Beaconfield

by Bri R. Leclerc

  We rounded the corner and saw my grandmother. I felt my heart jump to my throat when I saw her in the moon’s light through the window at the end of the hall. She wore a long white nightgown, and her pale skin looked nearly the same color.

  We stood frozen in place as my grandmother walked absently down the hallway. She walked into the wall and hit her head, causing the banging noise we’d heard. She turned and walked into the opposite wall. She went back and forth, continuing down the hallway.

  Ridge took a slow step forward, but I pulled on him, making him stop. “Are you crazy?” I mouthed.

  He continued, creeping closer and closer. My grandmother stopped for a moment, and I held my breath. Ridge stood still. Grandma faced the wall and raised her hands, and then she began scraping at the wallpaper. Her perfectly manicured hands dug deep into the paper, peeling through it.

  Ridge continued toward her. Not wanting to be left behind, I followed, my whole body shaking. Grandma was mumbling under her breath. I strained to hear what she was saying.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but closed it quickly after thinking better of it. Ridge took another step forward, and this time the wooden floor underneath us let out a loud creak. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath before opening them again.

  My grandmother stood directly in front of Ridge, her eyes glazed over.

  A scream bubbled in my throat, but I slapped a hand over my mouth to hold it in.

  She cocked her head to the side and looked Ridge up and down while he stayed still.

  From my vantage point behind him, I knew that he too was holding his breath, trying not to rouse her.

  My grandmother leaned closer to him and sniffed his neck, causing him to shudder. “It’s . . . here,” she said.

  The smell of her breath nearly knocked me over. It reeked like rotten meat that was topped with a cheap perfume. It smelled as though her body was decaying from the inside out.

  “Ridge! What do we do?” I was panicking. I wedged myself between him and Grandma.

  He pulled me back, shielding me behind him, and then stood his ground in front of her.

  “Mrs. Gentry, it’s us. We don’t want to hurt you,” he said as he backed up slowly.

  I stepped back until I felt the wall against my back. My breath was coming quick and shallow. I was starting to panic, seeing my grandmother’s eyes clouded over. Tears welled in my eyes. I wanted it to stop.

  She held her arms out and walked toward us. “It came back. Someone brought it back,” my grandmother said repeatedly. She was getting faster each time. She repeated it and repeated it, and then . . . she stopped.

  The hallway had suddenly grown silent, and the lack of noise made my ears ring. I stared at my grandmother’s blank eyes and shivered. She was swaying on her feet. Her mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out.

  Ridge reached out and touched her arm. When his fingertips made contact, she opened her mouth wide and screamed. The rotten smell wafted out and the sound pierced my ears.

  It ended as quick as it started, and then she collapsed.

  I gasped and reached for her as she fell to the ground. “Grandma!” I yelled as I flipped her over and pulled her into my lap. “Are you okay?” I asked as I grabbed at her face. She wasn’t waking up. Tears slipped down my cheeks. “What do we do?” I asked through my tears.

  Grandma groaned and blinked her eyes open. “Marigold?” she asked weakly.

  “Oh, Grandma,” I said as I hugged her to my chest.

  “It’s back,” she whispered before she passed out again.

  After getting my grandmother back to bed, I wandered into the kitchen, turning on every light on my way there.

  I scoured the pantry shelves for coffee, getting frustrated when I couldn’t find any. I then remembered that my grandmother always kept the coffee in the refrigerator. I pulled the can out of the fridge and turned on the coffee machine. As I spooned the grounds into the filter, I tried to keep my emotions inside, but that was starting to become difficult.

  I stretched and yawned, my brain heavy with exhaustion. The vision of my grandmother’s dead eyes flashed across my memory and made me shiver. What was happening? Why was she acting like this and what was she talking about?

  I laid my head and arms on the counter and watched the coffee stream into the pot. The smell filtered into my nose and woke me up a bit. I looked around the kitchen and felt myself grow more emotional. I remembered my younger self running through the kitchen with muddy feet. I’d spent so much time in here with my grandmother. I used to love standing on a stool to watch her cook or make some sort of potion.

