Rockinghorse (20 page)

But she knew it had.

And it began to sink into her mind that they were trapped.

They couldn't leave.

Perhaps they could sneak away?

But she knew they couldn't.

It was all so . . . so
incredible
.

She had to somehow warn her friends in New York not to come down for their planned visit. That thought almost caused her to break out in hysterical laughter.
How
to warn them?
What
to tell them?

Should she tell them the house is haunted? Possessed? By what? A rocking horse?

They would have her committed in the nearest funny farm.

Trapped.

And Jackie and Johnny . . . they seemed to be taking all this so calmly. Frightened, yes; but with a certain, a certain . . .
knowing
quality about them both.

How much did they know they were not telling? That they couldn't remember? And why,
why
, was all this happening to her family? Why?

Questions without answers.

Her rocking chair began rocking of its own volition. Tracy tried to rise from the chair. She could not; some invisible force held her in place. The coffee mug fell from suddenly numb fingers, to shatter on the deck. She felt her mind begin to fragment. Memories seemed to spring forth with vivid clarity, but yet all of them were jumbled. She was conscious of Baby looking at her strangely. The chair began rocking faster and faster. Tracy tried to scream, but no sound could push past her lips. Then the jumbled memories became as one. The memories of her friend's father violating her returned in exact detail, as if it had occurred only yesterday.

She began weeping silently.

Faster and faster the chair rocked, becoming a blur on the porch. Those young men returned to her mind. The assault. The humiliation. The secret she had never told.

The rocking chair slowed, slowed, then stopped. Her mind began to clear. She looked around her. Saw the shattered coffee mug, the liquid staining the veranda floor. She felt weak, drained, exhausted . . . and helpless.

She half slid, half fell from the rocking chair. She put her head against the bannister. On her knees on the damp, rain-washed deck of the veranda, she tried to think of some prayer, some supplication to a higher power, some way of conveying her wishes to be free of this awful place. Some message of hope for help.

Her mind drew a blank.

She could think of nothing. It was as if all former traces of God and His help were forbidden from entering or leaving her mind.

“It's not fair!” she whispered. “I
want
to ask for help. Please!”

Nothing.

Then the awful thought came to her: were they alone in this? Did they have to fight this by themselves. Had He abandoned them? Why? Why?

She looked up, tears streaming from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks, misting her vision. She saw someone walking toward her, from out of the woods. No, not walking. Gliding, she first thought. No, not gliding. More a lurching type of movement. Not fluid at all. She couldn't believe her eyes. The man lurching toward her was naked from the waist down. And he was filthy. As she recognized the shape, she tried to scream. No sound would come from her throat. The . . .
thing
drew closer. Closer. It opened its arms and held out its dirty hands, beckoning to her.

“Help,” the apparition said, breath from its mouth fouling the air. “Help.”

Tracy shook her head. Scurried away. Her back hit the wall. Baby was on her feet, snarling horribly at the sight.

“Help me!” Ira said.

He reached through the railing and tried to touch her.

Tracy fainted.

* * *

“Easy, honey,” Lucas's voice drifted through the fog in her brain. “Easy, now. It's gonna be all right.”

“What happened, Tracy?” Kyle said.

“Ira,” she managed to croak. “Rocking chair. It rocked faster and faster. I couldn't get out of the chair. Memories came to me. Awful. Then Ira came lurching out of the woods. He kept saying ‘help.' He tried to touch me.”

“What kind of awful memories?” Lucas asked.

She refused to answer.

Lucas and Kyle looked at each other, then shifted their eyes to the staggering, wavering line of bare footprints in the wet grass.

“Jesus!” Kyle said.

“Something is very wrong here,” Louisa said.

The men looked at her. “What do you mean?” Lucas asked.

The woman's face held an expression of alarm. She clutched at her throat. “I . . . I don't know. I don't understand any of this. I don't understand my feelings. My . . . I've never experienced anything like this. I can't explain it. It's as if my ability to convey thoughts into words is somehow blocked.”

