Darling (21 page)

“No. C’mon. Might what?”

She shook her head. “You’ll think I’m being silly.”

“I already think you’re being silly. Might what?”

“It might, I don’t know, explain my dreams.”

“Ah. There’s the rub.”

She kicked his thigh, a little harder this time. He didn’t seem to notice. “Listen, asshat. If a bunch of Civil War soldiers were tortured and executed in your basement, don’t you think there might be some kind of energy left over?”

He laughed. “Here we go with another ‘haunted house’ story, huh?”

She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest and scowled. “You are in rare form tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t think you’re being a tad dismissive? A tad condescending?”

His brow furrowed. She could feel the tension building in the air like static electricity. A fight was coming. They had never fought before, but she knew the feeling well from old boyfriends, from her Dad and brother. She wished that the conversation hadn’t gone down this road, that tonight wasn’t going to be their first fight, but it was too late. Her hackles were raised and, as much as she didn’t want it, she
needed
to fight.

“Dismissive, huh?” He laughed again. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “Because you’re trying to pin some fucked up dream of yours on a Civil War graveyard under my apartment building? Excuse me if I don’t merrily follow that train of thought to its predictable conclusion.”

Where did this come from? Why were they fighting over something so trivial? So stupid? But even as those thoughts ran through her mind, her hands clenched the pillow tight enough for her knuckles to go white.

“You’re a bastard.” She threw the pillow at him and jumped to her feet. “You know how much that dream bothers me. You know!”

Dennis was on his feet in a flash. “Yeah, I know. But c’mon, Eileen!”

They stared at each other, eyes red with fury, hands trembling. But the phrase brought a smile to Eileen’s face. Then Dennis laughed, and she laughed too, and the tension was broken.

“C’mon Eileen?” She asked and playfully shoved him.

“Should I get you some overalls and a banjo?”

He laughed again. “I didn’t even think of that. Bet you’ve heard that your whole life, huh?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

He smiled again and then looked to his feet. “Listen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Shhh.” She kissed him. “We’ve both been under a lot of stress. Let’s just forget about it.”

“Deal.” He held out his hand and they shook.

“I think I’m going to head off to bed.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah?”

“None of that. You can give me a backrub, though.”

He glanced at his watch. “You know, actually, I think

I’m going to head home.”

Her stomach sank. “Home?”

“Yeah. I just…I feel a little antsy now and I haven’t been spending a lot of time at home lately. I thought maybe I’d see if Mike wanted to go grab a drink or watch a movie or something.”

“Okay. That’s cool. I didn’t need you waking me at three in the morning with your hand on my breast anyway.” She smiled.

He smiled back and kissed her. He sat and slipped on his shoes. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Umm…not sure yet. Give me a call.”

“Alright.” He stood and kissed her again. It was short and felt like a formality. Had she said something wrong? No. The fight (if she could even call it that) was over before it had begun.

“Love you.” He headed for the door.

“Love you, too.”

But he was gone already. Eileen sat on the couch, pulled her knees to her chest, and twirled a finger in her hair. This was her thinking ritual. She twirled and untwirled, wondering what all of that could have been about. Dennis had seemed distracted the past two days. Even when they had been in bed, he hadn’t seemed present. They didn’t make love
with
one another. He had
fucked
her. The more she thought about it, the more she realized it had been done
to
her instead of
with
her and it made her feel sick. What could cause that?

She thought back to past relationships and how things had gone wrong. The signs had been the same with all of them and a thought rushed into her head.

Was there another woman?

She banished it as soon as it appeared. Don’t be paranoid, she told herself. That’s silly. He just had a bad week. Probably work. School starts soon. Just let it go.

But as she laid down in the dark of her room and drifted off to sleep, the thought danced through her brain, taunting her, reminding her of past failures and past abuses. She slept fitfully.

* * *

A hot puddle of sweat pulled Jack from his dream. He shook his head, wiped his face dry with an oil-stained rag, and glanced at his watch. It was ten at night. How long had he been asleep? It had still been light outside when he had come down here.

He climbed from his stool and yawned. Stretched. He looked around his workshop. Everything seemed in order. He had the nagging suspicion that something was off, though. He couldn’t shake it. All of his tools were there and in place. None of the lamps had gone out. His notebooks were in order. What was it?

Probably nothing. Maybe the dream.

What was he dreaming?

He couldn’t quite remember. It had something to do with the supermarket, the forest, and the grate.

The grate.

He snatched his keys and a flashlight. He paused for a second, trying to piece together the dream. All he remembered was the grate and a sense of something gone horribly wrong. He had always lived by the adage “better to be safe than sorry,” and so unlocked the old Army issued footlocker in the corner. He pulled his gun out, checked it, loaded it, and clicked the safety on.

One of the bulbs overhead flickered.

Cold trickled down his back. He grabbed a rag and checked the bulb. Something had shaken it loose, probably the kids in the apartment overhead wrestling around or playing that dancing video game of theirs. He sighed and tightened it.

He left his workshop, fastening each of the locks behind him.

The basement was alive with shadows. They spilled out from every corner, from under every box, and seemed to writhe in irritation under the dim lights. He erratically moved his flashlight around, dispelling one patch before moving on to the next. He hated it down here after dark. Why had he let himself fall asleep like that? He hadn’t been outside of his apartment after nightfall in almost ten years.

Something had changed.

That was exactly the problem. He wasn’t sure what it was, but could feel it in the air. The pressure was different, the feel of it against his skin. Something itched inside of his skull and no matter how hard he scratched he couldn’t get rid of it. It made him feel anxious and…

And afraid.

He clenched his jaw and went outside. The swollen moon draped pale blue light across the grounds, but he wasn’t sure if he liked that or not. Yes, he had light, but sometimes light just created more shadows. Shadows were not the same thing as the dark. Not in his experience.

