Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror

by Talbot, Michael

  “Obviously,” she said very quietly.

  He studied her face, searching for some clue as to how much she had overheard. And then, on the off chance she had heard nothing, he stood and nonchalantly slapped his hands against the sides of his legs.

  “So, how’s breakfast coming?”

  “You piece of shit!” she said, rushing forward and trying to beat him with her fists.

  “Oh, I guess you overheard?”

  “Yes, I overheard!”

  “Oh, come on, Lauren,” he huffed, holding her hands to stop the blows. “Don’t take any of what I said too seriously. I was just letting off a little steam.”

  But his words were lost on her.

  “It’s all just a game with you, isn’t it? You’ve been treating me the same way you treated that junior exec and that singer you were worried about.”

  “Lauren, will you just give me a chance to explain—”

  “It doesn’t matter what lies you have to tell or how ruthless you have to be. All that matters is that you get your own way. You’ll do anything just to get things your own way, won’t you?”

  “Goddammit, Lauren—”

  “Won’t you?”

  “Yes!” he roared. “You’re goddam fucking right! I don’t want your fucking kid around. I never have. And yes, I will do whatever I goddam have to to have things exactly the way I want them in my life. And I’ll tell you another thing. I don’t see what’s so fucking wrong about it. I mean, you seem to think playing by the rules is somehow better than playing by no rules. Well, it’s time you woke up and smelled the coffee. It’s survival of the fittest out there. It’s the people who play by no rules who always end up on top.” He pointed his finger up toward the heavens. “And if your little brat is right and there’s anyone else out there, you can be goddam sure they don’t play by any rules either.”

  After he finished his tirade he looked almost relieved, as if he had held the truth inside for so long it had begun to fester. But his words only anguished and infuriated her more. A thousand ways to challenge the logic of his argument rose up in her, followed closely by a thousand angry questions. But before she had a chance to ask any of them he stormed by her and toward the front door. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

  “I’m leaving!” he snapped.

  Despite her anger toward him, the announcement sent a shock wave of panic through her. “What do you mean, leaving?”

  “Splitting, going away!”

  “But going where? For how long?”

  “I don’t know!” he shrieked as he ran down the front steps and got into the Porsche.

  As he drove off a spray of gravel flew up toward the porch, and one of the tiny projectiles hit her in the ankle, causing it to bleed. But the pain of the wound was nothing compared to the pain she felt inside. As she went back into the house the tears started to flood her eyes.

  Garrett came bounding down the stairs. Not wanting him to see how devastated she was, she tried to stifle her sobbing. But it was no use.

  “Mom, what is it?” he gasped.

  “Nothing,” she said, the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Then why are you crying?”

  Unable to contain herself any longer, she sobbed openly. “Stephen and I had a fight.”

  “Oh,” he said quietly. And then after a pause he asked, “Does that mean you guys are through?”

  “No, of course it doesn’t!” she shot back, but the words surprised even her. After everything Stephen had said she knew she could never go back to him, and she wondered why she would say such a thing.

  “Is there anything you want me to do?” he asked softly. His consideration touched her, and she cupped her hand affectionately over his cheek. “No, sweetie,” she said, once again fighting back her tears and putting on a cheerful front. “Sometimes grown-ups fight. You know that. But I’ll be all right. Why don’t you just go in the kitchen and eat your breakfast.”

  He hesitated, and seeing he was still uncertain whether he should leave her, she forced herself to smile a little more broadly.

  “Okay,” he conceded. He started to walk away, but then stopped. “Oh, Mom?”

  “Yes, Garrett?”

  “You know that book you bought on hiking trails the other day?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could I borrow it?”

  “Sure, it’s in the drawing room. Come on and I’ll get it for you.”

  They went into the drawing room and retrieved the book from the small occasional table where she had left it. But she wondered suddenly why he wanted it. “You’re not planning on going on any hikes all by yourself, are you?”