  When the coffee was done brewing, I grabbed at it greedily, filling my mug, and took a sip even though it was still hot. The liquid seared my tongue and throat.

  I turned around and gasped. I dropped the mug and screamed as the hot liquid sprayed my ankles.

  Ridge stood in front of me with his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. He crouched and picked up pieces of the mug.

  Grabbing the cloth off the counter, I mopped up the coffee. There were now small burn marks that speckled my feet and ankles.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  I groaned and swiped a hand across my forehead. “Let’s just say that this coffee was a necessity.”

  “Is there any left for the both of us?” he asked.

  I smiled and motioned him toward the dining room. “I’ll pour you a cup. Go sit. Cream and sugar?”

  “Please,” he said.

  I watched him go, taking a peek at him in his sweatpants. He’d put his shirt back on, so I didn’t have as much of a show. I chided myself for thinking about Ridge’s body while my grandmother was sick.

  I poured two cups of coffee, each with a dash of cream and sugar. I brought them to the table and sat in the chair across from Ridge.

  “Is you grandmother sleeping?” he asked. He wrapped his hands around the mug, giving in to its warmth.

  I watched his blue eyes look to the liquid in the cup. “Yeah.” I put my head in my hands and groaned loudly. “Ridge, what the hell is happening?” I mumbled.

  “That’s exactly what I was wondering,” he said, gripping his coffee cup tighter than necessary.

  “Where were you when everything changed?” I asked.

  “Crescent Beach.”

  “That beach is on the town line, isn’t it?” I asked next, and he nodded. “I think we were both at the town line at the same time, just at different points.”

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  I paused. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “On your way back from the beach, did you run into anyone who was acting normal?”

  “No. You were with me when my mom didn’t even recognize me.” He stared into his mug.

  A crashing noise came from upstairs. Ridge and I looked at each other then rushed to see what it was. I took the steps two at the time, Ridge right behind me. I skidded around the corner and rushed into my grandmother’s room. The room was dark with the curtains drawn, so I flipped on the light. She was halfway out of bed and had knocked everything off her bedside table.

  I ran to her and gently pulled her back onto the bed. I tucked her under the covers. She was staring up at the ceiling. I sighed and brushed a hand down her cheek.

  “Mrs. Gentry?” Ridge asked, approaching the bed behind me.

  Her mouth moved, and she whispered something. It sounded like the same thing, over and over. Was she possessed? I had to lean closer to hear it.

  “It’s here,” she said.

  I swallowed hard, looking up to lock eyes with Ridge. A hand grabbed my hair and pulled on it. I screamed and tried to pull my head away, but my grandmother had a fistful of my hair. The more I pulled, the tighter she held. She was definitely possessed. Panic rose into my throat.

  I slapped at her hand, trying to get her off without hurting her. Ridge grabbed me and tried to tug her hand away. Finally
, the tension lifted and I scrambled across the bed to the other side. I looked behind me to see Grandma crouching on the bed.

  She bared her teeth and growled low. She moved to pounce on me, but I was a bit quicker. I rolled off the bed and out of the way. I groaned as my head hit the floor. I saw a flash of white light before standing.

  Ridge jumped across the bed and grabbed my grandmother, holding her down. Grandma snarled and snapped as they struggled against each other.

  I ran for the door. Glancing back, I saw my grandmother scratching Ridge, trying to reach his face.

  “Ridge!” I yelled. “Come on!”

  He pushed her and that gave him enough time to scramble off the bed and out the door. I pulled the door shut just as my grandmother slammed into it. She yelled from the other side, and then the handle flew from my hands as she ripped the door open.

  Grandma stood on the other side, her eyes white.

  Dread made my stomach sink as I spun on my heel and ran down the hall. I heard two sets of footfalls behind me as I sprinted to the guest bedroom at the end of the hallway. I skidded into the room, the rug sliding along with me, and fell to the ground. My body slammed into the hardwood, and I let out a yelp. I scrambled to my feet just as Ridge ran into the room.

