The Loveliest Dead (42 page)

He nodded as Miles joined them. David put a hand on his shoulder and said, “How’s it going, Tiger?”

“Okay, I guess,” Miles said. “Is this going to be scary?”

“I don’t know, honey,” Jenna said. “But you have nothing to be afraid of—you’re going to be fine.”

Jenna had put the lamps back on their end tables and cleaned up the broken Roseville vase, the shattered ceramic elves, and the pieces of glass from the framed photographs. The pile of broken elves and framed photos remained on the floor beside the black cabinet.
 

Mrs. Frangiapani said, “I’m going to try to explain to the children in this house that it’s time for them to move on. It might take a while, because they aren’t very attentive. I suspect that once these children know they can go, they’ll leave, and then this terrible fat man will have no reason to stay. Is it all right if I turn off the television? It’s distracting.”
 

Jenna quickly turned it off. “No problem,” she said.

“I’m not familiar with your work, Mrs. Frangiapani,” Lily said, “so feel free to speak up if there’s anything else you need us to do.”
 

The old woman smiled. “No, I need nothing else. Just make yourselves comfortable while I do this.”

Lily, Martha, and Claudia sat down on the sofa. David lowered himself into the recliner heavily. Jenna sat beside him on the recliner’s armrest and Miles sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him. They watched Mrs. Frangiapani, who stood in the center of the room and clasped her hands together before her as if to pray.
 

“Children,” she said. “Boys. I know you’re here. Please pay attention to me, boys, I have something important to tell you, something you’ll be very happy to hear.” She turned to Jenna. “Could you turn the lights down a little?”
 

Jenna got up and turned off the overhead light and two of the lamps, leaving only the lamp beside the recliner on. She returned to her seat on the armrest.
 

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Frangiapani said, “too much light keeps them away.” She turned away from them again and looked at nothing in particular as she said, “I want to help you, boys. Please come let Mrs. Frangiapani help you.”
 

The room’s temperature dropped several degrees. Even with the crackling flames in the fireplace, the living room cooled.

“Boys, you must listen carefully,” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “It’s time for you to leave this place, children. The fat man no longer has
any
power over you—you can leave anytime you want, just fly away. This is a bad place for you, a horrible place. There’s no reason for you to stay here—you should go now, boys, go away together, leave no one behind. There is nothing the fat man can do to you now, you’re completely free of—”
 

The lamp went out. Every light in the house went out and left them in darkness. The soft, dancing orange glow of the fire was the only light in the room.
 

“Dammit,” David said as he got up.

Jenna quickly stood, too. “Where are you going?”

“To get the flashlight,” he said as he went into the dining room.

While he was gone, Mrs. Frangiapani continued: “You’re free to move on now. You’ve been here far too long. I understand—”

Mrs. Frangiapani stopped speaking and stared at something in front of her. When Jenna saw it, she inhaled a gulp of air in a quiet gasp.
 

A small figure stood before the old woman, a shadow in the darkness. Jenna looked closer and realized the boy was as transparent as a faint cloud of dust, the features of his face softly blurred.
 

“I understand,” Mrs. Frangiapani said, “that you’ve had very bad experiences here and your spirits were broken. You’ve been confused and hurt by what happened here, so I understand, I really do.”
 

Jenna saw another boy standing near the straight-back chair, another between the chair and the dining room doorway, all part of the dark, melting into it, mere suggestions of shapes. More boys appeared—two, three, four, two of them toddlers.
 

Jenna hunkered down on the floor beside Miles and put an arm around him. She could feel him shiver as he gawked at the figures in the dark.
 

“Are those ghosts, Mom?” Miles whispered tremulously.

“Something like that, honey,” she said. “But don’t be afraid.”

“But you have to understand,” Mrs. Frangiapani said, “that this isn’t a place for you anymore—you can leave. Are you listening to Mrs. Frangiapani?”
 

“Where’s the flashlight?” David said. He stood in the dining room doorway. When he saw the boys, his chin slowly dropped.

Jenna thought about the flashlight and remembered where it was. “I’m sorry, honey—it’s in the basement.”

“The
basement
?”
 

They spoke in low tones. The boys did not seem to notice.

Jenna said, “Arty took one of their religious icons down there and something scared him. He dropped the light.”

“So he probably left it on. Do we have batteries?”

“On the shelf over the washer and dryer in the laundry room.”

David sighed. “So I’m going to have to go down those stairs in the dark,” he muttered as he turned to go back through the dining room.
 

Miles shot to his feet. “Just a second, Dad,” he said as he hurried out of the room and through the entryway.

Jenna stood and shouted, “Miles! Come back here!”

“It’ll just take a second!” Miles called as he ran up the stairs.

She heard him run down the upstairs hall to his bedroom. A few seconds later, he thumped down the stairs. He went down the hall to the kitchen and appeared beside David in the dining room doorway. He handed David his penlight, already turned on.
 

“Thanks, Miles,” David said, and headed back through the dining room.

Miles followed him.

“Miles, come back in here,” Jenna said.

“Okay,” he called from the dining room.

“Now, you boys listen to Mrs. Frangiapani,” the old woman said. “You need to leave here now. Just let yourself rise up and up and leave this place. The fat man has no power over you, he can’t stop you from—”
 

Faint, whispered voices, terse and frightened—the boys:

“He’s coming.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Go, go, go!”

“No, don’t go away!” Mrs. Frangiapani said. “You have no reason to be afraid!”

