Going Home (Cedar Valley Hauntings Book 1)

by Renee Bradshaw

  A crash of branches sounded through the forest, followed by a howl. Her face spun back to the woods, her long twig-like hair whipping my face. Light returned.

  I stood in the hallway.

  Aunt Dee, the trees, the pond, the moon — all gone. My feet stung with cold, and a sharp pain stung in my face where her hair struck me like a hundred tiny switches. I stepped back into my room and touched my cheek, then jerked my hand away. My fingers shimmered, red with blood. For the second time in days I had been injured by an illusion. Would the blood go away this time, like the pain left in the parking lot?

  The door slammed, shutting me in my bedroom. The flashlight, forgotten on the floor, cut across the darkness. Something darted through the beam a few feet from me. I bent down and grabbed the light. Whatever it was, I would confront it. It couldn’t be worse than what had just happened. Invisible, it moved again, given away from the sounds of a scramble across the floor. Then silence except for the nearly deafening sound of my own heartbeat.

  I scrambled in its direction to grab the flashlight, then stepped back, shining the light where movement had been. The sound of nails digging into the carpet started, like a cat on a scratching post. The sound came from where Wolfy stood, instead of where I had caught the movement.

  “Wolfy?” The flashlight found him, still and statue like. Just as he should be. So why didn’t that make me feel better? Then the movement again, cutting quickly across the light of the room. I crept across the room, holding my breath. A black creature the size of a rat leapt at me from my dirty clothes pile in the corner. It hit the floor hard, but was only down for a second before rising on all fours and running towards me.

  It leapt from the ground and I lifted my flashlight above my head, then brought it down hard and bashed the animal over the head. He fell to the floor in a lump, and I pointed the light at him.

  A mole. My hands shaking, I grabbed the broom from the bathroom. I pushed and poked the little guy out of my room, down the hallway, and out the back door, sending him sailing over the end of the porch through a curtain of rain. When I directed the flashlight beam down at him, he leapt to his feet again. This time, instead of focusing on me, he turned and ran towards the woods.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Slick was an understatement. It seemed like the creek had been lifted into the sky and dumped over the house. I slid across the porch and fell on my ass once, then slowed part way down the steps.

  When I reached the car I decided I couldn’t make the same mistake as last time. I went back into the kitchen for my purse, keeping my eyes off the dark hallway.

  Back outside, shadows danced across the driveway, more alive than ever. I froze as one crawled over me. Logically, I should have known it was from a tree, traced by the security lights. Logic suspended itself earlier that evening, and the shadow became five long fingers grasping for me.

  Run. I would deal with the house tomorrow. Tonight, I was leaving.

  By the time my station wagon pulled into Jordan’s driveway, the rain had let up. Thunder was a distant sound, and the clouds parted enough for the moon to announce its presence.

  I quickly flipped off my headlights, not wanting to wake anyone. I needed to wake someone, unless I planned to sleep in the car again.

  Shutting the door with my hip, I looked at the trailer. An eyesore back when Jordan’s dad lived here, now it was downright dilapidated. Peeling and splashed on paint in different shades of tan ran across a large portion of siding. A window made of more duct tape than glass pointed at me from what I remembered being the bathroom. An overflowing bag of trash sat beside the front door.

  I never expected Jordan to live like this. Of the two of us, he was the one who would achieve some level of greatness in life. Or at least, not lower level mediocrity. But, we weren’t talking when his dad died during our senior year; I never did see how Jordan was in the end.

  I believed once his father’s shackles released, he would run wild into the world, going far and claiming life. Not once had I imagined he would have stayed in Cedar Valley, let alone in that damn trailer.

  The bushes rustled roughly, and I jumped. “Aunt Dee?”

  I clutched at my neck, expecting her to appear. Instead of Aunt Dee, a raccoon nearly half my height darted out. It glared at me for a second, before running through the drizzle across the yard. When the raccoons were out, it was time to hang it up for the day.

