by Jim O'Shea
“I do.”
“I can’t talk you into postponing?”
Libby shook her head. “I’ve put this off long enough.”
“OK,” Aisha said, “but don’t spend the night. Take care of the trick-or-treaters and sort some things out to keep your shrink happy, but come home before it gets dark.”
Libby had been debating doing the very same thing, but hearing Aisha say it out loud made the idea more plausible. “I guess that would work.”
Aisha smiled. “You know you’re doing the right thing.”
Libby nodded.
“Maybe you can get a certain handsome detective to join you?”
Libby glared at her.
“How about Ryan?”
“I’ll be fine, Azzi. I can protect myself.”
“Of course you can.” Aisha grinned. “When I get back, I’ll find out if Apeha can translate that weird writing so we can get some closure on the whole box thing.”
Libby shrugged.
“Right?”
“I’ll think about it.” Libby smiled.
After Aisha climbed into the taxi, Libby watched out the window as the driver backed down her snow-covered driveway, and had the oddest sensation that she wasn’t the only one who did.
19
The whole family was waiting for Libby in the kitchen of her parents’ Stockton home.
Her deceased father was at the head of the table, still wearing the hospital gown Libby had last seen him in, and looking pretty good for having spent more than a month buried underground. Mom sat to his right, dressed in the same bed clothes she had on the morning she died. Her eyes were nothing more than empty sockets and clumps of flesh hung from dried bones. She appeared to be smiling, but the absence of lips made it hard to know for sure. What was left of Melissa, now nothing but a mass of shattered bones, sat across the table from Mom. Familiar dog tags hung from exposed vertebrae, and thin wisps of reddish hair lay scattered atop the remnants of a bleached white skull. Despite it all, they looked as if they belonged in the home more than Libby did.
“Welcome home, honey,” her ghost father said to Libby, as small bits of dirt fell from his mouth and onto the tablecloth. “We missed you.”
“I told Melissa to stop bothering you,” her mother added. “I want you girls to get along.”
When the thing sitting in Melissa’s chair turned to face Libby, whatever was holding it together either let go or gave up, and a pile of dusty bones fell across the kitchen floor.
Libby dreaming again wasn’t a surprise, but the fact that her nightmare did not involve a familiar, white-clad specter was. Yet it made total sense when she thought about it, since her sister’s ghost no longer seemed bound to Libby’s sleeping world.
It took a while before Libby was able to gather herself enough to pack, and it was Saturday mid-afternoon before she loaded a hesitant Miniature Schnauzer into her car for the journey to the real Stockton. Even though she owned the only dog in the history of the world that didn’t like car rides, Norm was curled up and fast asleep on the passenger seat before she turned onto the county road.
The short drive from Tooele was accompanied by yet another steady snow and, combined with the rhythm of the windshield wipers, provided the perfect environment to think clearly. But there were times the whole thinking thing was highly overrated. Libby pressed down harder on the accelerator, focused more on the world outside her car’s windows, and let the countryside blur.
The landscape flattened into browns and grays as Tooele shrank in her rearview mirror, and it wasn’t long before a familiar green rise took shape on the horizon. Tall ponderosa pines formed a natural boundary around Stockton and, rising above them all was The Crossing’s tall steeple appearing through the windshield, reaching up like a lone finger pointing toward heaven.
The snow had stopped but the day was still gray as Libby passed the sign welcoming her to what had been her parents’ adopted home town. She wasn’t sure how long she sat daydreaming at the small town’s only traffic light when she noticed green change to yellow then red. Only then did Libby realize she’d forgotten to take her meds before she left.
Great.
A mile later she drove slowly up her parents’ driveway, pulled around to the back of the house, and parked in the detached garage. Norm accompanied her halfway to the back door before turning away, apparently having decided the bushes behind the house looked much more interesting.
Although it had only been a month since her father’s death, Libby expected the house to look more abandoned than it did. She didn’t anticipate seeing the bright yellow ceiling fan slowly spinning on the covered patio or her mom’s sturdy purple mums to still be flourishing in their pots by the door.
The inside was more of what she expected—a distinct mustiness, the smell of ghosts. Her father’s jacket lay draped over his chair in the kitchen, mom’s bright blue snow boots placed neatly next to the back door, and an unopened box of Halloween decorations sat next to the front door. Despite all that, the house seemed different. Not a change she could see or smell, as one would from new paint or furniture, but she sensed it nonetheless.
After clearing several unsolicited sales calls from her parents’ answering machine, she strolled slowly through the old house as if it was a museum, admiring this knick-knack and that wall hanging, wondering why she hadn’t paid more attention to them over the years. The prevailing wisdom according to Dr. Lambert was to make no dramatic changes after a death in the family, but Libby’s instinct told her otherwise. Especially if she decided to make the move to Stockton, and away from the Tooele house that was feeling less and less like home.
Libby spent the next few minutes cracking open windows to replace the home’s stale atmosphere with fresh, cold air. She dressed Norm up in a spider costume she’d purchased years ago and accompanied the eight-legged canine along her father’s favorite route to Delmonte’s, at the other end of town. The old dog wasn’t happy with the cumbersome attachment, and nipped at both plastic front legs every ten feet or so.
