314 Book 2 (36 page)

“I see,” said Alma as she attended to the dying woman.

Terry’s face blistered as Alma watched, and white foam leaked from the corners of her mouth. She convulsed, and a spurt of blood colored the foam over her toothless gums.

“You killed me.”

“I’m so sorry, Terry.” One of Alma’s tears fell, but didn’t strike Terry’s face. Instead, the tear hit the wood floor beneath the fading image of the dying woman.

“I remember now,” said Alma as Terry’s body sank into the floor, leaving behind only blood and the white foam that had marred the woman’s lips. “I won’t forget again.”

“To give a thing a name,” said the creature in the walls. “Such a waste of good fear.”

Alma bounded to her feet, her teddy bear keychain still gripped in her palm. “You have a name too.”

“Do I?” the creature asked as if amused. “Do tell.” He was still composed of wires, but they continued to thicken as she watched.

“
The Watcher in the Walls,” said Alma. “That’s what they call you.”

The walls stopped moving, and the wires faded, revealing the dirty
, peeling wallpaper that existed in this room in 2012. The ceiling seemed to rise up several feet and then faded into a grey mist. Before Alma could react, she saw the fog swoop in, covering the entire room as green electricity zapped from deep within it. The lightning reflected off the twisting form of massive tentacles that were hidden in the fog. Black wires began to descend from the mist and reached out to Alma like the groping limbs of a jellyfish.

“You’ll be disappointed to k
now that I have no name,” said The Watcher. “I have no fear of being tamed, little thing. You’ll learn that as we tear apart the souls of Widowsfield together, my dark princess. I’ll twist you into a new monster for them to fear, and we’ll mourn your brother’s loss together. We’ll begin again, as just a simple, billowing mist, but every time we start over we’ll add a new horror. We’ll add the lightning and fire, the devils and demons. We’ll build this hell with your nightmares this time.”

“I won’t do it,” said Alma.

The Watcher laughed. “That’s what Ben said once, too, but look how malicious he became. I’ll miss him. I wish I could witness the horrors he’ll unleash now that he’s free.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh Alma,” said The Watcher as if delighting in her ignorance. “I am nothing if not Ben’s malice. The hell he suffered, as the chemicals burned his eyes and boiled away his skin. Nothing is as sweet as the first torture of a child. The way their world shatters as they first glimpse hell, an innocence burned away with pain and terror. I watched from the walls as he suffered, as he screamed, as his flesh peeled from his bones. I saw it all, and then took his pain away so that we could give it to others, over and over, always in search of those beautiful moments of utter anguish.”

The
thickening wires began to wrap around one another and slowly form the creature that had greeted Alma when she first entered the room. A single cord stretched down and others wrapped around it, snaking around the first before more came to join the mass. That first cord became the creature’s right leg, and another descended to begin the transformation into its left.

“I wonde
r if Ben will kill children now, or just the daddies.”

“Shut up,” said Alma. “Ben would never hurt a soul.”

The Watcher laughed. “You’re wrong about that, Alma Harper. I’ve known Ben far longer than you, and I’ve never met a more twisted creature. I treasure his hate, but I’m sure we can find that same thing in you; after we peel off your skin and go looking for it.”

T
he strands of black swelled as The Watcher reached out for Alma. She backed away as the monster’s hand came at her, the wires looping in and out of his arm like a mass of worms writhing inside a cup. He was growing in size, and as he did the fog was pulled into him, causing him to swell but the rest of the room to become visible as the grey mist receded. A window was revealed, and Alma wasted no time as she dashed towards it.

She blindly leapt, and felt the window shatter around her. Her stomach lurched as she fell, just as it had when she was driven over the hill on the road that led into Widowsfield. The sensation was short-lived, and she pounded down in the weeds that covered the lawn.

Alma had the wind knocked out of her and the scenery changed. It was no longer night, but the middle of the day, and Amanda Harper’s car was parked in the street.

“Hurry up,” said Amanda as she walked through the weeds, ignoring the woman that had just plummeted from the second story window.

Then Alma saw what looked like a ten-year-old version of herself, but was slightly different. The girl’s hair was longer than Alma’s had been, and she was wearing a soaking wet, white dress. The little girl looked at Alma and waved for her to follow.

“Come on, quick,” said the little girl. “We’re going to the reservoir.”

“Who are you talking to?” asked Amanda as she opened her car door.

“No one, Momma,” said Alma’s younger self.

Alma wheezed as she got up. She knew that her arms had been sliced by the glass when she broke through the window, and it had felt like the landing broke a few ribs, but there was no sign of the injuries now. She felt fine, and when she looked up at the window it was still intact.

Alma watched as Amanda Harper drove away. The young girl was sitting in the passenger seat.

Alma knew this wasn’t how it happened. She remembered coming to the cabin with her mother. Amanda Harper never let Alma sit in the front seat, and she had been crying when they left the cabin.

The Watcher in the Walls
was searching for Alma, but her escape had taken her to a different point in time. She understood that the creature would traverse the breadth of time to find her. The Watcher and the fog held on to all the souls of Widowsfield, and toyed with them as it recreated a series of nightmares. Alma had managed to break free of the Watcher’s constraint, and she knew that it had something to do with the keychain that she still clung to.

“Paul,” said Alma as she touched her thumb to the soft teddy bear that she had never taken off her keychain.

She recalled a familiar voice telling her, “No matter how many times you break my heart, you’re still my girl, for as long as you want to be.” As much as she longed to know more about the man named Paul, he was still a mystery to her.

