by Ed
Then she was hurrying across the lawn toward her own house.
Carmen stood in the doorway for some time after Tanya left, then she closed the door hard and leaned back against it, eyes closed.
Thoughts raced through her mind and she tried to slow them down. Maybe it was just all the things I’d told her about Stephen, about what he'd said, about what the kids claimed to have seen and heard, she thought.
She smelled dinner, remembered she had a roast in the oven and hurried into the kitchen to prepare the rest of the meal, trying to ignore the trembling of her hands.
Al had been trying to ignore a lot of things, too.
Like the music and voices coming from downstairs, for example. He'd heard them a number of times. Enough times, in fact, so that he didn't even get out of bed anymore, just lay awake staring into the darkness, listening.
Sometimes the bed vibrated, too, the way it had that first night. Of course, the family had moved in upstairs—Terrence and Linda Vanowen and their son and daughter, nice folks, friendly—so Al was able to use his upstairs-refrigerator theory to dismiss the vibrating; it took some pushing, but he managed to convince himself, and a few extra beers before bed helped him to get to sleep in spite of the disturbing thoughts he tried to bury.
Even when he slept as well as usual, however, Al found himself feeling as though he hadn't been, as if he'd been spending his nights tossing and turning between sweat-soaked sheets. He got through work with the help of a lot of coffee, and he started getting ready for bed as soon as he got home by opening his first bottle of beer.
He lay in bed one night, awake, but with his eyes closed. He wondered if he was drinking too much beer, if maybe it could be behind the things he'd been hearing and feeling and thinking; maybe, just maybe, Stephen had been right about the house. But then he told himself he'd been drinking more because of all those things, and he couldn't imagine himself not drinking, not without going crazy, not without blurting it all out to Carmen and, at the very least, looking crazy.
After a while, with the steady and soothing sound of the alarm clock ticking on the nightstand, Al slept....
He awoke suddenly and harshly to find himself shaking and his first thought was, Oh God, oh my God, it's shaking now, not vibrating, shaking!
It was Carmen. She was clutching his shoulder, shaking him hard and hissing, "Al. Al! Wake up, Al, it's the bed! The bed!"
"Wh-what?" He sat up, squinting in spite of the darkness and blinking furiously, as if his eyes had something in them.
"The bed, Al, the bed!"
Once he'd emerged from the thick fog of sleep, he realized that it was happening again. The bed was vibrating. Its silent thrum moved through Al's body, wrapping around his bones like twine.
He thought fast and came to a decision: If it worked for him, it would work for Carmen, too.
"Whassamatter with it?" he asked, trying not to look like he was in a hurry as he tossed back the covers and got out of bed. He stood there rubbing his eyes and running his fingers roughly through his hair.
"You can't feel that?" Carmen said, speaking louder now. She stood on the other side of the bed in her long nightshirt with a picture of Opus the penguin on the front. "It's vibrating is what's the matter with it. Feel it."
"What?"
"Just feel it!"
Al tried not to flinch as he put his hand on the bed and felt the familiar, somehow malignant sensation ooze up the middle of his arm. After a moment, he pulled his hand away, nodded at Carmen and said, "Yeah, well?"
"Well? Well? The bed is vibrating, Al, what is it? Why is it doing that?"
"It's from upstairs," he said quietly, calmly, his voice even and thick with the indifference of sleepiness.
"From what?"
"From the refrigerator upstairs. That's all. It comes on and vibrates, then comes down here and we feel it in the bed, is all. Go back to sleep. It'll stop after awhile."
She stared at him, lips parted, as he turned and headed for the bathroom.
Once in the bathroom, Al turned on the light and locked the door. He didn't need to use it, but it was the only place he could think of to go in the middle of the night without having to give Carmen some sort of explanation.
He put the toilet lid down and sat on it, elbows on his knees, his face in his palms, and exhaled slowly. He hoped the vibrating had stopped and Carmen had gone back to sleep. He even prayed for it silently. After a while, he crossed himself, stood and then stopped when he heard a loud noise from somewhere outside the house. The noise repeated again and again, stopped for a moment, then continued.
Al frowned as he left the bathroom, muttering, "Now what?"
It was a dog barking. He almost ignored it and went back into the bedroom, but it was so close, he thought he'd check it out.
He went to the front window in the dining room, which seemed closest to the barking, and separated the blinds with two fingers.
A bright moon cast a dull light over the ground like a luminescent bruise. A large dog stood at the edge of the front yard—in the poor light, it was difficult to tell what kind of dog—barking at the corner of the house. It was barking at the house the way a dog might bark to warn its master of an intruder, or the way a dog might bark at its own attacker: vicious and rapid barks punctuated by snarls and growls.
He had never seen the dog before and couldn't tell if it was wearing a collar or not. He didn't move for a while, just watched the dog as it barked persistently. He kept expecting it to stop and leave, but it didn't. If anything, its barks only became angrier and more threatening, more desperately fierce.
Al felt a bead of sweat trickling down over his temple and he moved the back of his free hand across his forehead. He was perspiring. His heart was pounding.
