Deadly Decision (2 page)

 

 

2

 

I stumbled backward, my eyes glued to the sitting boy. The child's penetrating stare burned with a message I didn't understand.

My lungs screamed for air but refused to expand.

“Dad, are you all right?” Trina and Ted each grabbed one of my arms.

I inhaled like a man coming back from the dead.

“Did you see that?” I turned to Trina, expecting a duplicate of my horror reflected on her face. Instead she stared at me blankly.

I jerked my gaze back toward the boy, but he was gone, along with the second child, the blanket and the chain. Like a hawk searching for its prey, I scanned the attic. Dust swirled in eddies around the light from the exposed bulbs, arranging their miniscule particles into twisting ropes. Most of the attic remained in long shadows, like silent beckoning fingers.

The space was silent, like a cemetery at midnight, and just like a cemetery, full of places children could hide. But I knew I wouldn't find the boys in any of them.

“Did I see what?” Trina repeated.

Ignoring her, I strained to hear any unusual sound in the shrouded space. The chirp of birds, probably perched outside in attic-level branches, sounded like jack-hammers on the highway. How could tiny creatures create enough noise to pierce my brain? A driver gunned his car's engine. A dog barked.

From inside, not a sound. Not even a creak or a groan from a settling house to confuse raw, human sensibilities.

Hesitantly I looked down at my arm and then at the hand that had gone through the child's shoulder. I bent my fingers and flexed my wrist. I don't know what I had expected, perhaps a distorted, withered stump, but my body parts appeared as they always had: thick boned with brown hairs scattered on the leathered skin.

Needing to be anywhere but in the attic, I stumbled down the stairs.

Trina and Ted caught up with me on the first floor as I slumped into the worn recliner in the right-hand parlor.

“Dad! You scared us to death.” Trina placed her cold hand on my shoulder. “I thought you were having a heart attack or something.”

“I'm OK.”

“But you ran across the room…”

“I thought I saw something.” I closed my eyes. “Just let me sit a few minutes. It was a long drive.”

Trina knelt beside me. “I should have let you rest before dragging you through the house. You drove most of the night to get here. I didn't think. I'm sorry.”

She pressed her head into my chest, just like when she was younger. My heart swelled, forcing tears to the corners of my eyes. I stroked her hand. “A nap will fix me up fine.”

Behind my closed eyes, Trina's and Ted's voices blurred to murmurs. Footsteps retreated down the hall. Even though my body was in a state of collapse, my mind raced. The scene from the attic screamed through my head, swirling around and around: one boy leaning over a second who was chained to the rafters.

Cold sweat covered my body. I tried to quell the queasiness churning my stomach.

I couldn't have seen ghosts. Ghosts were demons, and intuition told me what I had seen wasn't dangerous. Christians don't see apparitions. That's the stuff of adventure-seekers and new-agers, not rational men. Not God-fearing men.

Then what
were they?

In the haze right before sleep, my inherited nightmare and the event in the attic wove together. The boy in the attic wearing an outfit a hundred years old now stood across the chasm in place of the man on the horse. The urgency…something important.

 



 

When I woke, evening shadows stretched across the room. For a second—just the briefest blink of time—I felt as though I were in another universe, somewhere alone and removed from all those I loved. Inertia controlled my body, and I sat there, reclined in the leather chair, as much a benign part of the room as the plaster on the wall.

Like morning fog evaporating under the rays of the sun, awareness gradually returned. Left behind was a sense of otherworldliness, a tension that suggested I was not in the right place at the right time; an impression that I had invaded another dimension.

It was the same disconnection that remained after my nightmares.

Trina entered carrying a tray of sandwiches and iced tea. I shook off the disequilibrium and devoured my food. Trina nibbled at hers.

I debated how to bring up the subject. “Honey, how many times have you been in the attic?”

“Since I haven't
bothered
to clean up there,” she said with a grin, “only once before today, when we toured the house.”

“Did you see anything strange?”

