Ghosts of Eden (13 page)

Uncle Xander fixed him with eyes dark and foreboding. “But you care for her, don’t you? Even just a little. She’s such an innocent.”

“What are you saying? Is that a threat?”

His uncle puffed on his pipe, then turned and began to follow the path once more. Garty followed a couple of steps behind. The afternoon forest seemed to brood, the breeze rustling the needles helplessly, forlornly. Garty had been right, the path had been circling around, and soon they came out at the bottom of the gravel driveway, the house beckoning ahead.

When they reached the steps leading up to the front door, Uncle Xander said, “The first lesson begins tomorrow sharply at nine in the library.”

Garty didn’t say anything as he followed his uncle up the steps and into the house.

* * *

He spent the rest of the day looking for Kayla, but couldn’t find her anywhere.

After a quick bite to eat in the kitchen, he gave up the search and returned to his room, exhausted.

He stood by the open window watching the sunset flare orange over the trees. It was early for bed, but he could sleep and had nothing better to do. He could smell a faint odor in the air, an open drain or trashcan. He got into bed and lay on his back beneath the blankets. His mind swirled with thoughts of Uncle Xander.

He saw the strange old man looking at him when he thought Garty hadn’t noticed; he saw those eyes, open and eager, hungry to begin. Begin what? His lessons with Kayla? His games? What was the man hiding? Why had he really invited Garty out here? Kayla. His sister. Sister? How could that be? He’d only known her a day. Was there something his mom hadn’t told him?

He saw footsteps in the dirt along the path, several sets. Uncle Xander’s? Kayla’s? The photograph on the wall in his room that might be Dr. Thayer with his chemistry set; Kayla’s eyes wide and scared; his uncle’s thin smile, his face in sunlight…

His eyes closed.

The music was distant, but it wasn’t in his head. It must be coming through the walls, Garty thought, from Uncle Xander’s room. He sat up. He put his ear to the wall, listening. He left the bed and went to the open window. It was coming from outside, from somewhere distantly in the forest. He couldn’t see a light, or any indication of activity amongst the trees, at least not from here. He held his breath. It sounded like chanting, droning rhythmically, but faint, hallucinatory.

For a moment, the music grew louder, then faded to almost complete silence.

Garty walked to the door and opened it. It was dark now and there was a light on in Kayla’s room—he hadn’t heard her come in—but the music was not coming from there. It seemed not to be coming from his uncle’s laboratory either. The voices and drums washed through the night.

The sound grew louder, so that he could almost make out the melody, and at the same time, a foul stench filled the air. It was the trashcan smell he’d noticed earlier. It grew increasingly foul, as if its source were moving below his window. It was pungent, like disease and rotting flesh, but when he looked below, the bottom of the house was obscured in shadows. He could see nothing, no movement. He plugged his nose, breathing through his mouth.

The sound ceased completely, abruptly. The smell faded, became faint. Garty stood by the window, listening, wondering. The smell was gone, and the night silent. There was no sound inside the house, no creaking stairs, no gently closed doors, nothing.

He was alone. It was as if he’d imagined everything. He lay awake in bed for a long time. His earlier swirling thoughts had been replaced with something more abstract, more looming, more present, a sense of being slowly smothered beneath something unnamable, something unseen, something like dread.

In the morning, he’d go to the library, to Uncle Xander’s first lesson, but he’d be careful.

FIVE

Kayla wondered where the cat had gone; she hadn’t seen it since Garty had arrived. She sighed, watching a white butterfly alight in a patch of dandelions, then twist away. She began to walk down toward the woods.

But there was something strange about him…the man you saw earlier…the one in the garden…
Beneath the trees, she stopped for a moment, listening.
His skin so smooth, so pink…

She followed the path. She came into a clearing where tattered grass grew like a torn bale of yellow straw.

…what if you saw the man running toward you, wide eyes flashing through skin glistening like bubblegum, wrinkleless face contorted with fear…

She froze, going cold inside. Ahead of her, something shifted in the trees. She strained to catch a glimpse of whatever was moving through the foliage. It was large. A branch snapped. She took a step forward. It was a person. It was wearing some sort of faded orange garment. It had long black hair. The branches rustled more forcefully. She was unable to take her eyes from the person coming toward her.

It was a woman, she thought, and she seemed to be struggling with the bushes, trying to come straight through instead of going around. For a moment, she caught a glimpse of the woman’s face, and Kayla gasped. She was so young! Kayla couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t move.

The woman finally managed to thrust through the bushes and stood on the opposite edge of the clearing in her faded orange bathrobe. She held something white and fluffy tucked in her arms.

“Don’t stare, dear.”

“Mom?”

“Come here. I found your cat.”

Kayla’s eyes flicked to the fluffy thing in her mom’s arms. Her legs began to move beneath her, and it felt as if she were wading through water, being pulled across the clearing.

When she was halfway across, her mouth opened: “What are you doing?”

Her mom smiled, lazy and calm, her eyes barely open. “I don’t know. I feel…good…”

Kayla stopped a few feet from where her mom stood. The cat peered out at her from the robe, then it leapt to the ground and streaked between Kayla’s legs and disappeared down the path behind her.

“You better go after your cat,” her mom said.

“But…” She felt awkward, unsure what to do. Part of her wanted to embrace her mom and part of her wanted to flee, to run away fast. She stood frozen with indecision.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll come see you later.”

“Fine.” Kayla shivered. She turned and hurried down the path. She glanced behind her, before losing sight of the clearing, and her mom was still standing where she’d left her, unmoving and stiff, with her eyes closed, as if sleeping.

