But there was one thing Landon liked that Gary also enjoyed. Fire. Once a week Gary would roll his brother to the burn pile at the back of the yard. He would leave Landon there while he collected the garbage for the week and piled it high. Gary was careful not to sit Landon too close; a stray spark could be disastrous.
On that day, the day the Reverend Morris went to visit the widow Luella Wingert and administer Communion, the wind was especially lively. It came from the north and brought with it cooler air and a rugged attitude. As he always did, Gary pushed Landon to within ten feet of the fire, ignited what was there, and left to gather the rest of the garbage from the kitchen and back porch.
When he emerged from the house just minutes later, the fire in the burn pile was already as high as a man, whipping about angrily in the wind. And Landon was on the move. He’d managed to get his withered hands around the tires of the wheelchair and had inched closer to the fire.
Gary dropped the trash bags and bolted for his brother. Halfway there a gust of wind ripped through the fire, throwing flames toward Landon and momentarily engulfing the boy. Fiery arms encircled him and groped at his clothes, his face, his hair. Gary’s heart thudded in his chest like a sledgehammer on concrete. The flames ignited Landon’s shirt and trousers. Gary was still a good fifty feet away; he pushed his legs harder, urged them to move faster, ripped off his shirt as he ran. It was amazing how quickly the fire took to Landon’s clothes. Within seconds the boy was covered with flames. His arms flailed about, and his weak screams echoed across the clearing.
Gary reached his brother in full sprint and threw himself at the chair. It tumbled sideways, spilled Landon onto the ground. Gary pounded on him with his T-shirt, tried desperately to smother the flames. It took what seemed like hours for the last of the fire to be extinguished, and by the time it did Landon lay motionless and charred. He was only eleven; his lungs weren’t strong to begin with.
Back in the room in Harold’s house, the funeral parlor, Gary looked at his own arms and the burn scars that covered most of them. They had faded over the years, but the tight, smooth skin was a constant reminder of his failure.
Landon in the casket, however, showed no sign of the cause of his death. His skin was smooth and supple, the skin of a child. Gary wanted to touch it. He needed to prove to himself that this was real, that the boy in the casket was really his brother. He lifted a hand and hesitated, returned it to his side. He pulled in a slow breath and lifted his hand again.
Landon’s eyes opened, rolled around in their sockets, then found Gary.
Chapter 54
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE, wasn’t it?
Marny didn’t want to turn around, didn’t want to face the truth of where he was. He couldn’t be back in the old house. He was in Harold’s house; he’d come here with Gary and William, looking for Esther.
“Bustah, I’m talkin’ to ya,” Karl said.
Still Marny held his ground. His head was a little foggy from the fall and hitting it. He felt his clothes; they were dry. Had he imagined the whole thing? Had he hit his head and blacked out? This was all a dream; he was sure of it. The whole thing was a dream. He was still lying at the bottom of the staircase, unconscious. But that had happened after the whole water down the steps thing, after Gary had ascended those steps and disappeared, after William had gone missing. Maybe he was still lying on the ground up on that mountain with a gunshot wound to the head, teetering between life and death, and his brain had concocted all of this. He grabbed his head with both hands. His mind spun in circles, doubling back on itself. Nothing made sense.
Behind him, Karl didn’t give up. “Hey. Don’t ya ignore me. Turn around and face me like a man.”
Slowly Marny turned and faced his stepfather. Karl seemed larger than he’d been the last time Marny saw him, but that couldn’t be. It had to be this house playing tricks on him, the lighting maybe.
Karl squared his shoulders and jutted his chin. “Ya in my way, Bustah. The game’s gonna be on soon. Why don’tcha make yourself useful and get me a beer.”
The numbness was back in Marny’s feet and hands. He knew this scene, knew how it would play out. He’d run through it countless times in his mind. He had to get out of there; he couldn’t go through it again.
Karl stared at him with narrowed eyes. When he squinted like that, his small, wide-set eyes almost disappeared in his head. “Well, watcha waitin’ for?”