“All those old boxes and trunks, I'm really curious to find out what's in them, but I've been busy. You wouldn't believe the trash we've moved out in a week. I found newspapers from 1943! I saved some for you; thought you might want to look at them.”

She had not seen the boys.

Trina chewed at the corner of her sandwich and stared at me. “Dad, what happened up there? You cried out, and ran across the floor, and then you stumbled backward…”

My daughter's huge hazel eyes pierced my heart. What kind of a place was this? How could I protect my daughter from something I didn't even believe in? And it would be up to me to protect her. Trina might be deeply in love with Ted, but any man who didn't know how to shoot a gun or work a power-saw was useless. And he didn't have a real job. Painting pictures was not man's work.

“You know how I feel about ghosts,” I finally said. “The spirits of dead people don't hang around.”

Trina started to laugh. “You saw a ghost?” She peered at me more closely. “You're serious. You saw a ghost.”

“Little boys. They looked as real as you do right now. One was sitting on the floor and the other one was standing behind him. When I reached out…when I touched the boy… my hand passed right through him, like he was made of air.” The words sounded strange to my ears; I could only imagine how ridiculous the story must seem to Trina.

“What are you saying?”

Headlights of a passing car shined through the lace curtains sending ribbons of light across the room. As quickly as they had appeared, the dancing ribbons were gone. Just like my boys. Is this the way senility begins, with flights of imagination replacing rational thought?

I chose my words carefully. “Think about it, honey. If the souls of
people
don't linger after death, then the apparitions we hear stories about are
something else
. Most haunted house sightings are the results of over-active imaginations...but some have to be true.”

“This house is not haunted. God led Ted and me here. Why would He bring us to a house full of ghosts?”

I didn't know. However, I did know that seeing the apparitions was intentional. What connection they had to my nightmares I still didn't know. Maybe none.

“We'll have to tell Ted,” Trina said. “He's upstairs. He thought you might want some time alone with me.”

Her footsteps made patting sounds as she went down the hall and up the staircase.

All houses make noises, but I listened for strange sounds, anything unusual, out of place. I regretted that I was sitting facing into the room. One of the things Trina had shared with me from a self-defense course she had taken in high school was never put your back to the door. I had always counted on my bulk to keep me safe, but how do you fight something you can't even touch?

Where were the apparitions now? Did they leave when I glanced at Trina? Or were they hiding, waiting…

Footsteps behind me. Nasal breathing.

I stiffened. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I sat perfectly still in a dead man's recliner, the ever-present scent of his liniment invading my nose.

While I held my breath, grateful Trina was gone but at the same time sorry not to have a witness, a young man, early to mid-20s, and slightly built, rounded my chair. Limp blonde hair hung over the collar of his coveralls.

His eyes widened when he saw me.

Was he real or an apparition like the boys? The smell of motor oil and grease mixed with the liniment, creating a pungent swamp scent.

I stared at the man/apparition as he focused unblinking eyes on my face.

More footsteps, this time familiar. Trina and Ted walked into the room. I barely breathed, focusing on the young man, wondering if he would disappear.

“Oh, Mitch, you've met my dad.”

I exhaled.
So he's real.

“Mitch is an auto mechanic,” Trina explained. “He used to live here. He helped Mr. Barnett.”

“You come for the rest of your things?” Ted asked.

Mitch's surprised expression shifted to one of fearful confusion, almost like he thought I was a ghost. Strange that thought should come to me. Wonder if he has been in the attic?

“Shouldn't take me long,” Mitch mumbled. After another searching look in my direction, he shuffled out of the room.

“Mitch really is a nice guy,” Trina said. “A little strange maybe. He came with the house.”

“What do you mean, ‘He came with the house?'” What more trouble could come with this place?

“Shortly after Mr. Barnett died, little Jimmy disappeared. Things were just hectic and—”

“Wait a minute.” My heart missed a beat. “A kid disappeared?”

