Dead Reflections (8 page)

Cory felt his face heat up more. “Yes, ma’am. We just moved in yesterday morning.”

“Ah, the big house at the end of the road,” the lady said and her smile kind of faded. Suddenly, it seemed as if he’d caught both of their focus.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cory repeated. His parents had insisted he refer to adults as ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’; not that his brothers did it anymore, much to their father’s angst.

“That’s the—” the girl started, but the lady gave her a sharp look and shook her head. The girl shut up.

“What?” Cory asked.

“She wanted to say that’s the house that took a long time to sell,” the lady added quickly. She gave Gina a look of consternation. “Big place. Not everyone wants a house as big as that, but obviously your family did. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

The answer seemed logical enough to Cory. “I have two older brothers, ma’am.”

“You can call me Mrs. Rideout,” the lady told him. “You can even call me Anna, if your parents allow you to refer to adults by their first name. I’m easy, son. You do whatever’s comfortable for you. Gina lives just up the road too. I’d say you’re both about the same age and likely will be in the same class this autumn.”

“Maybe,” Cory said. Gina studied him for another minute, clearly not shy like he was, then began selecting her candy.

“I’m ten,” she said with authority, as if being of an age that commanded two numerals instead of a single digit somehow provided her with the right to flaunt more audaciousness.

“I’ll be ten in August,” Cory said softly.

“Cool,” Gina said. “You like these little licorice balls? They change colors.”

“I took some of them,” Cory said.

“Good taste,” Gina told him. They both laughed. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

“What are you doing after you buy your stuff?” she asked.

Cory felt his face go warm again. “I dunno. Ride home, I guess.”

“You want to come over to my place? We have a swing set in the back yard.” 

“Sure. I’d have to let my parents know where I am.”

They paid for their candy and Cory followed her outside.

“You have a bike?” he asked her.

“At home,” she said.

“I’ll just push mine and walk with you.” He strode alongside her, not sure of what to say next.

“That house you live in has been for sale a lot,” Gina said. “The last people were only there for a year. My parents talk about it all the time. Everyone around here does. Something bad always happens to each family that moves in. Anna didn’t want me to say anything.”

“Then why are you saying it?” he asked. “What do you mean something always happens? What’s happened?”

Tina bit into a chocolate bar. “The last people lost their baby. It died in its bed. Before them, the father fell from the loft in the barn and broke his back and neck. He died a few days later. I don’t remember stuff before that, but I heard that the house has had lots of families. Fires, accidents…someone killed themselves there. People got murdered.”

“That’s gross,” Cory said. He gripped the bars of his bike, feeling unease push into him. He thought of Jeffrey and made a note to ask the man about this stuff. Given Jeffrey lived so close by, he’d know about these things.

“Every family who’s bought that house always ends up selling it soon after,” Gina continued. “People around here take bets how long they’ll last. Some say six months. Some say less. My mother says that’s wrong; it’s like playing with bad luck or something.”

Cory wasn’t sure what to say. “My parents love it.”

“I’ve never been inside it,” Gina said. “I’m almost too scared to visit it.”

“So, you’ll never come over to play then?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I’m curious about it, though.”

“My father’s going to clean up the barn and turn the loft into a clubhouse for me. It’ll be cool. I can’t help it that some man fell. You have to be careful climbing ladders.”

Gina kept walking. “Yeah, or hang onto them when someone pushes you.”

“Who?”

She stared at him. “Do you believe in ghosts? Dead things that maybe aren’t completely dead?”

They both stopped walking.

“How can they be dead if they aren’t completely dead?” Cory wanted to know.

“They don’t go away to wherever they’re supposed to go,” Gina continued. “They hang around. Yours isn’t the only house in town that’s called haunted. There are a few others too. I don’t understand how that can be. I wonder what they do?”

“Who?”

“Ghosts. I don’t know what they’re supposed to look like.”

“I don’t know either,” Cory said. He’d have to ask Jeffrey about that too. He couldn’t mention such a thing to his parents, especially with his father so uptight about that room.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he told her.

Gina stopped in front of a small farmhouse, its front yard bordered in a dark brown wooden fence. “This is where I live. It’s old, but it isn’t haunted.”

