17
Both men were breathless as they reached the dimly-lighted stairs leading to the attic. Lucas had warned Jackie and Johnny to stay with Baby on the landing just below the attic.
They did not hear Jackie say to Johnny, “Did you hear it?”
“Yeah,” the boy replied. “Again. That heavy breathing.”
“You know what it is, don’t you, Johnny?”
“I think so. But it’s crazy. And how can we tell Mom and Dad?”
“We don’t tell them. They’d think we’re both nuts.”
“So? . . .”
“They’ll figure it out.”
“What if it’s too late then?” the boy asked, a worried look in his young eyes.
Sister met brother’s gaze. “It’s too late now. You know that.”
The great house seemed to sigh with heavy breath.
“I’m all right,” Tracy said, coming to Lucas and putting her arms around him. “But the attic has snakes in it.”
“Snakes!” Lucas said. He was as skittish of snakes as his wife.
Kyle smiled. “What kind, Louisa?” he asked calmly, as if he knew without asking.
Louisa wore a sheepish expression. Her smile was small. “Kings.”
“That’s what I figured,” Kyle said. He winked at his wife and turned to Lucas and Tracy. “Relax. King snakes are harmless. Very beneficial, really. Lots of folks around here keep them in barns and attics. King snakes kill rats and mice and other snakes.”
Lucas felt Tracy shudder. He felt like doing the same.
“Will they bite?” Lucas asked.
Kyle nodded his head. “Yeah, I guess so. But you’d have to make one awful mad. I used to carry them to school in my pocket as a kid. Scare the girls with them.” He grinned. “This is the country, Lucas.”
“I hate snakes!” Tracy said.
“Lots of folks do,” Kyle said. “But it’s mostly a baseless fear. A rattler will do his best to warn you of his presence—most of the time, if he can. Now, copperheads and cottonmouths—that’s another story. They’re both nasty little bastards. I kill every cottonmouth and copperhead I see. A cottonmouth will stalk you. Really! The rest of the varieties of snakes in this part of the country won’t hurt you. We don’t have any coral snakes—thank God.”
“But even the nonpoisonous kinds will bite, won’t they?” Tracy asked.
“Yeah,” Kyle admitted. “Most of them. But a nonpoisonous snake’s bite can vary anywhere from about the same as a mosquito bite to a wasp sting. I’m talking about snakes found in North America. Other parts of the world, well, that’s a whole new ball game. In Asia, there’s vipers damn near everywhere you put your boot down.”
“Where’d you learn so much about snakes?” Tracy asked.
“All part of SEAL training. Got to learn how to identify them, catch them, skin them, then eat them.” He smacked his lips and rolled his eyes, much to Louisa’s disgust. She’d heard it all before. “Some of them are right tasty, too,” Kyle concluded.
“Don’t get him started,” Louisa said. “Please. He can go on for hours. He’ll tell you how invincible he is. And about how four SEALs once surrounded a whole village one night in Vietnam.”
“Well, we did!” Kyle defended his SEAL past. “That is, until about a battalion of VC came out of the brush.”
“What’d you do then?” Lucas asked.
“Took off runnin’ for our lives!” Kyle said with a grin. “One guy was runnin’ so hard he ran slap into a tree. Knocked the tree down. Damn thing fell right on top of me. Army Ranger fell out of it. He’d been up there peelin’ bark off of it, having a late supper.”
“Oh, Kyle!” Louisa said.
* * *
With Lucas reluctantly helping, the men cleared out the attic of snakes—as best they could. Kyle would simply reach down and pick the king snakes up in his hands, then put them in a bag. Lucas would locate them, but steadfastly refused to touch one.
Kyle said, “You’d really be surprised at the number of men who’ll go through the most dehumanizing military training in the world—SEAL, Ranger, Special Forces, Marine Force Recon, Air Force Jungle Commando, don’t make no difference—and then get down to snake handling . . . and quit. I’ve seen them do it. It doesn’t have a thing to do with a person’s personal courage. Some folks just can’t handle a snake.”
“I heard that,” Lucas said. “And you’re looking at one of them.”
“Oh, maybe, Lucas. But I kind of doubt it. I think if you wanted to be a part of the best outfit in the world—take your choice, I’m partial—you’d do it if you just had to. I really believe that. You’ve got that bulldog quality about you. And so does Tracy. She’s a strong woman.”
“I’ll agree with the latter. You’re a quick judge of character, Kyle.”
“Buddy, when your life depends on making quick judgments, you learn and you do it fast. Believe me.”
Lucas didn’t doubt that for a minute.
