Chapter Six

Grandmother’s old house was still there.

In the night’s expanding gloom, sitting in the warm car, I studied it as best I could. I lit up a badly needed cigarette and stared. Jeremy slept beside me, curled into a tight ball that grunted and muttered occasionally. I debated if I should wake him to see it or not.

It’d been so long I’d almost forgotten how huge it was.

The house was one of those bastardized Victorian styles which couldn’t be comfortably squeezed into any particular category, because so much had been altered and added through the years. My grandfather hadn’t been able to tolerate anything in its purest form; he’d had to muck with it. Sitting there taking it all in, I didn’t need bright light. I remembered the house very well. A huge, two-story frame with a ridiculously ornate, tiered portico in the front, held up by two, tall, white columns, made the house look like it belonged on a southern plantation instead of in the middle of a sleepy small Midwestern town. The tall, narrow windows were made of rare curved glass. Pointed iron fences surrounded the place, making it look like a cemetery.

Rubbing my bleary eyes, and leaning over the steering wheel, I wanted to go to sleep like Jeremy and forget everything.

The dwelling was a dilapidated wreck. Weeds had taken control of the grounds, obliterating the first floor. The paint had peeled off. There were loose boards everywhere. The doors and windows were nailed shut with jagged wooden slats—to keep vandals away I supposed. I wondered about the inside’s condition. How many scrubbings would it take to get the wooden floors shining again? Were there any floors left to mop and polish?

If I weren’t so disgusted and exhausted, I would have felt sorry for the old place. It reminded me of an elderly frail woman who’d let time pare her away to nothing. It made me want to weep. I couldn’t tell who I felt sorrier for, myself or the house.

It looked like a hopeless case.

“Mom? We here?” Jeremy’s voice was drowsy with sleep. He rubbed his eyes and nudged me half-heartedly.

“Yes, we’re here. You want to look?”

“Do I have to?” But he was already peeking from under heavy lids. “Jesus! What I can see looks like a wreck, Mom. Do we really have to live in a dump? It probably has two million termites and they’re all waiting for us so they can attack. You’re not going to make us spend the night in a spook house, are you?” he pleaded, gaping at the house, his eyes narrowed.

“I don’t know.” I relented, giving it serious thought. “It is a lot later than I’d planned to get here. It’s dark and the place doesn’t have electricity or heat yet.”

“Jesus, Mom.” He was wide awake now.

“And everything’s nailed and boarded shut.”

“Mom!”

“Maybe we could find a cheap motel for tonight.”

“That’s the best thing I’ve heard yet. Let’s go!”

“On the other hand, we have to watch our money and wouldn’t you love ‘camping out’ in a haunted house and ‘roughing it’?”

The scathing look he threw me could have been framed.

“I was only kidding. It’s too late to open up the house now, with no electricity. I thought we’d get here sooner. So, you’re off the hook for tonight.” I restarted the car and after one last glimpse of our new home, I put it into drive and pulled away.

“As much as I hate the thought of spending money, I know we have to get a room somewhere. It’s too darn cold; even if we could get into the house in the dark, we’d freeze.”

Jeremy was either sulking again or he’d fallen asleep again. “We’ll come back in the morning. Things will look better then, you’ll see.” He didn’t answer me. But what he would have said hung in the cold air like frost.

It was after eight and night had dropped its curtain. I wasn’t sure if I could find lodging this late and had no idea where to look. I steered into the first filling station and asked. They told me there was a reasonably priced motel a couple of miles down the road. What they meant by reasonable I didn’t ask. If it had a bed, a heat source, and running water somewhere inside, I’d be satisfied. A warm bath was suddenly the most important thing in my life.

The motel I checked us into was about as large as the gas station. I marveled at the conveniences of electric lights and hot running water once we entered the room, by the looks of the place, I really hadn’t expected them.

Jeremy was half asleep and I directed him to a bed and helped him undress. That was something he never allowed me to do any more, except under the most adverse circumstances. I tucked him in and took my bath. I ended up settling for a lukewarm shower because a shower was all they had and the water wouldn’t get hot anyway. It didn’t make any difference; there were so many bugs in the bathroom, I was glad they didn’t have the time to amass and carry me away.