Cory sighed and glanced down the road at his house.

“I’ll come over,” Gina promised him, “but I don’t know if my parents will want me to. I can say that you live on another street.”

“What happens if they find out where I really live?”

“I’ll say that I got mixed up with your address,” Tina decided, “but that we’d become such good friends, I wanted to visit you, and that your house is really okay.”

“I think it’s okay,” Cory said. “You don’t think the house is going to eat you up, do you?”

Gina laughed at this. “No, silly!”

* * *

Gina had him wait on the sidewalk. “I’ll tell them that I’m going with you to play at the park. I’ll just say you’re a new boy at school. It’s not a real lie because you will be new this autumn, right?”

Cory shrugged. “I guess so.” He waited, his thoughts taken with her words while Gina went inside. He stared at his house in the distance, high and square and dark in the sun, its stone walls looking mossy from here. Nearby, the old red barn.
Fell from the loft. Broke his back. Dead.

“People slip,” he whispered. Gina reappeared, followed by her mother, a thin, blonde-haired woman with a tired, but gentle, face.

“This is Cory,” Gina said.

“Hello Cory,” Gina’s mother said. “I’m Mrs. Dewar. When did you move to town?”

Cory hesitated. Gina widened her eyes at him.

“Uh, just a little while ago,” Cory said.

“Where do you live?” Mrs. Dewar asked.

“Over there, behind those houses,” Cory nodded down the road. “Not too far.”

“That big stone house up the road that just sold?”

Cory’s mouth fell open. He didn’t want to lose Gina as a friend, but he felt afraid to lie. He shifted his feet. “Yes, ma’am.” Gina’s face curled in irritation at him.

Mrs. Dewar’s expression changed. It looked part irritated, part nervous. She looked at the house, then back at him. “You’re welcome to play here, Cory, but I don’t want Gina going to that house. It has nothing to do with you son. I just don’t like the house. Mind my words, Gina.” Mrs. Dewar turned and went back inside, leaving Gina on the porch. Gina strode towards him.

“What’d you tell her that for?”

“What did you want me to do? Lie? She’d really not like me then and never let you play with me.”

“I want to see the inside of your house,” Gina insisted. “Now I’m really curious…”

“It’s just a house.”

“I’m going to have to sneak over,” Gina continued. “Maybe I’ll try to stop by tomorrow. I’ll just tell my Ma that I’m going over to the library. There’s a reading group there in mornings.”

“You’d lie?” he asked.

“I want to see that house,” she said. “I’m a bit scared, but you’ll be there. And your parents, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It should be okay then. I’ll come over tomorrow morning.”

“Okay. I’ll see you then.”

He got on his bike and rode away, feeling excitement at having made a friend, but unease over her stories. Before he left the vicinity of her house, he looked over his shoulder and saw Gina’s mother standing behind a set of sheer curtains, watching him go.

Cory rode his bike over to the barn. It was empty, his father back inside the house. He glimpsed at the old wooden ladder leading up to the barn’s loft. Its rails were thick, but uneven. A person would have to grip the sides and hang on as they rose up to the loft that sat at least eight feet above the barn floor. Miss one rung and it would be easy to slip, your hands coming loose in a moment of panic.

He set his bike against the wall and approached the ladder. He reached out with one hand to touch it. The wood felt warm, dry, and splintery in spots. Cory gave the ladder a shake. It didn’t budge; it was anchored to the barn floor, and thick bolts secured it to the edge of the loft. He saw chunks of hay spilling over the loft and sunlight trailing through a dusty window. Cory pushed himself onto the first rung. He didn’t think his parents would care if he explored here. The rung felt solid; he jumped a little, still feeling safe. It held firm. He relaxed and brought his opposite foot up to the second rung, then the third. Now four feet up from the barn floor, his stomach turned at the prospect of falling. Distance winked at him, the floor cool and dark, promising that, should he plummet, he’d be guaranteed a good bruising, if not a sprain or broken bone. Six more rungs waited. He took another step up and wondered where on this ladder the man had slipped. Cory stared at the floor, looking for any signs of old dried blood.

