Chapter Eight

I stared out the window. The night was dark as Jeremy slept behind me and I shivered. I’d be glad when the heat was on.

Jim might arrive tomorrow. Once he was here I knew I’d feel better about everything.

It’d been awhile since I’d seen my brother. Too long. I missed him even though he was often in my thoughts. Had he changed? The last time I’d seen him he was in the throes of the rock culture, complete with shoulder length hair and wire-rimmed glasses.

The glasses weren’t for show because he couldn’t see a thing without them. I always told him it was because he stayed up nights writing his music and lyrics he’d worn out his eyes. I also wondered if he still dreamed of being a famous songwriter. He’d informed me years ago the traveling life wasn’t for him. So how did he feel now, still being bounced around from one town to another with a group of rag-tag musicians, playing what they wanted and how they wanted it?

Jim never seemed to settle down anywhere for long. If he’d wanted to write music he would have found a way. So there had to be more to his wanderlust with the band, doing dives and one night stands as he did.

How could he stomach the nomadic life? He’d always put such store in a real home.

He’d been running in his own way, too, all this time. Was it because he suspected, or knew, what was waiting here for us?

If that was true, why was he coming back?

For us. Me and Jeremy

I was exhausted, freezing, and crawled into the sleeping bag beside Jeremy, sharing my warmth with him. Tomorrow the electricity and heat would be switched on and we’d see if the relic of a furnace still worked. If the plumbing would hold out, and the wires in the walls wouldn’t catch fire and burn the structure down.

I fell asleep envisioning Jeremy and I plugging leaks in the rusted pipes, with hunks of rags and fighting fires in the archaic wiring system.

It was a dreamless sleep, so deep it was with a terrible jolt, the unwelcome noises roused me. Someone was pounding on our door and I felt the familiar chill creep up my toes and spread along my body.

Angry echoes boomed through the house and the perfume of roses nearly choked me. In those first moments of wakefulness I had the faintest of hopes it was Jim knocking at the door, but somehow I knew it wasn’t.

Staring at the door, I got up and tiptoed across the floor. Laid my hand on the knob and felt the hairs on my neck stand on end. Something was behind me. The same drowning sensation I’d experienced earlier in my grandmother’s séance room assailed me, only stronger.

The horrendous pounding continued. I clapped my hands over my ears.

“Who is it?” I cried. My mouth was cotton and my heart was doing a rain-dance in my chest.

“Don’t open the door…Sarah….don’t open it!” Somewhere behind me a sibilant whisper warned.

Was I dreaming? Was this a nightmare? I pinched myself and tried to clear my frantic thoughts. No, I was awake and it was real. What should I do? Jeremy was asleep, didn’t he hear the noise? How could he not?

The battering grew more insistent. Louder. The house was shaking. Yet I obeyed the whisper at my back and didn’t open the door. “My God.” I leaned against the wall, fist in my mouth to keep from screaming or fainting, while Jeremy slumbered through the god-awful racket.

He couldn’t hear it.

I pressed against the wall. Prayed. The murmurs swirled around me and the racket trickled into laughter. Ghastly laughter, I’d last heard in the woods when I’d been a child.

I am safe here, I told myself, a protective chant, over and over. I’m safe. It can’t get into the house.

Oh, how it wanted to, but it couldn’t gain entrance because it wasn’t allowed.

“Go away, go away!” I was angry. How dare it terrorize my son and me? What did it want from us?

“Go away,” I yelled, my head against the door.

The laughter trickled off into the night, a train whistle dwindling into the distance.

The pounding also ceased. Blessed silence.

A whiplash of vertigo assailed me and I clung to consciousness with all my strength. Something was pulling, willing me to follow until the sensation was almost irresistible.

I swung around and reached my fingers out to what I believed stood guard behind me. “Grandmother, help me.”

I was sucked into eternity and was no longer Sarah. I was someone else. No longer in the house but far away and in another time.

A long woolen cape clung to me and flapped softly against my ankles. I was a young boy running through the woods. Stunned at where and how I found myself, I hid behind a tree and fought to keep from screaming. Who was I? Where was I?

It was night, the wind was cold and rain splattered my hair. I stared down at myself and realized I could see in the dark. Loose fitting peasant shirt and heavy britches. Rough. Hand stitched. My fingers traced the unfamiliar lines of a stranger’s face.

I began to run, hearing laughter and footsteps rustling behind me. So close. I fled, stumbling and crying, away from my tormentor. The shirt was spotted with wet blood and somehow I knew it was a child’s blood. It was sticky on my hands and my bare feet.

There was blood on the ground. Blacker spots dappled on the gray mingled with the shadows.

The boy ran, twigs snapping beneath his feet until he came to a tethered horse rearing and pawing at the wind. He tried to calm the frightened beast but still it rolled its eyes until only the whites showed. It seemed to be in pain.

“Hush, now, hush.” The boy soothed the horse and gathered the reins trying to gain control of the animal. “It will be all right. I promise.” He threw himself up on the animal’s bare back and its huge hooves whipped the night air around them.

“Back. Back!” the boy screamed as the wind ricocheted with menacing laughter and the horse battled an invisible foe, whirling itself around as if it were possessed. As the forest was.

The boy slapped the reins against his mount and turned it to face…something. His eyes flashed with brilliant fire. He would not be beaten. He would not lose this time.

The voice in the woods bellowed at him. “Josiah, this time you will not escape. Not this time!”

Far away, Sarah recognized the voice and screamed.

The boy on the thrashing horse screamed in the same instant. The death cries of the horse and the boy rose together into one wail and the animal went down in its own blood, white teeth bared in a gruesome mask of agony.

And the boy…torn to pieces.

Sarah hid her eyes as the horse fell. Blood showered the leaves and trees. The vision faded to a blur and died.

Then there was blackness and nothingness for a long while.

It could have been minutes or hours later when I moaned and felt into the darkness. A wall, a floor. I opened my eyes and attempted to sit up.

I was in my house. It was still night and Jeremy lay sleeping, undisturbed. I was huddled against the door, sobbing in the dark.

What had happened? Where had I been? I shook my head, wiped the tears from my face and crawled into my sleeping bag. There had to be an explanation to what I’d seen, experienced and I had to find them.

It might have been another life, another time, but I knew the boy on the horse. It’d been Jimmy and he’d died in a horrible way on a night so long ago.

I lay awake trying to understand what it meant. I sat sentinel over my son and as dawn’s fingers crept into the house I finally felt safe enough to close my eyes.