by Don Sloan
“I guess we’ll add breaking and entering to our list of possible felonies if we go in for that cup,” Nathan said. “Best let me go, and you wait out here.” He started to clamber through the window.
“Oh, no, Spiderman. You really are crazy if you think I’m going to wait around on this stoop for something else weird to happen. We’re going to stay together every minute from now on.” She climbed through the door after him.
The old house was freezing cold and―there was something else―a malevolence that seemed to creep across the floor and up their pant legs, and into the very marrow of their bones, as though spirits were at loose in this house that did not like intruders.
“Sarah, I think maybe we’ve made a mistake coming here,” Nathan said. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but there’s more to the dream I had last night—it was about this place.”
Sarah was clinging to Nathan’s arm and occasionally swatting at something Nathan couldn’t see. “There’s something following us. Can’t you feel it? There, over by the refrigerator.”
Nathan turned his head quickly and did see something, although he would have sworn it was just a wisp of smoke, like the mists that are put out by a fog machine. “It’s nothing. Look, there’s the cup. Let’s just pick it up and get the hell out of here.”
Sarah shook her head. “No. I think that whatever is in this house is in all the houses along this stretch of Beach Avenue and I think it may be causing our weird dreams. And I don’t think we’re going to find answers any more convincing than the ones we find here. Let’s have a look around before we go. We’re already here. And if the cops come and find us, at least they’ll have guns. Look at us. What do we have?”
The question made Nathan feel briefly foolish. He looked around for a weapon, and opened a drawer. In it he found a butcher knife. “This is getting weirder and weirder. I feel like I’m in some kind of scary movie. The ones where the audience says, ‘Don’t go in there! What are they thinking?’”
Sarah laughed, an unexpected sound in the silent old house.
“I imagine they’re also saying, ‘A lot of good that butcher knife is going to do against people who are already dead,’” she said. “But, here we are, and here is where we’ll stay until we get some answers. Do you hear that, house?” This last part she shouted, as she had in her own home. And the answer that came back to her was the same as before, only more silent and more malevolent. The house itself was getting colder and the wind was picking up again offshore and blowing a new storm their way. It swooped in around the doorframes and window casings and seemed to make the sheets and blankets that covered the furniture in this house move with a life all their own.
Sarah went to the counter and picked up the coffee mug. “I don’t suppose you thought to bring a flashlight with you?” she asked Nathan.
Amidst the talk of the young couple, a shadow had been forming behind them in the doorway to the cellar. It now grew to man-shape and took a step forward. Sarah froze in mid-sentence, sensing its presence before it took her.
It was as though she had just disappeared before Nathan’s eyes, but even in the dim light of the kitchen, he could see the blackness that now lay between him and the wall. “Sarah!” he yelled, for the room was suddenly filled with wind, as though the house did not exist at all and he was standing alone on the beach. “Sarah, where are you?” he yelled into the deafening wind. He reached into the blackness and saw his own arm disappear up to the elbow. The shadow turned to regard Nathan. Its red, glowing eyes were familiar to him, and as it turned, it reached out to take him as well. But Nathan quickly pulled his arm back and stabbed at the shadow. From deep within it, he heard a laughing sound, then a screaming sound. It was Sarah, though she sounded very far away. Nathan was still trying to decide whether to stab again and attack the shadow, or fall back for fear of hurting Sarah with the knife, when the apparition suddenly turned and shambled off toward the front of the house, as though it had been called.
No hunting dog could have been given greater heart than to see his prey turn and run. With a hoarse shout, he leapt after the shadow―but, rounding the corner of the kitchen door into the hallway, he found he was too late. The shadow was gone.
Chapter 12
As soon as the shadow took her, Sarah had screamed. It had turned its head inward and looked at her with its hideous red eyes, and uttered a deep growling sound. Then, it had moved away, leaving her standing alone.
“Nathan! Help me!” she cried, tears streaming from her eyes. “I can’t see you.” But the shadow only laughed as it moved away, and mocked her, like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.