The women cautiously stuck their heads in the doorway to the attic. Louisa asked, “Is the coast clear?”
Kyle winked at Lucas. “I thought you were psychic?” he gently ribbed her. “So you tell us.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
Kyle and Lucas spent another half-hour stringing light throughout the shadowy attic, illuminating all the dark and mysterious pockets of gloom around the huge attic.
“Well,” Tracy said, looking around at all the boxes and crates and trunks, many covered with a forty-year accumulation of dust and cobwebs, “Let’s see if we can’t unlock some of the mystery about this place.”
She had a smudge of dirt on the tip of her nose. Lucas mentioned it and said, “You look cute.”
“This ain’t no time to get amorous,” Kyle reminded him.
The first trunk, which Lucas had to open with a prybar, revealed dozens of old manuscripts, the pages crumbling and yellowed. All were handwritten. Lucas recognized the handwriting as his grandmother’s.
How did I recognize it? he questioned silently. I never received a letter from her in my life. Or did I?
“I’m sure my grandmother wrote these,” Lucas said.
“Kyle,” Louisa said, “carry this trunk downstairs, please.”
“Are you trying to herniate me, woman!”
“Oh, poo! Come on, Tracy,” she said, and the women lifted the trunk easily, one at each end.
“All right, all right!” Kyle said. “We get the point, right, Lucas?”
“We?”
Bitching and grumbling, the trooper picked up the trunk effortlessly and took it out of the room.
“And check on the kids while you’re down there!” his wife called after him.
“Yes, dear. At your service. Your humble servant. The kids are right here on the landing, with that monster dog.”
“In the house!” Tracy called. “Lucas, put that dog outside where it belongs.”
Lucas went down and ordered the dog outside. Baby sat on the floor and looked up at him.
Lucas cleared his throat and raised his voice. “Baby, did you hear me?—out!”
The animal laid down on the landing floor and put its big head on Johnny’s knee, completely ignoring Lucas.
“How about if we took Baby outside and gave her a bath?” Jackie suggested. “Then could we keep her in the house?”
“Absolutely not!” Tracy called.
“You two take Baby outside and bathe her,” Lucas said. “And then we’ll see. And keep it to yourselves what I just said.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I heard that!” Tracy called. “No dogs in the house.”
“Go on,” Lucas urged. “And remember, stay close.”
“Yes, sir. Come on, Baby.”
Just as he was starting back up the stairs to the attic, he heard a vehicle pull into the driveway. Reversing direction, he went downstairs and onto the veranda. He smiled when he recognized Jim’s pickup truck. He waved the man onto the porch.
They shook hands and Jim said, “I’m real sorry about your brother, Lucas. I mean that. Hell of a thing.”
“Thanks, Jim. Say, I’ve been wondering where you were.”
“Went down to Atlanta. Damn shock when that stupid Burt Simmons came blundering into my place when I got back and told me all about it.”
Kyle came out into the porch and shook hands with Jim.
“You don’t get no prettier with age, boy,” Jim kidded the trooper.
Kyle came right back at him. “Look who’s talking. I always heard your momma had to tie a pork chop around your neck when you was a kid to get the dogs to play with you.”
“Now, that’s unkind,” Jim said, doing his best to look hurt.
“I’m glad you two are friends,” Lucas said, laughing.
“Known each other for years. He gets uglier every year.” Kyle playfully threw a slow punch at the man.
“Yeah,” Jim said, dodging the punch. “Me and Louisa used to keep company ’til this jerk came back from the war wearin’ all them medals. He conned the girl into marryin’ him. Flat out lied to her, is what he done.”
“Lots of medals, huh?” Lucas said, looking at the man.
“One or two,” Kyle said. His tone indicated he did not wish to discuss it.
“Jim, come on in,” Lucas took the man’s arm. “We can use another hand. The girls are working us to death up in the attic, exploring.”
“Well, that ought to be more interestin’ than changin’ flats or listenin’ to that ignorant Burt Simmons. Oh! The reason I come out was Tracy got a phone call at the station yesterday from some of the folks up north you gave my number to. One of my men took the message. ‘George and Mimi, Harry and Jan, and all the kids,’ ” he read from a piece of torn paper that looked as though it had been handled many times. “They’ll all be down in four weeks. Spendin’ two with you. Said to lay in a good supply of gin.” He grinned at the last bit.
“Well, that’s good news. They’re coming down sooner than expected. You’ll like these people, Jim, Kyle. They’re good people.” But he wondered if he should call and cancel them out. But what to tell them? That the house was haunted? That bugaboos were about in the night?