  He tried to close the door behind him, but my grandmother overpowered him. She burst through the door with a growl. Ridge and I ran a lap around the room and then back out the door, knowing that we wouldn’t be able to fight her off in an enclosed space.

  I sprinted down the hallway and down the stairs. I missed the third to last step and fell hard. My ankle twisted sharply, and I yelped as I tried to get back up. I tripped forward, not able to put weight on it. My head rocked forward and smashed into the corner of a table. Someone grabbed me from behind and threw me to the side. I brought my hands up to protect myself, but when I opened my eyes, I saw it was Ridge.

  He helped me to my feet and pushed me along to the entryway. I followed him, limping, and waited for him to open the door. I glanced over my shoulder and saw my grandmother stumbling down the steps.

  “Open it!” I yelled at Ridge as he struggled with the door. He pulled on the handle, but the door didn’t budge. No matter how we tried, it still wouldn’t move. I reached up and clicked the lock and the door sprang open.

  “Go, go, go!” he yelled, pushing me through the doorway.

  I limped outside, and the cold ocean breeze hit my bare arms. I turned and watched Ridge try to pull the door out of my grandmother’s hands. He continued to pull, not able to overpower her.

  “What do we do?” I yelled at Ridge over the sound of my grandmother’s growls.

  “Help me pull!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  I ran to his side and put my hands under his on the long door handle, then pulled with all my might. We both grunted as we strained against my grandmother. She continued to pull and she stuck a hand through the gap between the jam and the door. She swiped at us, but I pulled my face out of her reach.

  I pushed her back into the house and then pulled hard on the door one last time. Ridge pulled too, and finally the door closed. Ridge held it in place.

  “Now what? We can’t lock the door from the outside!” he yelled at me.

  I nodded and looked around on the porch, but there was nothing nearby to use. “I don’t know, I don’t know . . .” I limped around looking for something. I looked up on the wall and saw an ivy vine. I yanked it off the exterior wall and then pulled on it to make sure it could support the weight. When I was satisfied, I threaded it through the door handle a few times and then tied it back on itself.

  I stood back and assessed my handiwork.

  “Think it’ll hold?” Ridge asked, and I shrugged. I hoped it would.

  The door shook on its hinges as my grandmother banged on it and then it stopped. Ridge let go and stepped back with me.

  We looked at each other in the silence. We waited a moment to see if the door would start moving again. When it didn’t, we each took a deep breath. A loud thud came from the window to the right of the door, and I looked to see my grandmother’s twisted face in the window, staring at us.

  I scrambled off the porch, hissing at the pain in my ankle, and into the yard. I put a hand over my heart and waited for it to slow. Glancing around, I noticed that the lavender growing around the porch was even more dead than it had been when I first arrived.

  Grandma continued looking out the window and scratching the glass. It was obvious that she wasn’t my grandmother anymore.

  She pulled the window open and started to drag herself outside. Ridge sprinted up the stairs and pushed her leg back into the house before yanking the windowpane closed.

  “We have to get somewhere safe,” I said. “I don’t want to be outside alone. We don’t know what else is lurking out here.” My cheeks grew wet as tears spilled over. I looked around at the fog-covered yard and shivered. Through the trees was the outline of the lighthouse, standing alone in the dark. I grabbed Ridge’s hand, and he wrapped his arm around me, pulling me into him. I could hear his anxious heart in his chest.

  “Let’s go to my house. I need to check on my family.”

  “Okay.” I pulled him along with me.

  We stepped into the trees, walking the path that I’d helped my grandfather lay years ago. As we crept along, we looked around, making sure there wasn’t anyone in the woods with us.

  I couldn’t see anything, but I felt like we were being watched.

  Ridge and I crashed through the Abbotts’ front door and quickly closed it behind us. My ankle was sore from the quick pace of the walk here. Ridge and I looked at each other and then both groaned.