The figures in the dark dissolved and the room grew colder.

Instead of going out the kitchen’s rear door, down the hall, and back to the living room with Mom, Miles went to the laundry room. He did not feel safe in the dark and wanted his flashlight back. He went to the open basement door and peered down the stairs. He heard Dad’s footsteps on the dirt floor below, saw the narrow beam of his penlight moving through the darkness. He decided to wait there for Dad to come back up.
 

Seconds after the temperature dropped in the living room a second time, something rose up from the floor. It looked to Jenna like a dense swarm of gnats, a cloud of undulating blackness.
 

Mrs. Frangiapani stumbled backward as the cloud engulfed her. It swirled around her silently, then contracted, moving in close around her. It flexed like a muscle, and Mrs. Frangiapani cried out before collapsing onto the floor.
 

Lily came up off the couch.

The black cloud dropped slowly, then disappeared into the floor.

Jenna and Lily went to Mrs. Frangiapani. The old woman lay on her back, arms out at her sides.

“Mrs. Frangiapani,” Lily said, “can you hear me?”

Jenna picked up Mrs. Frangiapani’s right hand and rubbed the back of it. The old woman stirred, whimpered as Lily checked her wrist for a pulse.
 

“Should we get her on the couch?” Jenna asked.

“No, let’s leave her here for the time being,” Lily said. “Her pulse is good.”

“What do we do now?” Jenna said as they stood.

“To be honest, Mrs. Kellar,” Lily said, “I’m not sure.”

“Call me Jenna.” She turned and looked down at the spot on the floor where Miles had been sitting—he was not there. He had not come back in the room yet. She turned to the entryway, but he was not there, either. Her heart quickened its pace. “Miles! Miles, where are you?”
 

Miles stepped out of the laundry room and shouted, “I’ll be there in a second.”

“Come in here right
now
, Miles,” she said in the living room.
 

Dad’s footsteps started back up the stairs, and Miles hurried back to the basement door. Dad came up with the penlight in his mouth and the long black Mag-Lite shining in his right hand.
 

“It still works,” Miles said as he stepped back to let Dad into the laundry room.

Using his right hand, Dad clumsily took the penlight from his mouth and handed it over to Miles. “Wait here,” he said.

As Dad walked into the kitchen, Miles looked at the penlight and muttered, “It’s got spit on it now.” He wiped it on his jeans

Dad got something from a drawer, put it in his pocket, then came back to the laundry room. “Come down with me. I need your help.”
 

“Really?” Miles said.

“Come on, you go first.”

Miles aimed the penlight straight ahead as he started down the basement stairs. From behind him, Dad’s flashlight lit up the narrow staircase.
 

The light coming from behind Miles disappeared, leaving only the narrow beam of his penlight, which flickered out. Miles turned and looked up the stairs just as Dad pulled the door shut.
 

Dad faced the door at the top of the stairs, the flashlight tucked beneath his right arm. He threw a bolt lock on the inside of the door, then turned around and came down the stairs. The flashlight’s beam hit Miles directly in the eyes and made him glance away, but when he looked again, Dad had removed from his pocket the biggest knife from Mom’s knife drawer in the kitchen.
 

The penlight slipped from Miles’s trembling hand, hit one of the stairs, then fell through into the darkness below the staircase.

In a gravelly voice that wasn’t quite his, Dad said, “Go on, get down there, you fuckin’ puppy.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Saturday, 11:26 p.m.

Jenna bumped into one of the chairs at the table as she hurried through the dining room in the dark. “Miles, where are you?” she said as she entered the kitchen. “David?” she said as she looked around the room. “Miles? Where
are
you?” She went into the laundry room and listened at the closed basement door. She heard a low, gravelly voice. The words being spoken were unintelligible, but the voice was enough.
 

“No!” she screamed as she grabbed the doorknob with both hands and tried to open the door. “Leave him alone! Let him go!” The door would not budge. She pounded on the door while trying to open it. “David! David, can you hear me?”
 

Footsteps rushed into the kitchen.

“It’s locked!” Jenna screamed. “My God, it’s
locked
!”
 

Lily and Claudia came into the laundry room, followed by Martha.

“Let me try,” Lily said.

Jenna stepped away from the door. Lily clutched the doorknob with both hands and threw her considerable weight into pulling on it. It would not open.
 

The basement was cold and damp and so dark that, without Dad’s flashlight, Miles would be unable to see anything at all. Miles tried to scream but could not. He made small breathy sounds as his chest rapidly rose and fell. Once off the stairs, he turned to face Dad as he came down the last few steps. The flashlight beneath Dad’s arm had tipped downward. Miles backed away from him over the dirt floor.
 

Dad moved differently as he came toward Miles. Hips forward, torso leaning back slightly, he walked with a lazy swagger. His eyes looked sleepy, but his mouth was curled into a grin that made Miles feel nauseated. The blade of the butcher knife he held in his fist looked enormous. Light from the flashlight held under Dad’s right arm flashed on the broad side of the blade.
 

“Miles?” Mom called in the kitchen. “David?”

Miles gasped at the sound of her voice. Dad did not seem to notice.

“Miles? Where
are
you?”
 

Miles backed into a stack of boxes. The damp cardboard felt cold through the back of his long-sleeve blue-plaid shirt. As Dad slowly closed in, Miles became paralyzed. Even his lungs seemed to have frozen up, and he did not breathe. His heart was beating so fast, it seemed to hum in his chest rather than pulse.