33
Jon was reading the journal Loretta had laid down when the two women returned to the room. Not privy to Loretta and Carlie’s conversation and concerned about why they had left the room so quickly, he asked, “Is everything all right?”
Loretta didn’t know exactly how to answer—but Carlie did. “Jon, personally I’m going to be just fine, maybe a little sore for a while. I might even have a few small scars, but I don’t think that this mess we’re involved in is ever going to be all right.”
He continued. “Well, speaking of a mess, it seems the life and times of the McPherson family just took a turn for the worse.”
The three boys and the old man had left the house well before dawn to start tilling the fields.
“It’s after midnight now, and only Ian and Daniel have returned home. Patrick was tilling with Andrew on the double disc, and neither has returned.
“Ian and Daniel took off with kerosene lanterns and searched most of the night, but couldn’t locate them in the dark.
“Daniel left again just after dawn to see if he could retrace the direction Patrick and Andrew were supposed to follow. He finally returned to the house just after noon. Edith was the first person to hear Daniel yelling as he galloped up to the house. She shooed Ian out the door to find out what was wrong. After almost two days, Edith was positive that something horrible had happened to one or both of the boys.
“Up to this point, Edith was taking quick notes as to what they were thinking and doing. She is writing a little more directly now. She’s sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Daniel and Ian to return with the other boys.”
Ian and Daniel have been gone for nearly three hours now. Becky is holding on to Noel so tight, I fear she will squeeze the life right out of the poor little guy. I’m trying to keep faith that Patrick will return to us alive and well. But the more time passes, the less I believe that will be the case. I am not sure how Becky or Ian will react to the worst happening to Patrick —especially if Andrew managed to survive. God help us all in that event.
Loretta gave Carlie a pointed glance. Carlie could only shrug her shoulders; she understood the ramifications for Andrew and possibly Edith if the worst-case scenario should happen and Patrick didn’t return alive.
“Edith sort of skips a lot of immediate detail here, but picks up with the explanation of what apparently happened to the boys.
“She goes on to say that it seems as though something must have spooked the horses. When one of the horses reared, it kicked Andrew in the face. A second kick caught him in the chest. Lastly, the horse and tiller ran over the top of him, nearly severing his right leg.
“Patrick fell backward into the blades when the horse reared. As the horse trampled Andrew, Patrick fell backward and got wedged between the blades, where he was twisted and turned against the sharp metal edges. That’s how Daniel found him. Daniel didn’t bother to look for Andrew until he returned with Ian.
“Edith doesn’t mention Andrew anywhere in here again. I don’t know for sure if the boy survived or not. Edith goes into pretty specific detail about the family grieving Patrick’s death and his funeral, but there’s nothing about Andrew at all.”
The three sat in silence as they tried to absorb and make sense of all that they had just heard.
Jon stopped reading to point out what he considered to be an obvious contradiction. “You know, up to this point, Edith has been pretty mundane in her writings. They were not always complete and were usually devoid of facts and details. Each of her entries was the same until she started describing what happened to Patrick and Andrew during the accident. Admittedly, some of it was supposition; she claimed that it was. But that supposition quickly became fact. How would she know what was—and what was not—factual?
“I get the impression that the wrong son returned. Andrew was supposed to be the one who died that morning, not Patrick.
“Again, I’m just guessing here, but this accident seems like it was premeditated.”
Carlie nodded her head in agreement; she also considered the incident as being something other than an accident.
Loretta needed a little more clarification. “So what you’re saying here is, Edith was basically being spoon-fed the party line from Ian.”
“I can’t see it being any other way, Loretta. Edith had always been the weak link in Ian’s mind, so when it went wrong, he needed to create an accident scenario that both she and Becky could accept—one that left none of the three men to blame.”
Carlie was the first to notice the incredible drop in temperature in the living room. Pulling her sweater around her shoulders, she found herself retreating deeper into the corner of the couch.
Loretta started twitching and rubbing the end of her nose. Her eyelids were growing heavy from a buildup of frost on her lashes.
Because he was so wrapped up in his heated dissertation, Jon was the last to notice that the living room temperature had dropped to well below freezing. Looking over at Carlie and Loretta, he saw that they were visibly suffering. Carlie’s teeth were chattering uncontrollably, and Loretta had a severe case of the shakes. Both women were showing the onset signs of hypothermia; their skin was white, and their lips were turning a pale blue.
