“Mom, we have to leave this house. There's something evil here."
Carmen Snedeker stood at the kitchen sink with foamy suds clinging to her forearms and hands as she washed a plate. Wadded clumps of newspaper and empty cardboard boxes were scattered on the floor around her and Willy, the Snedekers' pet ferret, played among them. The dishes that, shortly before, had been wrapped in newspapers and packed in boxes were on the counter to Carmen's right, grimy with newsprint and dusty from travel.
The laughing voices of the other children clattered off the bare walls as they ran in and out, breaking in their new home.
She heard the thunking and shifting of heavy furniture being moved in by Al and his brother.
Stephen, her fourteen-year-old son, had been wandering around the kitchen behind her, silent and restless, nudging boxes and papers with the toes of his sneakers as if he had something to say but didn't have the nerve. So she'd decided to wait until he was ready to speak.
"What'd you say, Stephen?" Carmen asked as she rinsed a plate.
He repeated himself: "I said there's something evil here, Mom, and we have to leave this house."
Putting the plate on the drainer to her left, Carmen turned to Stephen slowly, frowning. "Leave? We just got here, honey."
"I know, but we've gotta leave now."
"But where would we go?"
"Back to New York, back to our apartment. We have to, Mom. There's something..." He stopped a moment and squinted slightly, as if he were selecting his next word from a list of choices, then: "...wrong, there's something wrong with this house."
Carmen's frown deepened as she rinsed the suds off her hands and arms and dried them on a towel. She turned, leaned back against the edge of the counter, and folded her arms, facing her son.
He was so gaunt, so pale, with such dark gray half-moons beneath his eyes. She tried to get used to it—and, of course, she acted as if it were unnoticeable—but every time she looked at him, the physical changes in him clutched at her heart. It was as if the cobalt treatments he'd been receiving had sucked half of him away, had drained him down to a spindly porcelain doll that merely resembled her son. With those treatments had come a great deal of stress, and it was that stress to which Carmen attributed his claim about the house. That had to be it. He certainly couldn't know the truth about the house. Only Carmen and her husband, Al, knew about the house's past.
"What do you think's wrong with the house, Stephen?" she asked quietly.
His smooth forehead creased and he averted his eyes for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder and said, almost in a whisper, "I...don't know. It's just...bad. It's"—he gave a jerky shake of his head, at once agitated and frustrated—"hard to explain. But it's bad. Evil. And if we don't leave here...something bad's gonna happen to us. Something really bad."
"Sweetheart, houses aren't evil. Only people are evil. Evil lives in their hearts, in the things they sometimes do and say to each other. But this house...well, it's just an old house. If it could talk, it could probably tell us some great stories, maybe even some scary stories. But it's not evil. It's just new to you, that's all," she added with a half-smile. "You'll get used to it after a while and you'll feel better about it, more comfortable with it. Did you see your room downstairs?"
Stephen bowed his head and stared at the floor, then nodded slightly. He said something, but it was too quiet for her to understand.
Carmen tucked a knuckle under his chin and tipped his head up slightly. "What?"
"That was the room that felt so bad. It felt...evil, Mom. I don't wanna sleep down there. It just doesn't feel...right."
Carmen tried to let nothing show on her face. Again, she reminded herself that Stephen knew nothing about the house, that he knew nothing about what kinds of things used to go on there. She took a deep breath and some of the tension in her chest relaxed.
"But that's your room," she said. "You've always wanted a room of your own."
He shook his head. "Well, I won't sleep down there alone."
"But Michael won't be back from Alabama for weeks. Where are you going to sleep till then?"
He shrugged as he leaned down to pet Willy. "I'll sleep on the couch. Or maybe on the living room floor, I don't know. But"—he began shaking his head again as he turned and headed back out to the kitchen, stepping around and over the empty boxes—"I won't sleep down there by myself."
Carmen remained with her back to the sink, arms folded, the towel dangling from one hand. She watched him walk away, then listened to his footsteps on the wood floor after he was out of sight, listening until she could no longer hear them.
Turning back to the sink, Carmen took another dish from the stack and began to wash it as she released a slow, quiet sigh.
In a short time, the Snedekers had traveled what seemed a very long and treacherous road. That road began in April of 1986.
Al and Carmen had met in 1977 in Plainville, Connecticut, in a bowling alley where Carmen was waitressing. Al had wholesome good looks, with a neatly trimmed mustache and short, dark brown hair. He stood a little over six feet in his socks and had a solid, muscular build from years of hard work. Carmen, on the other hand, was petite, with a broad, glowing smile and full, wavy blond hair. The two were immediately attracted to each other but Carmen preferred to take her time when making big changes in her life.