Kayla rounded the bend and felt the chill that had wrapped her heart immediately begin to thaw. The cat was sitting on the mossy remains of a fallen tree just ahead of her, watching her with sarcastic cat’s eyes, as if to say:
What are you so freaked out about? Stop worrying. Let’s go.

Kayla followed the cat.

* * *

When she reached the house, she didn’t want to go inside. She wasn’t sure what to think of what had just happened to her. Her mom was dead. It was a simple fact and she accepted it. She’d looked so strange. It had looked like her mom, but certain things had been missing, certain details, wrinkles and lines; facial expressions. She knew it hadn’t been her mom, but then what was it?

She must be going crazy, she thought. She was hallucinating. She wasn’t sleeping and her imagination was running rampant and she was losing her grip on reality. What alternative was there?

She swept her thoughts aside.

She followed the cat around the side of the house and into the backyard. The cat let her pick it up, hugging it to her. It smelled like dirt and dead grass.

“Silly cat. I wonder if you have a name.”

The cat looked up at her from her lap, eyes solemn and knowing.

“You look like a…Eustis. How about Eustis?”

The cat stared.

“Whatever,” Kayla said. “That’s what I’m going to call you. Unless you can tell me what your real name is?”

The cat bobbed its head.

Kayla giggled again. “Stupid cat.”

* * *

While she ate dinner alone, Uncle Xander stepped into the room. “Are you excited for tomorrow?”

Kayla glanced at her uncle between a bite of something succulent. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes. Your classes begin tomorrow. I will see you in the library promptly at nine for your first lesson.”

She was just about to ask her uncle what he was talking about when she remembered the note from breakfast. Her mouth was full, so she nodded her head.

“Good. I look forward to it as well. Be sure to get some sleep tonight.” He stood. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Is my mom coming to stay with us?”

Uncle Xander froze. For a moment, a strange look crossed his face, then flashed away, replaced with his usual blank expression. “Of course not.”

“I saw my mom in the woods.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “And I saw a stranger in the garden.”

Uncle Xander turned fully to face her, glared at her from across the room. “You must have been dreaming.”

“I don’t think…”

Uncle Xander raised his hand. “I told you there’d be visitors.” He turned his back to her, whisked to the doorway. “Don’t forget—you belong to me now,” he said, then was gone.

INTERLUDE: LOS ALAMOS

A local sophomore at the high school, Peter Jeffrey has been missing for months, and the town, being as small as it is, is rampant with speculation as to his whereabouts. Some believe he is a runaway, it being a well-known fact the Jeffrey kid is a troublemaker, despite his father being a respected pastor at the Methodist church. Others believe something more serious must have happened to him. Peter’s face flaps from every light post and telephone pole on every street corner, from one end of town to the other. At the local Starbucks, his name is spoken in hushed tones: “My son says after he started doing drugs he became a different person;” “My husband caught him slashing tires on Trinity Avenue;” “He hung around the wrong crowd, strange folk not from around here;” and the barista girls—fellow Los Alamos High School inmates, two of whom claim to have slept with him at various mountain parties—pointing to his picture plastered on the wall and smiling, and giggling, while they steam milk and Rachael spits in Mrs. Granger’s latte, their overly-strict bitch of an economics teacher. There is talk he may have been killed. There hasn’t been a homicide case in Los Alamos since Ellen Shelton poured a bottle of bleach over her husband’s face while he was sleeping back in nineteen-eighty-seven. There may be a murderer about. Someone not from around town—most certainly not.

Because this is Los Alamos: a quiet mountain town, with harsh winters and cool summers, and its citizens, who live high above all surrounding towns, know they are too-wealthy and too-educated to be subjected to such crime and atrocity—except, perhaps, in only the harshest of circumstances.

Science and math are the town’s specialties, the high school being one of the best public schools in the country, with some of the highest test scores in such subjects. There are no class distinctions amongst its citizens, since most every household has at least one family member with an advanced academic degree and employment with the National Labs. There is one local newspaper—the Los Alamos Monitor—from which most of its citizens get their news.

The town’s characteristic attitude is one of skepticism and arrogance. Subjects other than science and math—such as literature, philosophy, and the artistic pursuits—are often looked upon as little more than hobbies, fun to read and discuss from time to time, but not of any real value. For this reason, an odd denial, even mockery, of the fabulous permeates the thinking of most, an inability to believe in the unexplainable, in things that cannot be seen or touched or rationalized mathematically.

Several years ago, a young girl’s body was found in Ashley Pond. It was winter time and she was half-frozen in the ice, but when the police finally dug her free, they figured she must have been around eleven or twelve years old. She had been murdered, her throat sliced open and her eyes gouged out. No one had heard her screaming for help at the nearby community center. No one claimed the body. She was an outsider.

In that same year, some children from the neighborhood were supposed to have found a purple-skinned man in one of the sand traps out at the golf course, naked and hairless, gasping for breath. His hands were huge, torn and dirty, his body covered in bloodless scratches, caked with sand. The children surrounded him, laughing and pointing, mocking the choking sounds the strange man made. They threw rocks at him, knowing he was something inexplicable, something that didn’t belong, that was a threat to the rational world their parent’s had already taught them to cherish.

Some say Peter Jeffrey had been poking around in one of the private estates just passed the middle school, messing with something he shouldn’t have been messing with, when he’d uncovered some kind of secret best left undiscovered, and killed himself.