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  Uncle Hank looked down at the child and all the oxygen seemed to vacate the room from the simultaneous intake of breath from the fifty or so people present. He went to one knee before the child, held him by the shoulders, and looked him straight in eyes wise beyond his short years.

  “God allows evil and good alike, Sammy.”

  The answer didn’t provide the comfort the child had sought and his eyes began to tear up, so rather than give him a saccharin sweet coda to wrap everything up neatly for the child, my Uncle Hank just held him, placing his small head gently on his shoulder. He wasn’t one to water down the truth for anyone, no matter how young.

  On the way home, I thought about Claudia and what she’d asked at the dinner table. I finally connected the dots and knew what was on her mind.

  She wanted to contact her father.

  Her dead father.

  Chapter 5 (Thursday, October 1st)

  Together Claudia and I walked the route we anticipated decorating with a clipboard of schematics in my hands, a red correction marker in hers. We agreed on gravestones between the driveway and the big oak, but argued over the aesthetics of the classic hanging man versus scarecrow. We finally decided to use the stuffed man elsewhere.

  We walked the porch and the foyer and finally into the living room where the kids would settle to watch the traditional Halloween DVD. (Tradition had that there would be a decision made based on democratic vote between The Nightmare Before Christmas and another DVD, but regardless, the little ones would inevitably choose The Nightmare Before Christmas.)

  Our preparations were cut short by Mom’s announcement that dinner was ready, graciously so, because Claudia and I had just begun another argument. This one involved traditional orange and black streamers versus spider webs and moss.

  We said grace and Mom began the line of questioning.

  “So how are you settling in, dear?”

  “Fine.”

  “Does it feel like home yet?”

  Claudia’s silence was almost an answer enough. Finally, she replied, “No, although we did just get Internet service up last week. I’ve been able to answer emails. I guess everyone back in DFW was starting to think I’d blown them all off.”

  “Oh, did you have many close friends?”

  Claudia shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

  “You’ll find friends here. It just takes time.”

  Claudia concentrated on the food.

  When dinner was over, we picked up arguing where we left off. Dad interrupted only once to tell us to go argue in another room or come back after the show he was watching was over. We took a break around nine and found the original Night of the Living Dead on a classic movie channel. Dad came back in the living room to toss his newspaper on the stack beside the coffee table.

  He stood watching the attack on the farmhouse for only about thirty seconds before he made a disagreeable sound. “Paul!” I could tell from his tone that I’d done something wrong. “You walk her home tonight. Hear me?”

  Claudia and I traded confused looks.

  “Yeah, sure. Why?”

  Seeming not to hear my question at all, Dad stood there watching George Romero’s genius flow, like the Hershey chocolate he substituted for blood, in all its black and white glory. “Why in the hell do you kids have to watch this crap?”

  He turned and disappeared into the bedroom.

  Claudia and I gave each other a look. I nodded toward the newspaper Dad had just thrown atop the pile. She retrieved it and hungrily spread the front page across the coffee table for both of us to read. I came around from the ratty green rocking chair to sit beside her on the couch.

  The headline on the Haven Herald read: “Body of Teen Girl Found in Abner.” Claudia read aloud in the flickering light of the television. “Late Wednesday night the body of an unidentified female was found in a dry reservoir in Abner just off Farm Road 487.” That was forty-five miles northeast of us. “The remains are under investigation by forensic experts in hopes of determining the identity of the female and whether or not she met with foul play.”

  Claudia pushed back from the coffee table, her eyes glazing over. “Of course, it’s foul play,” she scoffed.

  I pulled the newspaper over to me and scanned it, the screams from the TV forming a soundtrack to the copy I read.

  When Claudia called it a night, I followed her into the darkness down Cedar Street without discussion.

  “I could tell by your Dad’s tone of voice that he’s already formed a theory about this. Retired or not, he can’t help but think like a cop.”

  “A theory about what?”

  “You can’t tell me that that girl fell into a reservoir all by herself,” Claudia announced. “She was murdered.”

  “Murdered? What makes you think it wasn’t just suicide?”

  “No, when a person commits suicide they do it in the privacy of their own home. Pills, razor to the wrists, rope to the throat. They don’t throw themselves into an empty reservoir.”

  I shrugged. She had a good point.

  Claudia nibbled her lip. “You think your dad might be getting a little bored in his retirement?”

  “He still does consulting for a few security firms in Dallas. Why?”

  “Paul, what did your father mean when he said that they didn’t think he was fit to return to duty?”

  I took a deep breath and gave her a look. “That was kind of a big deal, okay, and I’m not all that sure I can trust you.”

  She gave me an overinflated look of disbelief, but I could sense behind the melodrama that I had actually hurt her somehow. “Fine, Paul, keep your secrets.”

  After walking in silence for a few moments, I knew from the stolid expression on her face I had indeed hurt her. She started to quicken her pace a little and I had to make an effort to catch up with her.

  “Okay, if it gets back to my Dad that I told you, I’m a dead man.”

  She slowed down and gave me a single nod.

