning. He can’t hold a guitar now, much less play one. They want me to drive back right away. They’ve got an important gig beginning next week in a fancy resort upstate. The money’s the best we’ve ever been offered. Too good to turn down. Rich’s wife, Beth, is about to have their first child and if there’s no work, there’s no money. If there’s no lead guitarist, there’s no job. They can’t find a replacement quick enough. They’re counting on me, Sarah. What am I going to do?” There was panic in his eyes.

  If there was anything outstanding about my brother, it was his loyalty. He couldn’t bear to let anyone down, if he could help it. He’d been with the band for many years, he thought of them as family, too. He was going to be Rich and Beth’s baby’s godfather when it was born. One of the other guys, the drummer, I recalled, had a chronically ill mother to support.

  They needed him and he’d already been gone too long.

  “You do what you have to, Jim. Go and help them.” Was it fear I felt, as I said it? Fear of being alone, or the fear I’d never see him again?

  “You sure it’s safe?” he probed.

  Safe? Was anything safe anymore? In my heart, I knew if it wanted to kill us it didn’t matter where we were. The house was safe, but for how long? The rest of our family had run as far away as possible and had it done any good? No. Grandmother’s house seemed to be the only haven we had. I toyed with her ring. Did the special gifts I so often cursed give us some protection? Was it why I was still alive? Had it been me all those years it really wanted? Was I the cause of my family’s murders? My head whirled and my stomach churned. If I walked out into the forest right now and let the thing kill me, would Jim and Jeremy be spared?

  “Sarah, are you sure it’s safe?” My brother’s voice broke through my reverie.

  “As safe as it can be. Or at least, I don’t see anything unsafe in your going.” I was telling him the truth, as far as I knew it. “I see all of us back here again.”

  “Alive?” It was a cheap shot, I thought.

  I frowned. “Yes, of course, alive.”

  “You’ve been wrong before.” How little he knew of the gift. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you two defenseless.”

  “We have Ben.” Ben. My mind wandered off track a little. Should I call him to tell him I had seen another child in another vision? It was about to happen again. Then the million dollar question would be, what good was the little information I had gleaned do him? Should I bother him with it? It often happened like this with only a sneak preview of coming events. In some cases I’d see more as time went on. Something I dreaded.

  On the investigations I’d helped the police with in Benchley, the first vision had come like this. Only a few pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes another catalyst was needed for me to see what came next. Ben, I’d figured out, had been the catalyst in this case. My sitting beside him had produced it. The image was like a lead line, gossamer thin, to the completed vision to come. Somehow earlier Ben had touched it off.

  “Thank God for Ben,” Jim said.

  “Right. There’s nothing you can do Ben can’t,” I told him.

  “But he doesn’t believe. It’s not the same.”

  “Does it really matter, you think? If he believes or not?”

  He shook his head. “Probably not. I still don’t want to go. Not after what’s happened. I don’t trust it.” His eyes shifted to the windows uneasily.

  “So? Are we going to live entombed in this old house for the rest of our lives until we die of old age? We have to keep living, don’t we? Come and go.”

  “Yes, we need to keep living.” He smiled faintly, and yawned. “Well, I’ll call them back and tell them I’m coming. But, only until they can get another guitar player. Sarah? I’ve decided to quit the road for good. Settle down here with you and Jeremy, if you’d let me. I’m tired of being rootless. I’ve had it and I want to have a real home.”

  I wasn’t surprised. I’d known it was coming. It was the way it had to be. The trap closing in, assembling us here.

  “What will you do, then? Playing has been your life. It’s all you ever wanted. All you’ve ever known.”

  “Until now. I want a change. I want to be here.”

  “Jim, you don’t have to do this for me, you know. I won’t ask you to give up what you love to stay here and protect us.”

  “Oh, i
t’s partly that, but it’s a lot more. I want to stay in one place. There are a lot of reasons why I’m quitting the band. But, in the end, behind it all, I’m sick of running.” He was asking me to let him stay.

  “Jim, it’s your home, too. You’re always welcome. What will you do?” I repeated.

