There was nothing to find. He spent an hour looking along all the frames, testing the panels underneath, the walls between. He even moved the two cases Shelly replaced, as relatives restored them to the shop. He returned to the closet for a moment, and wondered what to do next, another hour and the sun would fade, he would not be in the shop as darkness fell, the thing in the attic might come down to see why he was there. Another pass at each window and he was undone, nothing found and the light fading. He would return the next day, and each day before Shelly was free to enter again, until he found what Papa ordered done.
His shivers returned as he left the gloom in the shop for the growing gloom in the garden, the open hole lying at the end of the steps from the porch. He had to look into the darkness, which had been filled with the dead until the day before. The contractor had not been able to return, Evan did not have a growing basement to look into, but the fresh emptied grave. The image of the skull in that hole filled his mind and he closed his eyes to stop it. The last step on the stair was but a few feet from the edge. Evan had difficulty moving down, moving away, and looking away. The body removed and the spirits were still there inside the building. He was no longer convinced they had recovered Yousep. The girl said nothing about Yousep finding rest; Evan thought it was all the dead required, a proper grave, proper respect. He could not understand what the dead here, might require, if their discovery were not enough to send them away.
The bottom step was won; he stood just at the edge of the hole and gathered his strength to move around it, to escape to the alley. He did not know; he was being watched. When the building felt his presence leave by the back way, the buildings around were hiding the last of the light in the studio windows, and the gloom quickly deepened to match the silence. But enough light remained to touch a shape in the window. A very large shape and it flashed laughter in its eyes and something worse on its lips.
“Evan, Thank God. We can't find Shelly!” Sareta was standing with Shelly's father at the front of the shop as Evan emerged from the alley; they had just arrived.
“Shit! You've lost her?” he cried and threw up his hands to his head.
“She was home an hour ago, she's not there now.”
“Why didn't you call here?” Evan asked Richard.
“She would not be here, she knows better!” Sareta yelled at him. “We do not know where your apartment is, we think she is there. Take us.”
“You should have called anyway! I would have gone home to check.”
“You are not supposed to be here, don't be stupid. We could not tell anyone to call you here, we were on our way from Beth's to see the basement dug today and just learned.”
“It wasn’t dug. They never came. How do you know she isn't here! We can't leave until we’ve checked,” Evan reproached them.
“You've been here all afternoon?” Shelly's father asked. “How could you not know if she is inside?”
“There is only one place she could be, and why she would go there passed Evan, God only knows,” Sareta said to them both. “Go back around, Evan, and meet us at the stair.”
Evan rushed to the rear again, stumbling up the porch steps, fumbled the key and made a mess of getting in. But happily, the back of the building was empty. He turned on every light in the place as he came through and found Sareta and her son in the middle of the store in front. They had not been inside that space the whole time Shelly worked, and they were struck with amazement when the lights came up. He could also tell they were frightened; they could have been up the stairs long before he made his bumbling way in the back, but they were trembling and slow. Sareta repeated what she told him the day before, she could feel the spirits in every corner of the place and her legs failed her will. Evan smiled a very weak smile and rushed up the stair before he could fright himself, they heard the door thrown and his gasp upon entering the room. The silence after was terrible to hear.
“What have we done? He should not have gone up there!” Sareta cried as she rushed to the bottom steps.
“It’s all right. It’s empty up here. Stuffy, like before, but empty,” Evan called down.
“God, child, mein kind! Get down here now before I die and haunt you myself!”
She was more distressed than she had been in years, and her son noticed the strain it caused her. Sareta had been very young, but the events in the attic those years ago were terribly fresh in her mind, Shelly restored the shop to perfection. Richard had only seen it like this in photographs, and he half expected to see the crazy old man, Menashe himself walk out of the back studio. Sareta’s sudden cry brought his mind back to the moment, but did not stir his reflexes to be of any help. Evan was head over heels coming down the stairs and his cries were almost as loud as the laughter, which remained just inside the door of that room.
“Holy shit, who’s up there?” Richard yelled and bolted to the stair where Evan was barely controlling his hideous fall.
“Richard! Do not move a step closer!” His mother hissed and flailed her arm in front of him. Evan settled, very dazed into a crumpled, but upright position on the bottom three steps. His eyes were swimming again. Sareta’s eyes were fixed at the top of the stair and she inched as close to Evan as she could without looking at him. Her color was gone, and she moaned in fear before she tried to speak to Evan in a whisper.
“Do not move Evan. Do not make a sound. Richard, Dear God, it’s at the top of the stair watching him! Please do not move Evan…”
She did not have to tell him again. Evan fainted.
“Richard, please walk slowly to the back porch and throw something in the grave.”
“Grave?” Richard Reisman was stunned at what she asked of him.
