I twisted a handful of tarp in each hand and pulled him behind me through the living room, and down into my bedroom, ignoring the grimy feeling the cobwebs on the slick material left on my hands. Who knew how long that tarp had been outside?
Once I got him into my room and the tarp thrown across the hall into Dad’s already dirty room, I lay down on my bed and stared at the beast.
I didn’t know what I was thinking earlier. He was nothing but a stuffed creation of Dad’s. But, that was the way wasn’t it? We try to find hope in the insignificant. No one had come to take care of me, no one had come to help me, but Wolfy was there to look over me. Just like he had been all those years ago.
I slept with the light on, and when something heavy crawled onto the bed by my feet, I didn’t dare open my eyes.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My appetite seeped in like condensation on my glass of iced tea the next morning. I wouldn’t call it hunger; my appetite never worked that way. I craved food most mornings, something to help me get up and move. The hunger had been missing the past few weeks, and I even began to wonder if my body had given up. Did it know I was done? Useless? No need for fuel when there is nothing worth fueling.
That morning, I welcomed it back with a mild relief. Maybe my life would still push forward. How did that make me feel? I wasn’t sure yet. I had been so sure there was nothing left. Maybe there still wasn’t.
The warm mini pickles I inhaled a second day in a row woke up parts of my body and brain that had insisted on dormancy the past few months. Whether I spent time questioning if I had more than just days left in front of me or not, the pickles ensured I would. My body was hungry. I sat at the kitchen table plucking them from a jar when a knock came at the door.
Cecelia back already? No, she’d let herself in.
I glanced at the ticking Budweiser clock; it wasn’t even eight in the morning. I pulled the threadbare curtain from the window and pressed my face against the thick glass, looking this way and that. No one on the porch. I moved and looked out the window over the sink at the driveway. No car. Dammit, I thought I had woken in a better mindset that morning, but I was imagining things already.
Distracted from the pickles, it was time for my first cigarette of the day. Even though the house smelled like generations of smoke, I still smoked on the porch. A good time to get close to nature; renew the spirit and all that. I grabbed my cigarettes off the counter and kicked the screen door out onto the porch. I turned towards the patio table, making eye contact with an elderly man, and choked on my smoke, launching into a coughing fit.
“Holy shit,” I said, once my hacking subsided. The man was thin with dark features, deeply wrinkled, and held a metal box on his lap. He certainly did not look surprised to see me. I looked back to the driveway — empty except for my car. “Where did you come from?”
“My horse,” he said, pointing down at the valley. Sure enough, a large brown horse waited, tied to the post outside the neglected barn.
“What the fuck? Who rides a horse?” My throat too sore to enjoy it, I stabbed out my cigarette. I stood awkward for a moment, unsure if I should introduce myself or call the cops. Then I remembered. No phone. What would I even say? I had youth on my side and could make a run for it if I needed to. Or, attack. He hadn’t even done anything yet. Sit it was.
“You’re one of his,” he said, setting the metal box on the table. He took a pouch of tobacco out of his flannel’s breast pocket. The horse neighed. The whole moment lived in an otherworldly breath.
I hadn’t seen someone roll their own since I was a kid. Not tobacco anyhow. “I’m sorry?”
“I said, you’re one of his.”
“Yeah... One of whose whats?” My eyes were on his fingers as he artfully dropped tobacco on the small paper, beginning the process of rolling back and forth, then he licked the edge and sealed the cigarette.
He looked up at me, his cloudy blue eyes didn’t squint against the bright morning light like mine did. He pointed the cigarette to the house. “One of his. Rodney’s kids.”
“Yeah, and you are?”
“I don’t suppose you’d remember me.” He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, pointing in the direction of the road snaking further up the mountain on the other side of the driveway. “Clancy’s dad.”
Clancy was Dad’s partner in the taxidermy business. He quit years ago, which sucked because he was nice. He used to bring us treats, silly things like pencils with hearts on them or half packs of bubblegum. He was more human than any of Dad’s other friends, who were almost as cruel as Dad himself. Clancy left because he had cancer. I think. “I remember him.”