He came at Marny, but Marny didn’t move. This wasn’t happening. It was part of his imagination, a memory his brain had dug up and replayed in an attempt to jump-start itself after the concussion he’d received from hitting his head on the banister. Or after receiving a bullet to the head. That was the only explanation that made sense.
Karl pushed past Marny, bumped his shoulder, and knocked him off-balance. He smelled of beer and body odor. He was real— too real. This was no concoction of images and sounds that had been hidden away in the neurons of Marny’s gray matter.
Before he sat in his Barcalounger, the brown one with the tear in the armrest, Karl looked at Marny and raised his eyebrows. “Well? You gonna get me a beer or not?”
Marny didn’t say anything.
Karl snapped his fingers. “Hey, Bustah. Ya there? Ya deaf? A beer. How ’bout it?”
No matter what he said, this scenario would have the same ending, and it put a lump the size of his fist in Marny’s throat. Nothing could change the outcome, or could it? Could Marny stop the inevitable? He had to try. It was time to stand up to the curse that had followed him his entire life and had stolen the lives of so many loved ones.
Karl sat, and Marny turned away from him.
“Don’t ya turn your back on me, boy.” Karl’s voice boomed throughout the first floor.
Marny headed for the staircase, first at a walk, then a run.
Behind him Karl screamed and cussed, demanded he return and fetch him his beer. But Marny was already halfway up the stairs. This time no water poured down them, and they did not collapse on him.
At the top he knew exactly where to go. He headed for his mother’s bedroom. She sat on the bed, combing her hair. When he saw her he almost burst into tears. She looked exactly like she had that day, the day she …
“Hello, Marny.” She smiled at him, a warm smile, her smile. But it quickly faded. “What’s the matter?”
Footsteps thundered up the stairs. Karl was on his way.
Marny panicked. “Mom, you need to get out of here. Go. Out the window or something. Just get out of here.”
She smiled again. “Oh, don’t be silly. Out the window? Why in the world would I go out the window?” She didn’t get it, the danger, the nightmare that was on its way.
“Mom, please, just do it.”
Karl’s footsteps reached the top of the stairs and started down the hall. Marny jumped up and went to shut the bedroom door.
“Marny—”
But Karl was there quickly and blocked the door with his foot. Marny leaned against it, but Karl pushed the door open and grabbed him by the shirt. “You’ll pay f’ this, ya lobstah.” He shoved Marny against the wall, then went for Janie.
Fear shadowed her face and twisted her mouth.
“Woman, your son is outta control.” Karl reached her and grabbed a handful of hair. He yanked her head back. “Since he’s too stupid to get me my beer, ya can do it for him, show him how it’s done.”
He pulled her up by her hair and dragged her toward the door. Marny tried to stop him, but Karl was built like a bulldozer and deflected every one of Marny’s assaults. Finally he jammed his elbow into Marny’s stomach, doubling him over. Nausea radiated through his abdomen, caused the muscles to cramp and spasm.
It was happening just as it had five years ago. In Marny’s attempt to change the past, he’d re-created it. He couldn’t escape what the past had already written.
He struggled to his feet and reached the hallway just as his mother and Karl neared the top of the stairs. Karl still had a grip on her
hair. Her eyes were wild with fear, and she was crying.
“Now, get down there and show ya lazy, stupid son how to get a beer from the fridge. It ain’t that hard.”
He gave her a shove, and she clumsily stumbled down a step, lost her footing, tripped, and plummeted head first. Over and over she tumbled until she rested at the bottom, one arm pinned under her body, her head bent at an odd, sickening angle. There was no expression on her face, no light in her eyes.
Karl cursed and casually descended the steps. At the bottom he pushed Janie’s limp body out of his way with his foot and hollered up to Marny. “Ya wanta take care a’this?”
Marny ran down the steps, but there was nothing he could do. There was no need to check for a pulse, no need to try to revive her. He knew how this ended.
Chapter 55
DARKNESS CAN HAVE a weight all its own.