Jon realized what was happening, but he didn’t know why. Moving across the room, he pulled the curtains back. A heavy layer of frost completely covered the glass. He found the latch encased in a thick layer of ice, rendering it useless.
He tried the front door and found that the frozen handle wouldn’t budge. Realizing they were trapped, he yanked his hand free from the handle, leaving pieces of skin attached to the frozen metal surface.
His breath came in quick billows of white haze. With each breath, the cold burned like fire deeper into his lungs. Carlie and Loretta were already starting to nod off; he needed to find a source of heat before they all froze to death.
Moving toward the kitchen, he wasn’t surprised—but was only disappointed—when the door slammed shut in his face and sealed from the inside.
The room was as cold as a deep freeze. It was so cold, Jon could barely feel, let alone control, his extremities. On shaky legs, he hobbled to the stairwell closet. Turning the handle, he yanked on the door with all his strength. The door didn’t budge. He tried it again, this time using his leg for leverage; he could feel a slight give in the frozen wood.
His mind was cloudy and numb from the intense cold, but he knew he had to keep trying.
The fireplace implements were on the hearth nearby. His only hope was to break a window or open a door, but his strength was beginning to wane. Grabbing the heavy iron coal shovel, he slammed the thin metal edge into the closet doorjamb and pried outward. The wood began to crack. He pushed once again and the door shattered, swinging out with such violent force that it threw him to the floor.
Lying on the floor not three feet away was a stack of heavy woolen blankets. Even closer were Jon and Carlie’s winter coats hanging on the hooks just inside of what was left of the doorframe. Standing, Jon reached for the coats, but a heavy black shadow blocked his way. It was as if he were grabbing at air; he could see the coats, but his hand kept missing. Exhausted, Jon dropped to the floor. He needed to rest for just a few minutes, then he would try again—just a few minutes rest and he would be fine.
As Jon lay down on the hard wooden floor, the black shadow moved over the top of him. When it did, Jon’s head snapped forward and then back hard against the surface of the polished oak floor. His back arched and his hands slapped the wood uncontrollably. Trying to move on his own was impossible—something was pinning him to the floor.
The voice sounded as if it were coming from the end of a tunnel. The intensity of the voice was as quiet as a whisper, but it reverberated inside Jon’s skull like a sledgehammer against the porcelain walls of time and space: “Leave what does not concern you alone.”
Opening his eyes, Jon’s face was only inches from the face of Ian McPherson. He saw a loathing in the man’s eyes that he had never seen before.
Once when he was very young, Jon had found a badger caught in a jaw trap. The look of terror and hatred reflected in that poor suffering animal’s eye as it snapped and bit at everything—including itself—was one that Jon knew he would never forget as long as he lived. He had just seen the exact same look in Ian’s eyes. The hatred that emanated from this man was so palpable, it was overpowering. Jon could not just see it and feel it, but he could actually smell it in the air. Ian’s breath reeked of burning wood and decayed flesh.
Jon blinked once, and Ian was gone.
Standing, Jon reached inside the broken closet and retrieved the stack of woolen blankets. He didn’t realize the room was no longer freezing—in fact, it wasn’t even cold. Turning toward Carlie and Loretta, he found them standing in the middle of the room staring at him.
“Are you girls all right?” Jon asked.
Carlie moved her mouth around and shook her hands to get the blood flowing before she committed to an answer. “My lips are still a little numb and my fingertips tingle, but I’d say yes, I’m all right.”
Loretta wanted to say something; Jon could see it in her eyes. “How about you, Loretta? Are you all right too?”
“My God, does this happen to you two all the time?”
“Well, not all the time, but a lot more often than we had planned on. Welcome to our world, Loretta.”
“Carlie, you’re a much braver soul than I am. Just the thought of a one-on-one encounter with Ian McPherson would be all it would take for me to put this place in my rearview mirror—forever.”
Jon watched the two women climb the stairs to the bedroom. He and Carlie had more or less asked for whatever might happen simply by living in the house. But Loretta was a different story. She only wanted to help; she didn’t deserve any of this.
