The Orphan (27 page)

Tommy was afraid to move, afraid she would hear his footsteps. He wanted to go back for the shotgun, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It couldn’t be her, not the little girl. It was a spirit, a demonic presence, using her to get to him. The thing making the voice was right below him, in the kitchen where this back stairway ended. Just out of sight, but close. She giggled again.

Tommy
…
the little girl’s voice said.
Toooooommy, I see you up there, Tommy Berkley. Are you spying on me again?

Tommy began to sweat. His legs felt numb, locked in place. His feet hurt. He had grown used to never feeling light, not at three hundred and seventeen pounds according to his last physical, but right now he felt as though he weighed a thousand pounds.

Did you like seeing me that way? I know you still think about me, Tommy. My young body purified in the ceremony of womanhood. Is that what you think about when you jack yourself off on those hot nights when your wife won’t let you touch her?
 

Do you want to see me again, Tommy Berkley? Do you want to touch my little rainbow barrettes?
 

Lord, help me. No. No, I do not.

But this was all a trick, because Sheila had died in the fire. Even if she’d lived, Adam’s sister would be in her mid-forties by now.

And it wasn’t even a real voice, like someone talking. It was in his head. This was all in his head, the footsteps too. It was two in the morning. That bastard Darren’s visit today and all this talk of Adam had screwed with Tommy’s head. How in the world would she have found him? Why would she bother? He’d never done anything to her except peep through her window.

The refrigerator door suctioned open, then closed.

‘Enough of this,’ Tommy mumbled. He gathered his breath and shouted down the stairs. ‘Somebody there? Huh? You want some trouble? I got trouble for you!’

He waited a few seconds for an answer. Got nothing. Marched back to the bedroom, to the closet where his mother used to hang her dresses, and took the Remington out. He checked the chamber for shells, saw it was full, and marched back down the hall to the top of the stairs. He banged the barrel of the gun against one wall.

‘Whoever you are, you’re in the wrong house,’ he said. ‘I’m coming down, and if I find you in here, I’m gonna blow your ugly head off.’

No one spoke or giggled. But was there… something?

Breathing, maybe?

Hard to tell from up here. It felt like someone was down there. The house no longer had that empty energy. Might just be his nerves.

Tommy hooked a finger around the trigger and cradled the shotgun barrel-upward as he descended the stairs, not attempting to do so quietly. He was in no shape to trot down, or tiptoe. He took his time. Five, six steps down…

When he got to eight he paused for breath and a floorboard creaked behind him, above. He turned, bringing the shotgun around in the tight stairway, aiming it up at the landing. His breathing stopped.

A small… person… stood there in the darkness, quite possibly the outline of a girl. Short, thin, the face pale. A frame of lighter hair hanging to the shoulders. She could be no more than twelve years old.

She was stunted, small for her age.
 

But it couldn’t be Sheila because Sheila wasn’t a kid anymore, couldn’t be this young, and Sheila was dead.

Tommy pointed the shotgun. ‘Who that?’ he barked. ‘Don’t move!’

The girlish shadow stepped forward to the edge of the stairs and leaped, seeming to float down at Tommy, arms spreading, the face coming into focus, legs moving in a walking motion that was too slow, underwater movement, not touching the stairs at all. She looked like an angel without wings, a pale specter with dark designs on her face, falling through space and time in cold silence.

Tommy screamed and fired the shotgun. The flash of fire blinded him in the stairway for a moment and he flinched backward, expecting the girl to slam into him. He staggered down two stairs and caught a heel on the last stair, falling to his ass in the kitchen, which caused an obscene racket and scared him so bad he fired another blast. A rain of ceiling plaster fell around him.

Nothing hit him from the stairway.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, recovering from the barrel-flash. There was no one in front of him. Whatever it had been, it was gone.

The girl giggled again, from his right side, somewhere close.

Tommy heaved himself to his feet and backed across the kitchen until his butt hit the oven door handle. He swept the shotgun in every direction, toward the living room, the laundry room, the small open bathroom. He heard himself gasping.

He didn’t see her.

