Tab Bennett and the Inbetween (3 page)

“We won’t be here long,” George whispered after making sure there was no one else around to hear. “Can you keep it together for just a little longer?” I could tell that he was worried about me by the way he bit his bottom lip.

“I can try.”

I stood at Window 6 for the rest of the morning, making mindless conversation with customers as I cashed their checks and wrote down their account balances. I smiled and nodded in the right places, but I had no idea what they were saying. My heart wasn’t in it when I handed lollipops to their children. It was 11:45 by the time Francis came in. He looked so sad, so stricken. When I saw him coming across the lobby I said, “Oh my God, what happened?” as if I didn’t know.

He shook his head. “It’s Rivers, Tab. She’s . . . there’s been an accident. We have to get home.”

Before I could even turn to look for them, George came up behind me with my jacket and purse. Together, my cousins ushered me to the waiting car. Francis went around to the driver’s side while George opened my door for me. “Drive carefully,” he said, tapping the roof.

Francis wasn’t capable of driving any other way. He checked his mirror and then turned to make sure no one was coming before pulling slowly onto the road. He did the speed limit and not a mile an hour more, with his hands firmly planted at ten and two the whole way home. He was steady and solid and deliberate. That was his way whether he was driving or chewing or mowing the lawn.

He’d taken up brooding recently. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him smile. He was always scowling at someone now, always ornery and argumentative. It was Pop’s fault. He’d always put too much on Francis, expected too much.

 “Quit staring at me,” he said.

 “I’m not.” He looked tired. His handsome face was unshaven and pale. His shirt was wrinkled and the knees of his pants were grass stained. I knew he’d been out in the woods all night and most of the morning. Obviously, he hadn’t found time to sleep or shower yet.

“You are,” he said. “Look out the window or something.”

I pictured him walking the grounds of Witchwood Manor, searching for a fresh grave under a dark sky.

“Where did you find her?”

He hesitated for a minute before he answered. “By the wall between the Manor and the deep forest.”

“Oh.”

On the north side of Witchwood Manor, the deep forest, as we’d always called it, went back and back for miles until eventually meeting up with state parkland that went back further still. When we were kids Rivers and I had been forbidden to play there. Not that we would have. It was too dark and the trees grew too close together, twisting around each other in an attempt to reach the sun. It looked like a fairy tale forest – the kind where witches and wolves are waiting to gobble you up whole.

“How did you find her?” I asked hesitantly.

“How did you know she was dead?” he replied without missing a beat.

“I wish I didn’t,” I admitted. “I just did.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Same.” 

“I can’t decide whose super power sucks harder. Is it worse to be able to see but not help them while they die or to only be able to find them once they have?”

“I’d say it’s a toss up.”

We drove through the gates at Witchwood Manor just as the ambulance and police cars were starting down the long drive from the house. Their lights were flashing but there were no sirens. It was too late for that. Francis put his hand on my shoulder, breaking one of his cardinal rules of driving to comfort me.

“Don’t they want to talk to us?”

“It’s not necessary,” he said.

Pop was standing alone by the front door. He was clutching a handkerchief to his mouth in what would have been funny way under more lighthearted circumstances.

The night before I thought he seemed unaffected by the tragedy unfolding around him, but the pain in his wide blue eyes as he stood watching the ambulance leave Witchwood Manor told a different story.

I looked up from the book I was reading and saw it. This light. Like the sun. Like a star. But brighter. Only instead of shielding my eyes from the glow, I found myself peering into it. Searching for something. I went to the window and watched it grow bright and bright and brighter still. There was something so familiar about it – but terrifying too.

As the light spread, I began to feel warm. Hot. A tingle spread across my skin like a flush, prickling like hives. I wanted it. God, how I wanted it. This light. To touch my skin. To hold me close. I can’t explain how desperate I was to reach it, how intense the need to feel it shining on me suddenly became. The next thing I knew I was running across the yard, ignoring the promise I’d made to stay inside unless someone was going out with me, heading toward the stone wall that surrounded the Manor and held the deep forest at bay.

The whole time, some part of me was yelling,
go back
. Some part of me knew it was a bad idea to be so far from the house; to be so unprotected and so very alone.

You’re going to get yourself killed.

I knew it was a possibility but most of me didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid of anything except losing the light until it collapsed in on itself and abruptly disappeared, leaving me alone at the edge of the woods in a sudden flash of bottom-of-the-well darkness.

As I stumbled forward, my eyes adjusting to the change in light, I realized the world hadn’t suddenly gone dark after all. I could clearly see the ground on the other side of the wall. There was nothing there. I don’t know what I expected to see – a meteor, a stray piece of the Hubble telescope maybe – something to explain the glow I’d seen. Something to make me not totally crazy for standing there.

“I’m totally crazy,” I said.

I heard a noise that sounded like a laugh. I swallowed back a rush of fear and the accompanying scream that crept into my mouth. I looked around but aside from a small black bird standing on the stone wall, there was no one around.

 
Calm down
, I told myself.
Turn around and walk slowly – slowly is the key here – back to the Manor.