“The same thing happened to me,” Tracy said, getting to her feet. “I tried to pray, but found I couldn't.”

“What if we all just ran off,” Kyle said. “I'm no coward, God knows that, but I don't know how to fight this thing.”

“Yes,” the voice came to them. “Try to run. Try to run. I won't try to stop you. I promise. Tell all your friends you are afraid of a wooden hobbyhorse. Tell them the house is filled with evil spirits.
Booooo!”

From inside the house, from its place on the landing, the rocking horse began laughing. Its laughter was taunting, ugly, evil, mad, nasty. It laughed and laughed.

And rocked.

No one wanted to go into that attic that Sunday. No one wanted to get that close to the rocking horse on the landing. Only Lucas.

“Why are you so insistent on going into the attic?” Tracy asked her husband.

“The key to it all is in the attic. I don't know how I know. I just do.”

The rocking horse laughed.

Lucas flushed and started out of the den. Tracy's voice stopped him and turned him around.

“You're that sure?” she asked.

“Yes. I'm that sure. I'm going to the attic. You coming?” He smiled as the old joke came to his mind.

Tracy caught it and said, “Remember the children, Lucas.”

“What about us?” Jackie asked.

“Never mind,” her mother said. “Yes. All right. I'll go with you.”

“Can we go, too?” Jackie asked.

Johnny wasn't all that damn sure he
wanted
to go up there.

“I'd rather you wouldn't,” Tracy said. “You understand, don't you?”

“Not really, mother,” the girl said. “I think the horse—or something—can keep us trapped here, yeah. And maybe it can hurt you grownups. But I don't believe our friends out in the woods will let the horse really hurt us. Johnny?” She looked to her brother for support.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That's what I think, too. But just don't ask me how I know that.”

The rocking horse was silent on its place on the landing.

“Let's all go, then,” Lucas said. “Be careful and don't touch that rocking horse. It seems to have more powers than we realize.”

The rocking horse was just that this time around: a wooden rocking horse. Nothing more. It sat on its runners on the landing like the non-living lump it was supposed to be. Kyle commented on that.

“Me and Lucas beat that damned thing to bits before we buried it,” the cop said. “Now it's all back together. But it's
wood.
We all know that. How can it be alive?”

No one would venture an opinion.

Lucas said, “I don't trust the damned thing.”

Tracy laughed, more than a note of hysteria in her laughter. “Can you believe what you just said, Lucas? Anybody? We're all grown people and we don't trust a damned wooden rocking horse. It's hysterical!” She started to laugh, and the laughter was just on the edge of becoming uncontrollable.

Louisa stepped forward and slapped Tracy's face. The pop brought the woman up short, the bubbling hysteria cut off in her throat.

“Get a grip on things, Tracy,” Louisa said. “Don't you see? That's what that
thing,
” she pointed to the rocking horse, “wants us all to do: lose control. Even when it looks like nothing more than what it's supposed to be, it's working on us all. You've got to understand that.”

“It's just a damned rocking horse!” Tracy said. “And all this . . . all that's happened to us, is some sort of sick game being played on us. That's all. Somebody's put LSD or PVC in our water—or something like that.”

“Plastic pipe?” Kyle said, a confused look on his face. “Oh! Right. PCP. Angel Dust. I wish it was that simple, Tracy. I thought along those lines at first. But had you been with Lucas and me last night, you'd think different. I am wondering about one thing, though.”

They waited.

Kyle looked at the horse. “I just wonder if that thing is going to let me go to work on Tuesday?”

“Sure,” Jackie said.

Eyes shifted to the girl. “How can you know?” Kyle asked.

The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Why wouldn't it? I mean, it's just logical. Even if you told somebody what was happening here—who'd believe you?”

The rocking horse began rocking slowly back and forth. It seemed to be smiling arrogantly.

No one had much enthusiasm about working in the attic that afternoon. And that fact showed up early on. Finally, the six of them sat on crates and boxes and talked.