“He died some six years ago this fall,” he said, not sad, only matter of fact. I didn’t offer any words of solace, but then he hadn’t said anything about Dad dying either. And Dad was fresher. He lit his cigarette and spoke again. “Your dad used to send me money from time to time, saying it was from Clancy’s old customers. He was a real nice guy, your dad.”
“People say that.” I answered in his matter-of-fact tone. The horse snorted.
“You don’t think so?” he asked, but then after a second I changed my mind about it being a question. It wasn’t so much asking as musing. And he wasn’t looking at me anyhow. He might be talking to the horse as far as I knew.
It occurred to me why he might be there. “I don’t really have any money—”
“I’m not here about money.” His eyes narrowed.
“I’m sorry, it’s just you said...you said my dad gave you money.”
“Was telling you he was a decent fellow.” He looked at the garden. “Sometimes it’s hard to see the decency in someone when you’re looking at them up real close. But, even if you didn’t always get that at home, we got that out here.”
“Yeah, well...” My stupid eyes picked that moment to get misty. Again. What was going on? The whole ride there I had to practice realistic crying, now it came on its own. “Good for all you out there.”
He cleared his throat. “Anyways, I’m John. If you need anything come tell me. I don’t drive, but I got a driveway so you can bring your car on over.” John laughed as if he had told a funny joke, then started to cough until he wheezed. He dropped the rest of his cigarette into the ashtray, not bothering to put it out. He stood up, a labored movement, and if I had been a better person I might have helped him to his feet. However, he said he liked Dad, and honestly, that warranted little sympathy out of me.
He walked towards the end of the porch, and I looked at his cigarette. Smoke twisted in the air, seeming to wave goodbye to him. Forgotten next to the ashtray, sat the box.
“You forgot your… lockbox?” I said.
“Not mine. Your dad left it with me for safekeeping, was just bringing it back,” he said, slowly hefting himself down the stairs, gripping the rail.
“What’s in it?”
“Not for me to say.” He paused at the bottom of the stairs, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked up at the sky squinting.
“Do you have the key?”
“Wouldn’t be safekeeping if I had the box and the key, now would it?” He ambled down to the barn, and I wondered how he would get on top of the horse. I didn’t wonder long though, because he grabbed onto the saddle, and like he was like a much younger man, he swiftly hoisted himself onto the horse’s back. The animal walked lazily up the hill, and John waved as they passed through the growth at the end of the driveway.
“Cedar fucking Valley, man,” I said, shaking my head. “Cedar fucking Valley.”
I ran in the house and grabbed the key Jake had found in Wolfy’s mouth. That had to be it. Imagine, both items being brought here back to back.
No matter how much I tried to jam the key in, it would not fit. Not a match. What the hell?
I studied the box, wondering if I should take it in. He held onto it for safekeeping? And, without the key? What did that mean? Could he be more vague? If the box held anything important, it would have been here. Not a
t the neighbor’s. I started to bring it inside with me, then changed my mind. If it was important to Dad, I didn’t care what it held. I tossed the box behind the cord of wood on the porch. Let the next owner have it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The following day I spent dragging bags of trash from the house and piling them up by the already full garbage can. I found the mesh screen for the burn barrel at the edge of the garden eaten by weeds. With it securely over the barrel, I burned a few bags of flammables.
My mind kept drifting to Jordan, my eyes darting to the road, half-expecting to see him pull into the driveway. I had the radio on most of the day, and heard promise of the storm they had spoken of earlier that week. The DJ expected it to break the heat. I’d keep my fingers crossed.
I took the final trash bag outside around dusk, and huge dollops of rain slammed down behind me in the driveway just as my foot hit the porch stairs. My body was not halfway across the creaky old thing when the first crack of thunder exploded; the porch lit up with a bolt of lightning and sent an excited shiver up my spine.
