Ravenous Ghosts (10 page)

…And on the ground before me is a dead sparrow.

I scramble to my feet and snap at the dog to shut up as I back away from the bird.

"
He was here," I mumble to myself, scarcely sure I believe it. I try to rub warmth back into my arms.

The sparrow is splayed out on its back, legs hooked into claws, eyes open and staring at nothing.

The dog is tethered to a pine tree to the left of the house by a rope that extends as far as the front door, just out of reach of Janus's gift and for this I am thankful.

The knot around the tree is strong.

The collar on Gabber however, isn't.

There is a loud
ping!
And I am knocked off my feet by the weight of the dog pushing past me. Before I can gather myself, the dog has snapped the bird up into his mouth and is racing out the gate.

I scream at him until I am hoarse and the house has woken, unaware that I am crying until I find myself looking into my father
's bloodshot eyes as he shakes me.

"
Gabber's going to die," I sob, my father's hands on my shoulders as he leads me back into the kitchen.

"
No he's not. He'll come back," he assures me, with not the slightest ounce of conviction in his voice.

I feel no better after a cup of strong coffee but at least the tears have stopped pushing against my eyes.

My father, dressed in a thick blue robe, his dark hair tousled, studies me carefully as we both sip the black brew. "How long were you out there?"

I shrug.
"A while."

"
Why for God's sake?"

"
I didn't want you or Sheryl to touch that bird."

"
What bird?"

"
The one Gabber ran off with in his mouth."

"
Why?"

"
Because…" A mild sense of relief accompanies the realization that seeps into my chest. I love Gabber as much as any boy loves a dog, but by being the first to touch the bird, he has saved my father and sister and probably me. Our dumb Labrador has saved us all.

"
Never mind. We won't be seeing Gabber again, that's all."

My father stares at me, confused, hung over and no doubt wondering what is going on in his son
's funny little head. I offer him a smile that feels crooked but he returns it and pours me another coffee.

A while later, I take a hot shower to wash away the chill and the guilt that eventual creep into my head. Could I have saved the dog too? Could I have saved all of us, instead of letting Gabber sacrifice himself?

After getting dressed, I decide to go find the dog. I dread the thought of seeing him dying or dead, curled up in some strange place, hit by a car or worse but I smother the thought and tell my father where I'm going.

"
Do you want me to come too?" he asks, surprising me. It has been a long time since we have gone anywhere together.

"
Sure," I reply with a smile, "I'll wait outside."

"
Okay. I'll go get dressed and tell Sheryl where we're off to."

I open the front door and wonder when the screams of anguish will begin. It is early yet. How many houses will awaken to find their loved ones dead on their front lawns? Will this become a national tragedy? Will the media soon overrun the town? The morbidity of the idea chills me but not nearly as much as the scream that sounds above my head.

Startled, I look up at Sheryl's open window, directly above the front door.

My father is screaming in pain and abject horror.

The terror and confusion that fills me then is debilitating. I shake my head in denial. No, Gabber took the bird. The dog was going to die, not…

A single brown feather drifts down from Sheryl
's window ledge and the chilling truth hits me.

Janus never said he would leave the bird on the front step, I had assumed that on my own. Outside the house had meant anywhere.

Including Sheryl's second floor window ledge.

In my mind
's eye I see her opening her window in a sleepy daze, not noticing the little brown dead thing on the other side of the glass, not hearing it scrape along the stone and falling to the ground outside the front door.

Whoever moves it will die instantly and they will awake to find themselves where they belong.

Where they belong…

As I fall to my knees to the accompaniment of my father
's hoarse cries, I think I know where Sheryl is now.

I am going to be living there for a while myself.

THE ROOM BE
NEATH THE STAIRS

This is another one of those stories that has a lot of truth in it.

I spent a lot of my childhood with my grandparents while my parents were busy deciding that the only real mistakes they had made in their lives were meeting and marrying each other.

My grandmother loved, and still loves to tell a story and no matter how wild and fanciful they are, she insists they are true. I'm relieved she never told me this one; though it's possible I might have blocked it out of my brain…

Andy hated being forced to visit his grandmother.

As he watched his parents drive away in their battered Taurus, he once again found himself beneath the ivy-choked architrave that led into her ter
ribly small and tangled garden. It made him wish his brother was still alive to do it but this in turn made him feel guilty. Before Steven had died, the task of representing parents who really couldn't be bothered to visit the old woman had been his charge.

Andy had only been to Gramma West
's house a handful of times but it had been enough.

Even with his family around, he had felt threatened by something lurking in the permanent shadows of the old lady
's home but those unseen watchers seemed patient to wait until he came by himself.

And now he was.

He quickly made his way up the narrow bramble-bordered path and wished he were somewhere else. Intimidating houses were not the place for a twelve-year-old boy on sunny Saturday mornings. He'd much rather be playing with Jimmy, the boy next door, or watching
Transformers
on the Cartoon Network.

Dewdrops glistened and dangled from black thorns like pois
on from the fangs of serpents. His discomfort seemed to draw the stares of invisible things. He felt a thousand hungry eyes on him, aroused by the scent of adolescent panic, hiding behind blankets of ivy and watching, waiting.