  I didn’t know what was going on here. My chest tightened, heavy with fear, and I rubbed the back of my neck as a tear rolled down my cheek. Brushing it away quickly so Ridge wouldn’t see, I looked around the entryway to the house and nearly gasped. It hadn’t changed a bit. The walls were still the same cream color and there were half-dead houseplants all around. I took a deep breath, inhaling the sea breeze and aroma of freshly baked bread. The only thing that was off was the lighting—it seemed dark. I glanced around. The lights were off, but it seemed darker than it should’ve been.

  Dark tendrils of dread washed over me again.

  “Mom?” Ridge called from behind me.

  We waited, but no sounds came.

  “West?”

  Again, nothing.

  “West should be home,” he grumbled. He walked quickly down the hallway, and I hurried after him. I definitely wasn’t staying alone after all that’d happened tonight. I knew how this worked.

  I was hot on his heels when he stopped and turned into a room. When he flipped the switch, I recognized West’s room. The vertically-striped wallpaper that alternated white and dark green, had its own place in my memory of the Abbott’s home. But one thing was different. The walls were covered in hand-drawn pictures. I gasped at the horrific scenes in each of them. There were monsters and ghosts and just . . . beings that seemed not of this world. I grabbed Ridge’s hand and squeezed.

  “Yeah, I know. They’re freaky, aren’t they?” he said, surveying the pencil drawings. “A few years ago, West’s doctor said that drawing his hallucinations may help him be able to distinguish between what’s real and what’s in his mind. We said it was a great idea but we didn’t know they were going to be like this . . .”

  We sifted through some of the pages and books on his desk, finding drawings that were mostly unfinished. Many of them featured a woman with a very unsettling face. Some of the images had the name Elizabeth scratched into the paper in harsh lines. Ridge picked up a book and began flipping through it. There were symbols on the pages and they looked similar to the symbols in my grandmother’s books at home.

  “He’s not here,” Ridge said, sighing heavily, and ran his hands through his hair. He wandered out of the room and down the hall.

  I stayed behind to take one last look at the drawings on the walls befor
e turning off the light and catching the faces of the drawings following me out of the room.

  Walking back down the hallway, a feeling of nostalgia washed over me. I turned to the left and stood outside Ridge’s bedroom. Seeing the room again made the breath catch in my throat.

  He still had a large blue rug in the middle of the room, the one that we’d lie and plot our adventures on. Most other things were different: the comforter on the bed, the posters on the walls, and the lack of toys everywhere. But I could still tell that it was Ridge’s room—organized and clean, but still full of things.

  I found Ridge in the kitchen. He sat at the island, his elbows resting on the granite, head in his hands. In the corner of the room I saw the Abbotts’ bright yellow phone. I remembered calling my grandparents on that phone when I’d ask if I could stay at Ridge’s.

  I picked up the phone—there was no dial tone. I slammed it back into the receiver.

  Panic flooded in, and I felt as if I was going to faint. I found myself reaching for my grandmother’s necklace, wishing she could help us figure this out. I stroked the gem for a moment and then tucked it back into my T-shirt. “Are you okay?” I asked as I walked to Ridge’s side.

  “As good as I can be. How about you?” He turned toward me, propping an elbow on the back of the chair.

  I laughed and rubbed a hand across my face. “Well, let’s see. The town is crazy, my grandmother has attacked me multiple times, and we can’t leave. So, yeah. I’m great.” I plopped down on the bar stool next to him and rested my head on the cool granite counter. “Oh, and I also hurt my ankle and hit my head on a table.”

  He inspected my forehead. “Yeah, you’ve got a little cut. Nothing too deep. Mari, I don’t know what to do,” Ridge said with a heavy sigh.

  I shook my head on the counter and groaned. “This is absolutely crazy. It feels like there’s nothing we can do,” I mumbled.

  “What happened when we first found your grandmother? What happened to make her snap out of her episode?”

  “I already told you, I don’t know,” I snapped at Ridge. I glanced over and saw the frown on his face. I gritted my teeth and sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m just frustrated. You know what my mom said when I left for Beaconfield?”