Chapter 5

Lurking in the Darkness

Late June

On her day off from work at the hospital, Miriam sat at the kitchen table peeling potatoes while Bradley and Samantha helped by peeling carrots, turnips, and onions. The kitchen in mid-morning was bright with natural light coming from the large windows and sliding patio doors. This room was always full of life. It was the center of the home’s main activities, be it with meal preparation, eating, homework or playing board games. It was always full of lively discussions and laughter and that was why it was Miriam’s favorite room in their house.

For the first time this summer, Miriam had opened all the windows in the kitchen, as the weather had at last warmed up enough to do so. The three of them peeled, sliced and diced to make scalloped potatoes, stew and shepherd’s pie; meals for the next few days.

Scott had taken three of the more energetic foster kids with him to get haircuts and run errands. Plus he wanted Clay, Peter and Colin to go with him to the library. Scott had promised Samantha he’d get her a few books she wanted, including the next in the Potter series. He had taken the boys in hopes of getting them to read more instead of playing video games all the time. That left the three youngest kids at home along with the two eldest who were helping their foster mom with meal prep.

“Hi, Patrick,” Miriam said as she noticed her smart little boy, walking into the kitchen, his left hand following the wall, as usual. He was abnormally bright for his age. “Did you want to help us prep?” Miriam’s smile was obvious in her voice, the soft tone of her words such a delight to the kids ears. Hearing her talk was almost as nice as the long, loving hugs she often took the time to give to each of them.

“No, mommy. I’m just looking for a puzzle. The one with the animals and trucks and cars.” He approached the table with a slow and steady step. Miriam got up from her chair and looked down at him. She brought her face closer to his. She peered into the large sunglasses and saw her own reflection in them, a funny and distorted image of herself, a bit like the fun mirrors at the carnival.

“I’ll get it for you, sweetie.” Her voice was soft and this made Patrick smile. Unlike others, his foster mom was very soft-spoken around him. She knew loud voices could sometimes upset him due to his keen sense of hearing. She always made sure to speak with a soft tone with him, and this he appreciated, in his own four-year-old way.

Opening the pantry, she bent down and sorted through a large basket with several puzzle boxes, board games and various decks of cards. Finding what she was searching for, she pulled it out and brought it over to Patrick.

“Here you go, kiddo.” Patrick reached out and with his fingers he found the edge of the puzzle board. He took it in his arms and turned around.

Once he made his way back, Patrick sat in the middle of the living room, still finding comfort behind his large sunglasses. He placed the large wooden toy puzzle board down in front of him. The board had various shapes cut out where puzzle pieces fit, pieces that had shapes of animals and things with Braille words written on each piece. Patrick took a piece from the pile, felt its shape and proceeded to feel the board to find its place.

His twin sister Lily stood at the window sill, playing with a dismembered Barbie doll. The doll’s arms and legs were scattered on the sill while Lily tried to comb the doll’s matted hair. Gavin played on the couch. His toy dump truck and toy loader were busy moving pretend gravel. He mimicked scooping it up with the loader, dumping it into the truck and moving it from one side to the other all while making his best impression of the roar of engines.

Lily put her small hand to the window pane as she looked outside, watching the man on the roof on the house across the street. The house had been empty for months. The last occupants, an elderly couple, had only lived there for three weeks when poor old Mr. Ketchum died of a sudden heart attack. A week after that, his wife, Mrs. Ketchum had a stroke. The house had been for sale since. Today there was someone working on redoing the roof. Lily, only four years old, didn’t quite understand all that. What she did remember was watching the ambulance take Mr. Ketchum on a stretcher. That had been an exciting day. She also remembered the day Mrs. Ketchum ran outside. She had burst through the front door while Lily stood at the same exact spot she did now, watching and smiling. Mrs. Ketchum had run as fast as her old arthritic-filled legs had allowed her. She had stopped midway on the sidewalk, only to spin around and stare at the two story house. Lily remembered watching for a moment before Mrs. Ketchum slowly fell on her side. She lay in the grass for a long time as Lily watched. Eventually Scott had come to see what had Lily so wrapped up, but it had been too late. Mrs. Ketchum had suffered a stroke and was pronounced dead by the paramedics upon their arrival.