Lifting the bronze knocker he thumped three times and waiting a short forever before the door whooshed open and a florid rosy-cheeked face peered around the opening.

"Hey, Gramma."

The old lady swung into full view and made a face that suggested she might cry.

"Andy!  Oh, how good of you to come see your Gramma!"

Her considerable frame heaved forward and swallowed Andy in an embrace
tight enough to make him gasp. Just as he was beginning to formulate a polite protest, she released him and gestured for him to enter the house.

"
Come, come!"

Beaming at him, she vanished inside with an agility that belied her eighty-three years.

Andy took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold into the gloomy hallway.

He followed his grandmother into the kitchen but not before casting a wary eye at the heav
y oak door beneath the stairs. A thin shard of hazy amber light seeped through a crack in the wood as if someone was shining a torch through from the other side.

He recalled the last time he
'd been here; the scraping noise that had come from inside the room. Despite his fear, he had approached the door with the intention of flinging it wide to gaze upon the horror it undoubtedly contained, but had scarcely touched the knob when Gramma West appeared behind him. He had almost suffered a heart attack when her pale hand fell on his shoulder.

"
Hey, Gramma?" he asked as he entered the kitchen, pleasantly surprised by the thick aroma of freshly baked apple pies that greeted him.

"
Yes, dear?"

"
What's behind that door beneath the stairs?"

He half-expected her to tense and turn to look at him, the still piping hot pie slipping from her oven mitt, a guilty look on her bespectacled face.

"Oh, the devil is locked behind that door, Andy. He keeps me fit and healthy and I feed him little boys who are foolish enough to ask questions," she didn't say.

Instead, she raised her eyebrows and offered him a cheerful smile that made her cheeks puff up to twice their normal size.

"Oh, that was your grandfather's workroom. He was always a bit upset that we had no back garden or cellar for him to build a tool shed, so he used the room beneath the stairs. It's plenty big. Surprisingly so."

She opened the oven door and as Andy took a seat at the large pine table in the center of the room, he asked:
"Can I see it?"

She wheezed as she bent over to slide two more pies into the oven.

"There's nothing to see in there, Andy. Just junk. I haven't given it the cleaning I've been promising myself I would. Can't bear to face it to be honest. Too many memories of your grandfather."

She took a seat opposite Andy, who was now picturing trans-dimensional portals hidden beneath stairwells.

"Some day when I get around to fixing it up, you can investigate to your heart's content."

Andy nodded.
Her attempt at appeasing his curiosity had only further inflamed it, however, and he resolved to make another attempt to peek inside the room before he left.

"
So how are things at home?" Gramma asked, poking the bridge of her glasses back into place.

He told her everything his pa
rents had told him to tell her. Mostly lies. His home life since Steven's death had rapidly decayed and now their once benign unit had become a somber vigil to a stolen child. His parents went about their daily routine like hollow vessels, acting only on memories gleaned from happier times.

His grandmother
's eyes told him she knew most of what he said had been from a script approved by his parents and that it was okay.

"
I expect they'll end up spoiling you yet, Andy. Parents who've lost a child tend to lavish affection on the remaining one once the initial impact of grief subsides."

Andy nodded and dr
ummed his fingers on the table. He was already bored and uncomfortable talking about his life with a woman practically a stranger to him.

"
I suppose," he replied.

S
he clapped her hands together. "So how 'bout some pie?"

"
Sure."

As they ate, Andy noticed the old woman staring at him with an intensity that made him squirm.
He tried to reason she was simply glad to see him, but couldn't bring himself to believe it.

"
You look a lot like your grandfather, you know," she said at last, breaking the silence forming like a pane of ice between them.

Andy raised his eyebrows in response, his mouth full of baked apples. He had been stuffing himself almost greedily as an excuse not to talk to her.

She looked at him with dark green eyes filled with remembrance.

"
When he was young, I mean. Same chin, same ears. You even eat the same way as Ben."

Andy blushed, juice leaking from the corner of his mouth.

"You have the same hands too--a craftsman's hands. Elegant in a rough sort of way."

The boy dropped his gaze to his long, thin fingers. He quite
liked her description of them. He had always just thought of them as…well, as hands. Now they were something much more. Now he had
craftsman's
hands. He smiled.

"
There was nothing your grandfather couldn't make with his hands. When we were younger and moved into that terrible rattrap on Haybury Street, he made it into a little palace. The landlord refused to charge us rent for the next few months after he saw what Ben had done with the place. I imagine he was quite pleased when he thought of how much he could charge for it after we moved out."

Her eyes glazed over and Andy continued to eat, aware she wasn
't actually looking at him any more but using him as a focal point for her trip down memory lane.

"
He built cabinets, tables, and chairs. Anything we needed and couldn't afford, he went out and chopped down a few trees from his father's place and made himself. By the time he was finished, the house looked nothing like it had when we first moved in."

She smiled, revealing polished dentures, and put her hand atop Andy
's. The boy resisted the urge to pull away and secretly chided himself for being so cruel. Although he didn't know her and her house made him uneasy, she was still his grandmother. Plus, the pie was terrific.