Finally, he reached the edge of the loft and peeked over, his mouth open with anticipation, wondering what he might find up here: the face of the dead man waiting for him, grinning his dead skull grin, asking him if he, Cory, might like a game of checkers? He thought of Jeffrey again and wondered if the man could somehow sneak into his parents’ house?

“Stupid,” he said. “Her stories are getting to you.” Gina. He hauled himself to the loft and stepped away from the edge. The barn’s ceiling sat several feet above his head. He walked to the milky window and peered out. He could see fields and woods from a new angle here. Bales of dusty hay leaned against the far corner. It could be a neat place. He turned to walk back to the ladder and stopped, a scream formed in his throat.

A thin man, balding, his skull and flesh broken along the left side from cheekbone to temple, brain matter and blood leaking down that side of his face, observed him.

“Hello, Cory,” the man said. “It’s a long way down.” Then he blinked out of sight.

Cory felt the scream lodge against his tongue, thick and salty, refusing to budge. He couldn’t breathe. When he did finally open his mouth, all that came out of him was a loud ‘puh’ noise, the release of held oxygen, his fright so extreme that he could barely inhale. He stared at the top of the ladder, afraid to go near it and peek over the edge, lest the bleeding dead man pop up again from below like some decomposing Jack-in-the-box. His thoughts rolled over. He couldn’t stay here. He had to look. He had to see what might be there.

“Mister?” he called out to the man.
It’s a long way down.
Would he have seen the guy if Gina had never mentioned anything about death and ghosts to him? He must have imagined it, but it had looked very, very real.

Silence; warm, pressing as humidity built with the day. Cory counted to three, then forced himself to walk to the edge of the loft and peer at the barn floor almost ten feet below, waiting for the dead man to be sprawled there, arms and legs cast out from his body like bent bicycle spokes, guts soaking into the rough wood floor. He saw nothing other than a sunbeam filtering dust through the air. Then, just as suddenly, he was overtaken by the sensation that he was about to be shoved, hard, from behind. He whirled. Again, nothing. Almost weeping, Cory curled one leg over the edge and found the top rung of the ladder. He hung on, but hurried down and jumped the last two feet to the barn floor. He ran, forgetting his candy and comic book in the bicycle basket. Only when he reached the front porch and door of the house did he glance back. He saw the dead man watching him from just inside the barn’s open door. The man’s willowy body, his front coated in gore, slipped back into the shadow of the interior.

Cory, lips shaking, let himself inside and shut the door behind him, Gina’s words following him like skeletal fingers prying for a grip.

* * *

They saw him walking by the kitchen.

“Hey sport!” Robbie called to Cory. “How’d your outing go?”

“Fine,” Cory said and kept walking. They heard him patter up the stairs towards his room. Tanya looked at Robbie.

“Go and see what’s up,” she said. “He still seems out of it. When the boys come back, I’m going to ask them to spend some time with him.”

“Yeah,” Robbie said. “That’s a good idea.”

He found Cory lying on his bed, his face turned to the wall. “What’s the matter, bud?”

Cory shrugged but didn’t look at him. “Nothing. I’m tired. I’m going to have a nap.”

“In the middle of the day? Did you get yourself some treats?”

Cory turned to look at him. His face looked part hopeful, part resentful at Robbie’s presence. “I got a comic book and some candy.”

“Where are they?”

“I left them in my bike basket. I forgot them there.”

Robbie sat on the edge of Cory’s bed. “Why don’t you turn around so that I can see you while I chat with you?”

Cory shrugged and rolled onto his back, to stare at his ceiling.

“Did something happen that upset you while you were out? You seem bothered.”

Robbie thought he saw that kind of vacuous expression in his son’s eyes that was filled with everything and nothing at once.

“I don’t know if I like it here,” Cory said. “I miss our old house.”

Robbie let out a chuckle. “Ah, sweetie, it can take a while to get used to being in a new place. I’m a little homesick too, but Mom and I are working hard to make this feel like our home. We did a lot of work in the kitchen today. We’ll start on your room soon. Maybe you’d like to tell us how you’d like to decorate it and we can start looking at paint colors and other things later this week.”

Cory shook his head. “I don’t care about the room.”