SHUDDERVILLE TWO (5 page)

“Not here,” she said fearfully, looking back at the house.

We went up to the top of the hill and made love in the wild clover on the edge of the woods. We were quick about it, like kids. Like fumbling teenagers. She giggled and laughed. It was the first time I’d heard Delilah laugh with her head thrown back. Deep laughter.

She grew warm and softened toward me. She opened toward me. I could smell the warmth emanating from her body. I wanted to keep her. I suddenly realized what had been eluding me all my life. Stupid, I know.

We sat together in the tall grass and smoked cigarettes. Her eyes were like the wet centers of something. She smoothed back her hair, adjusted her clothes, found her shoes in the grass and put them on. “I should go. The kids will be worried.” Her shoes were small and black and made of soft-looking leather.

*

That afternoon, I sat inside my room, tempted to go up to the attic and slash the straps and release Isabelle into the sky. Let her float away like a balloon. Maybe she belonged in the upper stratosphere? Would that put me on the side of the angels? If I released her from her suffering and torment? Would God forgive me then?

*

That night, after an awful dinner of pork and beans, a truly ghastly meal, I went outside to have a smoke and watch the light bleed out of the sky. After doing the dishes and sending the kids upstairs to bed, Delilah came out and joined me. She took one of my cigarettes, and I lit it for her, and we stood in the twilight, listening to a multitude of insects.

“I know all about the attic,” I told her. “I’ve met Isabelle.”

She stared at me in shock. “I told you not to go up there!”

“Well, I did. So deal with it.”

She looked exhausted. She seemed so worn-down and beaten up, it was as if she didn’t care anymore. “She can read people’s souls, and she suffers for it. She suffers every day. I can’t watch my little girl suffering anymore.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Olive has a gift, too. Different than Isabelle’s, but just as powerful.”

“What kind of a gift?”

“She knows things that ten-year-old girls can’t possibly know. She and Isabelle are very special. They can communicate inside their heads. They don’t need language. They speak in pictures. I’ve been dealing with this for a long time, hiding it from the world.” She drew a trembling hand to her mouth. “Awful things have happened. Terrible things.”

“What kinds of things?”

She shook her head and shivered. She wiped away the burning tears. “I think you should go. Leave. Hurry. It’s not good for you to be here. With me. Maybe this was a mistake? Another mistake. I’m very good at making mistakes.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Delilah.”

She hurried down the hill, and I ran after her.

I grabbed her. “What do you mean, another mistake? How many other guys have there been? How many boarders?”

She was weak and afraid. “Forget it.” She tried to push me away, but I grabbed her around the waist. “Let go of me!”

But I wouldn’t let go.

“Let me go,” she insisted.

But I pulled me toward her and pawed at her clothes. I felt a desperate neediness that was foreign to me. This place, these people, had changed me.

She screamed and clawed at my face. I grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, and she stared at me with terrible eyes. She understood me just then, the real me. The man I’d been hiding from her. I rocked back on the balls of my feet and felt everything, pain and sorrow and regret and excitement and fear.

And then I squeezed the life out of her.

I felt it happening right under my fingertips—her life draining away.

I lowered her body to the ground, and a nostalgic thought entered my head, like raindrops spattering against a windshield.

I shook it off. I had to be cold and empty tonight.

*

I stashed the body in the woodshed, clapped the dirt off my hands and went back inside the house. “Kids?” I hollered.

Not a peep.

I moved swiftly upstairs to my room and got out my hunting knife, along with a roll of duct tape and some rope. “Olive? Andy? Where are you?” I hollered.

Nothing.

I stepped out into the hallway where the moonlight cast deceptive shadows. I didn’t see the blow coming. I never heard anyone creep up behind me. It felt as if I’d been struck by lightning on the back of my head, and the whole world came crashing down.

*

I woke up with my face mashed against the floor and strings of saliva dangling from my mouth. Olive was walking in circles around me, her bare feet leaving sweaty footprints on the wood. The muscles of my face constricted as I tried to pull my shoulders together and sit up, but the pain was too great. The pain was astonishing.

“Andy! He’s moving,” Olive hissed, standing very still.

“Want me to hit him again, Olive?” Andy said.

“No. Wait.”

