During the #coronavirus pandemic, I am regularly posting stories and selections from my published collections and novels. Read for free! Reading is the best at this time!
This 13th free offering is Chapter 67 of "Summer Place: Book Three of the Thunder Rise Trilogy," published by Crossroad Press in March 2013.
Chapter 67
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Caleb felt it
as soon as he and his sister crossed the threshold into the kitchen of the
summer place. He felt it grow as they went room to room, calling their father’s
name, getting no answer — only a spooky echo of Caleb’s voice that was like the
time Mommy had taken them to the Museum of Art and he’d shouted down a long
marble corridor. He could see the Dark Thoughts now, quite plainly: They’d
returned from their hiding place the instant they’d come inside.
Something was wrong.
But what?
Well, Daddy was missing, that was wrong. That was
scary, if you thought about it too much, which Caleb tried not to. He kept
telling himself that Daddy must be in the barn, or maybe out looking for Paul,
or getting help somehow. And he’d be back very, very soon.
No, it wasn’t just Daddy’s absence that had
brought the Dark Thoughts out of their hiding place. It wasn’t the by-now-dull
ache from where he’d been bitten. Bites were no fun, but they hurt a less than
bee stings, and if you tried really, really hard — if you did what Daddy always
advised, “grin and bear it” — you could almost forget about them.
So what could it be?
The house. It had to be something about the house. Standing on the second-story landing, holding his sister’s hand, looking down the stairs into the brilliantly illuminated living room, Caleb struggled to figure what, exactly, was wrong with the house.
On the surface, nothing was different.
All the furniture was where it belonged. His and
Sarah’s toys were where they were supposed to be, in their rooms. There were
dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. The candle they’d been burning was still in
the living room, along with the empty cans of Raid. And those bugs — the dead
bodies of the ones they’d killed were scattered around, and there were a few
new live ones, which Caleb had dispatched to bug heaven with his remaining
Raid. If anything, the house should have been less creepy — the power was on, and
as they’d moved through the house, Caleb had turned on every single light. It
was like daytime in here now, so bright there didn’t seem to be any shadows.
No, it should have felt OK. Should have felt good.
But it didn’t.
It was like someone was watching them. Like the house was watching them. Like the walls
and the ceilings had trick mirrors and there was someone behind them, following
them as they moved, listening, listening to what was inside his head... the
Dark Thoughts... and waiting...
waiting.
“Daddy?” he called, his voice thinning. “Daddy are
you up there?”
He had not opened the door to the attic yet.
Except for the barn and cellar, which wasn’t sure he wanted to check, the attic
was the last place left. The entire first floor, the bedrooms, bathroom, even
behind the sofa and in the downstairs closet — he’d looked, and Daddy wasn’t
there.
Don’t have
to check the attic, he thought. Daddy
wouldn’t have gone up there.
But what if he had? What if, for some reason that
made sense only to a grownup, he’d climbed up there and had an accident? Like
Caleb had had that accident under the barn? What if he was up there on the
floor right now, unconscious, needing to be rescued, the way Caleb had needed
to be rescued?
For the first time, it occurred to Caleb that
Daddy might not be OK. The realization terrified him. So many other bad things
had happened this weekend, but Daddy — Daddy had been all right. Daddy had been
invincible.
I have to go
up. Even Mommy, mad as she was at Daddy, would have insisted he go up if
she’d been able to advise him.
“Sarah?” he said, his voice a whisper.
Sarah did not respond. Her tears had dried up —
she’d been crying so long and so hard there probably weren’t any tears left,
Caleb figured — but she was still out there in another dimension. Since the
car, she’d been like that. She’d followed Caleb obediently, without a whimper
of protest, without a word of any kind, not even when he talked to her. It was
like she was sleep-walking.
“Sarah?” he said again. “I have to check up there.
I’m gonna just run up and come right back. You think you’ll be OK?”
Caleb squeezed his sister’s hand. She kept staring
into nothingness.
“You’ll be OK,” he said encouragingly. “I’ll only
be a second.”
He opened the door and turned on the light,
illuminating the wooden stairs, where new cobwebs had materialized since his
last visit. Just before he’d broken his ankle, he’d snuck up here to
investigate those two old trunks that had come with the house. Both had been
unlocked, and both were empty.