Alma knew she had to get away from the cabin, but she’d been trapped in Widowsfield for what felt like an eternity now. Hundreds of awful nightmares of this place swam through her mind, and she couldn’t distinguish between truth and fiction anymore.

Was the little, soaking wet girl a fiction? It was supposed to be a vision of Alma at that age, but it was a lie. Alma remembered everything about the awful day that she had been forced to stare at the symbol for pi on the kitchen floor, and she knew that she wasn’t soaking wet and smiling when she got back in her mother’s car.

Alma Harper knew what she had to do, as much as she hated the idea. Ever since it happened, she’d done everything possible to avoid remembering the day her mother committed suicide.

Some memories are better left forgotten.

Some memories torture you if you let them.

Yet Alma had to return to the Jackson Reservoir to watch her mother die. It was the only place in Widowsfield where she could be certain of what was true and what was a lie.

She heard a sound like two large stones grinding against one another. It was cacophonous, filling all of Widowsfield as if the moon itself had fallen to Earth and was scraping along the surface. The ground began to shake,
but when Alma blinked the sound was gone.

Jacker was driving the van and Alma was sitting in the back seat with Rachel and Aubrey.

I’ve been staying in Branson for the past couple nights.

It’s a nice town, but I much prefer the country. After what happened in Widowsfield, I decided it would be best if I disappeared entirely, which is how I ended up living in central Indiana, tucked away in the middle of a sea of cornfields. For most people it would seem like a boring life, but it suits me just fine. I got all the excitement I needed in life out of my short time as Oliver’s lackey.

In fact, it took me several months after Widowsfield before I ever felt comfortable drawing again. I considered drawing nature scenes, but then I was struck by the fact that I was giving permanence to something that had been fleeting. After learning that the walls around us cling to the past, it seemed somewhat gross to take a living thing and duplicate it on a dead piece of parchment.

I eventually got over my trepidation, and now I wile away my days painting and drawing as much as possible. In fact, I brought along a duffle bag full of art supplies on this trip. They’re sitting right beside my guns, ready for my annual trip back to Widowsfield.

Widowsfield

February 23rd
, 2007

“I need to speak with you, Nia,” said Oliver.

It was Friday morning, and she had been headed to a bathroom on the third floor
to shower when the young scientist caught her. He looked more dour than usual, and was fidgeting with his watch when he stopped her in the hall.

“What’s up?” She was in a bathrobe and slippers, with a towel over her shoulder. Mindy and Nia had become rather comfortable with the facility in their time there. It felt like a dorm that only they inhabited, except for the comings and goings of a couple nice women, Helen and Rachel,
who worked downstairs and kept to themselves.

“We’re going to need to go to the house on Sycamore today.”

Nia’s smile faded fast.

“I know you don’t want to, but we’re running out of time. You see, I might’ve overstepped my bounds here a little. I was, well,” he stammered. “To put it bluntly, I’m in deep shit with the higher ups at the moment.”

“Why?” asked Nia.

Oliver rubbed his index finger and thumb together. “What else? Money. This is a corporation after all, and they’re beholden to the all-mighty dollar, just like anyone else.”

“What about all that talk about the importance of science and all that good stuff?”

“Come on, Nia, you’ve been around long enough to know how the world really works. I stand by what I said, and that this is an important project we’re working on here, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune to the accounting department’s ever-watchful eye.
We’re under review at the moment because I might’ve gone a tad bit over budget.”

“That’s never good,” said Nia.

Oliver raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Especially not when a ‘tad bit’ is code for twenty-two million.”

“Ouch.”

“Those construction crews don’t come cheap.”

“And I imagine my pay isn’t helping,” said Nia.

Oliver shrugged and nodded. “I was supposed to have you focus on the cabin from the beginning. Lee and I came up with the theory about a larger radius of polarimetry.”

“Of what?” asked Nia.

“It’s the idea about how objects in a given space affect energy. You see, everything we’re doing here is based on the effect energy has on physical objects. You know what I mean more than most, what with your gift and all. Our theory is that the objects around us can record everything we do. Almost like how a laser can imprint music onto a disc, other vibrations are imprinting themselves on the world around us.” He set his open palm on the wall. “And that particularly intense moments can resonate for years, maybe even centuries.”

“I can guarantee that’s true,” said Nia.

Oliver grinned knowingly and continued, “Right, people with your talent have known it forever, but this is a new theory for the scientific community, and the ramifications are staggering.”

“How so?”

Oliver looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then sighed and relaxed. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but you’ve been such an integral part of this already. I can’t really go into too many details, but let’s just say that what we’re working on here could change the world in a million ways. Just imagine if your gift was something that could be tapped into scientifically. Think about how that would change things like crime investigation, or even how we view history. If we could accurately recall memories from the inanimate objects around us…” He smiled and shook his head. “The opportunities are staggering.”

“And were you experimenting on this idea back in ’96?
Is that what caused the accident?” asked Nia. “Is that what happened to the people in Widowsfield.”

“No, no,” Oliver shook his head and assured her. “Of course not. We’re just trying to use this to figure out what happened. Several of our employees disappeared that day.
”

“Okay, sorry,” said Nia. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.”

Oliver paused as he gazed at the psychic. He looked her up and down as if appraising a statue. “It’s okay. I don’t mean to be defensive, I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea about what we’re doing here. I need your help, now more than ever.”