I slipped into bed next to Jeremy. I’d tried the room’s television and found it didn’t work. Laying there in the dark, I couldn’t help but review the preceding weeks and months.

Depressed, I’d decided not to read or do anything else, but go to sleep. Depression affected me that way. If I didn’t want to face life, I went to sleep. Tonight I didn’t want to face anything. Sleep was a great healer…when I didn’t dream.

Tomorrow would be a long day.

But sleep played the crafty scoundrel and eluded me. After an hour of lying perfectly still and pretending to sleep, I gave up. Propping my hands behind my head on the pillow, I stared down at my son. Some sort of flashing light across the highway illuminated his sleeping face in pale green and yellow rays. It made him look like a baby again and I couldn’t resist brushing the hair gently from his face and thinking of the past.

I missed my wedding ring. It’d always reminded me of a daisy made of tiny diamonds. So beautiful. I rubbed my finger where it used to be. It would have glittered in these muted lights and twinkled with a life of its own. It’d also been a talisman for me, signifying security and contentment. The grand prize. Now it lived alone and abandoned in a special compartment of my purse. In a way it was like me. Put away. Forgotten. It outlived its usefulness and had no meaning now. I supposed soon its glitter would fade and I’d bury it deep in my jewelry box.

I smiled into the emptiness and encountered my blurred reflection in the mirror that hung above the cardboard dresser across the room. I quickly looked away. It was an old superstition my grandmother had instilled in me when I was a child and still stubbornly hung on. A person should never look into a mirror in a dim or darkened room because what might gaze back at them wouldn’t be their faces, but the face of a lost spirit, a fiend or a demon. Since the day she’d told me that little gem, I couldn’t look into a mirror in a darkened room. I hated myself for my cowardice but I couldn’t help it.

When I was a child I hadn’t actually believed it was true. But now a days I wasn’t so sure. Because she’d also said, “There are more things in heaven and in Earth...”

Disgusted with myself, I pounded the pillow into a ball with my fist and plopped my head down. I needed sleep. Why was I tortured night after night with old, dead words from my past? Why didn’t they leave me alone?

My body was so tired it ached in a hundred places. Arthritis at thirty. No wonder Jonathan hadn’t wanted me anymore, I was falling apart.

Jonathan. How I missed him, especially at night. I sent him out a silent agonized cry: Remember me. Remember I loved you. The pain I felt was still so great, how could he not hear me? Even now, with so much time, distance and betrayal between us he should be able to feel my sadness. I laid my hand lightly on my son’s shoulder through the thin blanket, remembering.

No, I wasn’t as bitter as months, even weeks, ago. My whole life I had been a compromiser and it’d allowed me to accept things for what they were, not what I wanted them to be. I knew a person could never have everything they wanted and tried to live by it. I was grateful for what I did have.

I had Jeremy. My brother Jim. I had my talent and intelligence and I had a home. A real house no one could take away from me. It was mine, I thought fiercely. I thought about the house. As it was now and as it once was, or as I remembered it as a child. Amazingly, I found myself looking for excuses to stay and live in it ourselves and to not ever leave it. I was becoming fascinated with the prospect of fixing it up and keeping it.

My own beautiful house.

It’s a wreck. A pile of termite-eaten boards and weeds. Spider webs and ancient dust.

The gift of a house wasn’t something to take lightly. When would I ever be given another free house? I frowned, knowing the answer. As a divorced, unemployed woman with a child I couldn’t buy a house on my own now even if I sold my soul.

Mine. Free and clear.

There was no heat, no electricity. Did it have water? Yes, there was a well in the back. Yet it was in such bad shape my parents hadn’t even tried to sell it.

My mind kept striving to be heard over my heart.

I’d loved the house as a child and they didn’t make houses like it anymore. It’s so big and the high, beamed ceilings, remember those? It has an upstairs and lots of ground for Jeremy to play on. Flowers and bushes, rose bushes, my heart cried.

If only.

I untangled myself from the sheets and strolled over to the window. Just what I needed, it was snowing outside. The flakes weren’t large though, and I hoped they wouldn’t stick to the ground. I also hoped it’d stop soon and the sun would oblige us tomorrow and come out shining. The thought of tackling a decrepit mountain of aged wood in the wet cold, didn’t appeal to me. I had to get in first, execute an extensive junk-gathering campaign and a major clean up. With what was in the trunk, I was prepared for anything.