I heard the laugh again. And then for some reason, panic I guess, I laughed too.

“You are being ridiculous, Tabitha,” I scolded myself.

I forced myself to ignore the feeling of being watched, pretending I didn’t feel that creeping dread that makes you run up the basement stairs even though you’re too old to be afraid of the bogeyman. I turned and started walking, fighting the impulse to run.

The closer I got to the Manor, the more certain I became that someone was following me, staring at me from only a few feet away. I didn’t know how, but I also knew that he was surprised to find me alone, surprised by how easy we were making it for him. He would be happy to kill me. He was looking forward to watching me die. 

“I’m sure there’s no one there,” I reassured myself. “Turn around and see for yourself.” But I didn’t turn around. I didn’t move. I knew if I did he would know I knew he was there. He would get to me before I could get to the door. We would fight, he would win, and I would die.

Panic was setting in fast. It was getting hard to breath. Hard to keep from crying. Then two things happened at once that probably, definitely, saved my life. Hundreds of black-winged birds, thousands of them, came flying and swirling through the sky to perch on the bare tree branches all around me at the exact same moment as my cousin Matthew opened the back door and stepped outside. He shushed me with a wave of his hand before I could say how happy I was to see him. He stood with his eyes locked on something in the distance, somewhere far over my head, until I reached his side.

“Do you have a hearing problem I don’t know about?” he snapped. “Didn’t I specifically tell you to stay in the house? What are you even doing out here?”

“I saw something.” I swear I didn’t realize how lame that was going to sound until I said it out loud.

He was furious, his eyes wide and angry. “What did you see out here that was so important you were willing to die for a closer look?”

I knew I couldn’t I describe what I’d seen, what I’d felt, without sounding like I’d completely lost my mind so I said, “I don’t know. It was some kind of light.” As if that was any better.

“Some kind of light?” His voice was full of contempt but I noticed that even though I hadn’t said where I’d seen it, he turned to look at the place where the light had appeared. “When I tell you to stay inside, just do it. Don’t assume you’ll be OK if you decide to take a little stroll. You won’t be. If I’d stayed in the shower five more minutes you’d be drowning in dirt right now, do you understand that? Who else has to die before you see how serious this is?”

My bottom lip quivered as I tried not to cry. He closed his eyes and looked away from me, like he couldn’t stand the sight of me, before he said, “Robbin should be here any minute. Wait for him inside.”

When I opened the screen door the entire flock of black birds rose up together into the sky. The noise of thousands of wings beating at once was louder than thunder. I stood by the door to watch them fly away in a tight black cloud.

“Matt, I…” I was going to apologize for not listening to him, tell him I was sorry that my sisters were dead, ask him to stop pushing me away.

He didn’t let me. “Just go inside, OK? And don’t forget to lock the door.”

I was standing by the window, watching Matt as he was swallowed up by the darkness at the edge of the deep forest, when the front door burst open with a bang. I yelped without meaning to.

“Tab?” Robbin called. I could hear the panic and relief in his voice. “Tab? Where are you?”

He was half way up the stairs by the time I got to the foyer. He raced back down to my side and grabbed me and pulled me close, crushing me against his chest in a tight hug. “Are you OK? You look OK.” He pulled me close and then held me away so he could look me over again. “Did you see anything? Did anyone touch you?” I’d never seen Robbin so riled up. He looked dangerous and a little bit scary as I shook my head. “But you knew someone was there, right? You could feel him looking at you. Why were you alone? Where the hell was Matthew? Where is he now? Is he outside?” I nodded. “Don’t be scared. If there’s anything out there he’ll find it and if he does, it will never come back.”

You know what’s scarier than being scared? Knowing that someone as big and strong and capable as Robbin is scared for you. And he was clearly terrified. “Why don’t you calm down, killer? You’re freaking me out.”

He stepped away from me and smiled in a sort of crooked, apologetic way. “Matt called and said he couldn’t find you.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “But you’re OK. I’m here now and you’re safe.”

It wasn’t absolutely clear to me which of us he was trying to comfort.

 “Of course I am.” I took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

********

Scotch was just the thing to help us calm down after that frightening moment when Robbin and I both thought I was dead. We were sitting on stools by the kitchen counter slowly sipping when George and Francis came in the front door, their raised voices easily carrying down the hall. In a surprising role reversal, George was yelling at Francis. I was pretty sure I’d never heard George yell at anyone before but apparently it wasn’t because he didn’t know how. His voice was loud and strong and furious.

“You tell Alexander that then, when he gets here. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear your theories. Unless they get her killed.”

I looked at Robbin sitting at the counter under a canopy of brass pots. His eyes had suddenly had suddenly gone Disney princess wide. I waited for him to call out to stop their conversation but he didn’t. He looked nervous but he stayed quiet and still.

“Nobody is going to get killed,” Francis continued, in a low, menacing voice.

“Do you mean nobody else?” George was still yelling. “Because we’re three girls in. We’ve only got the one left.”

“Fine. Nobody else.”

“You make it sound like those deaths don’t count.”