This house, he thought. It's barking at the house because...because the house scares it.
Pulling his hand away from the blinds, Al stepped back and just stood there, staring at the closed blinds awhile as the dog barked...and barked...and barked....
Secrets grew like tumors in the Snedeker household.
Carmen did not tell Al when she heard someone laughing in the kitchen although she was alone in the house.
Al did not tell Carmen when he heard footsteps following him around the house one weekend, although no one was there.
And Stephen only talked to them when he had to. When he was not at school, he spent most of his time in his room, often with Jason, who brought along tapes for them to listen to, the newest from the heaviest of metal bands, with lyrics that spoke only of sex and death, violence and suicide, torture and necrophilia. He didn't spend much time with Michael anymore, mostly because Michael wanted to do things, was interested in things that held no appeal for Stephen. As a result, Stephen was considering moving into the room that had originally been his.
The idea of having a room of his own was, once again, appealing.
There would be nothing to interrupt the voices then....
Late one night, Stephen lay awake in his bed listening to the sound of a dog barking outside. He'd heard it before, but had given it no thought until his dad complained about it one morning over breakfast before going to work. Al had said they needed to find out whose dog it was and call them; it had been sitting outside their house barking for several nights in a row.
Curious, Stephen got out of bed and went upstairs, moving comfortably through the dark. He went to the window in the dining room and saw the dog outside in the moonlight, barking and snarling at the corner of the house. Nothing else—not a squirrel, not a cat—just the house.
Although he didn't realize it, one corner of Stephen's mouth curled up.
So he wasn't entirely alone. The dog somehow knew the house held something unusual. The dog somehow knew it was occupied by something other than a mother and a father and four children.
The dog knew....
12
Ghosts of Christmas Present
By Christmastime, Stephen had obtained a battered old lea
ther jacket on the back of which he put a skull and crossbones and the logo of some heavy-metal group that combined an upside-down cross with a bloody dagger.
He was wearing it one day when he came home from school. It was the last day of school before the beginning of Christmas vacation; outside, everything was blanketed in snow, and Stephen brushed flakes off his scarf and jacket before coming through the front door. As he walked through the house, Carmen stopped him.
"Stephen? Could you come here a second?" she called from the dining-room table.
She wasn't looking forward to the talk she was about to have with him—about to try to have—because she had a pretty good idea how it was going to end up.
Carmen and Al had talked with Stephen a lot lately—together and individually—about things ranging from the foul language he'd been using around the house to his personal hygiene, which, for reasons they could not understand, had gone steeply downhill over the past weeks.
There were a lot of things they didn't understand about Stephen lately.
Now there was the jacket. It was something he never would have considered wearing before their move. He'd always been a clean boy, a natty dresser, so polite and well-spoken.
Not anymore.
"Sit down, Stephen,” Carmen said quietly, smiling.
With an annoyed sigh, he pulled out a chair and flopped into it, thumping his elbows onto the table, resting his chin on his fists.
In spite of the fact that his cancer had gone into remission, Stephen still looked pale and thin and, although not as distinct, yellowish-gray half-circles still darkened the slightly puffy flesh beneath his eyes.
"Where did you get that jacket?" Carmen asked.
"Somebody gave it to me."
"Leather jackets aren't cheap."
He shrugged. "It's old. He didn't want it anymore. He gave it to me."
"Well...it's not a bad jacket, really. So why did you put that stuff on the back?"
Another shrug, a long, slow blink, then: " 'Cause I like it."
She leaned closer to him. "Stephen, you know we don't want you wearing things like that."
"Like what?"
"That's the cross you've got on your back, and it's upside-down."
"So?"
"Oh, don't play dumb with me, Stephen, you know what I'm talking about." She was getting frustrated and angry already and her voice was showing it. "It's sacrilegious and...well, if you ask me...you were the one talking about evil a few months ago and, well, as far as I'm concerned, that's evil, what you've got on your back. We've given in with the music, so you pretty much get to listen to whatever crap you want to as long as you keep it to yourself, but that is too much!"
"Well, what's the difference? I don't understand. It's part of the music, it's what the music stands for, it's—"
"I know, that's why your dad and I don't like the music. That cross you're wearing on your back is a very important symbol. Christ died on that cross so we could—"
Stephen rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I learned all about it in Sunday school."
"So how can you wear such a thing!"
"You're so worried about evil, so scared of it, but you've got it all around you and you don't see it, just ignore it. I'm tellin' you, this house is evil!"
"That again. I just...Stephen, I don't understand you. I don't understand what's wrong with you."
Then Stephen did something that made Carmen drop her mouth open and gasp, shocked and hurt.
He laughed, shook his head and said, "You don't understand much of anything, do you?" He stood from the table and went to his room, leaving Carmen staring at the place where he'd sat, her mouth still open, her wide eyes full of pain.
Finally, she lit a cigarette and exhaled wearily. Her next step, of course, would be to talk to Al about it, but she wasn't too eager to do that, either.