Libby cut through old man Hopkins’ backyard, paralleled the Wild Horse Creek and through the A-frame of a swing set with nothing left but rusty chains, and went past the town’s small athletic complex. The baseball fields were empty this time of year, but still brought back memories of her father sitting in the top row of the metal bleachers. Even as a small child, Libby sensed it was more an escape from her mother during the warm summer months than a real love for baseball.
Delmonte’s was a typical, small town general store complete with crowded shelves, mechanical cash register, and a small soda fountain featuring vinyl-upholstered booths and a hand-printed ‘Please Seat Yourself” sign. Libby tried to be invisible, but heavy stares from the locals weighed on her as she navigated her way through the store.
She purchased the last bag of candy on the shelf and took Main Street back through the middle of town. The first store she passed was Cullinane’s Hardware, but she didn’t get far.
John “Jack” Cullinane called to her from inside the front door.
“Elizabeth?”
Libby pulled back on Norm’s leash at the sound of the familiar voice, turned, and smiled. “Hey, Mr. C.”
“Sorry to hear about your parents,” Cullinane said. “Terrible thing, them both going so close together like they did.”
Libby tried to smile but could only nod.
“Nicholas left a big hole to fill at the church.”
“Thanks,” Libby said. She retraced a few steps and stopped in front of the store’s windows. The shelves in front were bare. “Looks like business has been good.”
The old man shook his head. “With all the Ginger Killer nonsense that was going on, I moved my locks and ammunition inventory up front. Been cleaned out for weeks.”
Libby accepted a few more condolences from the old man before saying her goodbyes. Then, she hurried past homes and businesses adorned with carved pumpkins, white skeletons, and black cats made from recycled
plastic. The season of the witch.
Libby shuddered and picked up her pace.
The one day of the year when the souls of the dead could return to earth.
Norm resisted when she tried to jog, but Libby still managed to arrive at her parents’ front door just as The Crossing’s steeple chimed 4:00 PM. It would be dark within the hour.
Norm stopped abruptly to sniff the air near the front door, but whatever caught his attention must have been blown away by the shifting evening winds. He followed Libby up the steps.
Once inside, she locked the front door and moved through the house as if following an intruder who had left an invisible trail, returning all the windows to their closed and locked positions. After turning the heat up to combat the cold air, she did the same thing with the lights in order to drive the darkness as far away as possible.
When Libby made it to her parents’ bedroom, she reflexively gagged, not sure if it was a scent of decay fabricated in her mind, or simply the lingering memory of her mother’s death. She stepped gingerly over the threshold using the light from the hallway to guide her, and the only sound inside the dark room was heavy breathing and a beating heart—both hers. It was exactly as she’d last seen it—heavy drapes pulled across the lone window, a myriad of pill bottles on the nightstand on her mother’s side of the bed, and the paintings.
Six months before her death, Marilyn Meeker began demonstrating a talent no one knew she had, including Marilyn Meeker. She invested three hundred dollars in painting supplies and began creating striking landscapes in the tradition of Georgia O’Keeffe. Hidden aptitudes were somewhat common for people with Bi-Polar Disorder according to Dr. Lambert, a phenomenon the good doctor referred to as latent learning. But what made the artwork truly unusual was the fact that each painting was nearly identical.
The completed canvases were typically strewn in the corner with an in-progress version perched on the easel when her mother was alive, but now they lay stacked neatly on the bed face up. She clicked on the nightstand lamp and paged through them slowly. Each depicted a dark figure standing menacingly in the yard outside her parents’ bedroom window. All but the bottom three in the stack, which were the last ones she’d completed before her death. They were not only different, but also quite disturbing.
What was going through that woman’s mind?
Although the last three illustrated the same scene, in each successive painting the dark figure moved closer to the window. The last version, the one her mother was working on when she’d died, still rested on the easel in the corner of the room. Although not finished, it was far enough along to show the ominous figure now standing inside the room and next to the bed.
Libby shuddered, threw a dusty tarp over the painting, and hurried out of her parents’ bedroom and down the stairs rubbing her arms with both hands. The last stop was her father’s office, where she nestled into his worn leather chair and let out a deep breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
She could still smell the scent of his favorite cologne and smiled at the familiar alabaster pipe sitting on the desk, but the warmth they brought dissipated at the sight of the familiar photo on his bookshelf. It was the newborn Meeker twins in the Tooele County Medical Center’s maternity ward, and the image once again brought the mystery of the puzzle to the forefront.
Suddenly the dark office didn’t feel so inviting, so Libby proceeded to double-check doors and windows and pull curtains on the first floor. Before she dragged the last one across the living room window, she stared into the dusk, shivering at the strange sensation that someone was watching her.
Norm was at her feet. As evidenced by his low grumble, he must have sensed something, too.
She put on a pot of tea and stood staring out from one of the two sidelights flanking the front door as the kettle began to boil. Dim light from the receding sun pressed against the glass, but revealed nothing to the naked eye. Still, she knew what troubled Norm, because she felt it too—a sound or vibration, just enough to disturb the delicate atmosphere, just enough to send a shiver up her spine.