“Hey, mister?” Now Andy was poking me in the back with the blade of the shovel. “Is he dead yet, Olive? Is he?”

“Stop it, Andy. Don’t poke him like that.”

“Is he dead?”

“Don’t touch him. He’s a bad man.”

“Really? A bad guy, Olive?” He sounded excited. “One of the bad guys, you mean? Those guys?”

“Stop it, Andy! Quit poking him.”

I couldn’t see. I couldn’t move. I tried to sit up, but there was duct tape wrapped around my arms and legs, binding them together, and rope twisted and knotted around my body. Andy shoved me with the heel of his boot, and I rolled over onto my back and gazed up at the pair of them. The moon threw a slab of light into the hallway. My thoughts moved like molasses through my mind.

Leaning over, Olive examined me intensely, the way you might examine a bug you were about to pull apart. “Where’s Mommy?” she demanded to know.

The boy knelt down beside his sister. “Still breathing. Should I hit him?”

“No,” Olive said. “Where’s Mommy, Clarence? What did you do to her?”

“You’re a bad guy, aren’t you?” Andy said, shaking his finger in my face. “Isn’t he, Olive? He’s one of the bad guys, huh?”

I tried to fight them. I tried to scream, but nothing came out of my mouth. I tried to grab hold of them but could only wiggle my fingers between the knotted ropes. I tried to roll over onto my side, but the pain returned like a freight train and flattened me.

Now I heard footsteps on the stairs.

I craned my neck to see who it was.

“Go ahead, Andy,” Delilah said, bruised and disheveled but alive. “Hit him. Go ahead and hit him, honey. Now.”

The boy raised the shovel, and the blow felt like a car wreck.

*

When I came to again, they were tugging and pulling my body up the attic stairs.

“He’s too heavy.”

I was upside down, and the feeling of vertigo was strong. Andy and Olive were ahead of me on the stairs, and Delilah was down behind me.

The little girl paused to study the situation. She grabbed one of my feet and tugged with all her might, but they could only drag me up the stairs a few inches at a time. I stared at Delilah and she stared back. My throat was packed with foam and drool. I tried to speak with choked words. “What the hell are you doing?”

The widow squatted down beside me and said, “You’re a liar.”

As if that was the worst of my sins.

Delilah told Andy, “Grab one of his legs. Olive? You get the other.”

“Okay,” the little girl said.

I held my head at a contemptuous angle. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you insane? Are you trying to kill me?”

They couldn’t pull me up the attic stairs. They were too weak.

“I’m going to kill you,” I told them triumphantly. “Every last one of you.”

Delilah shook with fury. I could see the delicate veins throbbing under the skin of her temples. She ignored me and slicked her greasy hair behind her ears. There was a low, sick, gurgling sound coming from deep in my throat. Delilah turned to Olive and said, “Go get the blanket out of the cedar chest. We’ll wrap him up in that and drag him up the stairs.”

“A blanket?” I laughed out loud.

Olive crept past me, careful where she put her feet, trying not to touch me, and then hurried away.

“I know what you are,” Delilah hissed, leaning over me.

“Really? What am I?” I spat in her face.

“I know exactly what you are.”

“What am I?” I taunted her. “What? What?”

Olive came running back with the blanket and said, “Should I do it, Mommy?”

“Not yet, sweetheart,” Delilah said.

“When, Mommy?”

“First we have to get him up the stairs.”

“What am I?” I screamed, and Andy hit me with the shovel, and I passed out.

*

When I opened my eyes, I was upstairs in the dusty attic. It was stiflingly hot. Andy was holding the shovel over my head, ready to strike again. I was propped against the wall next to the four-poster bed. The three of them surrounded me and were breathing hard from exertion. Isabelle was asleep on the bed. Or at least I think she was—I never could tell for sure. It was one of those enduring mysteries.

I swallowed the dry lump in my throat. I could feel a searing pain on the back of my head and a trickle of blood running down my neck. I was fading fast. I closed my eyes and tried to find my strength. Somehow I would escape this mess, get out of these ropes and kill them. Somehow I would drive away from here and never come back. Well, you know? Things don’t always work out the way you plan. 13 was my goal, but now I’d settle for 14. I would embrace my new lucky number if I had to. 14 it would be. Fine. Whatever. First I’d kill them, and then I’d hop in the car and veer away from here and head north. To Canada or Alaska.