Al seemed very short-tempered lately, especially where Stephen was concerned. He had no tolerance for the changes that had taken place in the boy; Carmen had to admit she felt much the same way, but at least tried to be fair and civil about it, tried her best to see Stephen's side (something that was getting more difficult all the time, since he seemed so unwilling to share his side). She was afraid that, sooner or later, she would tell Al about something Stephen had done or was doing, and Al would lose whatever restraint he'd been showing and come down on the boy hard, really hard, with something besides the usual grounding or suspension of telephone priveleges—like harsh physical punishment, for example. Although she understood the desire to do that—Stephen had pushed her tolerance to the edge, too, especially with his response to her complaint about the jacket—the thought of it made her cringe.
But the back of Stephen's jacket made her cringe, as well.
She would talk to Al. If he did no good, she would have to take stronger measures....
Although she waited until after dinner that night, hoping he would be relaxed, Al was furious. He went downstairs and, from the living room, Carmen could hear him shouting at Stephen. She even heard what sounded like something being thrown against the wall.
Peter was dozing on the sofa beside her; Stephanie and Michael were on the floor watching television, their backs stiff, their eyes fixed on the screen as they fought to ignore the sounds.
Then, after a brief silence, she heard Al's footsteps thumping up the stairs and his voice barking angrily, "That's it, I give up! You wanna go around looking like some kinda satanic punk, that's fine, just don't tell anybody you live here! Spoiled little shit is what you are! Don't know where it comes from, but it doesn't come from us!"
As he came down the hall, his tirade continuing, Carmen could hear the faint sound of Stephen's laughter from downstairs. She hurried into the hall to meet Al.
"I don't know what the hell to do with him," he growled, going into the kitchen and getting a beer from the refrigerator. "He wants to keep his fucking jacket—"
"Al," she chided, wincing.
"—he can keep it, I don't give a damn. Wants to go around looking like a thug, like a damned criminal or some kinda—I don't know, some kinda cult member—then fine." He leaned back against the edge of the counter and tilted his head back as he drank.
"Well, there's something wrong, I just don't know what."
"He's a goddamned spoiled brat, is what's wrong."
"Oh, what, it's my fault, is that what you're saying? It's my fault he's behaving this way?"
"Hey"—he spread his arms and raised his eyebrows—"you said that, not me."
Carmen spun around, stretched out her arm and leaned against the refrigerator with her elbow locked. She closed her eyes a moment, lips pressed together tightly. She knew this could turn into an ugly argument if she pursued that thinly veiled accusation any further. She decided against it, took a deep breath and turned around.
"I think I should take him to see Father Wheatley."
Al took another slug of beer and sighed. "You think it'd do any good?"
"Couldn't hurt, could it?"
He though about it a moment, frowned, became rather distant. Then he said quietly, as if to himself, "It's just been since we moved here...into this house..."
Carmen was surprised by his words—could he possibly be entertaining some of the same thoughts that had haunted her?—but hid her surprise quickly.
"You think that has something to do with it?" she asked.
"Hm? Oh, no. Course not. Just...an observation, is all. He's changed a lot in a little time."
"That's why I think he should talk to Father Wheatley."
"Yeah. Yeah, it couldn't hurt."
She called Father Wheatley the next day and explained the problem, and he agreed to see Stephen. Against his protests, Carmen took Stephen to the church and dropped him off while she went to the grocery store. When she was finished shopping, she returned, picked him up and headed home, resisting the urge to go inside and ask Father Wheatley how it went and what was wrong with her son. Instead, she tried to start a conversation wi
th Stephen.
"So, what did you and the father talk about?" she asked.
Looking out the side window, he shrugged. "I dunno. Not much. Just...talked, I guess."
And that was the most she could get out of him. She could only hope and pray that Father Wheatley would be able to do some good.
But that was not enough for her. When she got home, she called Father Wheatley on the bedroom telephone.
"How did it go, Father?" she asked.
"Well, Carmen, if you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it in any detail. I will say this much, though: You did the right thing in bringing him to see me. I'd like to see him again. Tomorrow, in fact. If that's okay?"
"Of course it's okay. I'm so glad. I mean, I was worried that...well, Al and I were both worried that..." She didn't finish, afraid that her voice would break and tears would start.
"Listen, Carmen," Father Wheatley said softly, "I'm here for you, too. I think Stephen needs these talks right now and I suspect we might make some progress. But if you need someone to talk to, don't hesitate."
"Thank you, Father," she whispered.
"Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time."
But Carmen was not able to drive Stephen to see Father Wheatley the next day.
That evening, Carmen received a call from her brother Everett in Alabama. The instant she heard his voice at the other end of the line, she became tense; he only called her when he needed something—or when something was wrong. Like their father, he was an alcoholic who had no intention of treating his problem; Carmen's heart went out to him and he was always in her prayers, but she'd finally realized a number of years ago that there was only so much she could do for him and, if he was ever going to be saved, he was going to have to take the first step himself.
"C-Carmen? You're, um, you're gonna have to come home. Right away." His voice was wet and quavery.