26
When Carlie came to, she found herself lying in the mud behind the barn. She could barely take a breath due to the pain from her freshly broken ribs, and her face was beaten almost beyond recognition. She had received beatings before this that had left her broken and bleeding, but this had been the mother of all beatings. She could almost crawl, but she couldn’t stand. The best she could manage to do was sit up, but even that was rather lopsided. If she had known anything about concussions, she would have realized that she was sporting a bad one.
Her right iris was three times the size of her left one. The slightest light penetrated clear to her brain, causing excruciating pain, the likes of which she had never experienced before. She was dizzy and nauseated, and if she had had anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.
As Carlie sat in the mud and filth, she hung her head, resting it on her knees. She was about to doze off when a shadow blocked the morning sun. Covering her right eye, she looked up to see if she needed to run—if she even could run. Recognizing the housedress, she knew she was safe, at least for the moment.
“Up with you now, child. Let’s be taking a look at ya.”
Carlie found that she couldn’t focus on the woman’s face. With her right eye swollen completely shut, the cut above her left eyebrow oozed droplets of blood, distorting the vision in her one good eye. The side of her face was already turning black from the savage kick, and her jaw no longer opened and closed completely. Two, maybe three fingers on her right hand also seemed to be broken or at the very least dislocated.
“My God, look at what they’ve gone and done to ya now. Can ya stand, child?”
The woman lifted Carlie carefully from the ground and helped her into the barn. Setting her on a bale of hay, the woman left Carlie sitting there while she busied herself finding antiseptic and bandages that her husband and sons used to treat the animals. After throwing one of the horse blankets across two bales of hay, she laid Carlie down on it and began tending to her wounds.
As the woman silently worked on Carlie’s damaged body, never once did she acknowledge the actions of her eldest son.
When she was finally finished, she covered Carlie with another horse blanket and walked toward the door. Stopping, she turned back and said, “Now don’t ya be falling asleep. I’ll fetch you something warm to eat. When I can, I’ll come back out and sit with you for a while.”
After the woman was gone, Carlie began to sob. Again, she was not crying out of sadness or pain—at least not the physical pain anyway—but out of anger. Actually, the emotion ran so much deeper than anger; Carlie seethed with a rage so potent, there were no words in her limited vocabulary to describe it.
When she felt a hand gently shaking her shoulder, she realized she had fallen asleep even after Edith had expressly told her to not to. Opening her eyes, she didn’t know exactly what to expect. Would Edith punish her for not staying awake? Or would she open her one good eye to welcome a new, more brutal beating?
“Carlie? Carlie! Are you all right?”
Carlie recognized the voice, but it took a few moments to register who it was. As she rose to the surface from her deep sleep, the fresh, moist aroma of mown hay and horse manure no longer enveloped her. All she could smell now was the warm, seductive scent of Jon’s aftershave.
Before she was willing to open her damaged right eye, she tentatively touched the area around it to see if everything that had happened to her had been a dream—or if it had been real. When there was no immediate pain, she took a few moments and mentally inspected the rest of her body. Her fingers and jaw were working normally again, and her body was virtually painless. She could breathe again without wheezing, and the grating pain in her chest cavity was completely gone. When she was satisfied that it had just been another nightmare, she reached out and pulled Jon down on top of her. With her arms wrapped around him as tight as she could, she squeezed.
“CAR-LIE! I can’t breathe!”
“God, it was horrible, Jon. They damn near beat this poor kid to death—again.”
Carlie relaxed her stranglehold on Jon and began sobbing into his shoulder. She eventually got her sobbing under control. Pushing Jon away, just enough to get a better look at him, she shook her head and said, “It’s never going to be all right, Jon. Maybe for you and for me it will be—we’re more or less on the outside of this looking in—but for that poor, tortured little soul, it will never be all right. You can’t possibly imagine what those people subjected that child to on a daily basis. She’s stuck in time, reliving those horrors for all eternity.”
Looking out the window, Jon realized how much of the day had slipped away. The sun had gone down, and the stars were already out. Staring at the ceiling, he let out an audible sigh. This whole situation was so far out of his knowledge base that he found it almost impossible to begin focusing on any kind of a solution. Above all else, he was not a psychic or even a believer in the paranormal. What concerned him wasn’t Carlie’s insisting that he refocus all of his scholarly attention on finding a solution for the intangible, but rather the undisputable fact that someone or something needed their help. He found the whole situation more than a little unsettling.
When Jon opened his eyes again, the sun was breaking over the eastern horizon. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and a gentle breeze was blowing the bedroom curtains. Carlie was still lying on his arm, exactly where she had fallen asleep. He’d actually had a peaceful night’s sleep—no visions, no visitations. He felt refreshed and ready to face whatever the day might bring.
Carlie rolled off his arm and sat up in bed. When she turned to him, Jon could see that her eyes were clear and bright. She looked better than she had in weeks.
“Jon, my appointment is at 9:00 am.”