All were conscious of the fact that the rocking horse had, unnoticed, shifted positions on the landing. It had turned so it now faced the attic steps.

“That thing,” Kyle said, cutting his eyes to the rocking horse on the landing just below them, “has us in a box. All of us.”

Tracy fought back the hysterical giggle that threatened to erupt from her throat. Jackie saw her mother's hand go to her mouth, her change of expression, and came to her mother's side, sitting close. Mother and daughter drew silent comfort from each other.

“Yes,” Louisa said. “That is true. But one positive thing has been accomplished here, Kyle. Now you are a believer. One hundred percent. I knew it would be this way when we came her.”

“And you have been a . . . believer all your life?” Lucas asked, curious to know more about this quiet, petite lady. He thought that perhaps another key to the puzzle lay within her.

She met his eyes and her smile was unreadable in content. “Oh, yes. As a child I used to play with the Woods' Children. Not often, but occasionally.”

Kyle shook his head. His sigh was as audible to the adults as the other breathing was to the kids. “Honey, just who are these Woods' Children?”

“They are children of early settlers from the coast,” she began. “They were born of witches and warlocks and fought their way free of the evil that surrounded them at birth. But to do so they took a vow to forever stay on the side of Light. They were very young when they did that. Their parents discovered what they had done and killed them. Killed them horribly. Their blood was then poured over the rocking horse. The horse is afraid of them because of that. They may leave these woods only when the Dark One's Brotherhood is finally driven out, or killed. Only then may they go home.”

“That's sad,” Johnny said. “And unfair, too, I think.”

“Why unfair, son?” Lucas asked.

All were very aware of the rocking horse having shifted itself closer to the attic stairs. Listening.

It did not seem to bother Jackie or Johnny.

“Well,” the boy replied, “didn't the Woods' Children repent of the sins they were born with?”

“So the story goes,” Louisa said with a gentle smile.

“That doesn't seem right, either,” Jackie said. “Why would they have to repent of sins they had nothing to do with?”

No one could answer that.

“All right,” Jackie said. “Then why are they being punished?”

“Perhaps they aren't being punished,” Kyle said.

“I don't understand,” Jackie and Johnny said in unison.

The rocking horse suddenly spun around, the movement sharp as its runners rubbed the floor.

“They are not being punished,” the voice came from the landing.

“Who said that?” Tracy said, her heart pounding in fear.

Professor Siekmann and his associates stepped into view on the landing below the attic.

All those in the attic breathed a sigh of relief.

“We are truly sorry to have frightened you,” Nancy said. “But we blew the car horn and hammered on all the doors. We were afraid something awful had happened to you.”

Lucas looked at the little horse. It seemed to be wearing a very smug expression. “We didn't hear a thing, folks. Sorry. But thanks for the concern. You're right on one count, though, something awful did happen to us.”

Mark looked each one in the eyes. He studied them all for a moment. “I see,” he said softly. “You have discovered that you are all trapped, right?”

“How? . . .” Kyle bit his question off short. He remembered that all the professors had some degree of psychic power.

“The same thing happened to you people, didn't it?” Louisa asked.

“Yes,” Karen said. “Just about the time you people arrived. You see, we,” she indicated her associates, “believe that we—your group, our group—are all interconnected . . . some way. We're not sure just how. But more on that later. I can sense you are all confused. So were we; still are to some extent. Let us explain.”

“I sure wish somebody would,” Tracy said. “I almost . . . well, lost control just a few moments ago.”

“That is what the Brotherhood wants,” David said. “They tried to frighten us away for months. It didn't work. I—
we
—believe they are bound by some sort of code for a period of time. They can't physically hurt any intruder. For a time. Only if all else fails can they resort to violence.”

“Why?” Lucas asked. “A code?”

“Why?” David said. “Well, probably due to some. . . ah, call it a deal, made between God and Satan a long time ago.”

“A
deal
?” Kyle blurted. “God makes deals with Satan?”

“That is the best way we know how to put it,” Karen said. “But, yes. I think it used to happen quite often between Light and Dark. Satan rules the earth, you must remember.”