Great God! They’d laugh themselves sick.
“I did meet a few folk in New York I called friend,” Jim admitted. He looked up at the cloud-free blue of the sky. “Gonna rain later on this evenin’.”
Lucas looked all around him. “There isn’t a cloud in the sky!”
“There will be,” Kyle backed up his old friend. “It isn’t so much what you can see as what you can feel and sense. Go back to your boyhood, Lucas. You told me you used to spend summers with your grandfather up in Vermont, didn’t you? I bet that old man taught you a lot about nature that you’ve just forgotten over the years.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I wish I had paid more attention to what my Grandfather Taylor taught me.”
And told me, Lucas silently chastised himself. He was fearful that all the things Grandfather Taylor told him—and that he had forgotten—would soon come back to haunt him.
Jim stayed for a couple of hours, teasing Louisa and ribbing Kyle, and helping move the crates and trunks and boxes around in the attic.
“Jesus!” he once complained. “This is worse than bein’ married and movin’ furniture around the damned livin’ room.”
He stayed a while longer and then had to leave, get back to his business. Lucas invited him out for dinner and he accepted. Said he might even be able to scare up some ol’ hant to drag along—winking as he said it.
“Jim’s a good friend and a lot of fun,” Louisa said, after the man had left. “But no woman will ever get too close to him. Emotionally, he keeps women at arm’s length. His marriage really soured him.”
Kyle winked at Lucas. “Yeah, a good woman is hard to find.” He sighed and shook his head. “But I just keep on lookin’ and hopin’.”
That got him another pop on the shoulder from Louisa, though one with considerably more power behind it than the one he had received earlier.
They worked through most of the afternoon, attempting to place trunks with trunks, boxes with boxes, and so forth. Soon they all realized it was going to be a long job; they had hardly made a dent in the huge pile of haphazardly stacked containers.
Finally Tracy said, “Let’s call it a day and get cleaned up. It’s going to take weeks to go through all this junk.”
Both Lucas and Kyle made a great show of standing up straight, moaning and groaning with both hands to their back.
“How’d you manage to surround that village?” Louisa asked. “By pretending to be an old man, maybe?”
“I was younger then, woman!”
“Yes,” she said, very primly, but with a wicked look in her dark eyes. “I know.”
“Oh, the slings and arrows!” Kyle said.
* * *
Jim’s date was anything but an ol’ hant. She was introduced as Lyda. A blonde, and as Tracy put it out of earshot, with mammoth proportions. Kyle and Lucas agreed with that description.
“She ain’t from here,” Jim drawled. “She’s from down to Rome. Owns a beauty shop. With two PP’s, mind you.”
“She is also interested in the dark arts,” Louisa said.
Lyda almost dropped her drink in her lap.
“Obviously,” Kyle said, “you forgot to warn her about Louisa.”
“I thought you give up all that spook stuff?” Jim looked at Louisa.
“I have told you more than once, Dooley,” Louisa said. “You can’t just ‘give it up.’ One is born with the gift. I even tried to suppress it for a time. But that doesn’t work either.”
“That’s fascinating,” Lyda said, her eyes sparkling with interest. “And you’re right. I do like horror stuff and witchcraft. But it’s limited to reading horror stories and watching horror movies. Other than that, I’m afraid I just don’t know much about it.”
Lightning danced and flashed and thunder rumbled in the distance. The first few fat drops of rain slapped against the house as the lightning licked closer, followed by more booming of thunder.
“Gonna be a bad one, I’m thinking,” Jim offered. “Y’all can look for the lights to go this far out of town.”
Tracy and Louisa and Kyle and Lucas exchanged glances as quiet fear touched them lightly. The touch was almost tangible.
“I say something?” Jim asked, a curious expression on his face.
“Why don’t we all sit down,” Lucas suggested. “Jim, I’ll bring you up to date.”
“Sounds serious,” the man replied, sitting down on a sofa beside Lyda.
Lyda was fascinated by it all, oohhing and aahhing in all the right places, thinking it was some ghost story her hosts were making up to entertain her on this story evening. Jim knew better. But rather than try Lyda’s intellect too much, he said nothing to contradict her thoughts, which were openly evident.
“Wow!” Lyda said, when Lucas had finished his telling. “That’s the scariest story I ever heard. Tell me some more, huh? It’s a great evenin’ for it.”
“Lyda,” Jim said, looking at her, “your lipstick is all smeared.”
“Oh! Then I better fix that. Y’all excuse me while I go to the little girl’s room. And don’t tell no more stories ’til I get back. I don’t wanna miss nothing.”
