17

Summer into Fall II

After a while, the girls began to behave as if they were living at home. By the second week of their stay, they were comfortable enough to lounge around in sloppy clothes, or go to the refrigerator and get something whenever they wanted. They became regular members of the family so easily that everyone else quickly forgot that they were really guests.

But as comfortable as they became, Laura was never quite able to relax. She always felt as if something deep down inside was bothering her, making her tense and anxious, nervous and sometimes even a little nauseated. But it wasn't anything deep down inside. Laura knew exactly what was making her feel that way.

The house.

The worst thing about it was that she couldn't put her finger on precisely what it was that bothered her. It was just a feeling.

Sometimes it was a cold feeling, a bone-deep chill that passed over her, through her, then disappeared in a moment's time as she walked down the hall or passed through a doorway. Other times, it was the feeling she was being watched as she undressed or showered; there had been a couple of instances, in fact, when she'd cut her shower short because of the overwhelming, almost smothering feeling that someone was in the bathroom with her and was about to rip the shower curtain aside and laugh at her— though all she had to do was look around to see that she was alone.

Sometimes she felt that she was being followed through the house or—and this was the worst—she felt someone brush by her in a doorway or in the hall. But there was never any evidence that her feelings had merit. There was never anyone nearby to make her feel that and, no matter how hard she looked, she never saw—or even heard— anything to explain her feelings. At least, not yet....

As the days and weeks passed, Laura started hearing some strange sounds. Al had brought a small fold-out cot into Stephanie's room and the girls had flipped a coin to see who got the bed; Laura had won. Sometimes late at night, while Mary was sound asleep, Laura thought she heard footsteps walking slowly around her bed in the dark. They were soft, cautious footsteps that barely tapped against the wood floor as they moved along one side of the bed, around the foot, and up the other side, then back again.

The second night it happened, Laura woke her sister.

"Mary. Mary! Wake up Mary!"

In a moment: "Huh? Hummuh? Whum? Whassamatter?"

"Listen!" Laura hissed.

"What?"

"Just listenl"

Silence.

"Listen t'what?" Mary asked groggily.

"You don't hear anything?"

"No."

"You don't hear, y'know, footsteps?"

"Aw, c'mon, get real Laura, I was asleep." She rolled over again and ignored her sister.

Other times, she thought she heard someone walking around outside. Even though it didn't make sense—she knew it was impossible—Laura thought she could hear someone walking all the way around the house again and again all night long.

Sometimes, when she was sitting in a room alone—on the living-room sofa reading, for example—she thought she heard a voice whispering to her unintelligibly from a shadowy corner of the room.

After Aunt Carmen's reaction to her first remarks about the house, she was afraid to say anything more to her. And after what Aunt Carmen had said about Uncle Al, she was certainly afraid to mention it to him.

So she kept it to herself. She continued to tell herself that it was just her imagination...even though deep down inside, she knew it was not.

It wouldn't be long before she realized that she was, indeed, right.

Very late one night, when Stephen was deep in a rare restful sleep, the voice said to him sharply, "Stephen! It's time to get up! Now!"

Stephen's eyes snapped wide open and he sat bolt upright in bed, his back stiff, fists clenched. In spite of the depth of his sleep, in spite of the fact that it had been a while since he'd slept so well, he was awake instantly.

"Get up, Stephen," the voice said. "It's time to go visiting."

Stephen knew immediately what that meant. He swept the covers aside and got out of bed, left his room, and crossed Michael's, being very careful to wake neither Michael nor Peter. Once upstairs, he passed through the living room, went down the hall and very, very carefully opened the door to Stephanie's room. Once he was able to stick his head in, he waited for signs that he'd disturbed Laura and Mary from their sleep. When he heard nothing, he entered the room and closed the door silently behind him.

Pale, dim moonlight illuminated the room through the window at the far end and Stephen used it to maneuver himself between the bed and cot.

For a long time, he watched them sleep. He turned from one to the other slowly, his eyes caressing their defenseless faces, watching them as they dreamed.

An urge built up in him slowly as he looked at them, an urge he could not long ignore. Finally, as he stood there in the moonlit darkness, he gave in.

Staring at Laura, who lay on her back leaning to the other side of the bed, he reached down and very carefully placed his hand on her shoulder to see how she would react.

Nothing.

He lowered his hand to her upper arm.

Still nothing. Her slow, rhythmic breathing continued.

He moved his hand over to her breast.

"Feels nice, doesn't it?" the voice asked quietly.

Wonderful, Stephen thought dreamily. It feels wonderful.

"You'd like to feel more, wouldn't you? You'd like to do more?"