  I looked back to the house. The blinds on the front window sagged open on each end, but it had not been that way a moment before. Raising my hand into a meager wave, the blinds snapped closed.

  Jordan flung open the screen door and stepped outside, Ken close behind. Jordan’s flannel pants and t-shirt looked warm compared to my tank top and shorts. He stomped across the driveway, his slippers angry against the gravel.

  Ken stayed on the porch with his arms crossed, alert and untrusting eyes on me. Somehow, I found it easier to glare back at Ken than to make eye contact with Jordan. Until he stopped in front of me, and I had to acknowledge him.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked, bedsheet wrinkles on his face. “You look like… well, shit. I got nothing. You look like shit.”

  I looked down at my wet clothes and bloody right foot.

  “This is a bad idea.” I grabbed my handle, but he pushed against the car door, keeping it shut. Suppressed tears waited until that moment to spill. A sob escaped my mouth, and my hands flew up to cover my face.

  “What?” He groaned, dropping his head back. “I can’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Pick up pieces of whatever this is.” He rubbed his index fingers on both temples. “You need to get your shit together.”

  “Oh wow, I had no idea.” I let out an angry bark of laughter. “Look, I know I’m going to sound… whatever.” I shook my head and ran my hand over my eyes. “I can’t stay at that house tonight.”

  “We were sleeping. I don’t know if you expected to come here and have some kind of fucking crisis, but it’s two in the morning. Crisis hours are closed.”

  “I hate you.” My tears stopped as anger twisted in my stomach. My arms crossed, I turned my attention to the bush that the raccoon ran out of and yanked off a triangular leaf.

  “I don’t get what you’re doing. Are you looking for someone to rescue you? Because you’re talking to the wrong guy. I got my own problems; I don’t need you and your daddy issues and crap with Bobby bringing Meg sized drama back into my life.”

  I flung the leaf at him, but it flew back at me, then fell to the ground.

  “I’m not bringing you my drama. I don’t have issues. Or, I didn’t anyway, until I got back into this stupid town. I was just... Something is going on... I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t know...” Why had I thought Jordan would take me in? There had to be somewhere else. “Where does Cecelia live? I’ll go there.”

  Jordan assessed me again. Instead of pointing out my poor appearance, his face relaxed. He took in another deep breath, and Ken cleared his throat. Jordan looked to him and shrugged, then back to me. “What’s going on?”

  “Aunt Dee was in my house,” I whispered. “She made the moon come. And the fog. And something else. She wants me to leave. But then she left, and gave me back my bedroom.” My voice grew higher. “There was a mole in there, and the way it acted… I don’t think it was a normal mole. It jumped at me. It looked like this.” I bared my teeth and hissed as I bent my fingers to look like claws.

  “I knocked it out with my flashlight and swept it out the door. It freaking ran off. Alive.” He didn’t say anything. “I’m scared she’s gonna come back, you know? Or more moles.” My eyes widened as an idea dawned on me. What about the nights I thought Wolfy had crawled on the bottom of my mattress? It might not have been him. “There is so much crap in the house, they could have made a burrow in there. Living in there. Watching me sleep.”

  Jordan’s lips pursed and his eyes narrowed. “Tell me the truth: Are you on an
ything?”

  “What? No, asshole.”

  “You can’t blame me for asking, you look like...”

  “I know.”

  He lowered his voice. “And you sound like...”

  “I know.”

  The trailer decor was sparse; an L shaped couch, TV and coffee table made up almost the entire front room. The house had been dirty and unorganized after his mom died, but the outside clean and orderly. Like a negative reversed, now the sterile waiting room feel and generic art inside, contrasted the hillbilly apocalypse outside.

  “My foot’s bleeding,” I said, self-conscious of getting blood any further than the small patch of linoleum by the door. The carpets were snow white, looking like they could have been installed yesterday.

  “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” Jordan asked. I stared at the red tiny dots on the floor and fell back against the door, sliding to the ground. I licked my finger, then used it to clean my blood droplets from the floor. “Meg? Hello.”