The middle of five children, Carmen was the daughter of a staff sergeant in the air force. Six weeks after her birth at Harris Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, Carmen, her two older sisters, and two younger brothers, were moved by their parents to another town. And another, and another...and they kept moving to wherever their father's work led them for five years, until he was disabled and subsequently discharged from service. Then they moved to Carmen's parents' hometown of Decatur, Alabama. But those years of constant uprooting, of never being able to settle, of always being on the move to someplace new and unfamiliar— even though she was very small at the time—had somehow stayed with Carmen, giving her a gnawing suspicion of changes in life, even the natural ones.
Later, when she was grown, Carmen made a drastic change in her life: marriage. With it came two more changes, her sons Stephen and Michael. But they were good changes, happy ones, changes that enriched her life rather than destabilizing it. Then came the worst change: divorce. Once again, Carmen found herself in unfamiliar territory, single with two sons. Carmen and the boys moved to Connecticut to stay with Carmen's parents, where, with little education and no work experience, Carmen went about the business of getting a job and making life as stable as possible for her children.
Al, on the other hand, had lived with his two brothers and three sisters in the same wood-frame house on the border of Plainville and New Britain, Connecticut, until he was grown. With no other children around but his brother and sisters, Al spent a lot of time with them playing in the woods around the house, and came to love the outdoors.
When he was grown, Al married in 1975, but the marriage lasted only nineteen months. Having led a life that was relatively smooth—except, of course, for the usual ups and downs, hurts and disappointments that everyone faces while growing up—Al was rocked by the bitter divorce and took his time getting into another relationship.
Then Al met Carmen in that bowling alley where she worked as a cocktail waitress, and everything changed. They were married in 1979, and began their new life full of hope.
In 1986, they were living in Hurleyville, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. During the summer months, New Yorkers came to the Catskills to spend their vacations. The Snedekers were never quite sure why because these big-city travelers seemed to have no appreciation at all for the beautiful green surroundings or the wildlife. During the summer months, in any store or shopping center, one could hear the vacationers complaining about the wild animals in the area that simply would not get out of the way of their cars. The number of dead animals on the roadside increased during the summer, too.
During that time, Al Snedeker worked in a stone quarry and Carmen babysat four children throughout the day, enabling her to stay home for her own. They were devout Catholics and went to church every Sunday. Carmen was involved in a number of church activities to which she devoted a good portion of what free time she had.
It was in April of that year that Stephen developed a dry, hacking cough. Al was the first to notice it and became concerned. But Carmen had seen the children come down with any number of combinations of coughs, sore throats, rashes, runny noses, and stuffed-up heads, so she was confident it would go away soon enough.
But the cough stayed.
"Mom, what's this?" Stephen asked one day, coming to Carmen frowning, with his fingertips pressed to the left side of his neck.
Carmen nudged his fingers away gently and replaced them with her own. Just beneath his jaw she found a pebble-sized lump.
Hormones, she thought with the slightest pinprick of worry piercing her chest, that's all it is, just his hormones kicking in.
Stephen pulled away as he broke into another fit of hoarse raspy coughs. Did the cough sound worse...or was it just her imagination?
Carmen thought, It might just be hormones, but—
"I think I’ll make an appointment for you with Dr. Elliott," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders and giving them a squeeze.
Dr. Bruce Elliott was warm, pleasant, and usually smiling. None of the Snedeker children were ever afraid of seeing him. They trusted him; so did Al and Carmen. So when Dr. Elliott said he wanted Stephen to spend a little time in the hospital for some tests, no one saw any reason to be overly concerned.
Carmen took the boy in to be admitted early the following Monday morning. It seemed odd to be hospitalizing Stephen when he seemed his usual healthy, upbeat self. Except for that cough. Except for that lump.
She admitted him and spent the morning with him in the pediatrics ward, but had to be back home when the younger children returned from school.
"Sorry I have to go, honey," she said, standing beside his bed.
Stephen held the control for the bed in his hand and was having fun moving it up and down. He looked up at her and gave her a big smile. It was such a boy's smile, so hungry for new experiences, so full of raw enthusiasm. "S'okay, Mom," he said. "I'll be fine."
After dinner that evening, Al and Carmen went to the hospital to visit Stephen. On their way to his room, they spotted Dr. Elliott coming toward them down the corridor. They smiled at him, but his response was less than enthusiastic. His shoulders were slumped a bit and his walk was slower and less energetic than usual. He nodded once, greeting them with a silent hello.
"So, how's Stephen?" Al asked, holding his smile in place, although it threatened to fade.
"Stephen is just fine," Dr. Elliott said quietly. "It's the tests I'm not too sure about."
Carmen took in a deep, steadying breath and exhaled, saying, "What do you mean?"
"Well, unfortunately they aren't really telling us anything conclusive about Stephen's condition. So, I think we're going to have to go a step further. I talked to Dr. Scordato today. He's a surgeon, a very good surgeon."
