It was a hot summer with day after day of endless blue skies and nights covered with brightly shining stars. The air was redolent with honeysuckle, and during the day, the neighborhood rang with the laughter of children.
Tanya had a baby girl and named her Kara, and sometimes the sound of her crying was picked up by a summer breeze and carried to Carmen's. The sound made Carmen smile; somehow, it made the neighborhood complete, more comfortable.
So why does something not feel right? Carmen asked herself again and again. The question was asked by an inner voice so quiet it was almost inaudible...because Carmen was trying her best to silence it.
Stephen hated his treatments more every day and was becoming more resistant. He was rude to the doctors and nurses in the hospital and sometimes even snapped at Carmen. She tried to take it in stride, tried to tell herself that it was to be expected considering the strain the treatments put on the boy. But it worried her nevertheless. On top of that, he'd lost more weight and was looking more frail than ever before. Sometimes when she hugged him, she feared he would break.
Dr. Simon told her it was a good sign, though.
"If he's being cantankerous," the doctor said, "that means he's holding up. If he's fighting us, then he's fighting the cancer. It's encouraging."
So maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all. According to the doctor, Stephen was doing very well and was likely to do even better.
That was good. So what didn't feel right?
Al was still working in New York, but came home every weekend like clockwork. The hard workweeks and long drives, not to mention his ongoing concern for Stephen, were wearing hard on him; he drank more when he was home on the weekends and was growing short-tempered. But, in spite of his grumbling, he was willing to help around the house. He painted the stained walls downstairs.
They went to church every Sunday; Carmen became involved in church activities, just as she had back home in New York, and had made some friends there, women with whom she was able to spend time during the week. Plus she saw Tanya a lot and they took turns taking care of one another's kids so each of them could get away from the house once in a while.
So what was it?
The other children, Stephanie and Peter, were fine. Michael was still in Alabama, but called regularly. Everything was just fine.
Except for...something.
The feeling had started the day she'd mopped the kitchen floor.
Kitchens seemed to be the first casualty in a house full of children, and it hadn't taken long for the brick-red mosaic linoleum floor in the Snedekers' kitchen to lose its shine, despite regular, if hurried, moppings. So, one day a few weeks ago, Carmen had gotten the mop and bucket, taken off her shoes and rolled her pantlegs halfway up to her knees, and begun a real scrubbing.
The kids were all outside that afternoon and the house was quiet.
The mop sloshed back and forth over the linoleum, its soggy strands of cotton writhing like tentacles over Pepsi stains and water spots. Carmen had mopped enough kitchen floors to be able to do it with a certain detachment, so she'd dipped the mop into the bucket a few times before she finally noticed the smell.
It wasn't very strong, but the cloying, coppery smell was certainly unpleasant.
Then she noticed the water in the bucket.
The mop's strands were a glistening crimson.
And Carmen's bare feet were smeared with red. In fact, the entire floor was smeared with red. She stared down at her feet with her lip curled up in a sickened grimace. The smell hung in the air like smoke.
Suddenly, Carmen thought of what Stephen had said their first day in the house—Mom, we have to leave this house. There's something evil here—and her heart began to thunder in her chest as she stared at the dark red fluid on the floor all around her, smelling that faint but awful smell.
"No, it can't be," she whispered to herself, "that can't be it, it's just...just the linoleum, that's all. That's all."
Deciding she couldn't let the kids see the mess, she quickly cleaned it up, using old kitchen towels and nearly half a roll of paper towels for the finishing touches. Then she'd given the room a couple of shots of air freshener.
"Just have Al rip that linoleum up, is all," she muttered. "That's what I'll do."
But it had bothered her that day, and in the days that followed.
Carmen hadn't told Al about it. She wasn't sure how. And what if he laughed it off? She just didn't look forward to mopping the floor again.
The kitchen floor was part of Carmen's off-center feeling. Another part was the fact that Stephen had stopped talking about the voices he'd been hearing in the house. He no longer made references to the house's being evil. In the space of just a few weeks, he'd simply stopped, as if it had never come up in the first place.
Carmen tried to tell herself that it was a good thing, that it was a sign Stephen was getting better. But whenever she told herself that, her inner voice whispered, Is it?
Sometimes, she walked into a room to find Stephen and Stephanie talking to one another with hushed, secretive voices. When they saw her, they would fall silent and pull away from one another, as if they had been caught doing something wrong. She'd thought nothing of it at first, but when it continued to happen—half a dozen times or so—she began to wonder if perhaps they were keeping something from her.
"So, what're you guys talking about?" she asked one day when she found them whispering on the sofa in the living room. She seated herself in Al's recliner and watched for their reaction.
Stephen shrugged and muttered, "Nothin'." He turned to the cartoons on television.
"We were wondering when Dad's coming home to stay," Stephanie said.
"It won't be long now," Carmen said. "It'll be a month, maybe a little less, till his transfer comes through."
Stephanie nodded, then she, too, turned her attention to the television.
It's just your imagination, Carmen told herself. They aren't keeping any secrets and Stephen is getting better and everything is just fine!
But, as it had so often recently, that tiny voice in the basement of her mind whispered, So why does something not feel right?
Stephen had stopped talking to his mom about the voices he heard because it didn't do any good. She didn't believe him. He didn't talk to Al about them, either; Al had become so cranky lately that if Stephen so much as hinted at the topic of disembodied voices, he snapped at him to knock it off and act his age.
The only person Stephen could talk to about voices was Stephanie. Although she still insisted she'd seen a woman appear in her bedroom, Stephanie did not hear voices. "But," she told Stephen one day as they whispered together on the sofa in the living room, "sometimes I...I..." Her face was tense with thought, with frustration at not being able to find the right words. It was much too tense for a six-year-old. "I feel like I'm not alone when I really am. Nobody's with me, I don't see nobody, but...I feel like there is somebody there."