  “No, I just wanted to look at it.”

  “Okay,” she said as she watched him take the book and go back upstairs.

  After he left she abandoned herself to grief. At times her sobbing became so convulsive she felt dizzy and disoriented. But finally, after she had cried herself out, she began to assess her situation.

  The first and most painful thing that surfaced out of the chaos of her thoughts was the horrible realization that she had done it to herself again. Throughout her relationship with Stephen she had caught glimpses of his duplicity and his manipulative nature, but she had ignored them, never imagining she too would become just one more victim. Annie was right. She did have a blind spot when it came to men. And once again she had fallen in love with a loser.

  She knew her only choice was to leave him, but she realized why she had responded so viscerally when Garrett had asked her if she and Stephen were through. Although every ounce of her intellect told her she could not remain with Stephen, she realized that some other part of her, a deeper part, still could not face leaving him. The discovery filled her with revulsion. She madly searched for some reason why she should still feel such attachment to a man whose moral makeup she now despised.

  She reached down deep inside herself to find it was not reason that caused her to retreat from the idea of leaving Stephen, but emotion, a dark and faceless bedrock of brute longing. She had two selves lurking inside her, one that knew her relationship with Stephen was over, and one, blind and ravenous, that still wanted him. This made her feel strangely debilitated. Like a person in a dream, she began to pace through the drawing room. She knew she should call Annie or make some other arrangements to leave the house, but she resisted and instead clung weakly to the hope that somehow everything would right itself, that if she only waited a little while longer, Stephen would return and somehow make amends for everything he had said and done.

  She remained in a daze for the rest of the morning and as the afternoon slowly crept toward evening. After she fed Garrett his supper and put him to bed she returned to the drawing room and continued her fretting and her pacing. But as night began to settle over the lake and her memory of the man with glowing eyes reasserted itself, a flicker of her rational self returned. Racing to the window, she pulled the draperies shut, but even in her muddled state she knew that pulling the draperies would not thwart an intruder intent on doing some harm. In a panic she wondered what she should do next, but then she remembered Mr. Foley was within shouting distance.

  She went outside and looked in the direction of the generator building. A faint mist was already beginning to rise off the lake, and somewhere in the distance a lone bullfrog croaked ominously. “Mr. Foley!” Lauren called, her voice cracking.

  The windows of the generator building glowed brightly, but there was no answer.

  “Mr. Foley!” she repeated, growing increasingly concerned. She was just about to race back into the house when the door to the generator building slowly creaked open.

  Still seeing nothing, Lauren stepped back cautiously toward the house, but then finally she heard a familiar voice. “That you, Mrs. Ransom? You want something?”

  She heaved a sigh of relief as Mr. Foley stepped into the open. He ambled across the lawn and walked up the steps of the porch.

  “What is it, Mrs. Ransom? Is something wrong?”

&nbs
p; She racked her brain, trying to figure out what to tell him. “It’s Mr. Ransom. I... well, you see, Mr. Ransom had to go away for the evening, and once it started to get dark I got a little worried, that’s all.”

  “Worried? About what?”

  Lauren glanced at the mist continuing to rise like steam off the lake. “Well, Garrett and I are going to be all alone here tonight. I just wanted to make sure you were here in case we needed anything.”

  Mr. Foley finally seemed to catch on. “Oh, you needn’t worry, Mrs. Ransom. I’ll be here if you need me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The words made Lauren feel much better. “Thank you, Mr. Foley. And if there’s anything I can get you in the house—a sandwich, anything—you let me know.”

  Mr. Foley smiled. “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Ransom. I’ve got my own little kitchen in the generator building, and it’s pretty well stocked. But I appreciate the offer, and if I think of something I do need, I’ll let you know.” He turned and started to walk away.

  “Oh, by the way, Mr. Foley...”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I was just wondering. Do you have a car? I didn’t see one.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t own a car.”