Al took Carmen's hand and squeezed it.
"He agrees with me that we should do a biopsy and, as long as you agree, too, he'd like to do it tomorrow."
Al and Carmen exchanged a dark, worried glance.
His voice dry, Al said, "So, this...um, this just means that you and the surgeon want to get to the bottom of Stephen's problem. Right?"
Dr. Elliott nodded and said encouragingly, "Yes, of course, that's exactly what we want to do."
They agreed to the biopsy, chatted with Dr. Elliott a moment, their voices thin, their mouths dry, then went to Stephen's room. They did not speak on the way, just held hands.
Stephen was sitting up in bed watching television and chewing on the end of a drinking straw. He smiled at them as they went to his bedside. He looked a little tired, but still healthy as ever.
So why is he here? Carmen wondered.
"How was your day in the hospital, kiddo?" Al asked, slapping Stephen's knee beneath the blanket.
Stephen shrugged. "Okay, I guess. 'Cept for the vampires." He stretched out his arm to show them the Band-Aid on his inner elbow where blood had been drawn.
"We'll bring you some garlic," Carmen said smiling, "you can hold 'em off with that."
"I still don't know what's wrong with me," he said, frowning slightly. "I feel fine. Only time I feel sick is when I get sick of layin' around in here."
"The doctor's not sure what's wrong, either," Al said slowly, pulling a chair to the bed and sitting. "That's why he wants to do a biopsy tomorrow."
Stephen's eyes widened. "A biopsy? You mean where they cut you open and take out your insides?"
Al and Carmen laughed. "No, no," Al said, "that's an autopsy, and they only do that on dead people. No, a biopsy is where they take a tiny piece of your lump out and examine it."
The boy frowned. "Is it gonna hurt?"
"You won't feel a thing. Just before they do it, a nurse'll come in here with a great big mallet and bop you over the head with it. You'll be out like a light."
Stephen laughed and threw the straw at Al who, along with Carmen, hid his concern behind a smile.
The next day, Tuesday, was one of the longest of their lives. They waited outside the operating room listening to the doctors being paged over the P.A. system, to the hushed rubber-soled footsteps of the nurses bustling up and down the corridors, and breathing the antiseptic medicine-tinged hospital air as time passed at the speed of molasses oozing over a flat surface, until...
The double doors of the operating room opened and Dr. Scordato, Stephen's surgeon, hurried out. He glanced at Al and Carmen, but seemed to look right through them as he walked on, hands slipped in the pockets of his white coat.
Al and Carmen looked at one another with wide-eyed surprise, then stood simultaneously and hurried after the doctor. Al called out, but got no response. Carmen moved ahead of her husband, closed in on the doctor and clutched his arm. Dr. Scordato spun around, startled.
"We'd like to know how our son is," she said.
The doctor blinked a few times, then said, "Oh, yes, um, well...Dr. Elliott will be in touch with you this afternoon. I think it would be best if you talked to him about the results. You can visit your son in a couple hours, after he gets out of recovery." Then he turned and headed down the corridor, blending in with all the other white coats and uniforms and white walls.
They had more time to kill, time filled with the restless ghosts of unanswered questions. Over lunch, Carmen said quietly, "It can't be too serious. I mean, he would've said something if it was serious, right?"
"Yeah," Al said, "I think so." Then he sighed, "I hope so."
After lunch, Carmen took Al home to be with the younger children when they got home from school, and she went to the store to buy Stephen a gift. When she got to the hospital, he was sound asleep, his neck bandaged and a thin tube trailing from the I.V. bottle hanging over his head to his inner elbow. She sat beside his bed holding on her lap the box of Lego blocks she'd bought for him—the advanced kind, far more sophisticated and complex than the kid stuff—and watched him sleep as she prayed silently, her rosary clicking gently as her fingers moved over it.
The only other time Stephen had been in the hospital was when he was born. The worst bout he'd ever had with illness was a cold or the flu, nothing more. Now this...whatever this was. As she prayed, she heard her own words to Al echoing in her mind: It can't be too serious...can't be too serious...too serious...
Sometime toward dusk, Stephen opened his eyes long enough to smile. She stood quickly, put the box on the chair and whispered, "How you feeling, honey?" His eyes fluttered. "Stephen? Look what I brought you." She turned, got the Legos, but when she turned to him again, he was asleep.
An officious voice announced that visiting hours were over. She leaned forward, kissed her son's cheek, then left, feeling empty and cold, even though the evening was warm.
When she arrived home, Carmen could see Al through the big picture window in the front of the house. He was seated in his recliner watching television. The familiarity of seeing him there doing what he did every evening at that time soothed Carmen somewhat, made her feel a little more normal and made her want to get inside to the comfort and safety of her family. She walked through the door, put down her purse, and went to Al's chair where he sat staring at the television through puffy red eyes, his cheeks glistening with streaks of tears. He looked up at her, his lips pressed together so tightly they were pale, then turned away, closing his eyes and spilling more tears.