He made his way through the woods by rote. Twigs snapped under his boots and he heard tiny feet scurry away from him every now and then. Probably possums, he reminded himself. No reason to let that bother him.

More than once his light reflected back from a spider’s web hung between two trees and he had to change his path. One belonged to a giant black widow that perched in the center, its sleek body almost as reflective as the webbing it rested on. The red hourglass on its underside shined like a neon warning sign as its front legs tapped against the cocooned body of a cicada. The insect writhed in the web, a futile struggle, as the spider’s feet kept their rhythm, drumming away like fingers while waiting for the thing to die.

He didn’t like the sight of it. The feeling that it was an omen gripped him. The Cherokee and Creek Indians that used to inhabit the area strongly believed in animal signs. He had always been interested in the indigenous people here, in their culture and beliefs, but couldn’t quite remember what spiders signified. It couldn’t be anything good, though. Of that much he was certain.

All of this area used to belong to those people. In his study of the history of this place, a study that tried and failed to shed some light on the countless entries in his “Anomalies” binder, he had traced it back to their occupation. Unfortunately they kept no written records.

What little he did know about that time was something scratched down in a land grant to Ms. Miriam Stowe, the Irish schoolteacher who had built her little schoolhouse on the hill where the apartment complex now sat. It was written by the land’s previous owner, a minor British aristocrat turned American land surveyor named Virgil Tiberius Lawson, in 1815. He had sold off most of his properties after the War of 1812, when Americans eyed everything British with suspicion. The only mention of the land prior to that time was found in the third paragraph, which he had copied by hand from a microfiche of the document at the University’s library in Knoxville. He had read over it a thousand times, trying to decipher a meaning he knew lay hidden between the lines of perfectly scrawled words. He had read it so many times that he couldn’t help but commit it to memory. As he neared the downward slope toward the concrete tube, those words ran through his mind:

God grant that Ms. Stowe find fresh air and calm and quiet environs for her teachings and her wish to Enlighten and Educate the young ones of these poor farming communities. The savages at one time revered this land until some time before the Good Christian farmers moved in when, in the barbaric ways of their people, two groups of them slaughtered one another in its fields. Christian folk came upon their remains still lying in the grasses after so many years and having rotted away to bones. A Learned fellow amongst them thus took to calling the place
Ex Campus Osses Pulchriflori
, a crude and likely inaccurate Latin that can be translated to “The Field of Beautifully Flowered Bones” and referring to both the carnage and the wild array of flowers that had found nourishment and sprouted from the dead. This has since been shortened by locals to
Camp O.P.,
or
Camp Opie
as they are prone to pronounce it. I do not wish to distress you with this tale but thought it prudent to tell you, both for your love of History and to prepare you for the superstitions that you will most assuredly encounter from the locals regarding the place, those pious yet unlearned folk who will refuse to allow their children ‘round after night falls and will undoubtedly try to frighten you with absurd tales of Haints and Will O’ the Wisps and Black Hounds scouring the area, despite any and all evidence to the contrary.

The rest of the document was pure and boring legalese, but this long paragraph had stuck in Jack’s mind since he had first read it six years ago. Yes, there were the legends of the locals with their “Haints” and “Black Hounds,” but what intrigued him the most was the “Field of Beautifully Flowered Bones.” Why did those two groups of people, likely Creek or Cherokee warriors, decide to slaughter one another
here
? Were they drawn here by the strangeness of the place, or did their slaughter cause it? There was no way to know.

He crested a small rise and made his way slowly and carefully down the other side and through the ditch. He clicked the gun’s safety to the “off ” position and crept toward the tube.

He raised his light and almost screamed.

The grate was thrown wide, gaping at him like a hungry mouth.

He rushed down and slammed it shut. A loud
bang
echoed through the tunnel and he regretted letting the fear take hold of him like that. The way the sound carried inside there, they would be coming soon. He glanced to the locks and saw that they were intact. In fact, they hadn’t even been unlocked. The grate showed absolutely no sign of being tampered with.

Yet there it was gaping open like the cave Ulysses took to the Underworld.

He fumbled with his keys. Dropped them. Cursed. Snatched them up, undoing the locks and re-securing them as fast as he could. When they were all in place he tugged on them one by one. They held.

Then how was the grate open?

His instincts told him to rush back to his apartment, lock his door, and hide in bed with the gun in his lap until dawn. But he couldn’t. He had to know if they had gotten out.

He heard scratching along the inside of the tube as something made its way up. He shined his light down, seeing nothing but black for a long time, before he caught a glimpse of eyes and gnashing teeth barreling toward the grate. He wished he had brought meat for them so they wouldn’t focus on him. But he didn’t, and before long they were all there, scrambling over each other, throwing their weight against the grating, drooling and growling. He counted them, recounted them, and counted them again. They were all there.

Then how did the grate open?

Something was very wrong here.

He did the only thing he could think of to ensure they didn’t get out again. He raised the gun and opened fire. The shots were like great thunderclaps echoing through the tube. They tore through the ones that pressed against the grate and the rest of them scurried back into the dark. He hated killing them like this, knew somewhere deep down that he wasn’t supposed to, but the instinct was too strong. If they ever got out...well, that was too horrible to consider.

One of the ones he shot whimpered and limped back into the black. The other one was dead, part of its face split open down the center and leaking blood and brain matter onto the concrete. The shots still echoed in his ears and all he could hear was a high pitched humming.

He jumped when the dead one moved.

He raised his gun, his finger quivering over the trigger, but stopped. It
was
dead. Its glassy stare was proof of that. But still it moved, sliding slowly backwards down the tube. He heard growling and realized they were dragging it back down.

Did they have that much compassion?