I found myself feeling excited to get started. Something else occurred to me as I stood in my nightgown surveying the snow outside; I’d never heard anything mentioned about my grandmother’s furniture. She’d been an avid collector of anything beautiful or unique. I loved old furniture and had always dreamed of owning a house full of hand-picked antiques one day. I began to fantasize about my possible house full of treasures. I could clean, refinish and rearrange them if I wanted to. Shampoo the mildewed rugs. I could buy plants to put on the wide window sills and hang more with macramé from the tall ceilings.

I could make it the home I’ve dreamed of.

If only. Those two words loomed above me, a message of pie-in-the-sky dreaming. What was I thinking? I’d sensed that entity out in the woods earlier. Or had it been the dying shreds of my childish fear; a memory lurking in those woods by the ruins of my childhood home?

So wasn’t us coming here or even contemplating remaining, playing with fire? It could be suicide. I didn’t know. But what choice did we have?

I weighed what I had to gain with what I had to lose. I glanced at my son and shook my head. I had a lot to lose. But if I ran from Suncrest as my family had done so long ago, would it make any difference?

I had to face up to something I hadn’t wanted to before. My family had run away, but we hadn’t hidden very well, had we? They’d died anyway. Coincidences or destiny, if we were cursed, did it matter where we lived?

Sighing, I crawled into bed with Jeremy again and willed myself to sleep. I could think tomorrow. Even though it’d be a waste of time, as I was afraid I’d already decided what I had to do.

We had nowhere else to go and I ached to put down real roots.

The house was what I wanted. Needed. I wanted to stay. For a while, anyway. We’d stay and see what happened.

* * * *

“Breakfast,” Jeremy muttered, rubbing his eyes and yawning, as I once more prodded him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I was fully dressed, waiting for him to come to.

“What do you want for breakfast?” I asked again, pulling the covers off his face where he’d yanked them up. I was anxious to get going.

“Jesus, it’s so bright out there,” he mumbled, covering his eyes with his dirty fingers. I tugged them away, smiling.

“Gee, you’re a regular dirt ball.” I turned his hands over in mine, studying them. “I said, what do you want for breakfast?”

It was beginning to soak in. His eyes flew open and he tossed the covers off. He was a growing boy in one of those “eating stages.” He attacked anything that wasn’t tied down or wouldn’t eat him first. It was embarrassing. People stared as if they thought I never fed the kid.

“Food? Let’s go. I’m starving.” He was awake at last, his eyes feverish and his face flushed with sleep. He slid out of bed, gave me a quick hug and lunged for his pile of clothes on the floor. “Can I have pancakes, Mom, with gobs of strawberry syrup? And biscuits and coffee milk, please?”

“Hold on there.” I pointed at the pile of clothes clutched in his skinny arms, motioning downward with my hand. “You need a shower first. Have you looked at yourself lately in a mirror?”

“Ah, but Mom,” he protested. “Do I have to? No one’s going to see me and I’ll just get dirty again.”

“Move. Bathroom’s behind you. I don’t take dirty boys out to breakfast. I’d be ashamed.”

“Mom?” He grinned sheepishly.

“Go.” I tried not to return his grin. He was a stubborn little cuss at times.

He dropped his clothes and ran for the bathroom like the place was on fire. I heard the shower running and a few minutes after it stopped, and he was running back out with a wet towel draped around his waist. “Fast, huh?” He beamed and started to squirm into his clothes, his back to me, after I’d turned my head. He was modest for his age.

“Uh, huh, Superman’s got nothing on you,” I said.

“Funny, Mom.”

I gathered the rest of our stuff and crammed it into the suitcases as he dressed. I’d hardly slept. I couldn’t stop thinking of our house and what I wanted to do to it. I’d awakened early and had thought of my childhood at Suncrest and my family. Most of the memories were precious, but many were overshadowed by the horrific ones. Coming home had called them out of their tiny cracks and crannies.

“You wouldn’t believe this dumb dream I had last night, Mom. Whew, was it wild.” He spoke with his back to me, buttoning his shirt. When he turned, he still hadn’t seen my reaction.

“A dream?” Something flashed through my mind.

“Crazy. I dreamed I was running through a bunch of trees, I think. Something was chasing me but I couldn’t see it very good.”