  “What I’ve always wanted to do. Write my music and try to sell it to other artists. Do some local nightspots as a solo once in a while to help make ends meet. There are larger towns around here within driving distance. They need live entertainment, too. I don’t need a lot of money. I’ve saved some and won’t be a burden to you and Jeremy. I’ll pay my own way, you’ll see.”

  “Don’t worry about it now. We’re sitting pretty good. The house is ours free and clear. That’s a big expense we don’t have anymore. I’ll get a job if I have to or sell my artwork freelance. I made pretty fair money at it once. I’ll ask Ben if he has any ideas where I could market it. I have so much right now I could sell. We’ll make it,” I said brightly.

  For the first time in days, Jim seemed cautiously hopeful as we sat up making plans for our future; after he’d made sure the damaged front door could still be opened and closed. It could. It was strange, I reflected later up in my room as I got ready for bed, the longer we stayed in this house, the more we loved it, and regardless of the danger we knew existed here, the more we wanted to stay.

  I smiled into the dark as I lay down and pulled the covers over my shoulders, thinking perhaps the house had bewitched us all.

  Perhaps it had. All I knew was I never wanted to leave. At what point, I sleepily wondered, had it ceased to be, “am I staying or am I going” and become “I can never leave”? No, it only wasn’t the invisible shield the house seemed to have against the thing in the woods, and no, it wasn’t even the warning I’d received, I’d better not leave for fear of losing Jeremy, it was something rooted far deeper.

  It’s this house. I was meant to live here. I fell asleep thinking about how much I’d grown to love it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The rocks were gone. All of them. Jeremy was down on his knees feeling in the dark with his hands. He was sure he’d piled them right here. He was sure. Who could have taken them? The night shadows whispered around him and he shivered with the chilliness the night had brought. He had to be very careful. Quiet. He didn’t want to wake his mom and uncle up. He’d caused them enough trouble today.

  Where were those confounded rocks?

  “Charlie,” Jeremy hissed out into the night. “You fink! You took them back, didn’t you? You Indian giver!” Jeremy finally came to the conclusion the rocks were really gone. If they’d ever existed at all, he thought.

  He perched on the top step of the porch and rubbed his tired eyes. It was so dark out. Children laughed on a distant wind.

  A breeze ruffled his hair and slapped his lightweight pajamas against his skin. It was so warm for April, it was what his mom had said that afternoon. But he liked it. It felt like an early summer.

  What was out there? Had Charlie, like the sparkling rocks, been a figment of his imagination? He mulled it over as he tried to conjure the pale face up again in his mind’s eye. He drew a blank.

  He couldn’t remember what Charlie had looked like.

  His skin had been pasty white like stone, he thought. Or had it? Blue eyes? Or green? Jeremy could neither remember if the boy had been short or tall, fat or thin. Even the sound of his voice and most of their conversations were lost to him. Had he dreamed Charlie up out of his loneliness? He could have. Must have.

  He bit his lip, fretting. No, Charlie had been there. Charlie was real. He couldn’t forget that. Some inner sense warned him never to doubt it. He remembered the fear. More laughter and voices rode the wind and brushed by his ears.

  Jeremy sneaked back into the house and crept up the stairs to his room, still thinking about Charlie and the missing rocks. He suspected the whispers in the woods were evil…like Charlie.

  Whose side was Charlie on anyway? It was a puzzle. The thing in the woods was bad. He was sure of it. It had killed people. Charlie had tried to frighten him. He knew it was Charlie who had chased him home and tried to batter the door down. Charlie had stolen the rocks. Charlie was evil, too. He stood at the window. A sudden wind rocked the glass pane. A face, or part of one, flickered in the darkness. Jeremy gasped and ran for his bed, pulling the covers over his eyes.

  * * * *

  The wind retreated to the cool woods.

  It was brooding. Silent. It had tried to get them and had failed. It had tried to lure them out and had failed. It had sent one of its own to lure the bait to him and enable him to catch the woman. All had failed.

  They always managed to escape.

  It tried to think, what was keeping them from it? He roared his summons and from under every bush and tree-trunk tomb came those lost souls it had worked so hard to capture and enslave during the endless years. Charlie was but one among so many, many others. These were the ones too weak to resist its call, not strong with the glow like those in the house. The captive specters came and floated around it, each a translucent, anemic essence of the puny creatures they’d once been. It collected them like a crow collects shiny baubles.