  “I remembered my purse this time.”

  We were silent for a moment, Ken and Jordan’s matching tan moccasin slippers turned pointed at each other. Whispers.

  “I’ll be right back. Don’t bleed all over everything,” Jordan said, walking out of the room.

  “It’s only my foot,” I muttered.

  I looked up at Ken. It was the first time I’d been around him while all the way awake and sober, and I noticed a little potbelly over his boxers. Too many donuts? I smirked up at him. Ken was not amused but continued with his award-winning glare. Was I living up to his expectations for the crazy ex-best friend?

  Jordan reappeared with a brown washcloth, box of bandages and peroxide. He crouched and placed it all on the floor, then stood. I twisted my foot onto my lap and almost skipped the peroxide, but decided with an audience I’d better, and squirted peroxide on the cloth while Jordan and Ken talked about where I would sleep. I winced, patting the soaked cloth against my foot, then placed bandages over the still sizzling cut.

  Ken laid sheets a few layers thick across the couch. Finished cleaning the blood off the floor, I limped over and plopped down on the couch. “Thanks. You know, I think I cut it a few days ago in the driveway, but it’s gotten worse.”

  Jordan leaned over the back of the couch and from the corner of my eye I saw Ken standing rigid as ever.

  “I saw Aunt Dee,” I said again, daring them to tell me otherwise.

  Jordan’s face filled with pity, and he chewed on his thumbnail, then flicked it to the floor before standing. He took Ken’s hand and kissed it. “Go back to bed.”

  “Are you sure?” Ken glanced at me warily. I wanted to tell him I’ve known Jordan since he used to piss the bed if he stayed up past eleven, so don’t give me that look. Instead, focusing on the framed toddler-like painting of random stripes above his head seemed like the safer action.

  “Trust me, you don’t want to deal with this.”

  Hey.

  “Why do you?” Ken asked.

  “Let me talk to her. Okay? You said, whatever I needed to do to fix this.”

  Fix what?

  Ken shook his head. “I meant at the bar, not here in our home. Not after seeing her the other night, with Bobby. I don’t want him coming here.”

  I patted my shorts. “I’m not carrying Bobby around with me.”

  Ken lifted his hand. “Look, Meg, no offense. But you aren’t exactly stable.”

  I shrugged. Gee, how was that supposed to be offensive?

  “If you need me, holler,” Ken said, his hand on Jordan’s shoulder.

  “Holla!” I catcalled. Silence. “Oh, you were talking to him.”

  They kissed and Ken walked back into the hallway, shooting a loaded look over his shoulder before he disappeared around the corner. Jordan sat down on the opposite side of the L as me, fingers interlaced on his lap.

  “I saw her in my bedroom. Only my bedroom turned into a swamp. And something else was there.”

  “Your bedroom is a swamp?”

  “No. The swamp went away and turned into my bedroom again. Something else came back with me. That part was real, a mole. No, the whole thing is real, but it was really real. Like, can be in this reality. Real.” I pulled my legs up on the couch and crossed them.

  “Meg—”

  “I thought it was dead, but it ran off as soon as I got it outside. Don’t look at me like that. I know you think I’m crazy. Now. But you didn’t used to. Did you?”

  “We were kids, and the stories weren’t so...”

  “I swear. It happened, and it isn’t the first time since I’ve seen her. The night Ken caught me sleeping outside? Because she was in my house.” I nodded, expecting him to have some giant aha moment.

  “We haven’t talked in fifteen years. You moved to California without telling me. You ignored me every time I’ve tried to reach you over the years, and pretended like I didn’t exist since you’ve been back. Now you show up at my house in the middle of the night? And you want to talk about your nightmares?” he asked, pinching the fleshy bit between his thumb and forefinger; just like he used to when he was called on at school, unprepared. “There are real things we need to talk about.”

  “It wasn’t a nightmare.”

  “You’ve always had nightmares.” His voice slowed, as though that was the only way I’d understand him. “Sometimes you think they’re real. You get confused. Dead people don’t come back.”