Carmen was so stunned she could do no more than stare at him. Suddenly, her mind and heart began to compete in a dizzying race. Al was a very quiet man, spare with his words, speaking only when he had something specific to say, and, except for when he got angry enough, he held his emotions close to his chest, like a poker player hiding the cards in his hand. Something had to be very wrong for him to cry so openly. But what could it be? Not Stephen, it couldn't be Stephen, she'd just come from the hospital, after all, and Stephen was fine, just fine!
"What's wrong, Al?" she asked, her voice dry and hoarse.
He opened his mouth to respond but could only sob as he leaned forward and put his face in his hands.
Carmen knelt beside the chair and put a hand on his arm as her heartbeat thundered in her ears. "Al, please, will you tell me what's the matter?"
The telephone rang loudly, and when she picked up the receiver, she realized her palms were sweating. "Hello?"
"Oh, Carmen, I'm glad you're finally home. I've m-missed you wherever I've c-called." The voice was male and adult, but thick with tears and tremulous with emotion. "It's Dr. Elliott," he said.
Dr. Elliott? But he was crying. Why?
Because, she thought, he's been our doctor for a long time, our friend, and he's a good man and he's crying now because something is wrong, terribly, terribly wrong...
She tried to speak, had to clear her throat first, then asked, "What is it? What's the matter?"
“I’m very sorry, Carmen," he said after taking a deep breath, "but Dr. Scordato said that Stephen's neck is filled with cancer."
That word was a drill that drove into her stomach and mangled her insides. It was an ugly word, glistening black and pulsating, that had a life all its own.
"I'm sorry," Dr. Elliott said, clearing his throat, "but it...well, we're going to do everything we can, you know that, but...it doesn't look good."
She ended the conversation abruptly and dropped the receiver from her numb hand into the cradle. When she turned, Al was still in his chair staring at her with teary eyes.
They called both families to give them the news, and each call was worse than the last: voices crumbling into tears and sobs, grieving for Stephen almost as if the news had been that he'd already died.
Carmen saved her mother, Wanda Jean, for last. Wanda Jean had practically raised Stephen and Michael while Carmen worked, and Carmen knew she would find in her mother the support and strength she needed. But, like the others on the telephone before her, Wanda Jean fell apart.
Carmen felt her hands shake as she listened to her mother's tears. A few minutes later, when she hung up, she turned to Al who had been alternately sitting in his chair and pacing.
"Why is everyone doing this?" Carmen asked, her voice raspy. "Why is everyone acting like he's dead already, or something?"
"What do you mean, why is everybody doin' this?" Al croaked. "He has cancer, Carmen. We're all upset, is why we're doin' this! I guess we can't all be strong like you. I guess we can't all be like one of those noble, long-suffering women Meryl Streep is always playing." He sat in his chair.
"I mean, am I gonna be the only one to hold up? Somebody's got to, otherwise we're gonna scare the hell out of Stephen."
But Al did not respond.
Carmen's eyes stung with tears as she sat silently by the telephone, trying to clean all the fear out of her mind.
The next morning, after the children had gone to school and Al had called in to get the day off work, Carmen said, "What a beautiful day to go fishing."
He stared at her, shocked. There were bags under his watery eyes and his face was drawn. "Are you serious?" When she didn't reply, he shook his head slowly. "No, I...I need to be with Stephen."
Gently as possible, placing her hand on his, she said, "Then you're gonna have to pull yourself together. Remember what I said last night? You'll only frighten him if he sees you like this."
"Yeah," he nodded, "I see your point."
Later that day, in the hospital corridor leading to Stephen's room, Carmen saw Al steeling himself. He rubbed a hand down his face once, as if to wipe off whatever anguish showed there. They pushed through the door smiling and found Stephen talking with Dr. Elliott.
"You're just in time to see him off to X-ray," the doctor said, and two young nurses came into the room behind Al and Carmen with a wheelchair.
"Time to hit the road," one of them said as Stephen slid off the bed and got into the chair.
"We'll be here when you get back, okay?" Carmen assured him.
"Boy, with all the attention you get around here, you're not gonna want to come home, kiddo," Al said with a weak smile.
As he was wheeled out of the room, Stephen said, "Oh, yes I will."
Once they were alone, Dr. Elliott began to talk quietly to Al and Carmen about lymphatic cancer and the problems that could arise, and he suggested they tell Stephen soon. As he spoke, he kept glancing at Al, noticing the fists clenching and unclenching, the perspiration on his forehead, the fidgeting, and the way he turned his face away whenever someone looked at him.
"You don't look so good, Al," Dr. Elliott said.
Al shrugged and began to pace the room.