Yes, I would.

"But she's too big. She'd defend herself. She'd only get you into trouble. You need someone smaller. Someone younger."

You're right. I don't need that kind of trouble.

"Turn around." The voice laughed.

Stephen turned around, as he was told. He looked down at Mary. Smaller. Younger. Definitely unable to defend herself. Stephen smiled, lowering his hand first on the girl's shoulder. Then on her arm. "That's better," the voice whispered....

It was two days later when Carmen drove home with a backseat full of groceries to find Laura and Mary on the front porch. Her attention was drawn to Mary in particular; she was sobbing uncontrollably.

Carmen pulled into the driveway, killed the engine, and hurried to the porch.

"What's wrong, what's the matter?" she asked; she hadn't seen the girls this way since they'd come to Connecticut, and her voice sounded frantic.

Laura put an arm around Mary. "Aunt Carm, something terrible's happened. You may not believe it, and if you don't, I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself."

Carmen sat down beside Laura and said, "Just tell me, please, I'll believe you."

It took a while for Laura to get it out, but finally, she said, "Stephen, um...he molested Mary."

Carmen could only stare at them in numb shock. She knew in her gut, the moment that Laura said it, that it was true. It was even unsurprising. It seemed a natural direction for his behavior over the months to finally take.

"When?" she asked.

Laura said, "This afternoon. While you were gone. He didn't, um...get very far, if you know what I mean. I caught him first."

"Okay," Carmen breathed, realizing that she was suddenly, for some reason, out of breath. "Okay, okay, I'll, uh, take care of it. Right now. Where is he?"

"In his room," Laura said.

Of course, Carmen thought as she got up and went into the house. She went downstairs to find Stephen, as usual, sitting on the side of his bed wearing headphones and drawing in his sketchpad.

Carmen reached out and plucked the headphones off.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" she asked angrily.

"Doing when?"

"Today. With Mary. You know what I'm talking about!"

He said nothing. His mouth curled upward into a smile and he laughed.

"Okay, that's it, I mean that is really it. We've tried so hard, God knows we've tried, but nothing seems to make any difference. You don't change. You just get worse. And this is the last of it, Stephen." She spun around and left the room, went upstairs and straight to the telephone.

Carmen called the police.

Stephen was taken away by the police that afternoon. He was questioned, at which time he confessed that he'd been fondling the girls while they slept at night, and that he'd attempted unsuccessfully to have sex with his twelve-year-old cousin. Then he was delivered to the juvenile detention center, where he was later interviewed by a psychiatrist.

In the meantime, Carmen was at home riddled with guilt. Al would be home soon and she worried that he would be furious; at the same time, she suspected he would be very happy, and that would make her feel even worse. But she had done what she had thought best.

They had dealt with the unpleasant changes in Stephen long enough. Obviously, those changes had gone way too far, and something had to be done. This might, at least, get him some help.

When Al got home, he wasn't furious, but he wasn't happy, either; he simply thought Carmen had done the right thing. He told her that maybe it would turn out for the best, that maybe it was the kick in the pants Stephen needed.

As it turned out, Stephen needed more than that. The psychiatrist who had talked with Stephen called Al and Carmen and told them it was his opinion that Stephen was schizophrenic—in other words, drastically out of touch with reality—and was in need of at least a sixty-day observation period in an appropriate mental hospital. He suggested Spring Haven. He recommended, however, that he spend the night in the juvenile detention center. He didn't think the family would be safe with Stephen in the house overnight.

They were devastated. Their son was, indeed, just as they had suspected, mentally ill. What had they done wrong? Every parent makes mistakes in raising their children, but what mistakes had they made that would bring their son to this?

They wondered how they could have been so callous. All that time he'd spent telling them he was hearing voices and seeing things, they had only gotten angry at him—when his real problem was a serious mental illness that he could neither help nor understand.

Their guilt and sadness were weighing heavily on them when, the next day, they picked Stephen up, took him to Spring Haven Psychiatric Hospital and admitted him.

It was an attractive building with lots of green grass around it shaded by a number of enormous oak trees. A tall solid fence stretched all the way around the sprawling grounds and patients and attendants strolled the grass calmly.

Stephen said nothing to them the entire time. He ignored their apologies, their offers of help, their pleas for him to talk to them. He remained silent until the moment they left him at the hospital. Then he looked at them, smiled darkly with expressionless eyes and said quietly, "Now that it doesn't have me to talk to it's going to come after you. All of you."

Al and Carmen left, saddened by his remark, thinking it was nothing more than another of the many symptoms of his illness.

Unfortunately for them, their children and Carmen's two nieces, they were wrong.