Today she watched as the man on the roof worked. Lily didn’t really understand exactly what he was doing. He sure did make a lot of noise with all the banging he was doing with the big hammer he was using. She knew he was working because he had tools; real ones and not toys. She wondered if today would be another exciting day too.

Ben Augustine’s favorite class in high school had been shop. Mostly it had been the carpentry portion of shop class. Ben loved to make things with his hands especially since he found meaning in it. He wanted to give a new life to the trees that had been cut and for their spirit to carry on. His grandfather had taught him that everything in nature has a spirit and that it must be honored, always. The idea that he could both honor the tree’s spirits and create something that could help serve his fellow man in different ways was a calling that came to Ben at a young age.

College wasn’t something he had thought about while going to school, but he had since learned that to become a carpenter, he would need to complete an apprenticeship. With the completion of a carpenter program at a college though, it would reduce the time required to complete the apprenticeship. Sure, he could learn a lot on his own, and he had done so, but you couldn’t list YouTube on a resume as a reference or experience. These days, most people wanted you to have related work experience or technical training in the field before they took you on as an apprentice. In order to make money to go to college, Ben had taken a job with a local sawmill. He had started as a laborer and had since gained the confidence of his boss by always being punctual, doing the job to the best of his abilities and treating everyone with respect. These were the qualities, he learned, that were appreciated in the workforce and rewarded. His boss took notice and he was the one who convinced him to go to college.

“Learn as much as you can and then make sure you come back,” he had said to Ben. “My brother has a construction company and he is always looking for carpenters. In the meantime though, maybe I can give him your name if you want to do some other jobs to make more cash for school?” Ben had agreed.

He had continued working at the mill, but he was also doing some side jobs and projects whenever he was needed. On this day, he had been asked to put new shingles on the roof of the old Ketchum house.

Ben had spent the day stripping off the old shingles and was now on the front side of the house, prepping it for the new roofing. It had taken him longer than he had hoped due to the three dormers on the front of the house.

Stripping the old roofing around these without damaging the siding or the windows had been tedious. Ben was now down to the last bits of roofing which were in front of the dormers. Crouched, he struggled with his safety harness while getting ready to pry the bits of roofing off. He had to be careful not to damage the existing flashing like he had been told. Damaging that would mean removing the siding and that was not part of the job. Sure, they would fix it at no extra charge if he did damage the aluminum material that stopped the water from getting in under the siding and into the house, but it would be best if they didn’t need to do that.

Ben crouched and carefully pried away a piece of roofing. As he bent down though, something caught the corner of his eye in the window of the dormer where he was working. A glint of something inside the house, he thought. Or maybe merely a reflection in the glass as it was dark in the house. It gave the glass a slight mirrored effect. Nobody was living there, so that was the likely cause of the glint he thought he saw.

He glanced behind him to see what the source of the reflection might have been only to be reminded that he was three stories high. The dormer was in the attic of a two story house which meant he was much higher than he remembered. This thought sent his empty hand to the buckle of his safety harness. Once he was confident it was still secure, he turned his attention back to the task at hand. Before he was able to reach for the strip of roofing, he noticed something in the shadows of the attic. Something definitely moved, he thought.

Before he was able to finish processing that he had seen movement, out of the shadows inside the house, on the other side of the window, a small red ball appeared on the floor of the attic. Focusing his gaze away from inside the house and to his own reflection, he saw the fear in his face and realized he had been holding his breath. Letting out a long breath, his mind started racing with questions. He knew the house was supposed to be empty. He wondered if there was anyone possibly squatting inside the vacant home.

Before he could give it much more thought, a second red ball appeared next to the first just outside the shadows, resting on the floor of the vacant house. Ben shifted his weight, grasped at his safety harness while clutching at the metal pry bar he had been using to remove the shingles. Before he could assess the situation, a third red ball emerged from the shadows of the dark attic, hovering in the air. His breathing was now coming in short, shallow gasps, and he felt a powerful tightening as he watched this red mass hovering approximately five feet off the ground. Confused, and feeling the adrenaline racing through his body, Ben started to rise from the crouched position then wobbled on the sloped roof as he almost lost his footing. He staggered slightly but steadied himself. Just beneath the floating red ball, Ben saw a set of bright white teeth materialize out of thin air, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, but with a crueller twist.