  “My wolf too. Wolfy? You remember, right?” I waited, but he didn’t respond. “He’s alive too. He climbed into my bed the other night and slept on my feet.” A creepy crawly feeling came over my arms and shoulders. “Or maybe it was the moles, if they’re in there. I’m not clear on that part. He moves sometimes. He—”

  “Stop!” Jordan’s fist hit the couch beside him. He leaned forward, dropping his elbows to rest on his knees. “Long dead animals filled with foam don’t move. Nightmares. Dreams. Hallucinations.”

  “They are real.”

  “No. They’re not. I remember you pointing at trees, faces on the walls, things talking to you. Real things. Nothing there then, nothing there now. You were the only one who saw them.” Jordan paused, looking at me for confirmation. I wouldn’t give him any. Yes. I saw things and they denied them being there, but that wasn’t happening now. If he had been there, he would know. “Has anyone else been around while you’ve seen something recently?”

  I shook my head no, but then I remembered. Jake in the garage. Wolfy. His head moved. He panted, and Jake didn’t notice. He put his hand into Wolfy’s mouth and pulled out the key. And nothing. “I guess, one time.”

  “Why didn’t you get help? Why didn’t you go to someone in California? I’m sure there is a pill you can take, or someone you can talk to. A professional.”

  I played with a tag on the edge of the sheet, flipping it back and forth between my thumb and index finger. “I haven’t had a nightmare — sleeping or awake — in ten years.”

  He shot me a sardonic grin. “Bullshit.”

  “I’m serious. It’s this town.” The flowers in the vase at Tracy’s were only a little thing. Little things always happened, but the big stuff...that stuff only lived in Cedar Valley. “As soon as I left, it all stopped. Now that I’m back... It’s like all the things that happened to us when we were kids, all the things we used to see—”

  “I never saw anything.”

  “It’s like it’s all starting all over again.” Only worse. I cleared my throat. “Do you have something to drink?”

  “Water,” Jordan said. He stood and grabbed a glass out of a kitchen cupboard.

  “Beer?” I asked, and he stared at me. “It’s been a hard night.”

  “It’s two thirty in the morning,” he grumbled, opening the fridge and pulling out a couple of beers.

  He placed a bottle in my hand. A brand I had never seen, a horse with a monocle and cigar on the label. “Fancy.”

  “Incredibly. It’s a local brewery.”

&nb
sp; He stared at me, as if moving me into focus. I took a sip from the bottle, and shook my head. Orange peel bitterness gathered in the back of my throat. “What the hell is this?”

  “An IPA.”

  I shuddered and took another sip, washing away the events of the night with a flood of beer. The bitterness slowed the flood. “I don’t remember Ken from high school. Did he go to North?”

  “He transferred here a few years ago from Roseburg.”

  “Oh, wow. Is that like part of the gay dating package? They transfer you guys where you’re needed?” I laughed at my own stupid joke, aware it wasn’t funny; something one of our fathers would have said.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he asked evenly. I wanted a rise out of him. I wanted emotion and some of my old friend under this serious adult to poke out.

  We sat in awkward silence. The rain picked back up; a welcome sound as we sipped the beer, and I finished picking off my label. I watched the second hand on the tea kettle shaped clock, concentrating on each passing second; the moments at Dad’s house becoming further and further away. Burying events under passing time.

  “So, you want to talk about your Dee nightmare?”

  “It wasn’t a nightmare.” I looked up at him, noting the emptiness in his eyes. Had he gone blank over the years? Or just empty to me?

  “You used to have intense nightmares. You used to scare me at sleepovers, screaming in the middle of the night.”

  “Exactly. I had the nightmares, so I know the difference.”

  “You swore they were real back then, too.”

  “I was twelve.” I set my empty bottle on the table with a heavy thud. Sometimes they were real.

  “You look like you’re twelve now, seriously. Don’t you eat?”

  “I’ve always been all elbows.” I bent my arms and clapped my elbows together, leaving out the seal sound I used to do.