“Mind-boggling,” Kyle muttered.

“The Children of the Woods are the, well, the guardians, if you will,” Mark picked it up. “True, they cannot leave, but their lives are mostly peaceful. They want for nothing, believe me. They are not being punished.”

“But they are dead?” Lucas asked, heavy doubt in his tone.

“Oh, yes,” David said. “They are quite dead. Have been for many, many years.”

“Jesus,” Lucas muttered.

“The Woods' Children are
dead
!” Tracy said. “No!” she said. “No.” Her voice firmed. “I absolutely refuse to believe, to accept any of this. I simply will not!”

“Believe it, mother,” Jackie said. “It's all true. And. . .” she started to tell them all what she and Johnny already knew, then thought better of it.

“And . . . what, Jackie?” Karen asked.

But the girl would only shake her head. “It's nothing.”

Louisa's eyes told the girl she knew better. But she did not push any further.

Tracy could only sigh.

“Are you a Christian?” David asked gently. “Or perhaps better phrased, are you a religious person?”

“I . . . broke away from the Church as a teenager,” Tracy told him, fighting back memories she had long suppressed. “But yes, I'm a Christian in the respect that I believe in God and Satan and some sort of life after death.”

“I'm a Jew,” David said. “Does that make any difference to any of you?”

Kyle shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of “So what?”

Louisa shook her head.

The kids looked at each other, not really understanding the question.

Tracy had never thought of Jew or Gentile. People were people. She and Lucas both shared that in common and raised their kids to believe that race or religion was secondary to the individual. There was good and bad wherever one looked, and race and religion or heritage had absolutely nothing to do with goodness or badness.

“Those are good thoughts,” Nancy said to Tracy, getting inside her head. “But don't be too trusting in this country.” And she left it at that.

“Who can we trust?” Lucas asked, tossing the question out for anyone to pick up.

“Ourselves,” David said.

The professors were invited downstairs for coffee and conversation. They stayed for more than an hour, with the Bowerses and Cartiers finding themselves liking the men and women more with every minute. Lucas invited them over the weekend their friends from New York would be down, and Karen said they would have been over, invited or not.

“What a strange thing to say,” Tracy said.

“It was not meant to be rude,” the woman explained. “For that is, we believe, the weekend the Brotherhood will strike this house and its inhabitants.”

“I still think we should call and warn them,” Lucas said. “As a matter of fact, I'm going to do just that.”

“It won't be permitted,” Mark said. “That is not in the overall scheme of things.”

“And if I do, regardless?” Lucas asked.

“You'll be placing yourself in great danger by attempting to contact them,” Nancy told him. “I mean that. Oh, you and your family may go into town shopping, if you wish. You won't be harmed. If you wish, you may even drive into Atlanta. One of our colleagues did.”

“Which one?”

“The one that is no longer with us,” David said. “We once were five. Harold broke under the pressure the same day you people arrived; the same day we felt we were trapped. He left in his personal vehicle.”

“And you haven't heard from him since?” Louisa said.

“No.”

“Then he made it out. If he can, so can we,” Lucas said.

David smiled and removed his wallet from his hip pocket. He took out a clipping from a newspaper and handed it to Lucas. The clipping told about a suicide in a motel in Atlanta.

“Your friend?” Kyle asked.

“Yes. And that was no suicide. Harold was not the suicidal type. Believe me.”

“But his death
could
have been a suicide?” Lucas said.

“No,” Karen said. “We received this clipping through the mails. Attached to it was a note. The note read: ‘You were warned. Now it is too late.' ”

That line of conversation stopped when the back door slammed and Jackie and Johnny entered the den. Both kids were excited and flushed.

“What's wrong?” Tracy asked.

“That big ugly Deputy Simmons was standing at the edge of the woods,” Johnny said. “Staring at the house.”

“And at me,” Jackie said, a disgusted look on her face.

“What would the law do to me if I shot that bastard?” Lucas asked Kyle.