SHUDDERVILLE TWO (3 page)

Suddenly I heard footsteps approaching and froze in place. It sounded like somebody was coming. I raced downstairs to my room and stood listening behind my closed door. After a moment, I heard someone going up the attic stairs and wondered who it was. I wanted to peek outside, but my heart was racing too hard to do anything. I heard footsteps above my head, and a soft voice. Female. Kind. Delilah Kincaid.

And then a harsh whisper. “No, Isabelle!”

Followed by silence.

A few minutes later, I heard movements, like the clinking of pill bottles, and more whispered words. Then footsteps tracking across the attic floor and back down the stairs. I heard the attic door quietly open and close. I heard a key click in the latch.

And then nothing.

I went to my door and peeked out. I saw the light wink off in Delilah’s room.

I killed the remaining couple of hours with a flask of whiskey and waited for dawn to arrive.

*

The next morning over breakfast, I noticed fresh scratches on Delilah’s wrists. Red and raw. She covered them up with her long-sleeve blouse, but it was a hot humid July morning, and as she fanned herself with a napkin, I caught glimpses of exposed skin.

She was gravely courteous this morning. Her eyes were flat as a lake and her hair was the color of ditch water. “I’m going to the grocery store, Mr. LaCroix,” she said stiffly. “Is there anything I can get for you while I’m there?”

“Just some beer.”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t drink in this house.”

I took the news with practiced calm. I prided myself on being able to soothe my victims—that was my special gift. I was good at it. “Well, okay. I guess I’ll visit the local tavern at some point.”

“What’s a tavern?” Olive asked, her hair in two pencil-thin braids.

“Bar,” I told her with a wink.

“What’s a bar?”

“A place where people go to get artificially happy.”

“It’s a very sad place,” Delilah corrected me.

Andy came downstairs wearing another crazy outfit—a pair of purple shorts with a silver belt, a flowered vest, and cow-brown suede boots. “Like my outfit?” he asked, and I just rolled my eyes.

“Jazzy,” Olive told him brightly.

He rocked his prideful head sideways, while beads of sweat collected along his hairline. He was a big kid, tall and bulky. “What’s for breakfast, Mom?”

“Pancakes,” she said. “Did you wash your hands?”

He held them up for inspection.

I passed him the maple syrup and he thanked me with an effusive grin.

I turned to the widow and said, “By the way, I heard something in the attic last night.”

Delilah held her fork just inches from her open mouth.

“It sounded like a squirrel. Or maybe a rat. Well, anyway. You told me to tell you if I heard anything.”

She swallowed hard. “Thanks. I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

She smiled with fear in her eyes.

In the Alaskan woods that day—after the girl died, her lips gradually turning as pale blue as her powder-blue snow boots—I began to cry. I sobbed with self-pity. I wept for my own pathetic wasted life. I wanted to die. It was the Alaskan wilderness. The vastness of it, the isolation. The woods were silent except for the creaking trees, which made a sound like many rocking chairs.

The wind whistled multiple notes through the leafless branches, and snow collected in the crotches of the maple trees, their trunks like human torsos bulging with veins. Little baseball-sized clumps of snow slid down the feathery cypress. If you stared long enough into the woods, you would see more colors than you ever imagined possible in the landscape. Blue ice crystals, pink kisses of fungus, gold flakes of birch bark. And the snow drifted down over everything.

That day I discovered the truth about myself. I was a killer. A vicious predator. Since then, there have been other victims scattered across the United States. Right now though, while I sat inside the widow’s kitchen, eating pancakes with her and the kids, I wondered if I it was possible to leave the past behind and lead a normal life? Just erase it all? Maybe if I got treated for my compulsions? Or maybe if I turned to Jesus? Could I keep the monster locked away in the closet? Was there any hope?

I didn’t want to kill again. I was sick of feeling that way.

But the cynic inside me laughed. And the laughter took over.

The little girl was counting the blueberries on her pancakes. “One, two, three…”

I held up my hands and counted. Ten fingers. Ten victims.

And then I remembered—three more would make it thirteen.

A perfect number.

13.

There was a symmetry there I couldn’t resist.

