House of Darkness House of Light (56 page)

“Sorry.” Their father’s voice, indicative of emotions hovering somewhere between humility and shame, had suddenly dropped with his guard. This was difficult to identify because no one had ever heard it before. His expression, his demeanor was suddenly foreign to them: A milestone moment. This man had more to say in his own defense. “I’m sick to death of it; every time I lay something down around here it disappears.” It was his flimsy excuse, lacking sincerity and substance with the qualifier as a tag. Absolving himself of any blame for his behavior; simply not good enough. Do unto others…

“Yes. We know the feeling.” Andrea finally spoke up, unimpressed by his act of contrition. In his words she heard some attempt to disguise the truth of it, sensing some effort on his part to justify this inexcusable behavior. During his previous altercation with Nancy, Andrea had remained silent and felt like a coward for doing so; it was an opportunity to address several longstanding grievances, to make a few points of her own. “They
like
to get us in trouble, dad, and
they like it
when you get mad! You should think about that the next time you’re tempted to blame us for taking something you can’t find. That is
not
the only explanation. If you accuse
us
then you don’t have to admit what the
real
problem is…it’s not fair to us! We are all used to it; most of the time our stuff shows up again, usually in some strange place we’d never expect to find it. You should think about the times you flipped out for
no
good reason
then found what you were missing when they decided to give it back to you!”

A pause for reflection.

Andrea decided to breathe. Roger was shocked. He never expected to be held accountable for his actions, especially to such an extent, but to his credit, he took it like a man. She was right and he knew it. She was firm and serious, as stern with her father as he’d been with them; unwilling to absolve him of the perceived crimes and misdemeanors: to let him off the hook based solely on a single word apology, especially one so long overdue. They lived together in the house of the spirits. It meant every member of the family had to rightfully acknowledge their existence. This mischief was
their
doing and it was about time he recognized the truth of it, the realities of a space shared. There was in fact at least
one spirit who enjoyed this upheaval and Roger had always been quick to oblige; to answer the clarion call-to-arms flailing in the wind created by a blow hard; at-the-ready to feed on its negativity while it fed off his own. Andrea intended to become a catalyst, to catapult his consciousness into their presumed realization of oneness; into the “
we’re all in this together
” mindset which had been sorely missing from him, like so many
lost
objects over the years. How she longed to prompt a series of flashbacks in his mind; wanting her father to explore complex concepts, needing him to remember and revisit these incidents, every time he’d lost his temper, every time he prejudged then punished his children based on insufficient evidence, because something he wanted was missing. Inviting him to examine his own aggressive tendencies with those who’d been watching all along, she wondered aloud if their house was changing him in fundamental ways. Then she insisted his outbursts stop; come to an abrupt halt. It was not a suggestion. It was an order. He complied. Presenting as a solid line, the united front was formed. An all-hands-on-deck approach was effectively emboldened by those most outspoken among them. Words used as weaponry, Roger saw the tactic turned against him. Disarmed and outnumbered, he surrendered. His eldest was not inclined to forgive then forget the sins of the father. Her accusations were not false but well-founded. As far as she was concerned he’d gotten what he deserved. As a former altar boy he should have known with confession comes a corresponding penance.

It was the last time Roger ever accused his daughters of anything, falsely or not, having learned his lesson well. They weren’t perfect but they were good girls and he knew it. As the epitome of grace under fire Nancy then issued an open invitation, one designed to make peace. Of course, there was an ulterior motive attached, intended to insure their planned outing occur on schedule. Nancy was no fool. “Dad, do you wanna to come down to the river with us?” He gratefully accepted. There they spent the afternoon chasing crayfish along the shoals. There, he reclaimed his right and proper attitude. It was a start.

***

Everyone in the family still swears the spirits did it just to annoy hell out of Roger. Empirical evidence sited: this
only
happened when he was home. The telephone rang off the hook. Sure, all the girls had friends and the phone got plenty of use but it would frequently ring and no one was there; nothing but fuzzy static on the line. Sometimes the line would be dead. More frequently there would be an unnerving noise, a crackling rather convoluted sound, as if someone was calling from far beyond the realm of possibility; from long ago and far away, but their calls could not properly connect. It would ring to the point of distraction. The line was repeatedly checked. It was fine, according to the phone company. Boo! Who is it? Who’s there? Can you hear me now?

“Take that goddamned phone off the hook!” Message received. The call of the wild one usually came from the parlor, behind a newspaper; their father’s reverberating voice echoing throughout a massive house, as if attached to an equally massive megaphone. Indeed, it
was
a “mega” phone by design as was the innocuous unit hanging on the kitchen wall…the one driving him mad! In fact, their telephone could take itself off the hook; an ingenious invention: a trick and a treat. Judging by appearances, the party line was being utilized by
everyone
in the dwelling,
some by rather surreptitious means; manipulating a common object in uncommon ways, circumventing the current, redirecting energy at will. It was a freaky physics lesson. Interacting with the telephone was always challenging, its form and function far exceeding any purposes originally intended for its usage. Mr. Bell would have surely been amazed! As a common method of communication from a distance it worked perfectly well. Nancy called Katy. Holly called April. The uncommon characteristics it possessed are what made it noteworthy. No one understood cryptic messages they received from the other end of the line; they seemed to come from the other side of the Universe, from somewhere beyond the grave or just beyond the speed of light and sound: testing the patience of mortal souls as well as the outer limits of technology. There is, of course, an implicit question posed by the ringtone of any telephone. “Is someone there? – Is anybody home?” The logical response: answer the call. “Hello?” Perhaps those calls from long ago and far away came through, after all. It could be they all had the proper connection with these intended callers…especially when the line was dead.

