Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (129 page)

Sleep came slowly and then the dream… a strange dream. There was this kid, a boy, who was peeking out at me through the window of an old brick house. It was getting dark and I was standing on the street looking at the house and thinking that I was lost somehow. Looking for someone or a place… it wasn’t really clear, but I was looking intently. It started raining, but I kept looking at the house, and at the kid looking out the window.

He waved at me to come closer, but as I started walking he disappeared from the window. I went up the stoop and knocked on the door, which then opened slowly into a dimly lit interior with the young boy standing just inside.

“Hello, Nephew,” the boy said slowly as he stepped aside inviting me in.

I did not enter but stayed outside in the rain as I asked, “How do you know me?”

“I’m Joe… your Uncle Joe. Don’t you recognize me?” He chuckled.

“How can you be my uncle, why you’re only a child? How old are you?”

His eyes glistened as he said, “I have been told you would come and that I should talk with you about the Name. Don’t you want to come in out of the rain?” His voice was that of a child but his words were that of an adult. He was about five foot, slender with dark eyes and light hair.

I refused to go in because of a sense of dread I felt looking at the house.

Joe said, “I can’t leave this house right now, even to just step outside. And if you won’t come in, I can’t talk with you about the Name.”

I awoke from the dream startled by a noise in my darkened room. My heart was racing but not only because of being startled; I felt that I had brought the dream back with me. I looked around the room expecting to see my ‘Uncle Joe’ but the room seemed empty and eerily quiet. It was three in the morning; something rustled in the darkened corner as I strained to see what or who was there. It did seem like something or someone was there and it was making me anxious, even scared.

“Did he tell you the Name?” Came a whispered voice from the darkness. The voice was strange. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

I froze for a moment before saying, “No… who are you? I don’t understand…”

I reached for the table lamp and when I turned it on I was startled to see that there was no one in that corner. This was getting crazier and crazier. I lay back down on the pillow and tried to get some clarity on all this, but none of it, absolutely none of it, made sense. Was I stepping in and out of dreams? Was the room haunted? If someone had told me this, I wouldn’t have believed even a little bit of it. I stayed up the rest of the night hoping time would pass fast while I watched for the first sign of dawn.

A nurse came in and seemed surprised to see me awake.

“What are you doing awake, young man?” she asked through a warm smile.

“Young… that’s a stretch. These bones have seen way more than fifty summers and I’ll bet that’s about twice as many as you have been on the planet,” I responded. “Tell me something…” She looked up from my chart and checked her watch, but still seemed to be listening. “This may sound strange, but I want to ask you… did someone die in this room… recently?”

She shrugged slightly. “Not that I know of, but I’ve been off on medical leave and just got back to work last week. I had a baby,” she said proudly. “A little boy.”

“Congratulations… what’s his name?”

She put the chart down and took my pulse. “Joe. We named him Joe. My husband had an Uncle Joe, and even though he never met Joe the name seemed to stick with him growing up. You know, he was kind of a legend in the family and sort of a hero to my husband, because of what his family said he did. And now he has a kid named after him.” She smiled thoughtfully and started to leave. She sure seemed chatty.

“Coincidence,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Coincidence… I supposedly had an Uncle Joe who I never met either.”

“Really? And was he a legend in your family too?” She asked as turned again to leave the room.

“As a matter of fact I never knew about him until I arrived at this hospital.”

“Huh?” She stopped short, and looked at me with a puzzled expression.

“It’s a long story that I don’t quite feel like telling right now. A long story, in a short period of time,” I said, as I settled back down and pretended to fall back towards sleep.

She left the room.

It was about ten o’clock in the morning when my doctor came by to check me out before releasing me from the hospital. He said, “You should be okay from here on, but remember, I want to see you again next week… at my office.”

“You got it, doc. See you then.” I winked at my wife who was standing by the wheelchair that would get me to the entrance and our car and the freedom of going home.

