Part 12 (1/2)
”Really? Like what?”
Charley told her about sneaking upstairs and about the machine gun pounding on the roof he'd heard.
”On the roof?” she asked. ”That's weird.”
”Might have been in the crawls.p.a.ce,” he said. ”I was right under the door. I don't remember anything about any crawls.p.a.ce.”
”What do you think it was?”
”I don't know. If anything, I hope it was one of those twins and not one of the kids.”
”But what if they really did just vanish? Went off somewhere and started over? Couldn't have been too hard back then.”
”If that happened, then it was one of the kids, but I can't imagine what it would be doing up in the ceiling.”
”I don't know,” his sister answered.
”Anyway, I just wanted to tell you I was up there tonight. There's stuff in that house, that's one story you can definitely believe from now on. I'm gonna call Ron and tell him.”
”Okay, I'll talk to you later.”
Charley hung up and talked to his brother Ron for twenty minutes before finally going back to his wife in the living room.
”What happened?” she asked.
He told her and she shook her head and said the same thing everyone said.
”Those poor kids.”
Later, everyone lay in bed.
Jack was dreaming of flowers growing wild when footsteps next to the bed woke him up. He opened a bleary eye and leaned his head up.
”Joe?” he asked. ”What's wrong?”
Before he got an answer, he'd gone back to sleep and the footsteps retreated out of the room.
Liz heard them, too. She wasn't asleep yet and doubted she would be by morning.
The footsteps weren't the first noise that night. Something was going on upstairs. Two floors below, Liz could hear them up there, knocking the walls, thumping the floors. She snuggled closer to Jack, not so much for protection, but for the simple presence of another living person.
Joey dreamed, too. But he didn't dream of flowers. He dreamed of running. He ran because he was being chased.
The dead girl was screaming at him, ”Your father's a killer, your father's a killer!” She chased him but when he looked back, she was smiling. Her face didn't show the least sign of meanness. In fact, she looked pretty happy. She laughed as she screamed at him.
He searched the park as he ran, hoping someone else might be here, anyone who could get the dead girl away from him. A grown-up. As soon as the thought formed, he spotted someone. A man stood under a tree at the other end of the park.
I'll never make it, Joey thought. She'll catch me before I get there.
And what would she do, he wondered. He hadn't thought of that. All he knew was that she was chasing him, and when people chased you, you ran. So that's what he did, ran full blast for the man under the tree.
The girl was at Joey's heels, screaming, ”Your father's a killer!” But he managed to stay ahead of her. His foot slipped once in wet gra.s.s, but he kept his balance and pressed on, pumping his legs and swinging his arms, wis.h.i.+ng for faster shoes, and then finally collapsing in front of the tall man under the tree.
”That girl's after me,” Joey panted. ”She's chasing me and screaming.”
He looked up into the adult face and then back at the girl who had stopped just behind him. The faces were the same, dead and green. Puffed, broken skin. Crazy smiles.
”I've been looking for you Adam,” the man said.
”I'm Joey,” he replied, hoping this correction would save him.
That's when he woke up. His first inclination was to cry, but he decided then that he'd done enough of that and if he ever wanted to get bigger, he'd have to stop crying, because bigger kids didn't cry. Instead, he lay under his thin blanket, his eyes open, his breath even, but his heart fluttering as he listened to the whispers from upstairs, inviting him to play with them.
Chapter Eight.
The heat came to Angel Hill that Monday. Liz was beginning to think summers here would be wonderful. Nice weather. Neither too hot nor too humid, breezes every now and then, like an extended, warmer spring. Their house in Texas had had central air, so the Kitches had no fans. Liz would have to buy some when Jack came home from work. She went upstairs once that day, she couldn't remember why, but when she came down again, she thanked G.o.d they lived on the first floor. It was darker down there, and cooler. For all its warmth on the bottom floor, the second floor was plain hot. She imagined the third floor was sweltering.
She busied herself the whole morning cleaning, straightening things, and making sure the dirty clothes were actually in the basket, instead of hanging out like limp tongues. Joey spent most of the morning on the floor in front of Cartoon Network. Finally, she was able to give him his lunch and tell him it was naptime.
She'd closed his closet door while she was cleaning. She didn't mention it to him. If he noticed, he might remember whatever had happened yesterday and not want to go to sleep. She had about an hour before the priest should be here, and she wanted Joey plenty gone by then.
She took a chair to the second floor and sat at one of the front windows, going through one of her books while she kept an eye on the front yard, waiting.
He pulled up in a new car, a Cadillac, it looked like. She wondered where priests got such nice cars all the time. She'd never seen one in a Datsun or some ancient piece of c.r.a.p. It was always nice new cars.
He knocked and she shook her head, loosening all thoughts of cars so they fell out, and she went to answer the door.
He was tall. She had to look up to see his face. His head was rectangular with short-cropped hair. He was thin. She thought he looked like a cardboard cutout in need of a display. He smiled and introduced himself and she showed him downstairs, telling him her son was asleep, but they could go into the living room.
They talked for a few minutes, but Liz wished he'd just get on with it. If this didn't work, she'd have to think of something else, and so far none of her books were offering any suggestions. She told him they were new in town, that they were starting over in Angel Hill, and that she wanted to start with having their new home blessed for their family.
”Always a good idea,” the priest said.
”Where do we start?” she asked.
”Nothing you need do,” he said, ”except have pleasant thoughts. I'll start in the kitchen, if you'd like, and just work my way through to the stairs.”
”Okay.”
He went into the kitchen and set a small case on the counter. Liz hadn't noticed the case at first, then she decided it must have all his stuff. Surely he'd need stuff, wouldn't he? She didn't know. She didn't even know what blessing a house entailed.
She heard him muttering something, but couldn't tell what. She imagined it was a prayer. What else would a priest use to bless a house? He stopped and she thought he was on his way back through. Before he did, she left the room to find something to do. She was curious about the process, but she wasn't sure how he felt about someone watching him work. Instead, she'd go about her business and keep praying it worked.
She went upstairs to check the mail. It hadn't come yet. She stepped out to the end of the porch and looked down the street, searching for the mail truck. It wasn't there. The summer air surrounded her in a coc.o.o.n and she wished for Jack to get home so she could buy some fans. Maybe they could get central air by next summer. She turned back to the house and froze, wondering if anyone across the street could see the man standing in the doorway, staring at her. He was grey, vague, but his eyes were all there and they pierced her, full of hate.
”You can't hurt me,” she told him.