But golly Christ almighty he’d heard the little fiend. What the hell was this? Either his mind was playing tricks on him or someone from that Burkett clan was here, trying to use their black art on him. Maybe the whole damn clan, their wicked spirits. Was it possible Darren had led them here? He’d said he brought Adam out, the kid was waiting in the car, and when they went to have a look, the kid was gone. Tommy had thought that was just proof Lynwood had a screw loose, but he had to admit his old friend had looked convinced.

Maybe they were all haunted by the Burketts. Maybe that’s what got Ryan Triguay. To hell with depression and alcoholism. Maybe when you got down to it, all suicides were just a way to shut off the past, past and present, because without the one you didn’t have to deal with the other. It got Ryan, was eating a hole in Lynwood, and now it was coming for him too.

Tommy kept the shotgun raised as he walked to the front door. It was closed, the screen door too, though he’d heard it creaking just minutes ago. So, this told him nothing new. They could be in here. She could be in here.

He scanned the front yard, threw the porch light on. No cars other than his own Dodge truck and the Jetta hatchback the girls in the guest house shared. Their Subaru was gone. What about them – Trisha, Dawn, Renee? He didn’t think more than one of them was home, but shouldn’t he go check on them? What if the creepers got them first?

No, he had to sort out the situation here in the main house before he wandered out into the dark. And the girls would have come running if they’d heard the gun go off, so they must be out.

Tommy locked the front door.

He moved across the kitchen, checking the small bathroom, the mud room, the closet, and had another gander up the stairs. All clear. He turned the living-room light on, the brightness a nice dose of relief, but not enough to lower the shotgun. There was his TV, his couch, the armchair recliner. He walked around the back of the furniture, checking the side yard through the windows. Nothing.

Nothing but his dearly departed old man’s last bottle of J&B Rare, its yellow label and red lettering stark in the otherwise boring room.

That would go down like nectar of the Gods right about now.
 

‘Nope,’ Tommy whispered. ‘Not tonight, Pop.’

The dining room was empty, and the rear parlor with its framed pictures of Tommy and his brother and some old family portraits hanging on the walls. Tommy’s heart was slowing and he wasn’t sweating so badly now. The downstairs was cooler. He carried the shotgun back into the living room, to the screened-in porch turned sunroom, a wide narrow space that had become a storage room for stuff he had been intending to auction off or give away to the Veterans. The room was choked full of boxes, nowhere to hide or walk except under the short coffee table, itself stacked high with boxes containing everything from old kitchenware to farm tools and rusted horseshoes. All clear in the sunroom.

Tommy headed back through the living room, intending to go to the kitchen for a glass of water. He was thirsty again.

You’re imagining it, all of it. Thinking about that girl naked in her tattoos, that’s what got you jumpy. Shouldn’t dwell on bad things like
—
 

He stopped. Something caught his eye. Over by the mantle.

The J&B Rare bottle had been moved.

It was standing in the same spot, but its label was facing the wall now. For over a decade it had been facing the couch, the center of the room, the red letters visible from just about every angle. Charlotte knew better than to move it, even dusted around it.

He’d just looked at that damn bottle not two minutes ago, but between then and now someone had turned it around. To send him a message. Not someone.

Her. That little fiend Sheila.

Tommy stomped across the living room and snatched the bottle from the mantle. It was hot in his hand, hot like it had been sitting in the sun all afternoon. When his fingers wrapped around its neck, a jarring tingle shot up his arm, vibrating, almost electrical, but he could not let go. Sweat sprang from under his arms, down his back, and Tommy saw his father face-down in the horse stable.

A single stalk of hay stuck in one ear, blood dried around his mouth like a clown’s smile. His eyes were purple, his throat hard full of white vomit, the reek of piss and faeces emanating above the everyday manure smell. And Tommy had set his hand on his daddy’s cheek, knowing he was dead, and tenderly wiped some of the blood from the old man’s chin. Morning sun already hot in the horse stall, and when he caressed his daddy’s chin, the old man’s eyes opened, bloodshot and dark, and his hands flew up and seized Tommy by the neck.
 

