Lisa flipped the eggs over, enjoying the smell of them mixing with a touch of butter, the greasy scent drifting across her face. She always loved the smell of cooking food, especially in the morning. Her mother, God rest her soul, never let a morning go by without cooking something for Lisa and her two brothers. Now, with a family of her own, it wasn’t a proper start to the day without a real breakfast—eggs, toast, bacon, something to fill the air with the scent of food. The smell of love. She viewed it as a sensory thing, love of a mother was highlighted by the odor of cooking food, and the barest scent of perfume.
In her role as teacher, it used to be chalk—though in recent years, before the fine selectman of Shiloh, New Jersey decided to cut her and seven other teachers from their budget, she’d had to settle for fruit-scented whiteboard markers. Gone were the days of tasting yellow chalk at the back of her throat in the elementary school where she’d taught.
She slipped the spatula under the eggs and lifted them onto the plate.
“Billy!” she called. “Eggs are ready. Get a move on! Your father and I have a surprise for you this morning.”
He did not respond, nor was there any hurried stomp of feet across the house. Lisa walked through the living room into the small hallway. The bathroom on the right was empty. She opened Billy’s bedroom door at the end of the hall without knocking. He was curled in a half-seated, half-slumped position against the wall, covers pulled around him like a backward cape. Lisa swore under her breath, knowing what she was seeing. Another nightmare.
She wandered to the wall beside the door, reached with her left hand under the clown’s chin and pressed the power switch. When the face darkened a wash of cold covered her hand, moved up her arm like gooseflesh. Lisa straightened and rubbed her arm with her right hand, reached below the darkened face again. No breeze. A draft had come from somewhere. She stepped to the windows and flipped the shades up. The room filled with daylight. Billy moaned and curled tighter under the blanket. Lisa pulled one corner free and rubbed his head.
“Come on, kiddo. Time to wake up and get going. Eggs are ready. We need to hurry to get an early start for our field trip!”
Billy mumbled something, then tossed the blanket off himself without looking at her. If he heard her field trip comment he gave no notice. He stared down at his feet a moment before scooting off the bed, bare feet on the hardwood floor, stomping into the hall. Never a word.
Before he’d reached the bathroom door she said, “Bad dream last night?”
She had to smile when he only replied, “Don’t want to talk about it,” and closed the door behind himself. He was so serious for a boy his age. On the way back to the kitchen Lisa called toward the door, “We’re going to do some sightseeing today. It’s a long drive so we need to leave as soon as we’re done. Don’t dawdle in front of the mirror.” He would, too, staring at his exhausted reflection, trying to spur himself on but succeeding only in dozing with his eyes open.
Both of them, Billy and Will, had been acting like basket cases since coming here. Something bad happened in this place when Will was a kid, and she suspected that his own father had had something to do with it. Her first and strongest suspicion, even now, was some kind of abuse. Physical, from the way Will had dragged Billy around the house the other night. She wouldn’t put up with that, post traumatic-stress bullshit or not. And whatever was happening in her husband’s head seemed to be directly affecting their son. Billy had nightmares before; they were a normal part of growing up. But three nights in a row, screaming until they brought home that frightening night light from the Dale Pharmacy. That wasn’t right. Hell, the thing gave her nightmares. But that was all they were. Nightmares.
Not right, none of this. She lingered at the threshold to the kitchen. The basement door was to her right, just inside the room. Lisa reached up and laid fingertips on the wood. Will had gone down there again this morning, as soon as he’d gotten out of bed. He’d become obsessed with the basement since they got here, specifically Lucy’s creepy altar and statue. On a few occasions over the years Lisa found herself downstairs, getting an extra can of something from the pantry for her mother-in-law since Will refused to go down there himself. He never offered a reason whenever she asked, not that she really blamed him. Each time, the altar was a cyst in her eye, forcing her attention away from the task at hand. When she stared at the scene, at the small table draped in a faded, faux-velvet cloth more suited to an Elvis painting than a tablecloth, candles always alight (or perhaps Lucy only lit them when company was expected, who could know?), the scene felt liquid, moving. The Virgin Mary with hands pressed together in prayer riding the wave of the table top, or drowning in it. In those moments Lisa would have to look away to break the spell. If this had been a lone incident she could have attributed it to a moment of exhaustion. But twice, that she could remember…maybe the lighting, the dust...
Either way, it was a section of the basement she did not enjoy being around. The woman’s madness, or perhaps simple loneliness, had been channeled into that altar. On that first night, encountering the shrine, she’d asked Will about it. He said his mother built it the night his father left. The woman had always been very religious. Makes sense, Lisa thought, then and now.
She lowered her hand from the basement door and put Billy’s eggs into the microwave for twenty seconds. Keeping the thing around now made no sense, especially if they hoped to get anyone rational to buy the place. It bothered Will, bothered her. This morning he’d been downstairs, making plans on how best to dismantle the symbol of whatever darkness swallowed the woman. He understood that darkness, Lisa thought, but had yet to share it with her. She’d wait until he finished, until the reminders of that life had been removed, before she insisted he tell her everything. Maybe things would fall back into normalcy when they returned to Shiloh, but this past week showed her that there was a part of her husband’s life that was now affecting their son, and that had to be corrected, soon, to get her family back to some relative sanity.