“Do not say another word, get something heavy and throw it into the hole at the bottom of the back steps. Go now, Son, or Evan will die right in front of us. It wants to come down,” she moaned and was so unsteady her son almost stayed with her, but she pleaded. “Go now! Please.” He hurried to the doorway and disappeared into the studio. Sareta held her breath to hear the back door open, and as it did, the thing at the top of the stair turned to look that direction, and slid back into the storeroom. The door silently closed, so slowly Sareta thought she would faint before she could draw breath again. A calm voice in her ear raised a chill and the hairs on her skin, though it whispered softly.
“That one will not return. He is safe.”
Evan stirred as the whisper faded. Sareta moved to take his hand, but did not take her eyes from the door above them. She heard the laughter again, very faintly.
Evan was laid on the divan in the studio. Richard was furious at what he found in the back, understanding when he saw it, why it had been called a grave. His mother tried to calm him and make him understand it was necessary; Yousep’s spirit might be released if they returned him to his family.
“This is insane, Mother. We should burn this place to the ground tonight. I can’t believe I’m even still here! How many times are we going to let this young man to be battered before we stop the whole damned thing?”
Sareta stood up against her son so quickly he was nearly thrown backward. Her tone spoke more authority than her words, and Evan was pretty sure she could have knocked her son out with a single punch.
“We will allow him to help us as long as he likes!” She pointed in Richard’s face but squeezing Evan’s hand. “This place needs peace, not flames. If we burn this place down, where do you think the spirits will go Richard? They haunt the Reismans, not the Bryants, Richard!”
“Grandma, that is not Yousep up there. It’s something else and I can’t figure out whom. I couldn’t feel it this time until it touched me. I hope it’s not Papa, you will never be rid of him if it’s Menashe Reisman,” Evan said as he rubbed his eyes gently. “Shelly has spoken to Yousep and probably the girl. I’m convinced of it. She doesn’t always speak English, have you noticed?”
“The boy must be the one who spoke to me,” Sareta said as she sat carefully next to Evan. “He told me you we
re safe when it went back to the room.”
Her son was becoming more agitated again. The conversation was very distressing to him. His entire life those were only spooky stories, and he’d never believed them.
“I’ve spoken to the girl too, Sareta. She is so gentle. Why she and Yousep are still here, we can’t understand yet. But they won’t harm us; they are still human enough to care about us.”
“Then what is the brute at the top of the stair?” Sareta pleaded with him. “Please tell me it cannot be Papa!”
“I don’t know,” Evan lied. “The girl doesn’t seem to fear it, but she told me to stay out of that room. Whatever it is, couldn’t pull me in, so it flung me back down. If that’s not Papa, I can only imagine who it is, and they are still murderous!”
“Is that Yousep’s murderer up there? Dear God!” Sareta was looking at the ceiling above them as if to see the thing in the attic room. She shuddered at the thought of what she saw on the stair.
“But why would it be here? Why would such a fiend come back to this place, where it killed two children? To torment them after their deaths? They have to hide from this thing forever?” Evan hated those words when he said them; they were foul in his heart. Yousep and his girl, trapped with that thing, with still no escape? And Shelly had to feel all of that in her poor heart?
Richard was listening to his mother and Evan discuss the very real haunting he just witnessed and they were calmly analyzing the actions of people who were dead more years than he had been alive. He wanted out of the building, and it was becoming more urgent than he could control.
“Do either of you remember we are supposed to be trying to locate Shelly?” he blurted at them finally. His mother looked surprised at herself, and asked if Evan felt well enough to rush out to his home. He nodded, he was still in pain from the fall, but he only wanted to find Shelly and have the event ended for the night. He refused the urge to tell Sareta and Richard the spirit in the attic had been the one that attacked him the last time he held Shelly in his arms. Finding her would be like walking back into that room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Evan was in no fit state to drive, again. He told Richard how to get to his apartment and then lay down in the back seat while they hurried to see if Shelly was indeed there. Sareta was hoping Shelly was there. Only there could she flee without permission, and be forgiven. The possibility spirits might still haunt her family, after the building was gone, to Sareta - it was unthinkable. There was some other way, she knew there must be, and she just prayed desperately it would not cost another life to find that peace. They must put the spirits and that damned building to rest before they cast the horrors into the wind to follow them all. Shelly must be at Evan’s, it was the only protection she might have.
At least his lights were on. He pleaded they let him go up himself to see her, but Richard would not hear of it. Evan could barely sit up in the car, and he had three flights to climb. They all three made their way up to Evan’s door, and Shelly burst out, to scare them out of their wits entirely. She hurt Evan horribly in her embrace, and she could not be pried loose to let him inside. She was so hasty to beg him to forgive and hug her that she had no idea he was injured again. Sareta and Richard both pulled the two into the apartment and carried Evan near the couch to sit him down.
“Shelly Reisman, get your hand off this boy, right now,” Sareta glared and hissed. Shelly jumped back as if burned.
“Why? Evan?”
“He was thrown down the attic stair,” Her grandmother said with another hiss. The look on Shelly’s face made Evan pull his arm free of Richard’s grip, and he took her chin and kissed her very gently.
