by Rick Hautala
The gloom that pervaded the Carlson house since the night of the blizzard was dispelled the day Julia brought little Nathan home from the hospital. Bri immediately dubbed him “Nate,” and Julia didn’t mind if the nickname stuck. She liked it.
And Bri — God bless her! — was an incredible help during the first few weeks after Nate came home. She had started school, eighth grade in Falmouth, even though they planned to move soon. But even with homework and being so busy with her friend Kristin, she never complained about helping out with feedings and diapers. Randy and Ellie Chadwick visited almost daily, bringing dishes of food and helping with the cleaning. The Chadwicks and Kristin were probably the only three people on Glooscap island who were upset the day Merilee Bryant, from Century 21, put a For-Sale sign on the front lawn of Frank’s house.
After a few weeks, Nate began to sleep ... well, mostly through the night, and Julia and Bri got busy packing for the move back to Vermont. Within two weeks, the house sold for a nice price, but the closing was more than a month away, so they didn’t feel any hurry to get out of the house. The painful memories associated with living on Glooscap had lost much of their sting, so Julia decided to take her time packing and, as painful as it was, weed out a lot of their accumulated trash. The hardest part was the day she gathered up John’s clothes and took them to Goodwill. But once that job was done, the rest of the work of getting ready to move went much more easily. On the last weekend of September, they had a yard sale and put up for sale everything they didn’t want to cart back to Vermont. Bri cried when someone bought her granddad’s wheelchair.
II
It was a gorgeous October day — clear and chilly — the Saturday before they were to move. Towering white clouds floated like cotton puffs across a blue sky so bright it hurt to look at it for long. Almost every room in the house was packed and ready to go. The van was scheduled to arrive on Monday morning. Julia and Bri were getting tired of living out of boxes, and both of them were anxious to get moved and resettled. Julia set up a small Port-A-Crib in the living room so Nate could take his nap while she finished packing the remaining dishes and pots and pans in the kitchen.
“You know what?” Julia said as she rolled a cup into a sheet of newspaper and placed it into the box.
Bri looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“It’s hard to believe, but it was exactly a year ago today that we moved here.”
Bri had finished giving Nate a bottle of distilled water and was sitting at the kitchen table. Her eyes continually drifted to the bright slash of sky that she could see out of the kitchen window. She took a shuddering breath and let it out with a slow sigh.
Bri didn’t know what to say to that. Her eyes got dreamily distant.
Julia perked up her ears when Nate, in his crib in the living room, started fussing. “He’s not settling down,” she said. “Did you change his diaper?”
“‘Course I did,” Bri replied, but Julia wasn’t convinced because Bri looked so distracted. She turned back to packing glasses and cups, hoping this was a momentary fussiness on Nate’s part, and that he would drift off to sleep so she could finish the job.
But Nate didn’t drift off. What had started as a low-level squawking soon turned into a full-scale cry. His high-pitched wailing set Julia’s sleep-deprived nerves on edge, and before long, she found herself shoving the glasses into the box with enough force to break something if she wasn’t careful. She was fuming when she turned and saw Bri still sitting at the table with her chin resting in her hands, staring out the window.
“Well?” she said, crumpling a piece of newspaper and throwing it onto the counter.
“Huh, wha — ?” Bri said, shaking her head and looking up at her.
“Maybe you could do something for him so I can get this done,” Julia said, trying to tamp down her sudden anger. “Or take over here so I can handle him.”
She knew she sounded a snappy, but her nerves were worn particularly thin today. That surprised her because for the last three nights she hadn’t had any bad dreams … that she remembered, anyway. Two A.M. feedings were keeping her busy enough at night without nightmares.
“Umm … yeah … Sure,” Bri said, getting up from the table and looking toward the living room with a confused expression on her face. She looked as if she didn’t know who — or what — was making that noise in there.
“Maybe pop him into the stroller and take him for a walk,” Julia said, forcing herself to tone her voice down. “Give me another half hour, and then maybe we’ll drive into town for lunch. Most of the cooking stuff’s packed, anyway.”
“Sure,” Bri said as she started toward the living room. “Lemme … ahh, get a sweater or something. It looks kinda cold outside.”
“Make sure you bundle Nate up good, too,” Julia said. “And would you mind getting a move on? His crying is driving me nuts!”