Esther opened her eyes against darkness so heavy she thought at first she was under a blanket. Her mind swam in some murky, distant water, confused, disoriented. For a moment she thought she was back in her house, in bed. Not Gary’s house, but her house, where happiness once lived and she was a carefree child. An only child. Her bed was so warm then, so soft. Sleep came easily and soundly, a welcome gift at the end of a day filled with play and laughter and lots of smiles. And her dreams were always pleasant and populated by flying horses and beautiful princesses.
She tried to roll over but was scolded by a sharp pain in her shoulders. That’s when she noticed that her hands were bound behind her back. Her feet were tied too. And her mouth was taped shut.
Her eyes were open fully now, and an ache settled in her stomach. The room was dark, but not completely. As her eyes adjusted she noticed the candlelight that danced on dirt walls. The floor and ceiling were dirt as well. Thick beams lined the walls and supported the ceiling. Was she in an old mine?
Memories started working their way to the front of her mind. She’d arrived at the old house with Harold. She’d run from him. The Karstens, the poor Karstens. And Nosey, the friendly Coonhound. Gunshots, screaming, cursing. Then Harold was on the move after her again, and he’d caught her, but not before she’d taken a stick to his head. The sharp prick in the arm, the sleepiness that overcame her.
Harold had drugged her. Her father had abducted and bound her. How twisted was that?
Rather than fear, a great sadness overcame her. What had her father become? The man who was once her hero had betrayed her.
From the corner of the room she heard the low thrum of voices. She didn’t have a good view of the entire space because she was on her side in the corner behind a generator of some sort.
She listened, tried to make out what the voices were saying, but it was useless. They sounded as if they were speaking a foreign language. She tried to right herself, but that too quickly proved futile. Her shoulders were too sore. She must have been lying there on her side, shoulders pulled back like that, for hours. Besides, even if the stabbing pain wasn’t there, she couldn’t get the leverage to sit with her arms behind her back. All she could do was scoot.
Slowly, so as not to make any noise, she inched around by pulling her knees up, then extending them. Each movement sent waves of pain through her shoulders. Sweat quickly broke out on her brow. It was warm in the room, and the air was heavy and musty.
She didn’t remember any mining operations near their house in Comfort. Harold must have taken her somewhere else. Maybe a different part of the state. She remembered the phone call she’d overheard. Harold said he would meet the caller at the house. Maybe it wasn’t a mine shaft after all; maybe they were in the root cellar of an old home or a bomb shelter from ages past.
Finally Esther maneuvered enough to peek around the corner of the generator and see the source of the voices. A group of bodies were gathered in the corner in a tight circle, all facing each other. It reminded her of a football huddle. But these players didn’t wear uniforms, and there was not a blade of green grass to be found. The huddle seemed to pulsate in time with the chant. She couldn’t make out what they wore; their clothes were too dark and the light so dim. Along one of the walls was a wooden table, and on it sat three candles. On the opposite wall was a wooden door.
From her vantage point Esther couldn’t make out how many bodies were there—seven, eight, maybe nine?—nor if they were male or female. There were no skulls in the room, no goblets for the drinking of blood, no cauldron filled with a strange boiling liquid, yet it seemed somehow a cultic scenario. Her stomach squirmed, and panic now clawed at her chest.
She had to get out of there. Whatever was about to take place couldn’t be good.
Esther closed her eyes and prayed. God was her only hope now. He always had been. She needed a miracle. With William and Marny gone, no one even knew she was with Harold. But God knew, and as odd as it seemed, that brought some measure of comfort and hope.
The chanting stopped, and she heard the dry shuffle of feet. Esther opened her eyes and found someone standing over her.
It was her father.
Chapter 56
MARNY DROPPED TO his knees beside his mother.
This was something he’d never got to do the first time. He straightened her neck, then placed his hand on her forehead and stroked her hair. With the other hand he shut her eyelids. The life was gone from her, taken by the brute in the Barcalounger. And just as it had happened the first time, Karl acted as though he didn’t care one bit, as though Janie’s life was nothing more to him than a beer can that, once empty and used, could be crushed and tossed to the side.