The trick-or-treating was uneventful, with less than a dozen young children visiting in small groups while parents and older children huddled in the shadows on the sidewalk. The streets were barren by six thirty, so Libby turned off the porch light and locked the front door. By six forty-five, she had settled into her father’s favorite recliner in the family room, and at seven nearly dropped her cup of tea when the grandfather clock chimed the hour, a sound that she’d once been accustomed to.
Every TV channel featured a scary movie on Halloween night, so Libby pulled a familiar novel off the shelf and found it still bookmarked where she’d left it a year ago—the part where the selfless heroine died a tragic death. She attempted to pick up where she’d left off, but found her eyes swimming over the same page for twenty minutes before returning the book to the open slot on the shelf.
She donned a pair of pajamas from her overnight bag, pulled a box of dusty photos and an empty album from the hall closet, and had just begun sorting through them when the wind picked up outside. The power flickered and a series of thumps and scrapes echoed against the walls of the old house. She told herself it was just tree limbs at the mercy of the wind, but that fragile assurance could not prevent a chill from crawling through her body.
Power outages were common in Stockton due to powerful winds constantly blowing down from the mountains, so help was handy in every room when it happened once again and the lights went out. The furniture in the room looked like angular black shadows, so Libby used the light on her cell phone to navigate the room like in a haunted house at the county fair, in constant fear of an unnamed threat leaping from the darkness.
She eventually located a battery-powered lantern in the hall closet and set it up on the coffee table. Although the powerful halogen bulb bathed the living room in light, she found herself more focused on the blackness beyond the lantern’s reach—as if there was something hiding just inside its depth, poised to leap out at her.
Libby only had three or four photos in the album’s sleeves when the lantern inexplicably went out. She was reaching for her cell phone on the window frame behind the sofa, when she felt a soft brush up against her leg.
“You’ll break my neck slinking around like that, Norman,” she said as her hand found the phone. “I could fall and—” Libby had just activated the phone’s built-in flashlight when Norm’s bark echoed out from somewhere on the second floor. She fumbled with the phone at first and then dropped it when its narrow beam revealed a woman with long red hair sitting with her back to Libby in her mother’s favorite wingback chair.
Libby’s eyes struggled to focus while her body withdrew in horror. Her cell phone must have fallen on its back because the flashlight was out, but the phone’s screen was still emitting dim light into the room. Libby struggled to move, her eyes now fully focused on a petite woman in a red dress.
She pushed herself up and tiptoed toward the specter, which was sitting motionless and staring straight ahead. When Libby approached the back of the chair, the phone’s screen apparently timed out and went blank, casting the room in total darkness. When she reached out to touch the woman on the shoulder, her hand came in contact with the back of an empty chair.
There was no one there.
She’d had delusions in the past, but this one was the granddaddy of them all, rearing up from who knew where inside the deep well of her mind. Libby crawled toward her phone in the darkness and found it up against the wall base. She punched in a nine followed by two ones, but stopped before pressing the Call button.
Who or what would she report? An intruder? Her dead sister? A ghost?
The power came back on suddenly, and the only sound in the house was a click she recognized immediately as the answering machine. She hurried into the kitchen and stared at a bright number ‘one’ flashing in red.
She pressed the Play button, the tape rewound in the old machine, and the playback
began. The voice on the recorder sounded like hers, or at least what she thought hers would sound like, and although the words were gibberish at first, they were laced with an unmistakable rage. Eventually, sounds and syllables coagulated into words, and the fear that had previously strangled her suddenly threatened to swallow her whole.
“Hello, Sis,” whispered the familiar voice.
Libby stumbled backward toward the countertop.
The tape hissed silence for a few seconds before the voice spoke up again.
“When are you going to welcome me home?”
20
When Libby came to, she was face down on the floor. She rolled onto her back and squinted against a bright sun seeping through the cracks in the window blinds. Her entire body was a mass of throbbing aches, but it was the sharp pain on the back of her head that was most prominent. She looked up at the edge of the kitchen countertop as if it were to blame.
Libby pushed herself up on all fours and pulled a kitchen chair next to the answering machine. She climbed into the chair and pressed the Play button again, but there was no response. A second attempt provided the same result. When she shifted in the chair to see the machine’s LED indicator light it displayed a flashing ‘zero’, and when she lifted the lid, what little air remaining in her lungs rushed out.
The micro cassette tape was missing.
Libby had always been blessed with a good imagination, which was why she’d chosen a career in architectural design. But was hers so prolific that she could have created the previous night’s episode in her head? Was she truly capable of imagining a being into existence? Then again, wasn’t everything an idea before it was real?
The sudden rush of awareness instantly changed her weekend agenda. It was no longer just an evening at her parents’ house to exorcise imaginary demons. It was time for some of that closure Dr. Lambert and Aisha had talked so much about.
Stockton Cemetery was on the opposite side of Main Street from the house, and Libby covered the distance quickly in a half-jog, half-walk, while carrying a handful of mums pulled from her mother’s potted plants on the covered porch. She strode through the opening in a stone wall mottled with dark green moss and hurried past all the reminders of her own mortality, forever preserved in stone and silence.