  “You know that my Dad shot a man, right?”

  Her eyes lit up, but her voice remained casual. “No, I didn’t. What were the circumstances?”

  “Routine traffic stop, guy fires on him, and he fired back,” I told her. “That’s how he got grazed incidentally. To hear my mother tell it, though, he almost had his arm blown completely off. The truth is somewhere in the middle, I guess.”

  Claudia gave a nod and stared raptly at me.

  “Well, every officer who fires his gun in the line of duty has to see a psychologist to get released back to work, but Mom told me that he couldn’t pass the psych eval.”

  Claudia frowned at me. “What?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I never got any of the details.”

  “Are you kidding me? Wow, aren’t you the least bit curious? I would be.”

  I made a sound of dismissal that ended the conversation as we turned up her driveway on Ash Avenue. I lifted and dropped my arm and started to back away from her. “What time are we getting together on Saturday?”

  “Saturday?”

  I glanced at her in confusion.

  “Oh right,” she quickly recovered. “I don’t know. Ten?”

  “Nine-thirty.”

  “Fine.”

  I started away with a final wave over my shoulder, but she called out once more.

  “If this is a murder, there’s a possibility that he’s done it before and will do it again.” When I gave her a blank look, she said as way of explanation, “The body they found in Abner.”

  “Oh, right,” I finally remembered. “What about it?”

  “If it’s a serial killer, he won’t stop, y’know. They keep at it until they get taken out or die of natural causes. Jack the Ripper probably died of old age. Some believe the Black Dahlia killer did too.”

  I was at a loss. All I could do was stand and gawk at her, waiting for a punch line that never came.

  The last thing she said to me was, “Seeya,” and as she disappeared into the house, I cou
ldn’t help but think how little I knew about the girl that had returned to Haven.

  Chapter 6 (Saturday, October 3rd)

  Saturday morning I woke from a dream and immediately begin to scribble in the notebook on my nightstand. Recently, I had begun to keep a journal. I found that putting down as much as I could remember on paper helped me to recognize it for what it was. A nightmare. But it didn’t stop the frequency. If anything, I was having them more often, usually on days of unusual anxiety. Looming exams. Baseball playoffs. Band concerts. It became most vivid when someone in my family was in trouble or sick.

  In the dream, I once again stood on the porch of The House Without Doors, an orange pumpkin bucket full of candy in my hands. Five years old.

  This time as I approached the black wall of the house and extended the palm of my free hand to touch it, the candy within the bucket began to glow with an ethereal light. The paint itself on the ancient wall of the house began to peel as if from a source of great heat. The light was so intense and white that the very darkness recoiled from it like a physical presence.

  I sensed someone behind me and turned to see Bridgette Sullivan rushing away to join the other twirlers on a football field. I looked up into the bleacher seats and saw nothing but the empty eye sockets of hundreds of whitened skulls perched atop skeletal remains staring back at me.

  The dream ended with Bridgette saying to me, “Nice save, Graves,” recalling what had just happened the night before at the football game.

  On Friday night, the band had traveled to Fayetteville and clobbered what was considered one of the best teams in our division, simply because their star senior quarterback wasn’t allowed to suit up because of his grades. (The word was that their coach had thrown up his hands and basically said that if the teachers were going to take away his best player, there was no point in even trying—“A rotten attitude even for a child,” my father had said later.)

  At one point during, our performance on the field, half the whole cornet section suddenly took a vacation. It was almost as if someone had pulled the Duracells out of their backs or something. All I could do was play my part louder and eventually Greg and Sonny found their place again.

  On the way back to the bleachers, they were arguing about something when Bridgette Sullivan, one of the more attractive twirlers, appeared beside me and said in a conspiratorial tone, “Nice save, Graves,” as she passed. “Those two idiots nearly tripped over each other out there on the field.”

  That must have been why I had been dreaming about her. That or I was developing an obsession with the way she looked in her twirler uniform.

  Still, that didn’t explain the part about the skeletons in the stands.

  After I’d finished my journal comments, I peeled myself out of bed, showered, and got breakfast. I called Claudia around ten but there was no answer.

  I piddled around for another half hour, putting up the plastic window decals of bats, skeletons and ghosts.

  Ten thirty rolled around and I called again. No answer.

  By this time, I was getting downright angry. Here I had gotten up “bright and early” on a Saturday (the only day I actually get the chance to sleep in) and the person who had goaded me into it wasn’t answering her phone. Finally, I resigned to starting the work all by myself as I normally did.

  When Mrs. Wicke pulled up in her old Honda van, I was just hitting my stride on completing the set-up of a zombie torso emerging from a fresh grave. I felt myself growing tense in preparation for giving Claudia a piece of my mind when I realized that she wasn’t with her mom.

  Mrs. Wicke stepped out of her car with a casserole dish. It smelled like dessert of the cinnamon-apple variety. She gave the yard a look that was half-smile, half-disgust.

  “Oh Paul. Really.”