“Nathan! Help me!” she heard her own voice say, as perfectly as though she were saying it, but in a high, shrill pitch. Then the shadow gave a deep, thundering laugh and moved completely out of sight. The light was very, very dim in this place, as though the hour was close to twilight. But she recognized it immediately. She had been in it many times as a small child. It was not the house on the corner, but an outbuilding at her home here at the shore, one that had been nailed together during a carefree summer by Sarah and her cousins as a kind of clubhouse. It was exactly the way she remembered it at dusk, with thin sunlight sifting its way through the cracks in the boards, and dust motes danced everywhere. In a corner sat her favorite stuffed bear, next to an elaborate dollhouse, painstakingly put together by her grandfather and populated with Barbies of every race and type.
The dollhouse, too, was a Victorian lady, meant to resemble in as much detail as possible the house on the oceanfront. Sarah had been very proud of it and played with it every day from the time she was five years old until she was thirteen, when she had put it away for safekeeping in the attic of the big house. She supposed it was still there.
“But how did I get here?” she heard herself asking.
“All right. I’ve had enough of this!” she yelled. “Put me back wherever Nathan is.” But there was no answering, mocking voice this time. And so she was afraid again, because she didn’t know where Nathan was, or what was happening to him. She remembered dimly seeing him slash at the shadow with a knife, but the image had been far away, as though the action was occurring in a time and place distant from where she was now. She wondered now if the shadow had taken the knife from Nathan and, in its rage, was even now hunting him down with its pitiless red eyes and hurting him.
Nathan had said he would protect her no matter what, and she could imagine him making a last stand in the kitchen, or in the house’s parlor, or hallway, before finally succumbing to the shadow’s malevolence. She shuddered at the thought of Nathan lying in his own blood, and so she screamed again, pleading with the shadow, and with the house, to let her back into the reality in which she had left Nathan only moments before. But her cries went unanswered, and as more time passed, she began to become exhausted and fell down in a heap on the floor of the outbuilding, sobbing and crying in a way she had not done since childhood―not since her grandfather had died.
Now she looked at the dollhouse again, so lovingly made for her, and she crawled over to it and laid her head against it. For a long moment she lay there, trying to make sense of what was happening to her. She was in a playhouse that had long since been torn down, and, as her eyes adjusted to the vanishing light from outside, she saw that it was exactly as it should have been, right down to the “Boys, Keep Out” sign posted over the door on the inside. Sarah got up and looked out and saw her beautiful Victorian house standing a little ways away, as wonderful and harmless as it had been in her childhood. She thought of going over to it, but this thought was chased out by another one: perhaps that was where the shadow lived, in this time and in this reality, so obviously different from her own. If she went into the house, would she once again confront it?
She looked out the window again and seemed to sense that in this time and place it was high summer, the summer of her childhood, and fireflies were skimming up and over the trees, and chasing each other across the lawn.
Sarah was drawn to the scene, so real she could hear birds in their hidden nests and water sprinklers ratcheting in the small yard next door. Had her grandfather suddenly appeared in the doorway, calling her to supper, she would scarcely have been surprised.
But that did not happen. It simply kept getting darker and darker, until Sarah could barely see her hand in front of her face. There were no lights on in her house, or in the one next door. Once again, she felt like a child, and felt very lonely and afraid. Yet a part of her spoke up. “Sarah, this is ridiculous. You are not eight years old. You are thirty. And this is only a dream. You are going to wake up soon and find that you have been making this whole thing up in your head. For all you know, Nathan doesn’t even exist. When you wake up, it will be Monday morning, the day after you arrived, and you will have a very bad hangover from drinking too much wine and smoking those awful cigarettes that you really don’t even like. And there won’t be any shadows, or newspaper clippings, or murder-suicides. There will only be you, and the old house, just as it was when you arrived. So just wake up!”