  It could taunt or torture them according to its whim. Sometimes it even promised to release them for services rendered, but never did. It liked to see them squirm and beg as they lingered here in its hellish limbo, never able to die or be at peace. Their punishment for being weak and their sentence for not obeying.

  Evil. Yes, it was evil. It could roam the world and take what it wanted. So few could stand up to it, so the search was everlasting.

  One good one. One good essence could appease its hunger and boredom for a time. After all, what else did it have to exist for, but the hunt and the kill? To find and destroy goodness was the only reason it existed.

  Without goodness to fight, it would cease to be.

  Glowing hideously alone there in its nocturnal domain, it herded its ghostly pawns before it like cattle. If it could, it would have smiled, at the meek way they danced to its tunes. But evil has no smile but death. It was bored.

  Sometimes it forgot its own power. Sometimes it’d forget for long periods of time what it was after or whom. The lethargy would eventually pass and it would go on as before as if only a moment had passed. A second was a year and a minute, an eternity.

  Time meant nothing when something could never die.

  It slept then. Pulling into itself to solve its problem—how to kill them.

  The woods sighed with the new peace and the trees embraced the dark sky as the world went to sleep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I had been dreaming something about Jonathan. I couldn’t be quite sure what, because as sleep waned, so did its memories. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the bright sunlight dappling my room, there remained the familiar vision of Jonathan in his blue uniform. How many times I’d seen him like that in the years of our marriage. For a time after I awoke, I felt the old grief and loss as I looked at the empty pillow beside me.

  What are you doing now, Jonathan? Are you happy? I didn’t know. He never talked to me anymore, not even on the phone. In fact, he hadn’t talked to Jeremy in so long I was beginning to worry.

  The sense of loss didn’t last long. Outside, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. It was too beautiful a day to be unhappy. I’d faced my loneliness long ago and conquered it. A new world lay out there. I had my son. Jim. My home.

  “Plus Ben?” A tiny voice chirped inside my head. It was a silly, premature thought and I didn’t know what had put it into my mind. I climbed out of bed and stretched luxuriously before the bay windows.

  I’d taken my grandmother’s séance room for my own. I’d always loved those tall, beautiful windows. I’d cleaned the room until it was spotless and painted it
a happy yellow. I had hung my mother’s crucifix next to my dresser. Delicate lace curtains, thin enough to see out of and the sunshine to come in, hung across the windows. At this height, the trees kept prying eyes out. I loved this room. I was going to fill it with my books and paintings, to make it my own miniature world.

  Jeremy and Jim were sleeping and I tip-toed to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. It felt good on my cold skin because the mornings were still cool. Afterwards I went downstairs to the kitchen.

  I made a pot of coffee and bacon and eggs for myself, leaving everything out so that when the fellows came down I could make them some too.

  Nothing out of the ordinary had occurred the night before and though I knew, before I turned the first page of the morning paper it was still a welcome relief. The papers were full of the last murder and theories as to why the victim had been killed. The child’s poor tiny life had been spread out for all to see. I slapped the paper shut and drank my coffee, happiness shattered. I knew there was more I could have done and there was more I could do, had to do.

  But how?

  I was so deep in thought I didn’t see Jim when he entered the kitchen. I glanced up and he was smiling at me. He seemed happier than he had in days. So he had missed the band? Perhaps a change of scenery was what he needed.

  “How about a cup of coffee. Bacon and eggs?” I asked him, getting up to pour the coffee. Old habits died hard. I was used to waiting on my men, it came naturally. Jim claimed a chair and picked up the paper, nodding at me. I saw a frown slide over his face as he noticed the headlines, but he shook it off and held out an empty cup to me with a smile. I filled it.

  “Bacon and eggs sound good. I’d better take advantage of home cooking while I can. It’s on the road again for me.” He grimaced, rubbing his tummy like he would soon be depriving it. “I hate restaurant food, Sis. I’m going to miss your cooking. Up early, aren’t you?”