"At the turn of the century, the house had its longest occupants," Lula continued. From above, Hazel turned this statement over in her mind a few times. She’d never heard anyone describe the year 2000 as "turn of the century." She wandered away from the conversation for a moment, mulling the phrase over.
"They owned a restaurant in town and were rather successful. I believe they gave birth to a son while they lived here. They owned the place for about five years, but their business fell on hard times and the house went into foreclosure. Yes, I think they were the longest owners. Once they left, the house sat empty. You're probably aware it was vacant for almost two years before you came along."
Lula had obviously reached the end of the parade of Shrek house inhabitants. Hazel tried to ignore the pins and needles in her legs and held her breath, waiting for Mom to ask the next most obvious question.
Very casually Mom said, "So, do you know if anyone died in the house?"
Lula reclaimed that quick, assured tone and replied, "Oh no, dear. I can assure you no one has ever died in the house."
Fourteen
Most would take comfort in learning there had been no deaths in their home, but it was almost a letdown. They wanted something easy on which to place blame and that would explain all the strange events. Somehow, saying a ghost was responsible would be an easy and acceptable explanation, no matter how preposterous. No one really believed in ghosts anymore. They were the things of childhood nightmares and fodder for television channels that claimed to be sources of learning. Ghosts were lore that gave you the creeps around Halloween and made slumber parties more entertaining. They weren't something used to explain weird things happening in your home.
Hazel decided the best thing to do would be to push the events out of her mind and ignore all of it. If no one had died in the house, how could it possibly be haunted? She was going to give up on her research, which hadn't amounted to much. Nothing pertaining to the house itself had come up, just a bit about the golfer. Mom seemed content knowing no one had actually died inside the home. But she quantified her relief with the acknowledgment that most people probably had no idea about deaths that had taken place in their dwellings.
"The person who lived in our Colorado home passed away there, in her sleep," Mom told them at dinner that night. "Nothing weird ever happened after that."
Holden detached himself from his phone. "You've kept this from us all this time? I would've dusted off the Ouija board if I'd known. Dude, bro, dude … did you hear that?" Only Hazel got the reference to one of Holden's favorite TV shows from when he was eight. Mom gave him "the look," which he didn't notice because before he was done speaking; his focus was back on his phone.
With this new information, they decided to just accept things and move on. What choice did they have, really? It seemed doable. There was enough craziness in the world to worry about without stressing about bizarre things taking place in their home. The virus was not letting up. The claims that warmer weather would slow the spread were proving false. They couldn't let their house turn on them. It was supposed to be their sanctuary.
Unfortunately, the presence still needed to be heard. Time was running out. It was done biding its time. It had spent many years being ignored by the many inhabitants of the house who were too busy to notice or too blind to see its pleas. But things were happening not far from the house that made the situation urgent, and so the presence could not slip quietly into the woods to await another group of people whom it would try to reach out to. While the house sat vacant, it had gathered its strength and devised new ways to make itself known. Now it would stop at nothing, so its secrets could be revealed. The presence wished no harm to anyone. It yearned for other ways to manifest its goals, but in its given state, options were limited. It needed resolution for the ones it loved and decisively set about to do so.
Fifteen
The day after their first neighborly visit, resolute in her plan to ignore the strange events, Hazel decided to tackle a dreaded task—removing the wallpaper in her room. After watching eighty-four (or three) YouTube videos, she considered herself well-informed and up for the job. She gathered the tools she needed: a spray bottle containing a mixture of liquid fabric softener and hot water, a large putty knife, gloves, and a step ladder. Tying her hair up in a bandanna, she asked Alexa to play her Favorites Playlist.
The paper had bubbled and peeled in some spots, which helped make the work easier. She started in a corner that was peeling badly and was able to discard the putty knife, as the paper lifted off easily. She was glad that it was going well, as she had envisioned the typical DIY process being made more complicated by the virus. She had feared it would snowball and require Mom and Dad's involvement, tears of frustration, and multiple trips to the curbside pickup lane at the hardware store. Excited that things were moving along so well and focused on the music, she didn't pay attention to what was being revealed underneath the wallpaper.