“Take your time, hon,” Jim said. “We’ll be right here.”
“She is . . . ah . . . very lovely, Jim,” Tracy said, after Lyda had stepped out into the hall.
“She’s an airhead,” Jim said, but said it gently. “But she’s a really fine person. One of the few that can put up with my shenanigans. Well, you folks have had a very busy past few days, haven’t you?”
“He said with tongue in cheek,” Lucas said with a smile.
A squeaking sound drifted faintly into the room the family had converted into a large and comfortable den. The people were just aware of the noise, which was not yet loud enough to attract that much attention or disrupt conversation. It was just there.
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “And those mysterious folks over at the Gibson house all turned out to be pretty good people after all. Weird as hell, but seem like nice folks.”
“That’s the way it is sometimes,” Jim replied.
The squeaking grew just a bit louder.
“You believe in ghosts, Jim?” Tracy asked.
“Yes. I think there is too much evidence supporting their existence to not believe in . . . well, spirits and the like.”
“Good ghosts and bad ghosts?” Kyle asked his friend.
“Yes. That, too.”
The cop shook his head. “I never did.”
Jim smiled. “Until now, you mean.”
“That’s about it,” the cop admitted.
The squeaking grew louder. This time it caught everybody’s attention.
“What the hell is that?” Lucas asked, looking around him.
“Seems to be coming from the hallway,” Jim said, looking up.
Lyda stepped back into the den. “Jim, my makeup wasn’t that bad. And that is the cutest little thing out in the hall. Where in the world did you folks get it?”
“What are you talking about?” Tracy asked.
“That darlin’ little rockin’ horse out there,” she waved her hand. “Its smile is so adorable. Why, I just love it.”
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
* * *
After a clearly startled Jim and Lyda had left, Lucas and Kyle carried the rocking horse out to the trash pile and tossed it on the heap. The hobbyhorse landed on its side, stayed in that position for a moment, its eyes gleaming balefully in the wet night, then slowly and almost painfully righted itself to its runners. It seemed to crouch there like some primeval hunting animal, grinning at the men in the rainy darkness. It whinnied softly, the call sinister-sounding, the notes of the whinny wavering through the storm.
“I see it with my own eyes,” Kyle said. “I see it but I don’t believe it. It’s impossible.”
“I do know the feeling. The question now is, what next?”
“Good question, buddy.”
Kyle looked around him. He finally walked to the tool shed and found a length of rope, fashioning a lasso. On the second toss, he managed to get the loop around the neck of the dodging, ducking rocking horse.
“Bastard!” Kyle yelled at the wooden hobbyhorse.
The rocking horse bared its teeth and snarled.
Kyle jerked it off the garbage pile. The rocking horse landed on its side and quickly righted itself, lunging at the men. Lucas kicked it in the side and the wooden horse screamed in the night.
“I’ll hold it,” Kyle said tersely. “You get some shovels. By God, we’ll bury the damned thing.”
The rocking horse fought the men as they dragged it from the trash heap into the wet night, close to the woods’ edge. The hobbyhorse howled and snarled and screamed in rage. Both men were on the verge of losing the frail hold on their fears. The beast in both of them, the ancient brute that roamed just outside the safe lair, was now crouched very close to the surface, threatening to rear to the fore, sending both modern men scurrying back to the sanctuary of the torchlit caves of their ancestors, where, hopefully, the fanged cats would not enter for fear of the fire.
The rocking horse seemed to sense this, and began changing before the men’s eyes. It became a tiger, with fangs like those found in prehistoric times. It became a hissing serpent, a hideous winged monster, half-man half-beast as it fought the heavy rope that held it.
“Fight it!” Lucas yelled. “It’s playing with your mind.”
“Goddamn it, Lucas!” Kyle yelled. “This is impossible.” He panted the words, struggling against the rope and the lunging, backward-jerking wooden horse.
“Tell the horse,” Lucas said, his words brittle-sounding.
“Hold the rope,” Kyle yelled. He picked up a heavy stick and smashed it over the hobbyhorse’s head. The wooden horse reared and screamed in pain. It fell to the ground, on its side, its wooden runners jerking in agony.
Kyle broke the club over the horse’s head.
The sky visibly darkened, lightning dancing and striking close, as if the horse could somehow control the elements.
Kyle found a two-by-four and beat the horse’s head in with the wood. The animal finally lay still on the wet ground, thick blood pouring from its battered head. The rain picked up in intensity; a major summer storm beat at the men.