“Hope begins in the dark; the stubborn hope that if you

just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”

Anne Lamott

 
no rest for the wicked

“What I give form to in daylight is only one percent of what I have seen in darkness.”

M. C. Escher

Bathsheba. If it is indeed she who haunts the farmhouse, in the truest sense of the word, the one who conjures spells and utters threats as enchanted rhymes before dawn then she is haunted still by what she bartered in life and by that which claimed her in death. Perhaps there is a penance meant to punish those in the afterlife…perhaps the penance is in achieving what mortals often seek: an everlasting life. Be careful what you wish for…for surely you will have it.

***

No rest. A wounded spirit who can bear; a wounded soul is she: a woman who covets children not her own, one who presumes to claim another life for herself in death. These clues come from a former lifetime: scandalous rumors and innuendo intermingling with folklore and lies spread over the passage of time and space like so much manure in the garden; see how it grows? Smoke and mirrors obscuring the view of most, Mr. McKeachern knew the truth. He had been the one to establish her identity, remembering much about this old woman he’d known as a child, though they were not very pleasant memories. According to the elderly gentleman, she was a mean-spirited soul, angry and resentful, closed off to the world. Bathsheba Sherman had quite a reputation to uphold. Whether because of it, or in spite of it, she was hated and hateful. A wicked woman’s torturous life was openly judged on the streets: tried and convicted in the court of public opinion within the village square, well before her final judgment day actually arrived. Reflecting upon history as a whole, it seems many mortal souls are comfortable in the leading role…playing God.

By all accounts hers was a tragic life. Bathsheba was a young and beautiful woman when an infant died quite mysteriously in her care. A mortal wound, presumably inflicted with a needle which was discovered impaled at the base of its skull, the baby went into convulsions and then died. An inquest ensued; the heinous charge, vehemently denied. Judgment rendered, the court found for the defendant, the judge’s ruling based not upon suspicious activity but rather, insufficient evidence: no proof of malfeasance. Case dismissed. Yet, the accusation haunted her for life. People
believed
she killed that baby, as an innocent sacrificial lamb. People believed a criminal, a wretched murderess, a wicked witch escaped unscathed. As Queen of Denial, Bathsheba could not defend herself against the onslaught of something as powerful as belief.

Whether true or not, and who besides herself could know for certain, much speculation circulated within the void created by a dismissal, suspicions that she had ritualistically sacrificed the infant, many at that time and since who claimed Bathsheba sold her soul to the devil for eternal youth and beauty; a dark heart in a pretty package. Many perceived her as evil incarnate and were not surprised when she seemed to age so rapidly afterward, once she was let off the hook for some alleged crime. Word spread as wildfire rumors swirled about this wicked woman and her evil ways: Witchcraft and devil worship. Someone prone to beating and starving her servants; an unflattering portrait painted of the woman considered to be a bit
too
beautiful: yet another charge leveled against her; it
must
have been because of a secret pact with the devil! The womenfolk were as threatened as the yeomen were attracted. Bathsheba had a following; a bevy of secret admirers as well as detractors, but there was no indication she’d paid much attention to any of her suitors. In spite of it she was persecuted; prosecuted out-of-court. She was labeled and libeled, treated as an evil temptress, a murderess and a harlot; looked down upon as nothing more than a whore: an unholy seductress who had been first seduced by the devil, so to do his bidding with promises made but never kept. The town folk quickly dismissed the notion of her innocence, faster than the court dismissed the charge. They had apparently forgotten about her
presumed
innocence, the law of the land, neglecting to consider even the remote possibility she might have been a victim of circumstance. It was a tale of life and death; enough to leave any spirit restless, wicked or not.

Mr. McKeachern imparted his vast knowledge as pearls of wisdom without ever mentioning the
afterlife
. Carolyn was unable to determine if he was an actual “believer” or not, as this concept was never discussed between them. He spoke of Bathsheba only in terms of her tormented life, describing a bitter old woman; someone filled with rage and contempt. He came to the farm one day, a place he knew well, to instruct Carolyn in how to create a divining rod from the limb of an alder bush. They’d walked the land, talking for hours; he kindly answered every question he could, telling Carolyn all he knew of the woman who once dwelled in her home: a fascinating tale. As the presumed mistress of the house, Carolyn had much to learn and much to gain from this knowledge, assembling an intricate puzzle one obscure piece at a time, until she had a picture in her mind of the woman called Bathsheba. Her temptation to know more had a root ball buried in a dark place. The more she discovered the more she wanted and needed to know. It became as much an obsession as Roger’s compulsion to murder the flies; an imperative. A current of negative energy charged a desire to know a woman she was surreptitiously becoming; a woman fulfilling her destiny through the living soul of another. Carolyn’s yearning for knowledge deprived her of sleep and deprived her children of a mother’s undivided attention for a time. A cosmic confluence was beginning to occur; a convergence of souls: an intermingling of the living and the dead. No one dared speak of it. None among them could fathom the depths of this transition. Essentially, her family could not believe their eyes. Carolyn could not close her eyes to rest. She remained awake, keeping constant vigil, laying in wait, watching over her young for an intruder who may come again under cover of darkness, one already present. No rest…for good and evil alike.

“Time! where didst thou those years inter

Which I have seene decease?”

William Habington