Soon the outdated wallpaper was gone, and she admired her work. It was then that she noticed a faint, repetitive pattern discernible over all three walls. She stepped as far back from one of the walls as she could in an effort to make sense of the markings. From there she saw the letters more clearly. They read, HELPLAURACOMBSHELPLAURACOMBSHEL. There were no spaces between the letters, so it took a moment to realize what it really said, HELP LAURA COMBS.
Hazel dropped the last remnants of wallpaper that she had wadded up in a ball, and bolted from her room, looking for someone, anyone, to confirm to her what she was seeing. While her focus had been on deciphering the writing on the wall, she hadn’t noticed Alexa had slipped "Memories Fade" into her playlist.
While Hazel was attempting to make out the message on her walls, Mom was in the kitchen baking brownies, partly out of boredom, partly out of craving chocolate, and partly out of the worldwide phenomena of pandemic baking. Alone in the kitchen, she relied on Alexa to keep her company as well as refresh her memory on the amount of butter and cocoa she needed.
As she went about mixing ingredients, she said, "Alexa, tell me three things I need to know." The disembodied AI usually shared newsworthy topics that weren't too alarming and in doing so Mom felt in touch, but not overwhelmed, by the world’s chaos.
Today the device started off by stating, "On April 9th, 1984, in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a thirteen-year-old girl named Laura Combs disappeared from her bedroom in the home she shared with her mother. Laura wasn't reported missing until the following day. Organized search parties did not begin searching for Laura until she had been missing for several days as authorities believed she was a runaway. Aerial searches were done, and divers searched local ponds and lakes. Authorities abandoned the search when her mother's live-in boyfriend provided details suggesting the child left on her own. Laura's mother denied these claims and has continued to search for her daughter via grassroots efforts. To this day Laura Combs remains listed as missing with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as neither she nor her remains have ever been located."
The words Stillwater, Oklahoma caught Mom's attention, and she paused, one hand holding a pan of uncooked brownies, the other on the handle of the upper oven, to listen to the story. She was distracted by hearing such a random, non-topical report, as she placed the pan in the oven. Alexa did not have a chance to proceed to the second thing she needed to know before Hazel rushed into the room, out of breath and looking panicked. She dropped onto one of the bar stools and splayed her upper body out across the island. Mom readied herself for an update about Miren or a new boyfriend, but then quickly remembered new boyfriends were hard to come by in quarantine.
Mom wanted to share the story the AI had just told her, but waited as Hazel managed to gasp out the directive, "You've got to come upstairs and see this! You aren't going to believe it!" Hazel hopped off the bar stool and grabbed Mom's wrist, dragging her in the direction of the stairs. Mom feared that Hazel had done something during her wallpaper removal to cause horrible damage upstair
s. She pushed past her daughter, shaking her off her arm. In the now vacant kitchen, an image came up on the Show. It was a missing poster showing Laura Combs as she appeared the day she disappeared.
Mom braced herself for disaster as she reached the teen's room. She stopped short, looking for an electrical fire or water spraying from pipes or some other disaster. She moved farther into the room and was impressed by what she saw. Hazel had removed all the wallpaper with very little mess. She had even balled up all the remnants into a nice, tidy bundle. Rushing behind her, still breathless, Hazel pointed frantically.
"Okay drama-mama, yes, I see! You did a great job! It looks amazing!" her mom said in an effort to placate her daughter and hopefully calm the hyped-up teenager.
"No! Look! Look at the walls!" Hazel exclaimed. "The words!"
Hazel could tell Mom wasn't making out the pattern, so she traced over them with her fingers.
As Hazel continued to point out the letters, Mom could see the message, and the letters almost seemed to grow more prominent as her mind accepted what it was seeing.