The California draught had taken a part of me that only thrived during a larger than life, exciting thunder and lightning storm. The porch roof didn’t appear to be leaking, so I enjoyed the storm outside. I grabbed a can of beer from the fridge, a leftover container of chop suey, and settled in on the porch for the rainstorm.
The thunderous rumbles rocked the earth. Or at least my little piece of it, making my heart leap in anticipation every time it started. The louder and the longer the crackle, the better. Each time the valley brightened, I could see the trees dancing in thanks for the heavy rain and the break from the murderous heat. I hadn’t watered the vegetable patch once since returning home, hadn’t put any thought to maintaining it actually.
“There you go, Dee,” I proclaimed over the beating rain. “A freshly watered garden. Mother Nature’s got your back.”
A lightning bolt shot down, followed by an echoing boom of thunder.
“She concurs.” I raised my beer to the invisible force.
The day had been long. My hair was crispy with dried sweat, my feet a dark muddy color, but I was too tired to shower. The to do list that grew with each passing moment wore me down from the simple thought of it, more than when I accomplished anything on it.
My stomach hurt when I crawled into bed a few hours later, patting Wolfy on the head as I passed him. I didn’t know if the pain was from the noodles, or nerves from letting my mind travel to Jordan. We had once held such an important role for one another, and his face on the side of the road had appeared when I closed my eyes many times that day. My brain wanted me to feel guilty for leaving without talking to him.
One thing seemed certain, I wasn’t going to bury the painful past in outnumbered joyful memories. I wouldn’t do that to myself. I wouldn’t even start to think of Cedar Valley as anything other than it was. An earthly hell.
I shoved my bedroom window to the side and tested the screen. There were holes, but it would make it through the night with no confused bats or other night creatures making their way in, other than a small moth or beetle.
It was one of those nights where I fell asleep seconds after my head hit the pillow, only to wake certain I had never slept. Murkiness covered my brain like a swampy fog. The storm had grown more violent while I slept.
Lightning flashed and the rain hammered down the side of the house. I wondered if the boy’s room had buckets in the appropriate leak spots. Darkness crushed against my eyelids, followed by lightning, and I decided I didn’t care.
The lightning lit the room longer than it should. My eyes flung open as the lamp flickered off bringing night again. Thunder. Bright light. Too long. Thunder. Night. Thunder. Bright light. I opened my eyes; the lamp was on. Thunder. The light turned off.
The storm must have been messing with the clapper. Annoying, but I grabbed the cord to yank it from the socket, when something gentle moved across my skin. As though someone blew on my arm, and all my hairs stood up.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and sat up as the light flickered off again. My heartbeat cut through the pounding rain, my ears swelled, expanded, then fell back flat into my head with each passing beat.
There was nothing to be scared of. It was only a storm and outdated electricity. My new fear did not disappear with the rationalization. Wolfy, was he moving again? I told myself before, it was the heat. The hunger. Dehydration. But I fixed all those things today. If it was him, so what? He had been my companion for the day. He moved the day before, and blood still pumped through my veins.
Something soft brushed against my arm again. I stared into the darkness across the room, daring my eyes to find something in the shadows and make sense of the night.
The curtains blew inward, light crushing into the room from a snap of lightning outside. Wolfy’s outline stood at the foot of my bed where I left him. Nothing else. I was an idiot. It was just the wind on my arm. That’s all. The curtain fell against the wall, but I still couldn’t move. I counted seconds between the crashes of thunder.
Eleven seconds.
My lamp popped on. Eleven.
Eleven years.
Eleven years ago, I sat on the porch with Dad while he refused to look at a picture. Todd took the picture from the policeman, showing it to the rest of us in rage. Dad spat black tar on the ground.
I was sixteen, and I stared at the picture of Aunt Dee, dead and floating in the water. Pink fishing pole tangled in her hair. The rest fanned out like a snaked halo. Much like her hair danced now, as she stood in my room.
