Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)

by Matthew Farrell

  In the spring of 1980, when my relationship with Noreen was just getting off the ground, I’d come upon an old hunting cabin in the woods in Cross Creek County Park up in West Middletown while hiking one afternoon. It wasn’t very big, maybe seven hundred square feet, one room, no bathroom, but to me, it was perfect. From the decaying walls and crumbling roof, I could tell the structure hadn’t been used in some time, so I claimed it as mine and took Noreen there to make love on a blanket on the floor with nothing but the solitude of nature surrounding us. That became our spot, one where we knew no one would ever find us and we could be together the way we wanted. It was as close to perfect as we could get.

  Over time, the cabin became a sanctuary. We went as often as we could after Tiffany and Sonia, talking things through and me letting Noreen cry it out without the need to look over her shoulder to make sure we remained alone. As her condition worsened, we would sit for full afternoons in complete silence, tears constantly streaming down her face. I wondered if she would ever get better, and I found my answer when she called me and asked me to meet her at the cabin in the summer of 1985.

  Like I mentioned before, the cabin was just one big room. A dilapidated kitchen area was on the far left, and a bedroom section was on the right. The front of the cabin was where a living room would normally be, but there was no furniture to fill up the space, and we never really needed anything other than a blanket. I had a clean line of sight to the bedroom area and could see Noreen on an old cot and soiled mattress that had been left behind. She was sitting up, her back against the wall, her legs lying straight out. A child rested in her lap, unmoving.

  “Noreen,” I whispered as I walked farther into the cabin. “What’s going on?”

  She looked up at me and smiled. But her eyes were vacant, lifeless. Her cheekbones poked through her skin from all the weight she’d lost. “I wanted to spend some time with her.”

  I took a step closer. “Who is that?”

  Her smile broadened. “Sonia, silly.”

  As I approached, I could see she was holding a young boy. He was African American, maybe ten, twelve years old. She’d put a blond wig on him, and the wig had red ribbons in it. Noreen was dressing him up to look like Sonia. I thought I was going to be sick.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I saw her when I was coming home from my route. I was feeling so sad and missing her so much. There were days visiting stores when I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull it off. Trying to act normal when life isn’t normal is harder than you’d think. Laughing when you want to cry. Making small talk with your customers when you really just want to lock yourself in your hotel room and make the world disappear. I knew I needed to play the role of the catalog saleswoman, so I did the best I could. But today was tough. God, I missed her terribly today. I don’t know why. And then, like a miracle, I saw her, and my day brightened. I knew I could spend a little time with her to make me feel better before we had to put her back.”

  The boy was unmoving. Pale. Lifeless. Dead.

  “You killed him?”

  “Who?”

  “This boy!”

  Noreen laughed, and it sent shivers down my spine. “What boy? This is Sonia. Can’t you see that? I saw her, and I knew I needed to spend some time with her. Just Mommy and her little baby. I missed her so much.”

  Noreen’s bottle of sleeping pills was on the floor next to the cot, and I figured she’d drugged the boy like she’d done to Sonia at her house three years earlier. I’d later find out that she got him into her car by hitting him over the head with the baseball bat Jackson made her carry in the car when she was traveling alone. She knocked him out and stuffed him in the trunk. Then she put him to sleep and smothered him. Just like Sonia.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked, kneeling next to the cot and taking her hand in mine.

  “I needed to see her.”

  “This isn’t Sonia!”

  She looked up at me. “Why didn’t you lock the door?”

  She hadn’t asked me that in years. The guilt ran through me like a fever.

  “Lives would’ve been saved if you’d just locked that classroom door.”

  “I—”

  “I’d have my little girl. Tiffany’s parents would have a family. Everyone would be happy.”

  I pulled at my hair, tugging it. “I can’t do this!”

  “Everything would be as it should be if you’d just locked that door.”

  She slipped out from under the boy and placed him down on the cot, faceup. He looked peaceful.

  “I need you to put her back,” Noreen said, her voice trailing off like she was dreaming. “Put her back so she can rest.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  She pushed me up against the wall and curled her hands around the lapels of my jacket. We were so close I could smell her stale breath. It smelled like death. “Bury my daughter.”

  She let go, and I slid down onto the floor, the scene before me blurring with my tears. I wanted to refuse. To stand my ground. I know I could have stopped her. I could have hit her or tackled her or overpowered her and gone to the police, but I was too scared to move. I didn’t know this woman. She was so completely mad. It shook me to my core.

  And I had been the cause of it all.

  45

  He could hear them breathing. Raspy. Painful. Choked. He knew it was dark, and in the darkness, he knew he was vulnerable. He was sleeping on his back, his face outside the covers, exposed. He wanted to scream for help but was somehow aware that if he were to scream, those small, clawed hands would reach into his open mouth and rip out his tongue. There was nowhere he could go. No way to get help. He was trapped.