This little soliloquy at least had the effect of rousing her from the drowsiness that had overtaken her. She went from the window to the door, and opening it, stepped outside and―
―into an ice cream parlor, right in the heart of downtown Cape May. Servers wearing those funny white hats scooped out big balls of hand-cranked ice cream. The place was filled with people, and she moved among them easily, although they did not seem to take any notice of her. She passed a mirror and was startled to see that she was eight years old again, and wearing a blue and gray smock, the uniform of her parochial school. There was a catcall from one corner of the room, and she recognized a boy her age. He was looking directly at her. How could that be? Sarah thought. No one else was even paying attention to her. She looked hard across the room at him as people crowded and jostled in front of her, and she wondered who he was.
“Sarah!” the boy yelled. “Say-rah!” He was positively stamping with impatience over in the corner. “Come here.” He was a tall, gawky boy, much taller than any of the other boys she could remember at that age. But he was smiling, a big, goofy grin on a lightly freckled face, with shockingly blue Howdy Doody eyes and a thatch of red hair completing the picture. Sarah cautiously crossed the room, avoiding others who would have bumped into her had she not moved. It was as though she was invisible to everyone there except this boy.
“Hi, Sarah!” said the boy as she now stood in front of him and saw that he had the most amazing blue eyes. It was as though they weren’t real, more like cats-eye marbles than actual eyes. But she couldn’t help but smile back at him, his grin was so infectious.
“Do I know you?” she asked. “Because as far as I know this is just a dream. I have no idea who you are.”
“Oh, you know me, all right,” the boy said. “My name is Gunther Wiesbaden. Remember?”
A cold bolt of ice shot through Sarah. She remembered him, all right. He had been killed during an accident right in front of her big house, while he waited for a school bus. Sarah had gotten out of her school in Philadelphia early that year, and was already at the shore during the Cape May school district’s last week that year. A big yellow bus had run over him not once, but twice, right in front of her house. The bus driver, after backing over him, misunderstood the frantic cries of the children outside the bus and pulled forward, crushing his Howdy Doody head flat. It sickened Sarah now to look at him, and she put a hand up to cover her mouth.
“See? You do remember me. So―what are you doing here? You dead, too?”
Sarah was speechless. Big, tall, gangly Gunnie Wiesbaden. The other Cape May kids had made fun of him and still made jokes about him even after the funeral. School could be such a cruel place.
“Uh, no. No, at least I don’t think so,” Sarah stammered. “Look, I’ve got to go.” And she quickly turned and fled the soda shop, banging the screen door behind her as she left, and running around the corner to lean up against the building. She thought perhaps Gunnie had followed her, and she kept expecting to see his red head come poking around the corner.
But he didn’t, and she just stood there, leaning heavily against the building, listening to the regular, everyday sounds of the small town. The soda shop was on the town square, next to the bandstand. Summer band concerts were still a big deal in Cape May, and she saw that some musicians were setting up music stands and chairs, apparently getting ready for a concert this evening. Sarah edged further down the side of the building until she was mostly in shadow. She was frightened, and the wonder of being eight years old again was quickly banished by the sight of poor little dead Gunnie Wiesbaden.
But where was this Never-Never Land where dead playmates ate ice cream and 30-year-old women suddenly turned up in parochial school pinafores? “This has got to be some kind of extended dream like Nathan’s,” Sarah said. “There is no other possible explanation.”
‘Ye’re wrong, little lady,” said a voice at her elbow. It made her jump back from the wall. “Don’t be afraid, missy. Old William Willingham ain’t here to hurt you.”
An old man with wide-set eyes and an ice hook nose stepped out of the shadows into the light from an antique street lamp close to the soda shop. He cocked his head to one side and looked at Sarah carefully. He stood between her and the street. Sarah cowered back against the building like a frightened rabbit.
“Why, ye’re trembling, lass. Whatever can be the matter? Ye can tell old Bill.” But his attempt at a friendly smile failed and turned into an ugly leer. Sarah had never been more afraid in her life.