The doctor said, "Listen, Al, I want you to sit down. I'm going to have a nurse come in and take your blood pressure." Once Al was seated in a chair, Dr. Elliott stood in front of him and said quietly, "You're going to have to stay calm, Al. I know this is tough, but if you don't pull yourself together, you'll make yourself sick and you won't be any help to Stephen then. Understand?"
Al nodded. But in spite of his efforts to relax, his anxiety stayed with him, whispering in his ear the horrible things that might happen, things like death, a funeral, a gravestone....
On Thursday, Stephen was released from the hospital to spend the weekend at home. On Monday, he was to go to John Dempsey Hospital in Connecticut for three weeks of tests. Over the weekend, Carmen managed to persuade Al to go fishing as much as possible. On Saturday, she and Stephen drove Al to the lake and dropped him off.
"Mom?" Stephen asked when they were alone in the car. "What's wrong with me? I mean...exactly. Nobody will tell me."
O Lord, give me the right words, Carmen prayed silently. After a few moments of thought, she said, "You have...something called Hodgkin's disease. Well, it's...actually, it's lymphatic cancer, is what it is."
Stephen nodded very slowly, then said, almost in a whisper, "Cancer. I kinda thought it was something bad." He continued to nod slowly. "But I'm not gonna die."
Keeping her voice steady, she said, "Of course you're not, kiddo, 'cause we're gonna pray about it and fight it. But...you know it's not going to be easy, right?"
This time he whispered: "I'm not gonna die."
On Monday morning, Al drove Carmen and Stephen to the hospital in Connecticut. He had to drive straight back to Hurleyville to take care of the kids and he left right away, knowing he would be unable to hold up under the weight of a lingering good-bye.
The pediatrics ward at John Dempsey was like most others; the walls were decorated with cheerful cartoon figures and drawings by the children, mobiles of every sort hung from the high ceilings and, instead of the usual hospital whites, the ward was done in soft, soothing colors.
But it didn't help. The ward was still filled with sick children. Even dying children. And now Carmen's son was among them. All the cheerful colors in the world could not change that.
The tests began shortly after Stephen was admitted and they went on forever. There were blood tests, X rays, and scans, then he spent seven hours in surgery one day. After that, there were still more tests. The old saying that the cure is sometimes worse than the disease became very potent to Stephen and Carmen.
Doctors and nurses swarmed around Stephen's bed like honeybees around a hive. But as Stephen began to grow pale and fragile, it was sometimes difficult for Carmen not to imagine them as circling vultures rather than swarming bees.
Al's family lived in Connecticut, so Carmen wasn't entirely alone. She spent the nights in a nearby motel and always called Al as soon as she got in. Since she'd seen him last, he'd begun having severe chest pains and, although she thought Stephen had drained every ounce of worry from her, she began worrying about Al as well. After a few tests at the hospital, however, it was determined that Al's chest pains were symptoms of extreme anxiety and were nothing serious.
Carmen knew that something would have to change at home to take some of the load off Al's shoulders, so she called her mother. Wanda Jean was in Italy at the time, but was happy to fly home and take care of the children for a while.
At the end of three weeks, Stephen was released from the hospital and allowed to return home to Hurleyville. He was thinner, pale, and there was a weariness in his every movement. It was as if a siphon had been attached to him for the past three weeks, slowly draining his youth. As if that wasn't enough, he had to return to Connecticut every day for cobalt treatments. His already weakened condition only grew worse under the strain of the grueling treatments and the 106-mile-a-day trips. In fact, that strain took a toll on the entire family.
Al and Carmen decided to look for an apartment closer to the hospital. With four children, they knew it would not be easy to find one big enough that they could afford—the medical bills were piling up quickly—but it would be easier than driving so far every day and spending so much money on gas.
Using every spare moment she could find, Carmen began the search. She encountered one disappointment after another: too small, too expensive, or both. Although wearing down, she continued looking, found another promising ad in the local classified section and made an appointment to see the apartment in Southington. On her way there, she drove by a beautiful threestory Colonial-style house with a sign in the front yard that read FOR RENT.
The apartment she'd arranged to see was very nice but, like so many others, simply too small. On the way back to the motel, however, she followed an impulse to stop at the Colonial house with the sign in front.
There were workmen all around the house and the sounds of hammering and drilling and sawing clashed in an ugly cacophony. Carmen approached one workman after another, asking whom she should talk to about renting the place, until one of them finally directed her around the corner of the house to a pleasant, softspoken man whose right arm was curled up in front of his chest, shriveled and useless.
"Help you?" he asked, raising his voice because of all the noise.
"I'm interested in looking at the house," she said, wincing slightly at the clatter.
"Oh. Well." He lifted his good arm and rubbed his hand back and forth over his kinky, graying hair. "The owner's not here right now and"—he chuckled, nodding toward the house—"you can see we're doing a lot of work right now, so I don't know if this'd be a good time, know what I'm sayin'?" He smiled around crooked teeth and the lines in his face deepened.