  James opened his eyes, and with the help of the streetlights coming in through the three windows, he saw the outlines of them. The four children stood on either side of him with their pale skin and decomposing faces, two on each side.

  “Go away,” James whispered through clenched teeth. “Leave me alone.”

  They stared at him with dead eyes, their gazes cold, fixed only on him. He knew they wanted to hurt him, but he didn’t know why.

  “Leave me alone!”

  He could see them in the semilit room. One of the girls wore pigtails, her blonde hair dirty and matted from being buried in the earth, her lips dry and cracked.

  The boy smiled when they made eye contact. It was a lifeless smile like one a doll would give if you pulled a string in its back. Mud oozed from his lips and ran down the front of what had once been a white dress shirt.

  The other girl had an eye missing. In its place, a black marble that shone in the glow of the streetlights outside. The marble was too small for its socket and moved from side to side whenever the girl turned her head. It was the most horrific thing he’d ever seen.

  I’m going to scream. God help me, I’m going to scream, and they’re going to rip my heart out when I do. No one will save me in time. I’m going to scream, and they’re going to end me.

  The girl with the ponytails moved to the end of the bed. He could see her skin was soiled with dried blood and dirt. Her nails had been snapped off each finger, leaving jagged edges. She slowly lifted her arm and pointed at him. When she did, the others followed. They were all pointing at him.

  “You,” the girl with the ponytails growled.

  James felt his heart pounding in his chest. “Go away!”

  He shut his eyes again and pulled the covers over his head.

  I’m going to scream! And if I scream, they’ll take my tongue, and they’ll reach down my throat with their muddy hands and broken fingernails and they’ll cut me from the inside, and they’ll rip my heart out of me. I can’t scream!

  The covers began closing in on him. He could see tiny imprints of hands pushing down from the outside.

  “Go away!”

  They were getting closer. Closer to his chest. To his throat. To his mouth. It was getting harder to breathe. The covers were going to suffocate him.
r />   “Go away!”

  They pushed down on his body. Eight hands. Forty fingers. Four dead children seeking vengeance for reasons he didn’t know. He could smell the old blanket, taste it as tiny fingers pushed the fabric into his mouth. He screamed now, no longer caring what might happen. But his screams were muffled and silent. More of the blanket was pushed down his throat, and he started choking. His chest burned and his eyes bulged. They were so strong.

  Pushing down the blanket.

  Suffocating him.

  Killing him.

  The odor of wet earth and rot filled the room. He was a dead man. It was only a matter of time.

  The light came on from upstairs.

  The children were gone.

  James sat up and threw the blanket off of him, coughing and wheezing, inhaling heavy breaths as if he’d just surfaced from drowning. He looked toward the stairs and saw the woman standing at the bottom landing tying her robe around her waist.

  “You!” he cried. “Oh, thank you for saving me. Oh my!”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Thank you for saving me. Thank you! That was close. Too close.”

  She walked into the bedroom area and bent down. “You were having a nightmare. I could hear you yelling up in my room. What were you dreaming about?”

  A man came down after the woman, not the man who was usually there, James thought. He remained at the bottom landing, watching.

  “The children,” James said, the words tumbling from his mouth without any thought or reason. He didn’t know what he was saying. His mind was racing as his eyes darted around the room looking for remnants of the creatures that had tried to take him away. “The ghosts. The dead children.”

  “They came back?”

  “All of them. Bonnie and Marcus and Tiffany and Sonia. All of them!”

  Cindy sat down on the edge of the bed. Her demeanor changed instantly. She grew serious. “You saw the children?”

  “Yes! They came to take me away. They tried to kill me, and you saved me. Oh, I love you for saving me. Thank you! I owe you my life!”

  “He’s remembering,” the man on the stairs said.

  James took her hand and kissed it. She pulled away before he could kiss it for a second time. Without words, she rose from the bed and ran into the living room area, grabbed the photo album, and returned quickly.

  “Was she there?” Cindy asked, flipping to the first page and pointing to a photo.

  “Yes. Tiffany.”

  Flipping. “And him?”

  “Marcus.”

  “Keep going,” the man on the stairs commanded.

  “Her?”

  “Bonnie.” James scanned the room as he spoke, suddenly unsure of where he was.

  Flipping. Pointing. “How about her?”

  “That’s . . .” He stopped and stared at the picture as he ran his fingers across the glossy photograph. “That’s . . . Sonia,” he muttered under his breath. “She was there. She’s the one who told the others to kill me.”

  Cindy gently closed the album. “You remember.”

  James craned his neck to see past the woman sitting at his bed. It looked like he was underground. In a basement.

  “Tell her their names again,” the man on the stairs said.

  James looked at him. “Who?”

  “The children. The ghosts. Tell her their names.”

  James thought for a moment, looking down at his legs. Why were they in braces? Why was he in bed?

  “James,” the woman pressed. “You remembered. That’s a great thing. Tell me their names again.”

  “What names?”