“Say-rah?” came a voice from the street. “Sarah? Oh, there you are. I thought you had gone. Why don’t you come inside and we can talk? I’ve not had anyone to talk to in so long.”
Gunnie Wiesbaden had never looked so good to Sarah Claymore. She ran to him and gave him a big hug. The shock on his face from this sudden display of emotion and the flush that rose from his thin shoulder blades matched his red hair. His cats-eye marble orbs got so wide, Sarah thought they might fall out of his face. Gunnie was taller than Sarah―at least an eight-year-old Sarah―and right now he looked like a U.S. Marine to her.
“Let’s go inside and you can buy me some ice cream,” Sarah said, locking an arm through Gunnie’s elbow. She quickly escorted him back into the soda shop, and he got in line with her. “Thank you, Gunnie, thank you!” Sarah said, disengaging her arm. “That man out there gave me the creeps.”
“What man?” Gunnie asked, looking at her curiously. “You was out there alone, Say-rah. Now, what flavor do you want?”
Sarah’s knees sagged and she clutched Gunnie for support.
“We’re next, Sarah. I’m gonna get chocolate, like always. What flavor you want?”
Sarah looked numbly at the girl behind the counter, who was not looking at them at all. Her focus had shifted from the couple in front of them in line to the woman standing behind Sarah. Two children trailed in her wake, bobbing and shrieking: “I scream, you scream, we ALL scream for Ice Cream!”
“I’ll have chocolate and―what’ll you have Say-rah? Banilla? Would Banilla be okay?” Sarah nodded, still in a half-faint. She clung to Gunnie, and the room’s conversation became only a buzz to her. Even Gunnie’s high-pitched Howdy Doody voice was getting harder and harder to hear. Gunnie was trying to place their order, but the girl could not hear him. The lady behind them placed her order and the girl behind the counter turned to fill it. Gunnie scratched his red head and apologized.
“I’m sure sorry, Sarah,” he said. “Doggone it, she always does that. I’m starting to think it’s just because I’m dead.”
Sarah only heard the last part of Gunnie’s conversation. She was mostly thinking about the man in the alleyway, and his words: ‘Ye’re wrong little lady.’ And what was Gunnie saying? He couldn’t get ice cream because he’s dead? Sarah laughed out loud suddenly.
“What the hell kind of place is this, anyway?” she shouted. “Can’t get ice
cream just because you’re dead?”
And this time, they did hear her. Conversation in the parlor came to a standstill and complete silence flowed through the room in a thick pall. Disapproving stares were focused on Sarah.
“Young lady,” said the woman behind her, who had covered her youngest child’s ears. “Language, please.”
This was too much for Sarah. She began laughing uncontrollably, alternating her gaze between the lady and Gunnie and the rest of the room. All were now looking at her with extreme disapproval, as though she were spoiling a party. Two men were coming toward her, and Gunnie was stepping away from her.
“Say-rah, you shouldn’t have said that,” Gunnie said. “I cain’t help you now.” And he went back to the corner in which he had been sitting when Sarah arrived. She continued laughing, even as hands were laid on her and she was being escorted to the door.
“Hey, you guys. Get your goddam hands off me,” she yelled, and she broke free. They weren’t expecting an eight-year-old girl to have such strength. She ran for the door and burst through it, flying onto the―
―pier in the broad, frosty daylight of a Cape May morning, with breakers foaming and crashing around stanchions that disappeared into the creamy green surf. It was the fishing pier just across from her house, and she was all alone. A sink was close at hand, for washing and cleaning fish. But no fishermen were on the pier, nor anyone else.
Low, heavy clouds were flying above her. The surf crashed and bubbled far beneath her feet, and Sarah looked down at herself. She was no longer eight years old or in a pinafore. She was dressed in the same vanilla bean-colored sweater and jeans she had put on that morning, before the trip she and Nathan had made to the house on the corner. A dead calm now prevailed, although the night air was chilly. She had no idea what time it was.