“A fucking clown,” he uttered as he took an involuntary step back from his old childhood phobia. The phobia that had been implanted by that stupid movie he had watched when he was way too young to watch such stuff. As he took the step, he suddenly realized that he was near enough to the edge of the roof already that his foot had nothing to land on. He flung his arms out to steady himself but it was too late. Falling backwards, he realized that his safety harness was clipped into a line that was too long, but in that instant, it was too late to do anything about it.

For a few brief moments, he felt himself free-falling, straight down, but as he struggled in his panic, his body turned a bit to the left. The fall came to an abrupt stop. He felt and heard a loud snap when the end of the line was reached. The pain and the pressure on his spine too much for his body to endure caused Ben to pass out. His body dangled alongside the siding of the house, where he would remain for almost an hour.

The angle of the fall, with the line wrapped around his waist, as well as the sudden jarring impact would be explained as the reason for the back injury he would sustain. This was the day that changed the course of his life forever. Soon doctors would tell him they were not sure if the damage to his spinal column would be reparable. One thing they knew for certain, though, was that his dream of becoming a carpenter would never come to be.

Lily stood at the window, the now headless torso of the Barbie doll in one hand and the doll’s head in the other. She stood there, silent as she watched Ben dangling from a line off the house across the street. She was completely unaware of the curse that she had inherited from her mother, but she knew if she focused hard enough, she could make things happen. She didn’t know how. She had no way of knowing that she made people see things that would scare them, things that would be disturbing to them. All she knew was that when she tried, she could scare people and she liked it. It’s fun to scare people, thought Lily, as she watched the man she had just scared now dangling from a rope. A giggle escaped her as she continued to watch him.

“Oh my GOD!” Samantha exclaimed as she stood behind Lily. Samantha, while checking on the kids, saw Ben dangling on his safety line. Ben’s harness had held him but the way he dangled, bent backwards like he was, it had to be bad, she thought.

A clatter startled Samantha and she heard a scream from behind her. She turned to see that Patrick had dumped his puzzle pieces and was starting his puzzle all over again. The scream had been from Gavin as the puzzle pieces clattering onto the floor had apparently scared him. Gavin, toy truck in hand, stood quivering in fear as he looked outside the window and noticed the hurt man across the street.

“Call 911,” Samantha blurted to Miriam. “Tell them someone needs help at the old Ketchum house.”

Samantha walked over to Gavin where he stood, terrified. She took his hand and led him away from the frightening scene in the window. Miriam ran to get the cordless phone in the hallway. With the phone in hand she called 911 as she went outside and made her way towards the Ketchum house.

“Lily,” Patrick said as he cocked his head to the side in an attempt to hear his twin sister. “Stop it, Lily.”

Lily smirked as she dropped the head of the Barbie doll on the floor while watching what was happening at the Ketchum house. She placed her small, bare foot on the head of the doll and slowly put her weight on it, crushing the plastic toy with her heel. Barbie’s face, distorted and disfigured stared out with plastic painted eyes underfoot.

Patrick took off his sunglasses, exposing his eyeless face. Where there should have been eye sockets and eyes, was just smooth skin. There was no way Patrick could have ever had sight, as his body never even made room for eyes to develop and grow. This was the reason why he always wore the sunglasses. Most people assumed it was just due to him being blind. However, he wore them to also protect himself from the taunts and teasing from other kids for looking so different. Though he was young still, he had received his share of bullying already. Even his foster siblings, Peter, Colin and Clay, called him a freak when the older kids or the grownups weren’t around to hear them.

“Stop it,” Patrick repeated. He knew his sister was doing something she shouldn’t be doing. He didn’t know what it was and he wouldn’t understand even if he did. In his mind, he had convinced himself that his twin sister was kind and could do no wrong. Although there were times he felt something was off and it had to do with his sister. Even though he sensed this, he only ever felt love and kindness for her. She wasn’t bad to Patrick. She might be confused, but not bad.

Walking over to where Lily stood at the window sill, he reached down and searched until he found her small hand. Standing together, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, he stood by her side. This love he had for his sister was the only thing he ever felt that was as real as life itself. Looking over at Patrick, Lily smiled as she returned to watch the ambulance arrive across the street.