Carmen realized she was wringing her hands and stopped, not wanting to look too desperate. "I've been looking everywhere for days and I just can't find a place for my family. This one looks good and we need a place right away because my son has to—"
He began nodding and held up a hand to stop her. "Tell you what. There's two apartments in there, one upstairs and one down. Why don't you go upstairs and look around and when you're done, I'll give you the name and phone number of the owner. Sound good?"
Relieved and excited, she went upstairs, hoping for the best. That was what she found. The living room was spacious with lots of windows that made it appear even larger. The kitchen was roomy, too, and had a built-in trestle table with benches. There were four large bedrooms and, upstairs, two more, one with builtin captain's beds paneled in solid pine.
It was beautiful. It was perfect. And it was probably way too expensive.
She hurried downstairs, got the owner's number and called him the second she got back to her motel room.
His name was Mr. Lawson and he sounded reluctant at first. Carmen didn't let that bother her once he'd quoted the monthly rate though; it was well within their price range. She told Mr. Lawson everything: about Stephen's illness, about how far they had to travel every day for his treatments, about how hard she'd been looking for a place.
He politely extended his sympathies, wished the best for Stephen, then fell silent, apparently thinking. Finally: "I can give you the downstairs apartment."
Carmen sat heavily on the edge of the bed and pressed a hand over her eyes. She hadn't seen the downstairs apartment. Was it as nice as the upstairs?
Who are you kidding? she thought. If it's smaller, it can't be by much, and besides...we're desperate. She decided that if it was anything like the upstairs apartment, she'd be thrilled.
"That sounds fine," she said. "We'll take it."
After she hung up, Carmen fell back on the bed with a long sigh. A tremendous weight had been lifted from her.
They began to prepare for the move immediately. Al would have to stay in Hurleyville for another six weeks or so until his transfer was complete. Michael managed to escape the chaos of moving; he decided to go with Wanda Jean to her home in Alabama for the summer.
Al and Carmen and the kids packed their belongings cheerfully and without a word of complaint, which was quite an achievement considering the fact that, along with all the work and organizing, Stephen still had to be taken to Connecticut every day for his cobalt treatment. They were anxious to move into their new apartment and return some stability to their lives. Of course, things wouldn't be completely stable until Stephen had recovered, but they had faith that he would.
Carmen told them over and over about the upstairs apartment, hoping theirs would be as nice, as perfect. But she spent a lot of time thinking about what the downstairs apartment might be like...a lot of time thinking the worst.
One night before they moved to Southington, Carmen slept restlessly. In spite of her worries about Stephen, she'd been falling asleep easily, exhausted from all the work. But on this night, sleep did not come quickly and when it did come, it brought a cold and muddy dream.
Caskets...lined up neatly...naked bodies with deathly pale skin...tools...equipment that looked old and sinister...hooks...chains...a faceless man wearing a white smock with dark brown stains caked on it...walking along one of the rows of caskets...zigzagging in and out between them...approaching one of the bodies...one of the dead bodies...carrying one of those tools...one of those old and ominous tools...
Carmen sat bolt upright in bed, unable to breathe for a moment, then sucking in a lungful of air. It was morning. Sunlight was shining through the windows, bright, safe sunlight. Her heart was hammering in her chest but she couldn't remember exactly why. A nightmare, yes, but that wasn't it...not exactly. It was something else, something she suddenly knew, just knew instinctively.
"I've rented a funeral home," she said, her voice thick with sleep.
Al lifted his head from the pillow. "Huh?"
"The apartment...that house...it's a funeral home. Or maybe...well, maybe it used to be."
"Did you have a nightmare?"
"No, no. I mean, yeah, I think maybe I did, but that's not it." She turned to him. "That house is a funeral home, Al."
He propped himself up on his elbows. "What're you talking about?" Then he sat up beside her with a squinty frown and said, "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Yes, I'm serious."
She leaned forward and hugged herself, closing her eyes.
Al put an arm around her. He was at a loss, but the look on her face was not one that came from a simple dream or nightmare; there was something much more real to it.
"We can back out of it, you know," he said. "I mean, if you really don't want to move into that apartment."
She shook her head slowly. How could they?
"We can't keep making that trip every day," she whispered. "It's too hard on all of us, especially Stephen. And I sure don't want to go out looking for another apartment."
They were silent a while, pressing close to one another, then Al said, "Look, even if this...well this dream or feeling or whatever...is true, and the place really is or was a funeral home...I mean, so what? The people died somewhere else, right? It's not like they died there in the house. And besides"—he kissed the top of her head— "you don't know it's true. I bet it's not. Just a dream. We'll get there, it'll be great, we'll move in, and we'll find out it's just a nice old house converted into two apartments."