But she didn't hear the voices Stephen heard: the cold, sneaky voices...the angry, mocking voices...
Only Stephen heard those.
But Stephanie was always willing to listen to him talk about them and had promised not to mention them to Mom. Her responses were neither judgmental nor disbelieving, but were filled with little-girl concern. Stephen found their talks comforting; they made him feel less alone.
Even so, the voice was becoming more insistent, more demanding. It seemed to know when it was frightening him— and it seemed to enjoy his fear.
"Stephen?"
Stephen froze outside the bathroom late one night. Everyone had gone to bed long ago, but Stephen had awakened with a full bladder. The voice spoke to him on his way out of the bathroom.
"Stephen, come down here," it whispered.
Stephen headed down the hall, his body chilled with fear, legs stiff with tension. But he moved slowly because, in spite of his fear, he was drawn to the voice, compelled to stop and listen to what it had to say.
"We have things to talk about, Stephen," the voice went on. "There are things to be done. No time to waste, Stephen. Let's get started."
What things? he thought, moving a little faster now. Get started on what?
"Time to stop putting it off," the voice said, then chuckled. It was a sound like ice cubes clacking together.
Stephen rounded the corner and went into the dark living room.
"I have things to tell you, Stephen. We have things to do." The voice was still whispering and yet Stephen could still hear it clearly.
He turned on the lamp at one end of the sofa, then the other. Under his pillow, he had a Walkman with an AM/FM radio and a pair of tiny earplug-like headphones. He'd had his mom get them for him from downstairs. He fumbled the small disks into his ears, turned on the radio and turned up the volume.
Music pounded in his head from a local rock station and he felt his body begin to relax.
But through that music, through the throbbing beat and the shrieking voices, Stephen thought he heard, for a moment, the voice's hard, cold chuckle....
It happened at different times and in different parts of the house, but no one else ever heard it. Stephen began to wonder if the voice was perhaps in his head; otherwise, why didn't anyone else hear it talking about the things it wanted to tell Stephen, about the things he needed to do?
Why was he the only one? He saw things, too...sort of. Sometimes, he would catch a glimpse of something moving quickly to his right or left, nothing more than a gray blur in his peripheral vision; when he turned toward it, there was nothing there. The first few times, it had happened so quickly that he thought he'd imagined it, or that perhaps it had been Willy darting through the room in that quick, wiggly way he had. Then he realized that, whatever it was, it was darting from behind one piece of furniture to another, as if to hide from him. Stephen told no one of what he'd seen—or at least thought he'd seen—not even Stephanie. It seemed too vague to talk about; he felt silly enough for what he'd said already.
But he also felt afraid. First the voice, which was becoming more ominous all the time, then the glimpses of something small and gray darting around him, hiding from him mockingly. What was next?
That was what frightened Stephen. He didn't know what was next, but somehow, deep in his gut, in his bones, he knew there would be more...and he wasn't looking forward to it.
With the summer winding down, it was time for Michael to come home and get ready to start another year of school. Around noon on Saturday, Al took the kids to the airport with him to get Michael while Carmen stayed home and prepared a big meal.
Carmen had been raised in a family that believed in celebrating things—big or small—with food. It was Labor Day weekend and she wanted to get it off to a good start, so she cooked up plenty of fried chicken and corn on the cob and hot rolls; she made a green salad, a potato salad, set out two kinds of chips and made plenty of iced tea. Then, when she knew they would be home anytime, she set all of it out buffet-style on the dining-room table.
She went to the kitchen, got a stack of plates from the cupboard and put it at the end of the table, then put the silverware beside it. She was about to set out some napkins when the telephone rang. Carmen went into the living room to answer it.
It was Wanda Jean.
"Has my boy got there yet?" Wanda Jean asked.
"Not yet, Mom. I expect them any minute.”
"How's Stephen?"
"Oh, the same. His treatments end in another week, unless the doctor says otherwise."
"What then?"
"Then we pray a lot."
Carmen explained she was in the middle of fixing a big lunch and promised to call back later. She hung up and headed toward the dining room, but froze halfway down the hall, her feet coming to a halt on the wood floor as she stared at the dining room table.
The stack of plates was gone and so was the silverware.
Carmen closed her eyes a moment, then opened them, half hoping to find that they had only been playing tricks on her and the plates and silverware were still there after all.
But they were not.
Taking slow, almost cautious steps, she crossed the dining room and went into the kitchen where she opened the cupboard.
All the plates were stacked in their regular place.
Her mouth opened as she frowned and made a noise as if she were about to speak, but she didn't. Instead, she closed the cupboard and pulled the silverware drawer open.
The silverware she'd removed—or thought she'd removed— had been replaced.
She closed her mouth, pressed her lips tightly together and could hear her breaths coming rapidly through her nose. Slamming the drawer closed, she spun around, leaned back on the edge of the counter and murmured half her thoughts aloud. That's all it was, I just— "—thought I set them out, that's all, I just—" —thought I did it, but I didn't, is all, because it's really— "—hot today, and with the cooking and— "—the stress, there's been a lot of stress around here, and—
"—yeah, yeah, that's all it was, just a little...mistake." There was suddenly a burst of sound and movement in the house and Carmen started, clutching her chest with one hand and letting out a little yelp.
"Hey, Mom!" Michael called, stomping through the hall and into the dining room, grinning into the kitchen at her.
The others came in behind him, talking, laughing. Carmen took a deep breath, held the tiny crucifix around her neck between thumb and forefinger and sent up a silent prayer.