“Here I go!” he announced.
Up he went, favoring his hurt ankle, which all of
a sudden was throbbing. He stopped at the top of the stairs. The bulb that lit
the stairs didn’t work so well up here. Whole corners of the attic were
shadowy, and some — in the rafters there behind the chimney, for example — were
downright dark. But this would have to do. There was only one light in the
attic.
But it wasn’t the shadows that sent a shiver
through Caleb. It was the trunks, side by side by the tiny window.
The trunks were open.
He’d closed them after exploring that day.
He remembered that vividly, as vividly as he
always remembered the details of his mischief, as his parents called it. Mommy
had a real eye for that sort of thing. She was like Sherlock Holmes, finding
all the clues. Seeing the trunks open when they were supposed to be closed —
she’d automatically finger him. So he knew he’d closed them.
They were definitely open now.
He could not see inside yet, only the lining on
the insides of their lids, a red cloth as soft to the touch.
Just like
coffins, the Dark Thoughts shrieked at him. Your Daddy’s coffin. Your Mommy’s coffin. Mommy and Daddy, laid out in
their best clothes, and cold as January. Would you like to see them one last
time before they’re buried? Before they’re six feet deep? Before the worms
crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on their snout?
“They’re not dead!” Caleb screamed. “They’re
alive!”
He was frozen now. He still could not see inside
the trunks, but he did not want to. He wanted to go back downstairs, run out of
the house, run to...
Run to where? To whom?
And what if
Daddy was in one of the trunks? he wondered, his mind racing. Not dead, but
hurt real bad? It did not occur to Caleb how improbable that would be. On the
contrary, on this horrible weekend, Daddy in a trunk would almost make sense.
Caleb had to see.
And so he forced himself across the floor, forced
himself to drag his cast and ignore how the light seemed to be dimming, the
shadows growing longer, the walls pressing in on him. Closer to the first
trunk, his angle of vision increasing, able to see more and more of the inside.
The first trunk was empty.
On toward the second one he moved, closer,
hobbling, almost able to see to the bottom now, almost—
There was a body there.
A dead body, dressed in a fancy suit — a tuxedo,
isn’t that what they called it? Daddy had worn one once to a wedding.
A dead body — old and gray. Worse — much worse —
parts of him had been eaten. There was no mistaking it. The flesh was flecked
and wormholed, the way garbage looked after maggots had gone to work. Eaten.
Eaten. The eyes were gone, nothing but the sockets left. The hands, folded
across stomach... they were bloody stumps, cartilage and bone only. And the
mouth, the lipless mouth. It was open and something was inside, curled around
its teeth. Something white and moving. A worm. Eating.
Eating.
You could hear it.
Caleb’s bladder let go. His breathing was coming
in fits now and he felt like he’d been punched. For the first time since the
car, he wanted to cry.
Valkenburgh.
Caleb knew immediately. Knew because he’d seen
Valkenburgh’s picture in that article Mommy had Xeroxed at the library, an
article he’d found snooping through the pile of books and articles and all the
other stuff about bugs she’d hidden in her bottom drawer, under her sweaters.
Caleb screamed. He screamed and turned and
tripped, hitting the floor with a slap. Crying, he got back on his feet. It
didn’t matter that his ankle was shooting stilettos of pain through his body.
He bounded down the stairs, hit the landing, and grabbed his sister’s arm.
“Come on!” he managed.
Sarah didn’t move.
“COME ON!”
But she could not be budged. Had withdrawn further
into herself, into a catatonic state.
For a second, Caleb thought of going without her.
Leaving her on the landing, to take her chances with... it. But he could not do it. He loved his little sister and he’d
been raised believing it was his solemn duty to protect her. He couldn’t
abandon her now.
“SARAH, PLEASE!”
He looked up the stairs, certain that Valkenburgh
would appear there.
But Valkenburgh did not appear there. Caleb
pleaded and begged, and one minute turned into two, and there was no sound, no
Valkenburgh, only the feeling of being watched.
“We have to go!” Caleb shouted. “We have to find
Daddy!”
Sarah finally stood. She stared emptily, as if her
brother had become invisible.
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