Except for one problem. There were
four
people in this family.

I suddenly heard a noise like the beat of a fly’s wing close to my ear.

The little girl was asking questions. Babbling on the way some kids do.

“What?” I said, distracted by the fly or the bug or whatever it was.

“What are you doing?” Olive asked.

“Doing?”

“With your fingers?”

“Counting.”

“Counting what?”

“My accomplishments.”

“What accomplishments?”

“Just stuff I’ve done in my life.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Grown up stuff.”

“What kind of grown up stuff?”

“Nothing you’d be interested in.”

She sighed. She grew frustrated, because I wasn’t going to be more forthcoming.

I winked at Delilah, who frowned. She didn’t trust me. Smart woman.

13 victims. I liked the sound of that.

I could feel the compulsion bubbling up inside me, and my scars throbbing in agreement. But there were four people in this family. Not three. So the question was—which one should I spare? The lovely and mysterious widow? The dimwitted boy who wouldn’t be able to identify me? The girl trapped in the attic? Or the normal one?

Then I heard it again. That noise.

I turned and swatted at the air. I stood up and listened, then heard it again.

Tick tick tick.

“What’s wrong?” Delilah asked, wrinkling her upturned nose.

“I thought I heard something,” I muttered, sitting back down and finishing my pancakes.

“What did you hear?”

“Nothing.” She asked too many questions. I needed to change the subject. “Hey, Olive, I got you something.”

“Me?” The little girl’s eyes lit up. “Really? What?”

“Stay here. Don’t move.”

Delilah leaned forward and said, “Please don’t give her anything.”

“Not a problem.” I went upstairs and dug the thing out of my bag. I hurried back downstairs and gave it to her. Wrapped in inky newsprint was a stuffed toy fawn—a baby deer with pink speckles on its tan back. It had tiny hooves, long painted eyelashes and an innocent smile on its adorable cartoon face.

“For me?”

“For you.”

“Oh! It’s so pretty!”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Delilah spoke intensely, as if some part of her was grateful, but an even bigger part might be jealous.

“Thanks!” Olive said, hugging her new treasure. “I love it!”

Now I heard that sound again. A flickering, awful sound.

Tick tick tick.

What was that? I looked around the kitchen but couldn’t see a thing.

That day in the Alaskan wilderness, while I was sitting in the snow and playing with the dead girl’s fingers, I saw a whiteness beyond the mountains that filled me with fear. A whiteness ten times as bright as the sun. A great absence. What was that? It was the shimmering whiteness of finality. Death was coming for me. One day, in the beat of a fly’s wing, I would be gone.

*

After breakfast, Delilah finished doing the dishes, fetched her purse, issued a few instructions to the kids, and then drove into town. Olive and Andy ran outside to play. At last, I had the house to myself.

I immediately went upstairs to the attic, a strange fear squeezing my stomach. The girl was lying in the exact position as before, her dreamy eyes closed, and I could see her ribcage moving slowly up and down. I stood in the doorway and said, “Hello?”

No response.

“Little girl?”

Nothing.

I wanted to talk to her and find out what was going on. Or maybe she was dimwitted like her brother? Or maybe she would speak in tongues?

“Hello? Are you awake?” I inched closer into the room. The whole scene was much creepier in the daylight. Morning sunlight streamed into the room. How could she sleep in the direct sun like that? And if she was unconscious, why was she tied to the bed? How did she eat? Why wasn’t she connected to a respirator, a heart monitor or a feeding tube? Why wasn’t she institutionalized? Nothing made sense, and for the first time in my life I felt a bit uneasy, to tell you the truth. I wasn’t used to feeling this way. I started to think that maybe there was something seriously wrong with the widow.

“Hello?” I said again, shuffling closer.

Nothing. No movement. Just a steady, gentle breathing.

I reached for the pale hand bound by velvet to the nearest bedpost and touched her small, curled fingers. They were cold. “Isabelle?” I whispered.

All of a sudden, her eyes popped open. They were shiny black as a turtle’s and just as reptilian. I gasped and drew back, so startled by this unexpected sight that I stood cringing in a corner.