“Look,” I told Delilah—no sense in talking to the kids. “We’re kindred spirits, you and me. Up on that hill? I loved you with all my heart and soul, and that means a lot coming from me. You’ve got to know, I’ve never loved anyone else in my whole life. And I loved you so much up on that hill that it created an entirely new anxiety in my heart—I thought you might leave me or dump me or cheat on me. And I got scared and flew into a jealous blind rage, but I didn’t mean to kill you. Honestly I didn’t. But here you are. Back from the dead. And I don’t blame you for being pissed. I’d be pissed off, too. I’d want revenge. I’ve got secrets, and you’ve got secrets. I’ll keep your secrets if you’ll keep mine. We can fix this. We can let bygones be bygones. We can part ways as friends, not enemies. Simple as that.”

I could tell she wasn’t buying it. Not for a second.

“Now?” Olive asked her mother.

“No.”

“Mommy, we have to…”

“Not yet!” The widow bit her lower lip. She stood with one hand on Olive’s shoulder, pressing it down, and was looking at me with pained confusion.

Good. Maybe I was getting to her after all? Maybe I hadn’t lost my touch after all? That gave me hope. I knew I could wiggle out of anything. When I wanted to—when I cared enough or felt like it—I could sweet-talk anybody. I had a smooth shiny demeanor, a glaze of good manners, and I could shape any argument. That was my public face. In private, I was something else.

“Listen,” I said—and I spoke only to Delilah, ignoring the others—”listen to me. We’re different, you and me. Okay, fine. But we’re similar, too. I felt it when I held you close, when we kissed. I felt your feverishness, your restless desire to wander and roam. To get away from here. But you’re stuck, aren’t you? I’m a wanderer and you’re stuck. I’m an adventurer and you’re not. But I’m giving you an opportunity. Come with me, Delilah.”

Her pale face trembled a bit.

“How stuck are you? You’ve been stuck here forever with them, haven’t you?”

Her high forehead wrinkled like fine linen.

“When I first met you, want to know what I thought? I thought, this little lady doesn’t look like herself. She doesn’t look like who she really is. She looks like a person who’s trying desperately to be someone else. And that’s a sad and pathetic thing—that’s what I thought. Her ego is all mashed up and she’s ground down like a raw stump. Red and sore. But then, as I got to know you better, I saw huge depths to you. Vast complexities. You could be somebody. You could blossom. I know it for a fact. I’m not making this up! You’re stuck in this house and you’re stuck with these kids who keep sucking you back to this house, right into the pit of your despair, day after day, when the sad fact is you just don’t belong here. You belong with me. Let them fend for themselves. They’ve got special powers, right? Let them use their damn powers, they’ll survive. But you’ve got to leave, Delilah. They’re killing you. They’re sapping you of your strength. Make a choice. Now’s your chance. Come with me. How long have you been stuck here inside this house? How long have you been taking care of them?”

She gasped in a burst of nerves.

“How long?”

Frightful tears sprang to her eyes.

“How long?”

She was smothered in an amber light, caught inside a sepia-tinted photograph. The little girl made a tiny noise and moved like a shy queen. The boy sniffed his fingers. They were all stuck. None of them was happy.

“We could be together, you and me,” I told the widow—only the widow. I kept pouring this slender ribbon of bullshit out into the room. “We could just head out over those hills together—do you have any idea what’s beyond those hills, Delilah? Do you?”

She clenched and unclenched her fists, and all I felt was disgust, but I hid it well.

“They’re only kids, but they’re greedy. Needy.”

She winced—I was almost there.

“Sucking all the life out of you. All the juice… all the…”

Isabelle opened her turtle eyes and stared at me. Slick black tar. Wet licorice.

Delilah must’ve smelled it on me. The fear. Something resolved in her eyes. It happened so quickly I didn’t have time to back-pedal. It was too late.

Delilah nodded at Olive. “Do it,” she said. “Do it, Olive. Make him disappear. Make him go away!”

The little girl lit up joyfully. “Okay, Mommy.” She scowled at me before scrambling onto her sister’s bed and untying Isabelle from the bedposts, and that weird little creature began to rise into the air. Straight up in the air.