‘No!’ Tommy cried, spinning around in the living room, searching for her. Without thought, without even noticing what he was doing, he released the shotgun and used his left hand to twist the bottle’s screw top, breaking the seal. Whisky fumes stabbed into his nostrils as the bottle came up fast, the green top clinking against his front teeth. His mouth filled with a huge wash of the J&B and the swallow sprang tears from his eyes. Felt like someone ramming a fist down his throat. Then the heat was spreading through his gut, swirling around his dinner, seeping through the lining of his stomach walls. A long string of saliva dangled from his lips and stuck to his shirt.

Tommy looked down at the bottle in his hand, wondering how he had done it, how he had waited so long. He was suddenly calm, not drunk but marvelously light on his feet and – best of all – fearless.

He took another magnificent belt of the whisky and roared. ‘Hoo-yeah! There you go, Pop. That one’s for you.’

Trembling, laughing and crying at the same time, he set the bottle down and picked up the shotgun. He strode back toward the kitchen and swung the barrel around in all directions.

‘Come on, honey,’ he said, already slurring. ‘Come on out and play, you rotten little creep. I’ve seen you before and I ain’t afraid of you.’

She didn’t answer, and in his warm, billowing buzz he grew confident she had never been here. He’d let himself get spooked and there was nothing more to it than that. He laughed at himself. Decided he would take the rest of the bottle to bed and knock himself out for the night.

Back into the living room. The bottle was where he had left it on the mantle, open, leaking its heavenly fumes. He snatched it by the neck and upended the bottle and guzzled, taking the shotgun in his left hand. He hit the bottle three or four times on his way back to brave the stairs. He was wheezing sourly by the time he reached the top, but he got there in one piece. Tommy did not feel drunk, only loose and warm, whatever bug he had been catching now poisoned dead.

He walked down the hall, into the master bedroom, and the bottle slipped from his fingers. It hit the floor with a clank and the liquor spilled over the carpet.

His father was sitting on the bed, sideways to Tommy, bare feet dangling a few inches from the floor. He was leaning forward, swaying a bit, head hanging low as if staring at his open bathrobe and boxer shorts the way Tommy had seen him on so many mornings, caught between the last hours of a barn-burner drunk and the onset of a head-splitting hangover.

Tommy’s brain ceased all thought. For a long spell that could have been five seconds or five minutes, all he could do was stand at the threshold and stare at his old man. His matted gray hair, the overgrown ears, his gray stubbly chin.

Gradually, very slowly, Randall Berkley sensed his presence and his chin lifted from between the open rolls of terrycloth. He turned his head and looked at his son. His eyes were darkly wet in the darker room, and Tommy could smell the old man’s horse stall and sweat scents from eight feet away. His lips were shiny, smeared.

‘Tommy?’ the old man said in a meek, saddened voice. ‘That you, son?’

‘Daddy?’ Tommy said. ‘You okay, Daddy?’

The old man looked away for a moment and sighed. ‘Not feeling too good today, my boy. I get so tired, you know. The work never stops. Is your momma home?’

‘No, sir.’

The old man looked at Tommy again. His eyes weren’t as dark as before. There seemed to be clouds of white in them, cataracts maybe. His mouth was pulled down at the corners. His lips trembled. His father was in need. He looked so sad, so tired.

‘We’re in a bit of trouble, Tommy,’ the old man said. ‘I need you to come on in here and help sort this out.’

Tommy moved a few steps closer. He was within arm’s reach now. He wanted to sit on the bed beside his father and hug him, hold him close, squeeze him to his chest and tell him not to give up, everything was going to be okay. There was still time. They could get help. They could do it together.

But he was afraid to sit down, to touch the old man, for fear of sending him away again, back to wherever he’d been gone so long.

‘What is it, Daddy? Anything. Tell me what to do.’

The old man looked toward the closet door and exhaled all the way out, pausing before he drew another breath. Slowly he raised his right arm, the hand closed in a frail little fist, the skin gray in the dark room, the knuckles misshapen, knotted.

‘Tommy…’ his father said with another disappointed sigh. ‘Didn’t I tell you to get rid of this?’

The fingers opened slowly, twitching arthritically. Something was perched there on his daddy’s palm like a bug. Tommy took another step and sat down on the bed beside him, the springs creaking, his father’s bony shoulder and the soft meat of his leg nudging against his larger son. The leg was cold.