“Something?”

“Yeah, I don’t know what it was, but I knew I didn’t want it catching me, no way.” He looked up and met my eyes. “I was real scared. I remember that. In my dream I was real scared, I mean.”

Inside of me, ominous whispers fluttered around my heart and I hoped my son couldn’t see the sparks of fear in my eyes. For a second, I didn’t move. Barely breathed.

“It’s only a dream, son. Everyone has those kinds of dreams. They’re symbolic. It means something but not always what you think.” I zipped up the suitcase and smiled at him.

“What did it mean, then?” He cocked his eyebrow at me, waiting.

“Well, I think I read somewhere, it’s the anxieties you don’t want to express during your waking hours, fears of the world and the unknown. You’re trying to run away from the things which upset or frighten you. Makes sense with what you’ve gone through. It’s pretty common so don’t worry about it.” I lifted the suitcase and swept my eyes one more time over the room to see if we’d left anything. I wanted to move on and forget what we’d been discussing.

“Oh,” he said, trailing me to the door. I opened it and we stepped out into the bright daylight. “It was so real, though,” he added weakly, squinting his eyes at the sun.

We loaded the stuff into the car after I’d locked the motel door and returned the key to the office.

“It’s warm out.” Jeremy rolled down his window and leaned out, his face tipped up to the sun’s rays. It had to be at least sixty degrees outside.

It was the first of April. Snow last night and warm sunlight today. Life and the weather never ceased to surprise me.

“By the way, what time is it?” He was peering at the scenery. Melting snow and ice.

I snuck a glance at my watch. “About seven.”

“In a hurry, aren’t you?” he commented sarcastically, then softened it with an honest smile. “I only get up this early to go to school. Is this a school day?”

“No. It’s Saturday.” I parked by a sleek Camaro in front of a truck stop. It advertised EAT in huge red letters over the door. Underneath it said: Open Twenty-Four-Hours. Good-Food.

I wanted to see if the sign was telling the truth.

“Okay, I’ll fill your belly with gooey pancakes before I put you to work.”

He was out of the car and in the restaurant before I’d finished the sentence. I followed and spotted him in a rear booth, gesturing at me, a patient waitress standing over him, order book in hand.

The pancakes weren’t half bad. The coffee was fantastic. I ordered two large paper cups to go and a bag full of goodies to take to the house. There’d be no food there, of course, and the night before we’d left the apartment I’d fried up a mess of chicken and made potato salad to use in an emergency. With what we had in the bag, and the cooler, it should keep us fed for a while.

When we drove up in front of my grandmother’s house in the sunlight I had a chance to see it for the first time as an adult. It looked better in the daylight; not so ramshackle as the night before. It could have been the sunlight, me or my maturity, but it didn’t look like it had when I was a child; nothing appeared as I’d pictured it all these years. Suncrest was a little country town on the outskirts of a little larger town. It seemed strange not to see houses back to back, doorstep to doorstep as I’d become used to. Everyone knew everyone else and liked it. I wondered if they remembered my family. Probably. Rural people don’t forget scandal and tragedy.

As I remembered, the streets were narrow, graveled affairs winding here and there like skinny snakes. People didn’t lock their doors at night, feeling safe. How quickly they forgot.

I’d noticed stores, shops really, here and there and even a larger shopping center at the end of town, that hadn’t been there years ago. A couple of new businesses dotted the main streets and some new houses had been built. Except for these additions, Suncrest was pretty much the same as it’d been when I was a child. I was the one who had changed.

My grandmother’s house sat alone on a large square of land. It was sheltered by soaring trees and protected by yards of black iron fence. To me, a recent city girl, it was a mansion. The next house had to be a mile away.

I maneuvered the car up the weed infested driveway on the left of the house, parked and took a deep breath. Here goes nothing.

“Where’s the hammer?” I turned to Jeremy. He usually seemed to know where everything was.

“In the trunk in the red box, remember? You put it in there yourself so you wouldn’t forget where you’d put it.” He giggled and got out of the car.

I unlocked the trunk and hunted through the assortment of boxes and bags until I found the hammer. I walked to the fence where Jeremy was waiting, grabbed the gate and started to push it open. It didn’t move easily and we had to shove at it with all our might. Years of accumulated rust and weeds had jammed it in place. The corroded pieces finally slipped off and fell into the dried bushes. It opened.