  “But how do you get around? What do you do if you need groceries or something?”

  “My daughter drives up once a week, and she takes me. You haven’t seen her yet because she only comes on Sundays.”

  Lauren nodded, and once again Mr. Foley started to walk away.

  “Oh, one more thing, Mr. Foley.”

  He stopped.

  “Do you know if there are any taxi services in the area? I mean, if we should need to go somewhere before Stephen comes back, is there anyone I can call?”

  Mr. Foley smiled apologetically. “No, ma’am, there’s nothing like that around here. Everyone pretty much drives himself.”

  After his mother tucked him in, Garrett got out of bed and began to study the book of hiking trails, yet again. He had hoped they might reinforce his memory of where to turn off for Fugate’s house, but instead he found its meandering routes indecipherable and realized he would have to rely on memory after all. After dressing and checking the flashlight to make sure it was working, he listened at the door and waited for his mother to go to bed. But it finally became apparent to him she was still too depressed over her fight with Stephen to sleep. He would have to try to sneak by her.

  He crept downstairs, and when he reached the spindle-work archway leading to the drawing room, he peeked inside and saw that she was sitting in an armchair near the fireplace. She mostly just gazed into the fire, but occasionally she leaned her head back and emitted long despondent sighs. He waited until she was in the middle of one of these and then tiptoed quickly past. When he reached the front door he unlocked it gingerly and turned the knob. And after squeezing through the narrow gap he allowed himself, he shut the door quietly behind him.

  Outside the night was cool and alive with the sounds of insects and bullfrogs, and once again the idea of making his way to Fugate’s cabin in the pitchy darkness filled him with fear. But, recalling the importance of the task ahead of him, he marshaled his courage and started down the steps. Because he did not want to risk attracting his mother’s attention he decided not to turn on his flashlight until he was far enough away from the house so that its beam would not be seen.

  For the first several minutes as he followed the driveway around the lake he was still so apprehensive about being in the forest at night that every sound, every faint rustle and snap, nearly sent him running back to the house. But slowly, as his eyes adapted to the dark, his fear became tempered by a touch of fascination. He had never been alone in the woods after nightfall, and despite his unease, the newness of the experience bombarded him with a multitude of enthralling sensations.

  First, he noticed that the night air was rich with a variety of smells. The most noticeable was the deep, resinous scent of the pines. But beneath this were others, the cool, watery smell of the lake, the green fragrance of the ferns and grasses, and occasionally even the rich, loamy smell of the earth itself.

  But even more prominent were the sounds of the forest at night. Although at first he had heard only a cacophony of frogs and insects, just as his eyes had become accustomed to the dark, so too his ears became more attuned to various subtleties and shadings of sound. He began to discern the difference between the rhythmic stridulations of the tree crickets and the higher, shriller droning of the cicadas. He detected that the constant whispering of the wind through the pines actually possessed great peaks and lulls, as if, somewhere, it was being mysteriously orchestrated; and he noticed that occasionally, no matter how many rattles, murmurs, and furtive rustlings he could hear, the night was punctuated by great silences, silences so deep and eerily still that it seemed the world itself had stopped in its turning.

  Thus he recognized also the mercurial nature of the woods at night, for just as he was beginning to feel comfortable, the forest would lapse into one of its unearthly hushes, causing his imagination to run wild. Indeed, by the time he reached the tunnel of pines that led down to the main highway, a silence of such duration had fallen over the land that he broke into a run. Once on the main road, he finally allowed himself to turn the flashlight on.

  But to his dismay, he found that he did not feel that much better having the flashlight on than he did having it off. It was true that with it on he could see clearly whatever was in the beam’s path, but suddenly what vague ability he possessed to see through the forest as a whole was completely canceled. It was as if he traded the ability to see everything just a little bit for the ability to see only a narrow strip completely, and he was not sure he had gotten the better part of the bargain. He also worried that if there was something in the forest he should be afraid of, with the flashlight on it was sure to notice his presence. But finally he concluded that the flashlight’s advantages outweighed its disadvantages and decided to keep it on.