  “He’s gone,” the man on the stairs said. “Just like that.”

  The woman smiled as tears glassed her eyes. “Tell me their names. Please.”

  “Who?”

  “Tell me!”

  James shook his head. “I need to get some sleep. I have class first thing in the morning. We’re starting Romeo and Juliet, and I have to have my wits about me if I’m going to explain Shakespearean prose.”

  The woman got up from the bed and started spinning in circles. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening! You remembered!”

  “Please. I need my rest. The students can be so tiresome sometimes.”

  The man on the stairs sighed and climbed back up, disappearing from the basement.

  The woman looked at James, panicked. “What’s my name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He paused, thinking.

  “NO!”

  The woman rushed to his bedside, grabbed him by the collar of his pajamas, and began shaking him.

  “You son of a bitch! Tell me their names. You just said them! Tell me about the children you killed! Tell me their names!”

  “Stop it!”

  The last thing he saw was the leather-bound photo album swinging down toward his face.

  He heard the woman scream.

  Then blackness.

  46

  “I can’t do this. Do you hear me? I can’t do this anymore! He won’t remember!”

  “You told us you could get him to talk,” David said calmly. She could hear the anger in his voice, but it was subdued. “You told us you could do it before Hagen came.”

  “Well, I guess I can’t!”

  “Then why are we here? Hagen could’ve just killed Darville at his house, and we all go home. He’s giving you what you asked for, and that affects all of us now. Do you think my sister and I would’ve taken part in this madness if we thought things would fall apart like this? You told us you could get him to talk, and we keep waiting around while people are dying. My sister is—”

  “I’m doing the best I can!”

  “It’s not good enough!”

  David stormed down the hall and into the living room, stopping in front of a set of windows that looked out onto the front of the house. “How are we even supposed to get out of this? Everything’s so far gone.”

  Cindy leaned against the wall, exhausted. “I don’t know.”

  “I get that you’re trying, but maybe he’s a lost cause. Maybe you’ll never get your truth. Maybe it’s just better to let Hagen come up here and end it. We give him Darville, and he gives my mom her liver and gives Trevor back his family. You lose, but you were never really sacrificing anything in the first place.”

  “Screw you,” Cindy blurted through her tears. “My sister sacrificed her life, my mother sacrificed her happiness, and I’ve sacrificed my childhood trying to find out what happened to Sonia. You don’t get to tell me what I’ve given to Hagen and this plan. You think Hagen’s just going to come up here, kill James, and let us go back to our lives after everything that’s happened? We can’t cover this up. Not after everything we’ve done. We’re liabilities at this point. Don’t you get that?”

  David shook his head, his back still turned. “We’ll get our lives back. We have to. He promised.”

  Cindy walked across the room and joined David at the windows. It was pitch black outside, and all she could see was the reflection of a tired and frightened woman staring back at her. “Their crime scene people will find some kind of trace of something in that car, and we’ll be caught. They already have the dashcam footage, and they’ve already been through James’s house. All they need to do is find something that links one of us, and we all go down. Hagen knows this. We’re sitting ducks up here.”

  “We have to stick to the plan. You can keep trying to get answers from him about your sister and the other kids, and me and Trevor will keep babysitting until Hagen gets here. We’ll give him the old man, and then you go home, my mom gets her new liver, and Trevor gets his family back. Hagen will forgive us. He has to.”

  Cindy turned away from the window and looked at David, trying to get a sense of whether Trevor might be right about David being Hagen. The story he wrote. The motive of using a new book to get rich and famous. His mood swings from panicked to calm. It was unne
rving.

  “How can you be so sure Hagen will forgive us?” she asked.

  “I just am,” David replied. “You have to have faith. Trust me.”

  47

  Susan woke to the first snowfall of the season. It wasn’t anything significant, and the ground was still too warm to worry about accumulation, but as she climbed from her bed and looked out her window, she couldn’t help but feel a mix of awe and dread. The snowflakes cascading onto the neighborhood looked so picturesque and peaceful. Yet, at the same time, she feared the snow would further remind her son of what had happened a year earlier and send him spiraling even deeper into anxiety. The holidays were coming, and with them, her family’s haunted anniversary.

  Despite everyone’s alarms going off at the same time, Susan could already hear Beatrice and the twins in the kitchen. Their conversation was quiet, mixed with yawns and stretching and the clattering of plates being passed around. Susan turned from the window, grabbed her robe from the hook on the back of her door, and made her way downstairs.

  “Hey, guys,” she said as she walked into the kitchen.

  Casey pointed out the window. “Mommy, it’s snowing!”

  “I know. I see.”

  “Can we play in it after school?”

  Susan took a mug from the dishwasher and poured herself a cup of coffee that was still brewing. “Honey, I don’t think it’s going to stick much.”

  “But can we play anyway?”

  “Maybe. We’ll figure it out when you get home.”

  Susan kissed her mother on the back of the head. “Good morning, Mother.”