They finally left Hurleyville on June 30, a hot summer day that was even hotter on the road. Al took Stephanie with him in the moving van they'd rented—she held Willy in his cage on her lap— and the two boys went with Carmen in the car. Every few miles, Peter, who was three at the time, asked with unfailing enthusiasm, "We there yet? We there yet?"
When they got to the house in Southington, most of Al's family was already there, ready to help them move in. Carmen got out of the car and Al got out of the van and, for a moment, they stared at one another, Carmen's face tight and apprehensive, Al's smiling reassuringly. When he came to her, she whispered, "Before we do anything, can we just...go inside and look around?"
"Sure we can." He took her hand and, after greeting everyone, they headed inside.
The ground floor was not finished yet and the carpenters were making plenty of noise. Inside, they found a lot of sawdust and pieces of wood and men with hammers and saws. But there was no one downstairs in the basement.
As Al and Carmen started down the stairs, the noise faded slightly behind and above them. It was musty down there and the thick air carried the smell of age. At the foot of the stairs was a spacious room that opened up to their left and, to their right, a pair of French doors that opened onto an even bigger room.
There were five rooms altogether, all musty. They walked around cautiously for a few moments, not quite sure what they were looking for...if anything at all.
At the end of a hall, they found a room in which a number of shelves held tools. Alien, sinister tools. Frightening, unspeakable tools. Steel devices darkened with age. Tubes and hoses and blades. Across from the shelves was what appeared to be a fuel tank, old and grimy, and a small table beneath which were several sturdy boxes. Al and Carmen hunkered down to find the boxes filled with countless rectangular metal plaques. The plaques were blank, but Al and Carmen looked at one another silently, knowing full well what they were. The plaques had been waiting in the boxes for who knew how long...waiting to be put to use...waiting to be assigned names and placed over graves.
They left the room and stepped into a hall at the end of which was a ramp that sloped downward into the basement from a door on the side of the house. It resembled a handicapped entrance, or some sort of loading ramp.
Carmen reached out for Al's hand, more to steady herself emotionally than physically. The things they'd seen already were enough to tell her she'd been right...but there was more.
A heavy-looking metal cross hung over each doorway they passed through. The crosses looked like silver, but they were so tarnished with age it was difficult to tell. They looked up at one of the crosses for a moment, then turned to one another, but the silence was too heavy to break; neither of them spoke.
They turned right and entered a large room with another shelf, more stairs and—
"Oh, my God," Carmen breathed, "what's that?”
She pointed to something that looked like it had come off the set of an old black-and-white Frankenstein movie. A rectangular bedlike platform was hooked to chains that were attached to a large hoist. Al and Carmen looked up to see a rectangular trapdoor in the ceiling directly above the platform.
Al's shoes scritched on the concrete floor as he crossed the room to a piece of plywood about four feet square on the floor below the stairs. He bent down and lifted it up a few inches, peered beneath it, then lifted it higher. Carmen stood beside him and looked down the tunneled sides to the bottom of the dark-stained concrete pit where woodchips were scattered around a circular drain.
Faint light seeped in through the two grimy windowpanes above and to their left, casting misty shadows into the pit as Al and Carmen stared silently.
Al said, "I wonder what this—"
"I don't think I want to know," Carmen whispered, turning away and walking toward a doorway that opened onto another smaller room. She stood in the doorway and stared.
There was a sturdy rectangular table directly across from her, the kind one might find in a laboratory or hospital...or in a morgue. The wall to her left was stained reddish-brown. To the right, a large deep sink bore the same rusty stains.
A loud bang behind her made her gasp and spin around to see Al brushing his hands together as he walked toward her and away from the pit. The bang had been the plank crashing back into place when he let go of it.
"What's in here?" Al asked.
Carmen started to speak, started to say something about there being a big mess to clean up, that was what was in there, but her throat was too dry and when she realized her voice wouldn't work, she closed her mouth and just stared at the stains. Al did the same.
There was a different smell in that room, darker and more cloying than the odor permeating the rest of the basement. It was a thick, almost greasy smell, the kind that remains in the nostrils for a while after the source of the smell has been left behind.
Al walked over to the wall, pressed his fingertips to it tentatively, then turned to Carmen. His brow was creased; his upper lip was curled slightly. He opened his mouth to speak but, as Carmen had earlier, simply closed it again. It wasn't necessary to speak.
They both knew what the stains were.
"I'll just paint over it," Al said as they headed back upstairs. "Right away, I'll just paint over all of it."
"And we won't tell the kids," Carmen added.
"'Course not. And we can...well, just get rid of all that stuff. Get it out of here. When we're through, it'll just be a big basement, is all."
At the top of the stairs, Carmen turned to him and said, "I can't bear the thought of looking for another place. I want us to settle down. We need to settle down so Stephen can get better."