Anger blew through Marny like hurricane winds. He got to his feet and clenched his fists. If this was history replaying itself, then there was something he could do now that he hadn’t the nerve to do the first time. This time he didn’t care. His curse had caught him again, exacting another payment for whatever he’d done in life to deserve all this.
But that was the question: What had he done to deserve it? Be born? That was it? Where was God in all this? Where was Esther’s and William’s faith? Forget that. This was Marny’s time to do the right thing. He crossed the foyer with deliberate steps, fully intending to round the corner into the living room, walk right up to Karl, knock the pathetic beer can from his hand, and make hamburger meat of his face. He was going to kill him.
But when he turned that corner there was no living room. No Barcalounger, no beer cans, no Karl. Marny was back in Harold’s house. He spun around and found the foyer empty. His mother was gone too. The floor was dry, the steps intact. Had he indeed imagined the whole thing? From the time he first heard the creaking second-floor boards and rattling pipes?
But where was William? Where was Gary?
The image of Karl and that confrontation was still so fresh in his mind. The feelings were raw nerve endings, scraped with a sharp edge. Karl was never convicted for Janie’s death. It had been his word against Marny’s, and Karl swore she merely slipped and fell. There was no proof otherwise and plenty of reasonable doubt that Karl intentionally pushed his wife, the wife he loved and cared for and now cried for, down a flight of stairs.
But justice is no respecter of men and is rarely fooled. Sooner or later it comes knocking. For Karl Gunnison it came sooner, a week after the acquittal. He was putting in overtime working the gillnet on a trawler when he got tangled in the net, fell overboard, and in an accident as freakish as they come, got sucked into the boat’s propeller. His remains were never found, and it was presumed what was left of him became lobster food—a horrible but fitting ending to a life that brought others so much pain and sadness.
Marny shook the memory and walked back into the hallway. “William?” As before, his voice sounded small in the house, lonely. He said the boy’s name again, louder.
Down the hall William appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I’m here, Marnin. Look what I found.”
Marny rushed down the hallway and pulled William close. “Where were you? I told you to stay in the foyer.”
&nbs
p; “The water was getting too bad, so I came in here.”
Marny knelt in front of William. Despite all that had happened and being shot and chased and winding up in this bizarre house, William still appeared calm, innocent. “You saw the water? It was there?”
He nodded the confirmation Marny needed, confirmation that he wasn’t going plumb mad.
“Yes, Marnin. The water was real. It was cold, so I came in here to get away from it.”
“What’s happening here, William?”
It appeared to be a normal kitchen. White cupboards and countertops, white tiled linoleum floor. White appliances.
“The house is alive, Marnin. It knows us. Don’t believe everything you see or hear, okay?”
“Okay, buddy. Let’s get out of here.”
Marny reached for William’s hand, but the boy pulled it away.
“Wait. Do you believe in God, Marnin?”
Marny wasn’t sure this was the right time for such a question. He reached again for William’s hand, but again William pulled it away.
“Do you?” the boy asked.
“Yes, of course I do. Now—”
“Do you believe in Jesus?”
Jesus. What did this have to do with anything? “I don’t know, I guess. Now come on, we need to get out of here.”
“Do you or don’t you, Marnin?”
His mother did; Marny knew that much. And when he was a kid he’d said a prayer with his mother, asking Jesus into his heart. Wasn’t that enough?
“Sure I do. Now let’s go.”
But William wasn’t finished. “Do you trust Him?”
Behind William the oven turned on, and all four burners suddenly sprang to life. Blue flames rose inches above the stove top.
“William, we need to go now.”
William didn’t take his eyes off Marny. “Do you trust Jesus, Marnin? You’re going to need to trust Him to get us out of this.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
Marny heard a dripping then, not like the high-pitched dripping of water, but lower, thicker, the splash of something more viscous, like …
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