She said nothing. She didn’t move a muscle. She just gazed at me with those awful, wetly primitive eyes. It was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things. Wicked things.

Suddenly, I was overcome with feelings. Emotions. Fear. Revulsion. My body shook with the kind of quaking terror I’d never experienced before. Inexplicable. And then sorrow surfaced, and longing and sadness. I couldn’t bear the thought of feeling anything, not even hate. I turned and ran down the narrow staircase and slammed the door and stood in the hallway, panting. I had to get the hell out of there. The house was old and worn and warm and nurturing and unnatural and full of children and cruelty and love and twisted tenderness and horror, but most especially a silent knowingness. Somehow a knowingness of who you were and where you’d been and what you’d done. A horrible judgment. And I swore, that creature upstairs knew all about me.

I tore down the staircase and out the back door and stood in the sunshine. I closed my eyes and faced the sun, my pulse racing. I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts. A warm wind shouldered through the trees, shaking them gently. I noticed a giant oak tree on the edge of the property. It was huge and sprawling and defied gravity, like a haunted-house tree, its gnarled branches reaching for the sky and begging for light. The hot wind made the leaves flutter—it sounded like faint rain.

I glanced around the property and saw Delilah’s stunted rose bushes, the ones she’d blamed those scratches on. The pink roses were coiled up tight, just like the widow. I stood in the afternoon heat with the sun beating down on me like a heavy rain and realized I would have to kill the thing in the attic. And then I’d have to kill Andy. And then I’d have to kill either Delilah or Olive. One or the other. Only three of them would die.
Thirteen
was my goal.
Thirteen
and done. I had a sense of renewal, of something very promising and rewarding waiting for me on the other side of that unlucky number.

I hesitated before going back inside. I was tempted to get in my car and get the hell out of there. You could only travel on the slate-gray road for so long before you fell under its spell, and then traveling was the only thing you wanted to do. You tore up a mountain in the Rockies knowing you could spin right over the edge of the world. You drove through a fleshy southern city the way an arrow pierces a beating heart, and you never wanted to stop. Ever.

Two squirrels were making a racket in a nearby tree. I picked up a fallen chestnut and flung it at them, and they scattered. I looked up at the attic window, and the fear ran up my legs and into my neck and congealed inside my face, especially around the eyes. At the same time, a ridiculous impulse to stay here forever burned in my brain. I was confused.

As a math teacher, you have to admit three plus ten equals 13.

Or T-H-I-R-T-E-N-E, depending on what kind of a moron you are.

I carried a physicality inside me that was built over time by hard labor and fueled by resentment and envy. I was much stronger than I looked. I had faced death many times. I had embraced death. Now I willed myself not to be afraid and went back inside the house.

The stairs creaked. The banister creaked. The walls creaked. I went directly to my room and rummaged through my duffel bag, aware of the girl’s presence hovering above me. I was sweating like a pig. I ran my hand over my chin. I’d forgotten to shave that morning.

I hurried down the hallway toward the bathroom, where I locked the door with the chintzy little latch and took a quick shower. I needed to clear my mind and wash off the heat and humidity. I cranked the faucets until the pipes rattled. I stood under a mere trickle of water, running my hands over the knotty, bumpy, purple scars on my flesh. Before he left me for dead, Baldilocks had carved T-H-I-R-T-E-N-E on my chest. He couldn’t spell worth a damn. I don’t know what made me madder—the ugly scars he’d left on my flesh or the way he’d misspelled my age that day.

I used to sleep like a baby, all twisted up in my sheets and breathing softly, just like the little girl in the attic. I used to think I was safe in my own home, and so I slept soundly, drunk on the fresh air wafting through my bedroom windows and sunk inside my own fluffy childhood dreamscape. My room used to smell of crayons and cookie crumbs, too. Just like any little kid’s room.

But then Baldilocks got inside my head and turned me into a monster.

And I blame him for everything.

He opened up a sick need in me and ruined my life.

And I’m going to get him.

We’ve been crisscrossing the country—him running, me chasing.

Baldilocks has been leaving me little messages in the classifieds for years.