“Well, I’ve got to admit, Mother, you’ve done it this time.” He stood there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head at me. “This place is a real mess. It looks like a reject from the Twilight Zone.” He grimaced as he climbed the porch steps and craned his neck to stare up at the front of the house.

Reject from the Twilight Zone. Inwardly I wanted to laugh at the way children picked things up. After so many years they’d started reruns of The Twilight Zone episodes and Jeremy was one of their biggest fans. It’d become a weekly ritual, watching the show. He was fascinated with them, and I found myself reluctantly joining him and remembering the twisted plots and twisted remarks my brother, Jimmy, used to make about them.

“Well, it’s home, so respect it.” I took the hammer and jammed it viciously under the ends of the wooden slats. They came away easily, rotted and broken. “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Jonathan had loved clichés and after years with him, some of them still popped into mind and out of my mouth before I could stop them. I hated clichés.

“You’re saying we’re beggars?” Jeremy was taking the boards from me as I pried them off and piling them neatly on the corner of the porch.

I eyed him seriously over my shoulder and grinned. “No man’s a beggar who has love.” Another cliché? Jesus.

“We’ve got plenty of love. Pretty good, Mom.” He nodded, laying another board aside. On closer inspection, I thought the porch looked well preserved for its age. It was standard slate gray. I could see the planks were only rotted through in a few places. I would repaint it and was thinking of using a warm chocolate brown. I might even go ahead and paint the whole house in shades of browns and tans. That’d look nice. It’d be a big job, though, because I could tell there’d be hours of back breaking scraping to do first. The house looked like it had leprosy.

“There.” I yanked the last board off the door, and went on to the windows. “There’s no use in going in until we let light into the place.” I grunted, already breathing harder at the exertion. “Otherwise, we won’t be able to see a thing.”

“Kinda like a spook house, huh?”

“Something like that.” We moved from one window to another until they were all open. I counted three broken panes. Which was nothing less than remarkable for how long the place had been left alone and untended. “We’ll patch them with cardboard for now and fix them later.” When I’d known we were going to claim the house and the lawyer told me what kind of shape it was in, I’d gone out and bought a set of those ‘fix-it-yourself’ books. I thought we’d have to do most of the work and if it was written down in clear instructions, I should be able to do most of it myself, or die trying. I was a great believer in self-teaching and learning by experience. I’d try anything once. Well, almost anything.

“Let’s go in. After you.” I waved my hand and bowed towards Jeremy. I handed him the key the lawyer had sent me. Jeremy turned it until there was a click and the door swung open. We clapped.

He stepped aside after peeking in. “Moms first.”

Years of dust clung to the surfaces like barnacles on the bottom of a sunken ship and long thick spider webs hung suspended in the stale air before us. I brushed them away with a wooden slat. I couldn’t stand to touch them.

“Was this place ever clean?” Jeremy asked as we looked at the inside.

It was so huge compared to what we were used to. There were white lumps everywhere, furniture covered with sheets and blankets. I shoved the mottled, dirt-encrusted curtains apart, uncovering the windows. Some drapes I ripped off the rods because they were in such bad shape.

Jim would be bringing my curtains with the furniture. I thought what a good idea it’d been carefully packing away the apartment’s old curtains as I bought new ones. I liked change and after a year or two I’d grow tired of a color or pattern and the curtains would be packed away. It was a good thing the apartment’s motif had been country. Modern would definitely not look good in this house.

The dust could have choked a horse. “Yes. Yes,” I muttered as I went around the rooms and yanked sheets off chairs and dressers. Memories flooded back and I felt a lump rise in my throat. “My grandmother had been an immaculate housekeeper when she was alive. Her home had been a showcase. Nothing was ever out of place.”

I felt sad looking at it. Seeing her home made me remember how much we’d loved her and I found myself missing her and the joy she’d brought us all over again. The place wasn’t the same without her. It was as if the heart had gone out of it.

I’d have done anything to have revisited those innocent childhood days. Before the troubles anyway. I yearned for the familiar smiles, the sound of stomping feet and the people I’d once loved so much. I missed my family and coming here had only made the ache and loss more acute; much more so than it’d been in many years.