"And we're going to. Don't worry, hon." He gave her a quick kiss and smiled, then put an arm around her shoulders as they went back upstairs.
They found that, even up there, crosses hung over every door leading down to the basement.
Outside, Mr. Lawson arrived and met them in front of the house. He was a paunchy fellow in unfaded jeans and a plaid shirt. While Al talked with his family, Carmen took Mr. Lawson aside.
"I'd like to ask you something,” she said cautiously. “This house...in the past, was it...by any chance...a funeral home?" It still seemed so ridiculous to her—even in spite of what they'd found in the basement—that her vague feeling could actually be correct that she winced when she said the words funeral home.
One comer of Mr. Lawson's mouth twitched into a smirk. "How did you find out?" he asked.
She was annoyed by his smirk and her voice held the slightest hint of anger. "Well, I think there's plenty of evidence in the basement. Have you been down there?"
He closed his eyes and nodded, smiling. "Yes, I've seen the stuff that's down there. If you don't mind, I'd just like to leave it there. I don't want any of it destroyed, or anything. They make great conversation pieces, don't you think?"
She blinked several times. This was ridiculous, but she was in no position to argue.
He said, "Yeah, the original owner's in his nineties now. He's gone off to live with his son. When I bought the place, I intended to convert it into an office building, but"—he shrugged—"zoning problems. Couldn't do it. So, I figured it'd make valuable real estate, what with the hospital expanding. Plenty of people need a place nearby. People like yourself." He gave her a big close-lipped smile and joined his hands behind his back. When Carmen didn't return his smile, he said, "Oh, don't worry, Mrs. Snedeker. The place hasn't been in use full-time for...oh, two years or so. Since then, it's only been used a couple of times. Just for special occasions."
Carmen frowned. "What kind of special occasion?"
"I mean, for members of the previous owner's family, that sort of thing." He turned toward the house and put his hands on his hips. "Yeah, the funeral-home business is in the past for this old place. You've probably figured out by now that the downstairs apartment isn't finished yet. You might want to store your things in the garage and stay in a motel or with friends, or something like that."
Carmen was facing the house, too. She nodded and said, "Yeah, okay." But her voice was flat and expressionless; she wasn't sure if she was disappointed that they couldn't move in right away...or relieved.
Al had to return to Hurleyville for work, so Carmen and the children moved into a motel room. But like most motel rooms, this one was cramped, especially with three children. After two days, Carmen decided that even an unfinished apartment would be preferable.
They returned to the house on Meridian Road and pulled some mattresses out of the garage. She and the children pushed them together in the dining room, where they decided they would sleep until the workmen were finished. But it wasn't long before the sound of Peter's unsettling wheeze began to echo off the bare walls: an asthma attack brought on, no doubt, by the sawdust in the air. They drove him to a local walk-in clinic where he was treated, then returned to the motel room. Peter was feeling much better the next day. They returned to the house and began cleaning out the sawdust to give it another try.
By that weekend, the house was in a livable state, so they began the tedious job of moving in. Al returned for the weekend and, along with his brother, moved the furniture into the apartment while Carmen began to unpack all the dishes and wash them. Stephen went downstairs to see what would be the first room of his own that he'd ever had....
Carmen stopped washing dishes and stared out the window over the sink as she thought about what her son had told her.
Yes, the house used to be a funeral home. But evil? She did not believe that a thing could be evil. It was a beautiful old house and their apartment was perfect. But...what could have made Stephen say such a thing? Why would he even think such a thing? Something had to have triggered it.
She rinsed off her hands, dried them, and caught Al on his way back out to the garage. She told him what Stephen had said.
He frowned. "I didn't say anything to him about the house," he said, a bit defensively. "Did you?"
"Of course not. We agreed."
"Then...what do you think?"
"Well"—she spread her arms—"I don't think the house is evil, if that's what you mean. How can a building be evil? Creepy, sure, I can understand that, but I don't even think it's that. At least...not very creepy. Nothing a little paint won't fix."
Al stuffed his hands in his back pockets, looking around. Stephen was nowhere in sight. "You've gotta figure," he said, "Stephen's been under a lot of strain with the treatments, and all. I don't think it's anything to worry about. He'll probably forget all about it. I wouldn't worry." Then he went out to the garage to bring in another piece of furniture.
Carmen stood in the unfinished living room and looked around. The apartment had a lot of windows, which was sort of a prerequisite with her. There were no curtains on them at the moment, though. Even so, there didn't seem to be much light coming through in spite of the sunny day outside, no shafts of sunlight spilling bright pools on the floor. She walked to one of the panes and ran two fingertips over it.
"Have to wash these," she muttered. "Have to wash these first thing."
But when she rubbed her thumb in tiny circles over her fingertips, they did not feel the least bit dirty.