Hazel continued down the wall. "Help, Laura, Combs," she said as drew over the letters that repeated over and over, wrapping around and proceeding again in another row, equally spaced. It looked as if someone had dipped a finger in paint and written in the words in broad strokes. The effect was dizzying, and Hazel was now certain the words were becoming darker, their insistence growing.
She was relieved that Mom could see the message she was seeing. She bent over, hands on her knees, attempting to catch her breath. Mom was slowly walking back and forth eyeing the walls from every angle when Dad entered the room without looking up from his phone.
"Smells like something is burning," he said distractedly. That got Mom's attention. She hadn't set a timer for the brownies! She turned, rushing out of the room in a desperate attempt to save them.
Hazel waved Dad over. "Look, look! Do you see it?"
"Wow, Haze, great job! You're hired. I've got about forty other projects I need you to get started on pronto."
She flapped her hands at him in annoyance. "No, no, look at the walls! Look at the words." She went over the letters again with her finger, tracing the letters out for him, saying them out loud, stopping at the final S. "Help Laura Combs! It says, Help Laura Combs, over and over again on my walls!"
"Yeah, I see that. How odd. I wonder who this Laura person is. My guess is it was some gag the contractors played on each other when they painted."
Mom returned to the room. "I saved the brownies, and I think I might know who this Laura Combs is." She then relayed Alexa's curious story about the missing girl.
Sixteen
With a name, date and location, the family gathered around Mom's laptop at the kitchen island. Mom typed, Laura Combs, April, 9, 1984, Stillwater, OK, and hit enter. Google returned about 103,000 results. The first one was a story from The Stillwater News Press dated April 9, 2019. It was titled, “Where is Laura Combs? Stillwater Girl Still Missing After 35 Years.” Mom clicked the link to the story and read the article aloud.
Where Is Laura Combs? Stillwater Girl Still Missing After 35 Years
Ask any of Stillwater's lifelong citizens if they know the name Laura Combs, and the answer will likely be yes. Ask any of them if they care to speculate about what happened to the girl, missing thirty-five years today, and you will hear many different theories. The story of what happened to Laura Combs is one of Stillwater's biggest mysteries. Laura's mother, Charlotte Combs-Childers, has pushed to make sure her daughter's name, face and story are not forgotten. Mrs. Combs-Childers pressured local and state authorities to reopen the case of her missing daughter, never believing the official stance of Stillwater officials who in 1984 closed the case. Their findings were that Laura had simply run away from home.
The case was reopened in 1988, after a new sheriff was elected in Payne County. Sheriff Clarence Reed, who ran uncontested until his retirement in 2004, had this to say about the case: "I was never convinced that Laura Combs was a runaway. The facts made it difficult to wrap your head around. There was virtually no physical evidence, no real motive and not much in the way of leads. The Stillwater Police Department and Payne County Sheriff’s Department did what they could at the time with the information they had. However, awareness, advances in law enforcement techniques and quite frankly, gut instinct, made it impossible for me to close the book on the case. It remains open and will remain open, so new leads may be investigated and evidence can be submitted should it be made available."
Laura's mother reported the child missing the morning of April 10th, 1984. The child's bedroom window was found open; her room was in disarray and rain-soaked. Laura's mother was at work at the time of her disappearance. The only person home with the child at the time was the mother's live-in boyfriend, Ronald Wayne "Bubba" Floyd. Laura's mother reported that the girl was wearing a tan Members Only jacket, a hooded sweatshirt with ladybugs on it, blue jeans, yellow rain boots and a Swatch. A flashlight was missing from the girl's room as well.
The search for Laura Combs was hampered by a number of circumstances. No exact timeline could be established. When questioned, Mr. Floyd indicated the child went to her room upon returning home from school, where she stayed for the remainder of the night. Mr. Floyd stated he fell asleep on the couch around 9:30 p.m., where he slept until Laura's mother woke him in the morning.