Jon had to think about that for a few seconds. Then it dawned on him that it had been over a week since Carlie had fallen and broken her nose. The packing was coming out today, and the brace was finally coming off. The bruises under her eyes had cleared up days earlier, and the swelling in her cheeks was completely gone.
It was going to be a good day—Jon could feel it.
Shortly after 8:00, Jake’s Farm Supply delivered the roofing felt, a new window, and a box of whatever was required to install all of it. After signing the bill, Jon and Carlie left for town. He was comfortable in the belief that Smitty would find everything he had requested sitting next to the barn, and could get started on his own.
When Carlie was finished seeing the doctor, she walked into the waiting room with her head held high, showing off her new nose. Jon was pleasantly surprised at what he saw. Her nose was again perfectly straight. The slight upturn of the tip of her nose was even more pronounced now. This slight change was breathtaking; it made her face look angelic.
“Boy, you look great,” Jon said with a smile. “I have an idea. Why don’t you and I go out for breakfast? We can go over and say hi to Loretta and show off your new nose.”
“That’s a great idea. I’ll be able to taste food again.”
Jon signed the paperwork, and the two stepped out into the clean, fresh air.
Jon sat in stunned silence as he stared at the “Closed” sign on the door of Loretta’s café. He couldn’t remember ever seeing the café closed during the day.
The look of concern on Jon’s face prompted Carlie to ask, “Do you think something’s wrong?”
Remembering their conversation about the house, he envisioned Paul’s accident and Dexter’s stroke. Just the thought of Loretta being hurt because of their conversation left him with an empty feeling.
Backing out of the parking space, he pointed the car toward the end of town. The woman who worked behind the counter at the Pantry Mart would know what had happened to Loretta; he was sure of it.
“Good morning, Pauline,” Jon said. “I was wondering if you might know why the café is closed. Is everything all right with Loretta?”
Before she could answer, a booming voice from the back of the store spoke up. “Retta’s fine—it’s that idiot husband of hers that got hurt.”
In a whisper, Pauline introduced the big man at the back of the store as Loretta’s brother Kenneth. “Loretta should be opening up any minute now.”
Jon thanked her and returned to the car. As he was opening the door, he spotted Loretta’s pickup going the opposite direction. Settled behind the steering wheel, he put the car in reverse and backed out into the street.
After creeping across town again, he found the café open and two pickups already in the parking lot. The sign now told him that it was open and to come on in.
“Are you still in the mood for breakfast? I never thought to ask, I’m sorry.”
“I’m ravenous.”
With that said, they went inside.
When the bell over the door tinkled, announcing their arrival, Loretta’s voice rang out from the back. “Well I’ll be damned. You two are a sight for sore eyes. Come on in and sit down. I’ll be right over.”
Sliding into the seat next to Jon, Loretta stretched her arms across the table and took Carlie’s hands in her own. “It’s been so long. How have you been, sweetie?”
“Well, okay, I guess. Things could be better, but I imagine they could be a lot worse, too. Enough about me, though. We heard about Cecil. Is he all right?”
“He’ll be fine. His pride was hurt more than his body.”
Jon looked to Carlie to initiate the conversation. He had no idea what, if anything, she would be willing to talk about. Carlie’s first order of business, however, was to order breakfast.
Once their order was in the kitchen, Loretta returned to the table and gave Carlie her undivided attention. Not saying a word, the waitress just sat and waited; Carlie would tell her what was on her mind when she was good and ready.
She didn’t have to wait long.
“Loretta, I need to talk to you about our house. It’s haunted!”
“I know, Carlie. I know.”
Over the next three hours, between eating and Loretta waiting on the occasional customer, Carlie told her everything that had happened at the house since she had last seen her. Then she went on to tell her about the disturbing nightmares she had been having. Carlie went into such detail that it actually surprised Jon. A great deal of what she was telling Loretta was information he had never heard before. He was amazed that Carlie could remember every detail of her dreams with such rich, vivid clarity. It really was, just as she had said, as if she were actually reliving these events of the past.
When Carlie was finished, she sat waiting for Loretta to respond.
Loretta’s voice was calm when she began. “I think I can help you figure this out—that is, if you’ll let me. We have a lot of records and even more photographs from back then. I had family that worked at the county recorder’s office. The records building burned, destroying most of the records. Hundreds of the old records that they thought had been destroyed in the fire actually weren’t. They were part of this town’s history, and my family members went out of their way to save them.”
“What about Cecil? It sounds like he needs your help right now, probably even more than we do.”
“Don’t you go giving Cecil another thought. He’s just fine. Doctor says he’ll be in a walking cast for about a month. Besides, his crops still have until the end of November or maybe even the end of December before they’ll be dry enough to harvest.
“I work the morning shift here, and Pauline and Shirley work the lunch and dinner shifts. I can spend a couple hours in the afternoon with y’all.”
The look of excited determination on Loretta’s face made it virtually impossible for either Jon or Carlie to say no, so they both agreed to let her help.
While they drove home, Carlie worked hard to justify their decision to involve Loretta. The only reason they could both agree upon was that three sets of eyes were better than two.