Both men backed up to catch their breath and try to maintain some hold on their emotions.
“I keep hoping I’ll wake up,” Lucas said. “We don’t know each other. Not really. I’m back home in the suburbs. This is all some sort of insane nightmare.”
“It’s real,” the cop said, his voice as tight as their nerves. “It’s real,” he repeated. “But it’s damn sure a nightmare. A living one.”
The storm grew in strength, the rains now a thick torrent; the winds hammering at the men as they began digging. The men were soaked, hair plastered to the head. They continued digging as fast as their strained muscles would allow, but always keeping one eye on the wooden but somehow living horse. Once the hobbyhorse reared up and tried to bite Kyle, its yellow teeth just missing the man’s leg. The trooper smashed his shovel blade on the horse’s head. The rocking horse screamed a horrible yowl and fell back to the earth, stinking blood from the centuries past gushing from its now-shattered skull.
But still it would not die.
The men dug the hole deeper as the lightning hummed and spat and danced in macabre obscenity. The devilish display of lightning licked around the men, producing a sulfurous odor that clung to their wet clothing and seemed to snake its way into their very flesh and bone.
“All right,” Kyle finally gasped. “That’s enough.”
The men climbed out of the pit.
“Come on,” Kyle said. “We’ll get those sacks of mortar out of the shed. Pour that over the goddamned thing. I don’t know how much good it will do, except to add more weight.”
“It won’t bond in this weather, will it?” Lucas asked.
“Just added insurance, buddy. I don’t know how much more of this I’m gonna be able to take.”
“I heard that.”
The rocking horse lunged at Lucas, its teeth snapping, just missing his arm. Lucas whirled, rage overwhelming him. He brought his shovel down on the horse’s neck with all the strength he could muster. The head of the horse fell off. Blood erupted out of the severed neck.
“Impossible,” Lucas muttered.
The men kicked the broken horse into the pit and dumped the sacks of mortar over the horse, lying in shattered bits in the pit. Whinnying, pitiful sounds came from the head of the wooden horse.
Both men tried to ignore the painful, whinnying cries. Neither man would look the other in the eyes, for both were fearful of losing what little control they had left over their ragged and tightly-stretched emotions.
The wet earth began to cover the mortar-spotted hobbyhorse.
In the house, Tracy and Louisa sat with the kids in the den. Jackie with her mother’s arms around her, Johnny with Louisa’s arms around him. The storm battered the Georgia countryside, but not in a manner that punished the house. Inside the mansion, the storm sounds were muted. The lights flickered and dimmed several times, but stayed on. They all heard the back door open and close. Then the sound of footsteps. The men appeared in the archway of the den. They were both muddy from boots to head, their faces gray and lined with tension and exhaustion. Both looked to be very close to the breaking point.
The women and kids looked up. Tracy asked, “Is it? . . . ”
“Buried,” Lucas told the group. “Covered with mortar and dirt in a deep pit. I think it’s all over, now.”
“Both of you better take a hot shower,” Louisa said. “We’ll lay out clean clothes for you and make some coffee.”
“You kids go to bed,” Lucas said, his voice shaky. “Leave your door open. At the first sign of anything happening that’s out of the ordinary, get to our bedroom, OK?”
Showered and dressed in clean, dry clothing, Kyle and Lucas poured mugs of hot coffee and sat down in the den. They sat for a few moments in silence, neither of them quite believing what had happened this rainy evening. But knowing it was all true. Kyle was the first to speak.
He looked at Louisa and said, “I want to apologize, hon. Never again will I kid you about your beliefs in the supernatural. That’s a promise.”
She put her small hand in his big hand and gently squeezed. Her eyes told him she had never really minded the good-natured kidding from her husband.
“While I was taking a nap today,” Tracy said, “I had a . . . a nightmare. A daymare. Whatever. I dreamed we decided to leave this place, but the house refused to let us. Isn’t that crazy? The house refused to allow us to leave. But I was relieved when I woke up.”
The house don’t want to be sold! Ira’s words jumped into Lucas’s brain. The house.
He said nothing. He could feel Louisa’s eyes boring into his brain.
“I wish somebody would tell me what it is about that . . . damned wooden horse,” Kyle said.
“It’s possessed,” Louisa said. “By evil.”
“You didn’t say possessed by Satan,” Lucas said. “Why?”
Louisa only shrugged.
“I wonder if this time it’s gone for good?” Tracy asked.
“No,” Louisa said. Her one word chilled them all.
In their beds, Jackie and Johnny both felt and heard again that mysterious heavy breathing.