What was I doing? How could I be happy here?

I made my way through the rest of the house, my mind harvesting memories as I rambled through the rooms. Jeremy seemed to sense what I was feeling and respected it by lagging behind me.

The house had eight rooms, three large ones and a full bathroom on the first floor, a kitchen, a dining and a living room in the front of the house. The upstairs consisted of five rooms, a bath, three bedrooms and a bright sewing room where my grandmother used to conduct her séances.

I stood at the bay window and laying my hand on the cold windowpane, searched the landscape outside. I could see for a long distance. All the way over to where my parent’s house once stood, and the fields and woods creeping along the horizon. I lifted the curtain away from the window. The light brightened noticeably across the room in a dazzling yellow shaft, as the dust particles danced in the stream of sunlight.

My eyes were mesmerized by the view. Something inside my head began to hum and my hands felt cold. I trembled with the sense something was coming, but too far away yet to reach me. In my memory I saw the gnarled cherry tree Jim and I used to climb…the woods…our old house…then the vision blurred and I wiped my eyes as if I’d been weeping.

As I watched, the ruins seemed to come alive. Whispers, angry bees, swirled in my head. I strained, while leaning against the window, to understand what the whispers were trying to tell me but they were too faint. I shook my head to clear them away. My fingers feathered against the windows, down, down. I slid slowly, soundlessly, to the floor, my head slipping down the glass. I was having a vision as I’d had so many times before but here it was different. I knew if I let go I’d fall into an endless quicksand. I’d be vulnerable. Unprotected.

Gasping, I struggled not to faint, not to give in. The cry which issued from deep within me came out silently. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see it again.

The woods. The child’s pathetic body mangled and bloody.

The past? Oh, my God—the future?

The vision was so intense I could have reached out and touched it. Dream actors in a bloody play. No! I was sobbing as I pulled myself up along the window ledge and my eyes swept the sea of snow-spotted browns and grays outside. It was April now, but the winter had left its mark.

Far away on the outskirts of the woods something hovered. Something slithered among the shadowed trees and my heart became a lump of ice. I followed it as it moved and heard laughter echoing on the air. I thought I heard a child’s broken wail, and far away I saw…

My fingers froze to the glass and my eyes stared, unable to pull away from what I was seeing. Inside I cringed. A child was being hurt and I couldn’t help, I couldn’t lift a finger. I wished I could hide it from my mind’s eye, block out the screaming voice, but I couldn’t move. It was as though I were being forced to watch.

Once more I asked, “Had it happened long ago? Or was it yet to come?”

Charlie!

The hated, demonic voice penetrated the frailty of my conscience and forced me to listen.

“I have waited, Sarah…for you.”

The trance broke and my heartsick scream cut through the fog and released me. I was thrown away from the window, a rag doll, and sprawled on the floor.

How could I fight it? How could I stop what was to happen?

When Jeremy came running up the steps and knelt down beside me, I’d composed myself and wiped the tears from my face. I was rattled at the power of what I’d sensed. My hands were shaking so badly I sat on them to keep Jeremy from seeing.

I’d been challenged and warned. It made no difference because I was also trapped. I’d been told I couldn’t escape. Would not, this time. No matter what I did.

“Mom, are you okay?” Jeremy was blubbering over me, his angelic face as white as flour. “I heard you scream and I came as fast as I could. Mom?” He shook my shoulder, glancing around the room to see what might have frightened me.

I took him into my arms and held him tightly. I was more afraid for him than me. The trap had been baited with honey and I’d fallen into it. The trapdoor had sprung and there was no going out the same way I’d foolishly wandered in.

The thing in the woods wouldn’t let us leave now. It had us where it wanted us, had wanted us all these years.

I took my son’s face into my hands and looked into his eyes. I saw the fear, the concern, and sealed my heart. Gathering my courage, I took a deep breath and lied. “I’m all right. Nothing to worry about. I stumbled over something and I think, I might have twisted my ankle, that’s all.”

I never lied to Jeremy but I wanted to protect him. He mustn’t know. He mustn’t suspect. Until I could decide what we’d do I didn’t want to frighten him with ghosts and visions. He wouldn’t understand. I made a show of trying to stand with his help and limping around a bit to make my story believable. I’d left visible slide marks in the dust where I’d fallen, supporting my story, and Jeremy accepted the fabrication as any child would, with blind trust.