“I just need to sit down, Sweetheart. We were just in a panic over where you were.”
“Why were you there?”
“We will explain all that when we find out why you are not where you are supposed to be,” Her grandmother shot back as she helped Evan get settled. Shelly just stood there watching.
They saw instantly what Shelly had been doing there, she had been reading all of Evan’s work strewn about on the floor, and the photographs from Papa’s chest were arranged in much the same way. Richard was stunned at the depth of the work to discover why the Reisman Portraits held its spirits and would not allow those spirits to leave. Then he saw the photograph on the wall, the beauty the other three had known about, the angel who died as Yousep tried to build protections around her. Richard stood back from the couch and stared at the image on the wall. He backed further across the papers on the floor and stopped at the window. He shook his head in disbelief and whispered to himself,
“She is real. How can she be real?”
“Daddy, we don’t know her name. I’ve been trying to find it here. I did not know Evan printed the plate.” Then she took her father’s hand and turned his face to meet her eyes. She was careful he should understand what she was telling him. “She’s not perfect, Daddy. That is more than an image and it has a horrifying secret you do not want to see suddenly.” Richard just looked at his daughter with confusion on his face. “Daddy, the image shows what was done to her, the things Yousep was trying to save her from. They will break your heart if you are not prepared.”
And he turned from Shelly’s eyes to see what she meant. They were silent for him, and the only sound, came from his lips, as his eyes cleared to see behind the beauty. Shelly tried to comfort her father, he still had not expected, still was not ready to see the angel wounded as he did. Evan suddenly remembered, Sareta had not seen the image printed so large. She too could not look away, until the sorrow made her weep.
“Daddy, she became part of our family, because of Yousep. It’s why she’s still with us - to be with him. But we do not know why he is still here. We don’t even know what we are looking for to help them.”
She turned to see Evans’s face, to try and smile at him, she didn’t even know yet if he could forgive her, or even wanted to try. The image on the wall in the den stopped time around them before she could get his answer. He was very quiet and distant; he would not reach to touch her.
She left her father’s embrace and walked to kneel at Evan’s feet where he sat, tense on the couch. He studied her very closely, suspiciously even. She tried to smile again. Her grandmother sat beside them and told Shelly there were too many important things which needed to be explained, which must be understood before she and Richard could leave the two alone. Shelly would have Evan alone, if she would but wait a bit, to hear what was done at the building, and what had been done to Evan.
Sareta asked Evan to tell all he knew of the hauntings, and the things he learned from Papa’s chest and the archives. He explained to Richard and Shelly how he discovered clues to the grave they would find in the garden, it was still not certain whom the poor soul might have been, no real clue surfaced. Richard heard the hole called a grave, but neither he nor Shelly knew human remains had been taken out. It took Evan and Sareta together the next half hour to make the story known.
Evan needed to explain to Shelly, the opened grave had not released any spirit from their entrapment in the Reisman Portraits. Sareta needed to explain to her son they must endure the place until all the story could be known, if ever it could.
He had seen and heard enough in the building that night; he did not want those things to pursue his family, but to remain where they were. He needed even more comfort from his daughter now, she was in the greatest danger because she felt the spirits more than anyone else, and nothing had yet been solved for them, but so very much was disturbed around them. Shelly was as trapped and tormented as the ghosts in her building.
“Evan I had a terrible dream of a garden last night. It was awful until I tried to wake up.” She was touching him softly, seeking some clue he wanted her to continue. Her father interrupted her.
“You scared the shit out of everyone in the house, screaming Evan was not dead. And then crying about the laughter being gone.”
“What laughter, Sweetheart?”
<
br /> “From the storeroom. From here, last month,” she said with hesitation. Her folks may not have known what happened the last time she and Evan were together in his apartment.
“It was very different up there tonight,” Evan told her. “The room was fine for a few seconds, but I didn’t really go in, just stuck my head in and flipped the light.” He explained that when he turned around to let them know below that Shelly was not inside, the room menaced him suddenly, but could not hold him, the way it had when he fell into the shelves. But the presence there did not surrender its grip on Evan; it threw him down the stairs.
“Something has changed, I just don’t know what.”
“I’ve changed,” Shelly surprised him. “I do not hear it now. The laughter does not haunt me like it did.”
Richard and Sareta were satisfied the two could be left alone. Shelly’s father was still in disbelief the old tales and family legends caused so much pain to his daughter and her young man. He did not approve of their returning to the building at all, but he relented under his mother’s increased anger about his stubbornness. Shelly had not moved from Evan’s feet, but was now lying across his legs with her head on her arms, and Evan was absently running his fingers through her hair.
“I can’t believe all this began with the opening of this box,” Richard said as he peered into Papa’s chest. All the documents and papers were still inside and he fingered them around a bit with curiosity. “No one still alive knew Granddad owned anything but the studios. That is a stunning bit of history. What it means may be as disturbing as the events in the shop. Why would the family hide that?” and he looked to his mother for some answer.
Caraliza Page 21