  Of course, I could only beam with pride. “Hey, Mrs. Wicke. This is nothing. Wait ‘til I plug him in.”

  “Nothing too scary I hope.”

  “Nah, it just sits up and sings Rodgers and Hammerstein.”

  “Don’t forget, there’ll be little ones coming by for their first Halloween experience, y’know. This might scar them for life.”

  “If I’m lucky.”

  She stared at me for a moment, seeming to gauge whether or not to say whatever had just entered her mind, thought twice about it, then decided to say it anyway. “Y’know, Paul, I’m glad you two are spending some time together. Growing up, I always felt you were that inner voice she couldn’t always hear.”

  “What? You mean like Jiminy Cricket?” I chuckled ironically.

  She looked away then, maybe fearing that she said a bit more than she should have. “Y’know, you ought to give Claudia a call and ask her to come help you. Ms Lazybones is still in bed.”

  So much for trying to stay cool. My temper got the better of me and I spiked the plastic skull I had been holding.

  Mrs. Wicke stopped and turned. She was adding up the figures and arrived at an answer. “Was she supposed to help you?”

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Wicke. No big deal.”

  “Oh Paul, I’m so sorry. She didn’t get to bed until early this morning.”

  I sighed and turned back to my work, driving the metal spikes holding the glowing ghost-shaped lights into the ground harder than was really necessary.

  “If I’d had known she was supposed to be here, I would have made her go to bed. I’m going to turn around and go back…”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you just let it go.”

  Mrs. Wicke gave me a long look and smiled maternally. “You’re right. I’ll let you two work it out.”

  I spent another hour on the mock graveyard, reached a stopping point, and went inside to grab a little lunch.

  Mom and Mrs. Wicke were sitting at the kitchen table with a stack of photo albums. Both were red-faced from laughing (and no doubt from the bottle of wine they were in the process of emptying). When I saw my mom enjoying herself like that, I always felt it gave me a glimpse into the girl she must have been in high school, carefree and her whole life ahead of her.

  I peeked over her shoulder and saw an ancient photo of two teenage girls in sweaters and poodle skirts, smiling and waving from the front seat of a ’57 Chevy.

  “Who’s that?”

  Mom cuffed me on the ear.

  “That’s me, buster!”

  It was my mother with at least twenty years subtracted from her. Her eyes wide, her face fuller, her hair bigger. She was, it turned out, not much older than I am.

  “Good lord. You’re like a kid.” Then on the heels of that. “Whose car?”

  “That was your grandfather’s car. He sold it in ‘69. He used to let me and Patty take it out now and then.”

  “Oh, our friends hated our guts,” ‘Patty’ recalled. (Nah, I couldn’t picture Mrs. Wicke as a Patty. No way).

  I scanned the open pages of an album I had never seen before. Obviously, it was from the Wicke archives. At the bottom of the page was a rugged dark-browed kid, with a cocky smile. He wore a t-shirt with a cigarette box-shaped object rolled up in his sleeve and a handful of grease in his unruly hair.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Ronnie. Claudia’s father.”

  I leaned toward the page.

  It was him. The mystery man.

  “Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of him.”

  Mrs. Wicke looked down at the picture and laughed. “Yeah, he hated taking pictures.” The humor drained out of her face as she time traveled back to the day of the picture. I wondered how must it have felt to lose someone so close to you and then try and carry on the semblance of a normal life, only to have the past pop up at random times.

  Claudia had never had that problem in relation to her father, because she had never known the man except through images in photo albums. I’d never really thought about it from her perspective. I couldn’t imagine never knowing Dad, but then I’ve already built up a lifetime of memories of time spent with him. Claudia had n
one of those memories of her father.

  Ronnie Wicke looked normal enough. Friendly, with a smirk lifting the corner of one lip and a spark in his dark eyes (as dark as Claudia’s own) that seemed to suggest he was about to tell the photographer a joke to end all dirty jokes.

  “Oh, Paul! Almost forgot. Call Claudia.”

  I gave Mom a look. “What does she want?”

  “I don’t know. She sounded pretty excited about something.”

  I gave Mrs. Wicke a look but she was busy refilling my mother’s wine glass.

  Dialing Claudia’s number, I let my temper simmer down and decided to let her attempt an apology.

  Her greeting: “What?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Oh! Hey, come over. Now. It’s important.”

  Then she hung up.

  I stared down at the receiver, hoping a portion of my ire was traveling fiber-optically to that two story house on Ash Avenue.

  Of course, I went back to work on the display in direct retaliation.

  About thirty minutes later, Mom comes outside, wordlessly hands me the phone and walks back into the house.

  “Where are you?” the voice on the other end of the receiver asked.

  “Where are you?”

  “Paul, we can do the stupid display any time. This is really important time-sensitive stuff. Lives are definitely at stake.”

  “Claudia, are you high? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “There’s a serial killer in our neighborhood.”

  My knock was responded to with a yell from an open window upstairs. The first thing I noticed as I opened the door was the smell of burnt popcorn, probably one of the most unattractive odors on earth outside of decomposing road kill.