The living room was so quiet that Jon could actually hear his heart beating. The temperature was exactly as it should have been. The thermostat on the wall showed that it was seventy-two degrees. No one would ever believe that less than fifteen minutes earlier, three perfectly healthy people had been moments away from freezing to death. The only thing out of place now was the broken closet door. In fact, it was the only tangible piece of evidence that anything had happened in the house at all.
Jon picked up the telephone receiver and tentatively placed it to his ear. He wasn’t exactly sure what he expected to hear—quite possibly Ian’s threatening voice. Fortunately, all he heard was the droning sound of the dial tone. Punching in a set of numbers, he waited again.
A voice on the other end answered on the third ring. “Jake’s Farm Supply. Dick speaking.”
“Hi, this is Jon Summers.”
“Hey Jon, what can I do for you today?” said the friendly voice of the counterman at Jake’s Farm Supply.
“I need a door.”
“Exterior or interior?”
“Um, interior, a closet door.”
“Do you need the casing or just the door?”
In hopes of not sounding as stupid as he felt, he told Dick to send out everything.
“Sure thing, Mister Summers. I’ll have it on the first truck in the morning. Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“No, that should do it. Thank you.”
“Sure thing, Mister Summers. Thank you.”
Jon hung up and walked to the broken door. He picked up the shovel and hung it back in the utensil holder on the fireplace hearth. He couldn’t believe that the door had broken completely in half. Inspecting the damage, he wondered just how cold it actually needed to be to freeze a solid wooden door. As he touched the shattered edge, he heard Carlie and Loretta’s voices coming down the stairs.
When they reached the bottom step, Jon saw that the repercussions of this day were far from over. Carlie had that look in her eyes again, the look that told Jon she was only one more bizarre incident away from running off screaming into the night. She had had the same look in the bathroom when the letters had appeared on the mirror and in the kitchen when flying china had attacked them. Even Loretta was showing signs of distress. Although her voice was animated and coherent, her face was slack and her eyes glassy. Jon knew he needed to do something, but exactly what, he had no idea.
Once the three settled themselves at the table, Jon decided to broach the subject of where to spend the night, but he knew he needed to tread lightly after what they had just been through.
“Listen,” Jon said, “I was thinking that maybe we should spend the night someplace else. The living room is kind of a mess, and I’m afraid staying here will be a little distracting.”
Carlie thought about Jon’s suggestion for at least a minute before she said anything. “Loretta and I discussed this when we were upstairs. She has agreed to spend the night here with us. I don’t believe that anything else will happen tonight. They need to be shown that they don’t have the power to drive us out of our home.”
“I’m worried about you two. I’m not positive that spending tonight here is the best idea. I do understand your determination and I commend you in light of what just happened. I’d feel better if we all stayed together in the same room—a safety in numbers kind of thing.
“Hopefully it will be a quiet night,” Loretta said.
“One thing is for sure,” Carlie remarked. “We hit a nerve. I think Jon’s assumptions were right on the money. Something happened that day—something that Ian intended to keep a secret, especially from Edith and Becky. He felt so strongly about it that he is still keeping it a secret.
“Maybe if we discover exactly what that secret is and get it out in the open, it will end the reign of terror he has waged on us. My God, it’s been over a hundred years. What could possibly have happened that he is so scared someone might discover?”
Jon gave Carlie’s question serious thought before he answered. “Quite possibly we have tunnel vision on a single event. Let’s consider the possibility that Edith and Ian’s life was like most people’s, layered in many events. Let’s look at their life like an onion. If we keep peeling back the layers, eventually we will get to the center, and I believe we’re going to find something very disturbing.”
Looking across the table, Jon could see that the old Carlie was returning. Her eyes were bright and inquisitive again. Even Loretta was beginning to show signs of life. Jon was getting excited again about the possibility of solving the mystery surrounding Grace’s house until he flashed on the image of Ian’s face and the hatred in his eyes. The thought reined in his enthusiasm as fast as a glass of ice water in the face.
“Listen,” Jon said, “let’s call it a night. We’ll start again tomorrow.”
Carlie and Loretta both fell asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. Jon decided that he was going to stay awake for safety’s sake, but he quickly found that he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
A rustling sound disturbed him. Opening his eyes in a sleepy haze, he saw three small children sitting on the steps watching him. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t keep his eyes open, and in seconds, he was in a deep, dreamless sleep.