CHAPTER TWO

Both of my sons and my daughter came for a brief visit. John arrived before Dennis, who was coming from Spain. Lucy, the youngest of the three, was working as a chef on a cruise ship out of Seattle and luckily was in port long enough to come visit her dear old dad. We had a good time reminiscing about their younger days and the fun times we had on our many summer adventures, when we did most of our traveling as a family. John seemed happier than I’d seen him in quite a while. Dennis seemed troubled but kept his mood from dropping to the levels of depression with which he’d wrestled since his teen years. Lucy arrived and almost immediately began lecturing me about eating
healthy
. She went on and on about how best to do that. Each lecture was followed by a kiss on my forehead. I noticed that she spent more time talking with me, rather than at me, these days. Sure made me feel good.

Kate was happy that we were once again all together, especially since as adults they were not prone to pay as much attention to their mother as she needed. That was a concern to me — and a subject I had broached with the three of them. John was a good deal more receptive to my concerns than was his brother. Lucy was a very strong and independent young woman who had her own way of keeping herself where she wanted to be in the family and on her terms with her mother. There was a lot of her mother in her and the older she got the more apparent that got.

They all left on the same day and because they were in their twenties, there wasn’t much I could do to ‘make’ them listen to my words about staying in closer touch with their mom, but I did have a feeling that maybe things would get a bit better in that department, ironically because of what was going on with me now.

Weeks passed and my thoughts about the eerie events surrounding my near death experience and subsequent hospital stay remained clear in my mind, but not quite as traumatic as they had been. I wondered about the reference to, and appearance of, in my dreams, my “Uncle Joe.” I decided to explore my family history to see if there ever was a person named Joe who would’ve been the brother of either my mother or father who both had passed away within the past few years.

I had a recollection of my maternal grandmother referring to a boy she called Joe and that reference always seemed to make her very sad, especially when she was drinking. (She did enjoy her beer.) I remembered her hugging me as a young child and vaguely recalled her even calling me by another name, which could have been Joe. When a bit older, I remembered asking my mother about it but she would always try to change the subject and direct my attention elsewhere. Maybe because I was a child I didn’t pursue it, but there was something of a halfway clear memory there.

I talked about Joe with my brother and sister, both of whom are younger than I, and neither of them had any knowledge of an uncle by that name. When I spoke with friends of my parents none of them had any knowledge either, until I spoke with a couple named Warren and Louise who had been close friends of my maternal grandparents.

I decided to take the three hour drive south to Brooklyn to visit with them and ask in person if they knew anything about my grandmother ever having a child named Joe. I always believed in the truth being in the eyes, and watching people’s eyes could negate any doubt about any answer, in my book, at least.

Kate and I discussed my fixation on this and although she was somewhat bewildered by my insisting we travel the 150 miles to speak with them, she was kind enough to humor me.

“You know, Teller, I don’t ever remember meeting these people. You’ve never mentioned them before. It’s amazing that they are still alive… really, how old are they? Over a hundred?” She laughed with that question, and it brought to my mind that she was absolutely right.

“They must’ve taken good care of themselves to have lived this long — but they were a bit younger than my grandparents… maybe ten or even fifteen years.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, while she continued looking at the rapidly passing landscape of the New York Thruway.

“I guess I thought that as a kid because Louise had dark hair when my grandmother’s was snow white.

“How about Warren’s hair?” she asked.

“Didn’t have any… bald as a cucumber, he was.”

“You are sounding like Yoda, my dear husband. Are you turning Jedi?” She giggled as she leaned over and touched my hair.

“No my love, I am Christian and have no plans to change. A Knight I am… of Columbus,” I said in response to her cajoling.

“Would you mind it terribly if I dropped by to see Elaine while we’re in the City? I enjoy my crazy sister so much, and since we’re here…?” Kate was begging in her very special way.