  Fearing cars coming from behind might not see him, he continued on the shoulder of the road. But after walking for several miles and not seeing a single car pass by, he moved up to the smoother blacktop. Within about twenty minutes he had passed the first turnoff he and his mother had seen on their way to Clearwater Lodge, and shortly thereafter he passed another. But it was almost an hour before he finally reached the crudely painted keep-out sign and the winding dirt road that led up to Fugate’s cabin.

  He immediately turned the flashlight off so as not to telegraph his coming to Fugate. And then, taking a deep breath, he started up the drive. Although he had not noticed it before, the breeze had started to pick up a bit, causing little eddies of wind to rush through the upper branches of the pines, and in the moonlight it looked as if some heavy but invisible animal was making its way through the tops of the trees. Because his eyes had grown accustomed to the light of the flashlight, the shadows once again became deep troughs of darkness, and his inability to see more than a few feet in either direction added to his growing trepidation.

  Finally, after walking up the steep and winding driveway for what seemed about a mile, he reached a clearing in the trees and spotted Fugate’s cabin. It was strange being there in person, for everything, from the rakes and shovels leaning up against the outside to the large window in its front, looked exactly as it had through the telescope. Even the light was on, and as he stole quietly up to a clump of bushes near the cabin he could hear Fugate yelling inside.

  After positioning himself behind the bushes he looked through the window and saw that once again Fugate was frantically pacing back and forth in the room and waving his arms as if arguing with somebody. A shot of excitement passed through Garrett as he realized that at last he was going to see who or what it was Fugate was arguing with. But to his great disappointment he discovered that even when he craned his neck the object of Fugate’s wrath was still just out of range of his vision.

  He listened carefully, hoping that if he could hear what Fu
gate was saying, it might provide him with some clue. He found that he was able to make out a phrase here and there.

  “... do this to me?... you’re all the same!... can’t take it... if you only knew... all the same...”

  But what few snippets Garrett was able to pick up did not tell him much. A chill passed through him as he realized that much as he dreaded the idea, he was going to have to get closer.

  After watching Fugate for several seconds and making sure he was not looking out the window, Garrett crouched down and ran up to the cabin itself. When he reached it he flattened his body up against the outer wall and listened for a moment just to make sure Fugate had not heard him. But detecting no change in the clip of Fugate’s delivery, he slowly started to inch his way toward the window.

  He had to advance carefully, for several times when he went to put his foot down he felt a twig start to crunch beneath his shoe. Several feet from the window he also encountered one of Fugate’s rakes, and lifting it and gently placing it behind him proved to be an even more grueling and delicate process.

  But finally he drew close to the very window itself, and as he did so Fugate’s ranting became clearer.

  “... why?” he implored. “Why do you have to do this to me?... I don’t want to... it’s not me...”

  Garrett leaned forward so he could see the room a little better. It was even more filthy and cluttered than it had appeared through the telescope. Here and there on the crumbling plasterboard walls were great swathes of dirt and grimy handprints, and there was such a thick accumulation of garbage and moldering refuse on the floor that Fugate had been forced to carve several trenches through it just so he could still walk through the room. There was also a smell, faint but gagging, like the stench of an animal den, save that it was disturbingly human, with traces of urine, sweat, and feces.

  The smell revolted Garrett, but before he had time to think about what it meant, Fugate suddenly passed so close to the window Garrett was forced to jerk his head back to keep from being seen. Even so, as Fugate passed, Garrett caught a good enough glimpse of him to tell that he was just as dirty and unkempt as the cabin he lived in. His hair was greasy and matted, and his skin was white and beaded with perspiration. His eyes looked as though he had not slept in days. They were so reddened and desperate that Garrett was doubly convinced that the secret Fugate harbored was not of this earth.