Such snake like hair, at first, my brain wanted to convince me she was Medusa from Clash of the Titans. Hair twisted and hissed from her head, but it was Aunt Dee’s hair.
Dead eleven years now, Aunt Dee squatted mere feet from the edge of my bed. She clapped her hands like a tone-deaf cheerleader in the air above her head. Her mouth moved with a violent fierceness, the skin at the corners of her lips ripped open. She pointed behind me, into the woods. Her eyes on mine, bulged from her head. She no longer floated at peace down a river, but in my room, hair dancing with some energy I couldn’t see, like she floated down that river still.
The light snapped off again, plunging us into a deep sea of darkness. A scream sputtered out in my mouth, becoming a high-pitched moan. I pulled the blanket to my chin, as though it could somehow protect me. Shield me from Aunt Dee. It wasn’t Aunt Dee I was scared of, but at the same time I was. A word flowed through me like blood through my veins. Run.
Aunt Dee stood between me and the door. I clapped my hands, and the lamp flipped back on. Aunt Dee was gone. My lips snapped shut, and the weird inhale of a scream that had come from my mouth ceased.
She no longer squatted where she had been only a moment ago. Had it only been a dream? Plagued with vivid nightmares as a kid, they would set me on my feet and push me out of the house down to the playing pit in the woods. Other times, I would wake up in the living room or kitchen, and would tear back to the bedroom and crawl into the top bunk with Angela.
Unable to shake the feeling of being watched, I sat on my knees and studied the room. I turned to my left, and there she sat on the bed behind me. Mangled and sitting on her knees. Mirroring me.
Her head tilted, then snapped up straight when she saw I had found her. She smiled, that rip spreading further from the creases in her mouth into the flesh of her cheeks. When she reached out for me, her fingers dripped clear liquid onto my bed.
Thunder snapped, and the room went dark. A silence so whole and complete swallowed the earth, only interrupted by the hungry fingers of rain. I knew there would be no turning the lamp back on now. I had lost power.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As a kid, I walked everywhere barefoot. Down the road to the mailbox, through the woods, wandering the parks in town, playing at recess. Angela, my brothers and I would run out to the pit barefoot. Sometimes Mama would make us put sneakers on, but we would usually kick them off bef
ore we got to the woods, running across broken tree limbs, rocks, mud and bugs. Children of the forest; we didn’t need shoes. After all, it was too difficult to climb tree roots in the playing pit with shoes on.
My feet built up a hard callous, making them impenetrable. In my teenage years, I wore sneakers more often, softening them. But I still sneaked across that driveway a hundred times late in the night to meet boys behind the garage, rocks under my barefoot. But, in those years the walk grew slow and calculated; my feet losing the callouses that carefree Meg sported.
After waking finding Aunt Dee watching me in my room, I ran across the driveway to the car with no care in my step. My poor feet, softened from age and socks, split as jagged rocks stabbed into them. Though terrible, the weight of the pain did not compare to the fear of staying to talk to my rotting and splitting Aunt.
My right foot grew beyond tender when I pushed it against the gas pedal, but I didn’t care. I would deal with it later. I glanced up to see the house in the rear view. In my rush, I left my purse behind in the kitchen.
I sported a worn tank top and a pair of men’s boxer briefs, my usual pajamas. I did not have a penny with me. Or my driver’s license. The emergency credit card from Todd. Where would I go?
Cecelia’s.
Except, I never asked Cecelia where she lived. One of the new trailer parks on the side of town by her work. And she worked at...
I couldn’t remember, and what would I do if I did? Knock on each door until I found hers? Hope that her name lit up in neon above her trailer when I pulled into the park?
Three aunts lived in town, though the last time I saw them I had been an angst bursting teenager. Would they welcome me? More than likely, not.
Lightning filled the sky again, and thunder made the car vibrate as I sat at a stop sign, plunged back into a darkness only broken by my headlights. Whatever the plan, sitting at a stop sign all night wasn’t it.
Going Home (Cedar Valley Hauntings Book 1) Page 8