A heavy thunderstorm hammered the area that night and well into the early morning hours. Police surmise the rain may have washed away valuable evidence including footprints and trace evidence left by the child and/or anyone she may have left with. Tracking dogs were not deployed by the police at the time. While friends and neighbors began searching as soon as the girl was discovered missing, an organized search was not formed until April 12th, spearheaded and privately funded by Mr. Wallace Childers. Over the next several days an aerial search was implemented, and a canine search and rescue team was brought in to search local ponds and lakes. Mr. Childers and his family started a reward fund. At the time the reward was $10,000. Today the reward fund has grown to $50,000, but it still has not led to any viable leads regarding the whereabouts of Laura Combs.
Mrs. Combs-Childers has never given up hope that she will learn what happened to her daughter, saying, "For many years I hung on to the hope that Laura was out there somewhere, alive. Now that so many years have passed, the hope of finding her alive has faded. I believe if she were alive, she would've come back to me by now. She did not run away. She was a happy child. She loved her life. What I wish for now is to have answers and to have her home with me, so I can give her a proper burial."
Mom pushed back in her chair as if to distance herself from the despair the article conveyed. She waved a hand in front of her face, symbolically erasing the words she read.
"I can't read anymore. It's so sad," she said.
Hazel had listened numbly to the words and fixated on the missing poster that ran alongside the news story. A dated image of a young girl, only slightly younger than herself, but who looked much more childlike in comparison. The missing child was smiling. Hazel was struck by the innocent nature of the smile. In the picture, she was wearing a simple polo-style shirt with rainbow stripes and had long, wavy brown hair held back in a clip shaped like a cloud. The girl had a dimple and bright eyes. This image had school picture written all over it, and Hazel realized it was likely the last school picture Laura Combs had ever taken. There was another photo, which was an age-progressed rendering; the kind that never looked quite right. The face was often at an odd angle, or some other key element was left askew in an unnatural way. The photos all apologetically said, We know this isn't exactly what the person would look like … but it's pretty close.
Dad clicked the back button, and they began to look at some of the other Google hits related to their search. There was a link to the National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children labeling Laura Combs as "Endangered Missing." Other links were for The Charley Pr
oject, WebSleuths, WikiFind, a Facebook page called Help Find Laura Combs, and more news stories. The enigma had even been featured on the television show “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Dad clicked on the images link and multiple photos of missing posters popped up. Some posters included the age-progressed photo; others did not. One showed the articles of clothing Laura was believed to be wearing. There was a photo of Laura Combs’s mother from an old newspaper story. She looked eerily similar to Laura's age-progressed image.
That night, Hazel lay in bed mulling over the mystery of Laura Combs. Rolling over onto her side, she saw her clock read 9:59 p.m. and subconsciously braced herself for the anticipated nightly running of the stairs. As expected, the beeping broke the silence, quickly followed by the footfalls. This time, however, the spectral sound stopped short before running down the stairs. Lifting her head off the pillow, Hazel focused her senses on the sound and the rhythm; everything about it had been so ingrained in her mind that the change brought back the fear and confusion of the first night. The runner had stopped on the other side of her door.
Sitting up, she saw motion under the door—the shadow of feet. She threw the covers back and sprinted to the door. As she swung it open, she yelled, "Holden! That's not—"
The words and her breath seized in her throat. Holden was not outside her bedroom. The hallway was empty and dark. A chill set over her. She didn't feel like she was alone in the hall. Cloudy puffs of breath pushed out of her gasping lungs. As she exhaled, she heard a sharp inhale, and her breath disappeared as if sucked into a vacuum, stolen right out of the air.
Recalling a TikTok video she had seen of someone claiming they captured an unseen entity using Snapchat filters, she drew out her phone and opened the app, quickly clicking the first filter at the bottom of the screen, which was floppy puppy ears and a snout. Instantly the app recognized an unseen face as the dog filter appeared over the void beyond her doorway. Her breathing quickened and plumes of visible vapor expelled in sharp gasps as the image tilted, an inquisitive nod of an unseen head moving like they were taking in the face before them. Hazel's face.
Red Water, Shadows of Camelot Crossing Page 7