“Mrs. Roberts's grandson. She's raising him. His parents were killed in a car accident about five years ago.” Trina lowered her voice to a whisper. “About two weeks ago he just didn't come home from school.” Tears filmed her eyes, and she reached for her husband's hand. “Ted and I met him a few times before we moved in. Cute boy, very polite. Mrs. Roberts is heartbroken. The whole town is searching for him. Posters with his pictures are hanging everywhere.”

Ted slid an arm around his wife's shoulders. “We've been praying that God will protect Jimmy and bring him home.”

I scowled. After two weeks, kids didn't usually show up alive, and God doesn't always answer prayer.

“Anyway,” Trina said, “back to Mitch. With the police looking everywhere, and you can imagine how upset Mrs. Roberts was, she just let Mitch keep on living here.”

“Mrs. Roberts is the, um, lady renting you the house?”

“Right. Mr. Barnett was her husband's uncle. The house belonged to him. Now it belongs to Jimmy…or it might belong to him, if, you know.” Trina sat on the sofa. As she tucked her legs beneath her, the aging springs groaned slightly. “When we moved in, Mitch had to find somewhere else to live. He only found a place two days ago with some guy at the garage.”

“Trina said you saw ghosts in the attic.” Ted settled beside my daughter, the couch protesting more boldly under his weight.

Ted's raised eyebrows told me Trina had already shared the story. Obviously, our discussion of Mitch was over, and just as obvious, Ted had not seen the ghosts.

Had I hallucinated? No way. It was too real to have been my imagination.

I repeated the story to Ted, unsure if I wanted my son-in-law to dismiss the experience or validate I had seen apparitions. No one prayed or read their Bible more than Ted. He ought to know the answer.

“So who do you think they were?” Ted asked me before I could shoot the same question to him.

“I'm not sure I want to call them a ‘who.' After all, ‘who' would indicate they were human.”

Ted and Trina exchanged glances.

“The way you described one of the ghosts,” Ted said, “sounds a lot like Mrs. Roberts's grandson.”

All my life I had been taught that the Bible was the final authority, but this experience had conflicted my thinking more than I wanted to admit. I'd always believed that lingering souls and Christian teachings are antithetical. And yet I had seen them, two little boys. And now one of them might be the homeowner's grandson. My brain hurt.

“Maybe we should go back to the attic,” Ted suggested.

Trina glanced at the window. “Not after dark!”

I jumped. Something had bumped my chair.

“I'll come tomorrow and finish.” Mitch's voice mumbled from behind me.

What's with this kid? Does he float from one place to another?

Plastic bags rustled. Footsteps shuffled down the hall. The kitchen door banged.

What had Mitch overheard…and why did it feel important?

“I really think we need to go back to the attic tonight, honey.” Ted took Trina's hand. “What if there's something up there that can tell us what happened to Jimmy? No one's ever searched the attic.”

Trina's brows pulled together. “You're right,” she finally said.

A question had been bothering me. “Why didn't either of you see the apparitions? Why just me?”

Ted rubbed his chin. “I don't know. God must have a reason.”

I clenched my teeth and fought back the snarl that filled my mouth.
God must have a reason
? Easy words from my faith-filled son-in-law. If you don't know the answer, say ‘God has a reason.' If God was responsible for opening my eyes to the apparitions, then God should have revealed them to Ted. Ted was the one with unwavering faith, missionary parents, and all that.

God was so far removed from what I had seen in the attic that it was impossible to imagine His involvement. If human souls don't linger, then the apparitions had to be demons. But I knew what I had seen wasn't evil. So what were they?

The proverbial rug under my feet had been jerked away, and I found myself airborne with no idea where I would land. All my years in church had not prepared me for this experience.

We left the parlor and headed to the last place in the world I wanted to go—the attic. My stomach pushed its way into my throat.

What would the next hour bring?

 

 

 

 

3

 

With shaking hands, I forced myself to open the attic door and lead the way up the stairs. My current dread made my nightmares seem more like a ride through an amusement park funhouse: I knew the ride would end. The terror brought on by my dream would fade as the new day arrived; life would be normal again as the gray of dawn chased away the shadows of night. Whatever waited for me in the attic refused to be banished by the light, the part of my life that had always remained my own.