I didn’t care for Elaine’s husband Terry, and Kate was well aware of that, so we agreed to my dropping her at Elaine’s in Brooklyn Heights, and my driving solo to see Warren and Louise. Since Kate had never met them anyway, I didn’t think that they would feel bad about her not coming with.

Kate’s sister was waiting on the stoop of her brownstone as we arrived. Kate had called her when we were ten minutes out and she knew that I would have a hard time finding a parking spot that time of day, so she came to the car to say a few words and give me a hug.

“When will you be back, Hon?” Kate asked as she exited the car.

“Oh I don’t know… a couple of hours or so? I’ll call you when I’m leaving their place.” We exchanged blown kisses as I drove away.

* * *

I rang the doorbell at Warren and Louise’s home in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The small house had an empty look about it and I waited quite a while for the bell to be answered.

At length the door opened slowly; there stood Louise with her dyed black hair just as I remembered from when I was a child. Her face didn’t seem much different either, as she smiled and hugged me in greeting.

Their house was spotless, but dated style-wise. However that did bring a certain charm with it.

We exchanged light pleasantries and Louise offered me tea, which was welcome. When asked about my reason for the visit, after all these years, I dove right into the subject of “Uncle Joe.”

My question about my grandparents ever having a boy child who’d died at an early age was answered by Warren with an immediate shake of his head, but Louise seemed to be a little disturbed by the question.

“Who told you that?!” She asked. “You know, Jeremy, your grandparents have been gone a long time now and there’s a lot of things we don’t have a good memory of… we’re old and forgetful.” She recovered by chuckling with that remark.

I persisted. “Do you remember my grandmother ever mentioning a child, a boy she may have had?” My grandmother had only one child, my mother — at least to my knowledge.

“We don’t know,” Warren stated with authority. “We don’t know.”

The visit was becoming a bit tense, so I took the conversation away from the “Uncle Joe” thing.

We talked about good memories, talked of the days when they were close to my grandparents, and how they remembered my childhood relationship with my grandparents.

They seemed to have been very fond of my mom and dad, also. Louise talked about how much my dad loved my mom and how he proved it by giving up his career in sailing to be home with her and his family every day of their marriage. It was no secret that my father loved the ocean and the freedom it brought.

Warren and Louise were sometime drinking partners of my mom’s mother, and I recalled the times when I would ride my bike to my grandparent’s house and then walked in on them singing to the music of their record player. My grandmother would laugh and swirl around the room with an imaginary partner as she sang. Grandfather would caution Grandma about the danger of falling while she whirled. He would only dance when he was at a wedding or other event where a live band played, but he could only dance the waltz, and even that required a few beers in his belly.

“Don’t worry about me falling. But if I do fall, Jeremy will pick his grandmother up. Won’t he?” I remembered her saying with a loving smile and a look of pride in her eyes.

There were times when I vaguely remembered her calling me by another name. I didn’t pay much attention to that at the time — but now however, it could have had meaning which could impact what was going on in my life, and my encounter with an uncle I had never heard of until now.

My mother, on the other hand, had seemed to not be too fond of Warren and Louise, and I believe now that it was because of their drinking. She used to say that they would drink themselves to death when I overheard her discussing them with my father. The irony of all this was that Warren and his wife had outlived not only my grandparents, but my parents as well.

I was surprised that they seemed to be so ageless, much the same as they did when I was a kid on a bike. I thought that was a relativity thing. Like when we are children, adults look old to us and as we age, their age seems to remain the same. It’s all a matter of perspective I guess.

My mind returned to the present as I said my goodbyes to my grandparents’ close friends and asked them to contact me if they remembered anything at all about an Uncle Joe. I sensed their discomfort — even as they closed their door saying they were glad to see me, and that I should of course come again, soon.

I called Kate and told her that I was on my way and she said she would wait for me on the stoop. When I got there I wasn’t happy to see Elaine’s husband Terry standing with her and Elaine, looking all puffed up in his shirtsleeves and suspenders. He had the look of a heartless but successful banker, which he actually was.