“You ought to be more careful, Mom,” he clucked, helping me down the stairs. I braced myself along the walls and chunks of plaster crumbled away and clattered down ahead of us.

The wall color had once been baby blue like the kitchen and was now faded with aged neglect. The house was in an appalling state and it’d take elbow grease to put it right.

Jeremy chattered as we went, oblivious of the heavier thoughts churning inside my head. We’re like plow horses with blinders on sometimes. We only see what’s in front of us, especially when we know there is danger flowing on either side.

My mind was busy calculating how to put our life into shape. How to fix up our home and take care of bills and what to have for supper. What color to paint the living room. Where to begin cleaning.

How to stay alive another night. How to stay alive.

How to escape what surely wanted to kill us or find a way to destroy it.

I needed time to figure out what we should do. Time.

We worked most of the day cleaning the debris out of the house. Jeremy, who was strong for his age, helped me carry the furniture, what was unsalvageable and light enough, into the back yard and stack it up. The house contained everything I remembered, as if nothing had been touched from the day my grandmother died. Most of the stuff was in fairly good condition and perhaps valuable because of its age.

We swept the floors on the lower level and scrubbed everything in sight until it shone. Jeremy had brought a portable radio and we turned the music up loud as we worked. I resisted dwelling on the danger and what I’d heard from the woods in the early morning. I worked until my muscles ached, but the haunting voice still echoed in the recesses of my mind.

The well hadn’t dried up. The water spurted erratically from the pump, tinged with rust and sediment, but I thought it was still usable and drinkable. Jeremy held his nose and made faces when he drank it. But it was water and we needed it.

By the time the sun sank through the sky the lower floor was more than livable, kind of cozy, if you didn’t think about how filthy the carpeting and upholstery were. We’d taken the rugs outside and shaken them. Until the rest of our stuff came and the electricity was on it was about all we could do.

We’d come prepared. Jeremy lugged in the sleeping bags and lanterns from our camping days, and we cleared a space in the middle of the living room to sleep. It’d warmed up and Jeremy had begged to stay in the house all night. I didn’t argue. I was so tired we could have been in Alaska, on the middle of an ice floe and I wouldn’t have cared. Anything was better than the bug trap down the road we’d spent last night in.

We devoured the chicken and potato salad by lantern light and crawled into sleeping bags side by side, with arms around each other. Jeremy fell asleep in my arms but I lay awake for a long time, clicking off an invisible list of things done and things yet to do.

I listened to the creaking sounds of the house, probably objecting to our disruptive presence. I listened for the voices, but the night was hushed and only our breathing fluttered through the rooms around me.

It was sleeping, too. Or, was it only waiting?

From the moment I’d seen the ruins of my old home, I knew someone, or something, had demolished it on purpose.

“They burned it down, didn’t they?” I whispered to the silent house. “It was a symbol of evil and the town sacrificed it, didn’t they?” Tears had settled in the corners of my eyes.

I thought I heard whispering somewhere above us.

Something was with us in the house. I could feel it, yet I wasn’t afraid.

I knew it wasn’t what lived in the woods. Something shifted in the room behind us and faint murmurs skittered beyond my level of hearing.

“They burned it down to the ground after we left, didn’t they?”

No answer. But the feeling of condemnation was strong.

“We should have stayed, right, and fought it?”

Something soft and faint settled on my shoulder and whispered agreement. Something as light as fingers from the grave.

Can a ghost touch the living? I didn’t know.

“Would it have helped if we’d stayed? Would more of us be alive today?”

The whispers were silent.

I closed my eyes and sighed. I saw the woods and the dark hulking shape abiding and brooding there. Something had put the image in my mind. Something was trying to tell me something. Who? What? I sat up and strained my eyes searching the room.

“Grandmother?” I murmured softly, “What does it want?” There was a scurrying of shadows and sighs trembling through the rooms. Finally they faded away into the night and the house was quietly empty once again.

I drifted off to sleep feeling safer than I had in a long time. I’d learned the secret of the house. It wasn’t a trap, it was our sanctuary. My grandmother had loved us, me, with a love stronger than death and hadn’t forgotten me. She’d been gone a long time but she was going to help me, as she’d promised.

Content, I slept.