Nate was still wailing away in the living room as Bri trudged upstairs. Julia turned back to her job at hand, but she couldn’t keep her attention from drifting back to the living room as she waited for Bri to return. After what seemed much too long a time, while Nate’s crying rose more shrilly, she finally heard the heavy tread of footsteps on the stairs.
“Put that white hooded sweatshirt on him,” Julia called out. “I don’t want him getting a chill.”
Bri didn’t answer her, but, figuring she knew what she was doing, Julia kept on packing. After another five minutes or so, Nate was still crying, and it seemed to Julia as though Bri was taking entirely too long.
“You two all right in there?” Julia called out.
“Sure…” Bri answered, but there was a vacant tone in her voice that bothered Julia. It sounded as though Bri was still upstairs, not in the living room.
“Bri …?” Julia called out as she walked into the living room. Bright daylight filtered through the windows, and soft, gauzy shadows shifted across the carpet.
“If you — What the hell!”
Julia felt a flood of panic when she saw Bri leaning over the portable crib. Her hands looked unnaturally pale and thin, and she was gripping the crib’s side rail, jiggling the crib gently as she made soft, cooing noises.
What surprised Julia was what Bri wearing — a long, gray sweater that was hanging down heavily at her sides as though it was saturated with water. White patches covered the sides and back looking like … mold. The sweater brushed against the edge of the crib with a soft thump-thump sound as Bri shook the crib, trying to calm Nate.
“Where did you get that old thing?” Julia asked as she took a few cautious closer.
The fuzzy-edged shadows on the floor shifted subtly, making her feel off balance … disoriented.
Did a cloud cover the sun, changing the light? she wondered. Or is it my vision?
An alarm went off somewhere in her mind as recognition gradually dawned.
She gasped aloud, unable to believe what she was seeing.
“Bri?”
“You know,” Bri said, her voice sounding muffled, distant.
“When he’s crying like this, I can see that he has your mouth and chin.”
“Jesus Christ, Bri! What are you doing?” Julia shouted as panic roared inside her. “What in the name of God are you doing?”
Moving stiffly, Bri shifted her shoulders as she straightened up. The heavy folds of the gray sweater rippled like sludgy, scum-topped water. Her mouth drooped open in mute horror as Julia tried to take a deep breath.
“But I think …” Bri said, but that was all as she slowly turned to face her mother.
When she looked at Julia, cold, numbing fear slammed her, tugging like an irresistible wave.
Bri’s face was gone.
In its place was the rotted, peeling visage of Abby Snow. Her long black hair, tangled and stringy, dangling clumps of dirt and bloated crawling things, hung loosely down around the sides of her face. Exposed bone showed between shredded strips of dead flesh, and her eyes glow with a wild intensity.
Julia
started backing away until she banged into the living room wall.
Then, as her knees gave way, she crumpled slowly to the floor.
“I think, though, that he has my eyes,” the thing that wasn’t her daughter said. Its jaw made hollow clacking sounds as the blackened lips peeled back, exposing the top row of yellow, dirt-crusted teeth.
“Don’t you think so?” the creature said. “Definitely … He has my eyes!”
Julia’s throat was making odd little clicking sounds as the creature threw its head back, exposing the mottled gray flesh of its neck, and began to laugh.
Julia felt herself falling … spinning backwards into darkness as the laughter spiraled higher ... and higher ... and higher …
The End
Table of Contents
Introduction by Gary Braunbeck
A Brief Note from the Author
PART ONE: Clotho-the Spinning Fate
ONE: Coming Home
TWO: Church Wood
THREE: Unloading
FOUR: First Day Jitters
FIVE: Meeting Audrey
SIX: A Certain Slant of Light
SEVEN: Frank and Julia
EIGHT: Trick or Treat
PART TWO: Lachesis-the Assigning Fate
NINE: Wharf Rats
TEN: High School Memories
ELEVEN: After the Storm
TWELVE: “Dem Bones”
THIRTEEN: Fish Bait
FOURTEEN: Ice Maiden
FIFTEEN: Nor’easter
SIXTEEN: Father and Son
PART THREE: Atropos — the Cutting Fate
SEVENTEEN: Wish List
EIGHTEEN: Christmas Eve
NINETEEN: DOA
TWENTY: Suspicions
TWENTY-ONE: “See what he did ...”
TWENTY-TWO: Storm Watch
TWENTY-THREE: The Blizzard
TWENTY-FOUR: Across the Bay
EPILOGUE: Waiting to be Born