And then, there was another. A voice whose speaker stood just outside of Jeff’s periphery. He could not turn his head to see the speaker, but he recognized the shrill voice.
“They can’t hear you, you know. There’s only me. Invite me in.”
But Jeff never would. He knew better. The voice continued plaguing him, stopping only when Ethan came back into the hospital room.
Someone sat at a computer in front of his bed, hen-pecking at the keys. The very large monitor obscured the typist’s face. Behind the typist was a window that portrayed an endless orange-streaked sky and a dipping giant moon. The clouds in the sky rushed past the window at an incredible speed. Jeff accepted this the way any hallucinating person would: with the knowledge that one’s surroundings are out of their control. That everything happening is perfectly rational.
He found that he could move. He looked around and saw another bed next to his. It took him a moment to realize who was lying in it.
“Mom!” he said. His voice traveled in a muted echo.
She looked at him with a bittersweet smile, a smile so missed, though Jeff could sense the worry etched in the lines of her face. He rose with ease and went to her, taking her hand.
“Mom. You’re awake!” He squeezed her hand and started to cry. She had been in dreams before, but not like this. Not this real.
This must be true!
Her hand squeezed back. Her hair was long again, not cut short as it had been in the care facility. It flowed in a beautiful white stream down her thin shoulders, shoulders he knew could carry more than he could ever imagine.
“No.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re asleep, hon. And I’m just visiting.”
He was certain his face had fallen because his mother patted his hand. “There now,” she said. “No time for that. You’ve got to leave this place. Both the dream and the cottage. Take Ethan and go.”
“How did you know about the cottage?”
“I’m just visiting. You need to wake up, Jeffrey. You need to get away from him.” She turned as serious as he had ever seen her. Her face was set of stone. “The one who comes in here and tempts you. I hear him whispering at you. You need to get away from him. Don’t let him in, whatever you do.”
“I won’t. I mean, I’m trying not to. But it’s been so hard.”
“No excuses!” She seemed angry now. “Get away, Jeffrey. Wake up now!”
A loud clearing of the throat came from the typist.
“And stay away from
him
as well.” Her eyes were aimed like missiles at the computer.
Jeff looked over his shoulder. “Who?”
“Your father. He means to—”
“Dad?”
Before he knew what he was doing or, for that matter, had any choice in the direction his dream was taking him, he found himself drawing closer to the typist. He looked back to see his mother, but she and her bed had vanished, replaced by a void. The typist came more fully into view and the familiar angles of his father’s face appeared. The old man (for he had always looked old as long as Jeff could remember) looked up at Jeff, though his fingers still attacked the keyboard with zeal. The sky behind him had turned ominous, but no less urgent. Instead of orange clouds racing by, there were beaten clouds of black and dark blue.
The old man did not seem the stern father he had once been. The crags and the cliffs were still evident on his face, but they no longer seemed as dangerous.
Jeff grinned. “Dad!”
Tap tap tap
. Relentless.
“Dad, it’s me. It’s Jeff.”
Nothing but the focused stare and the tapping on the keyboard. A tapping that grew even more frenzied.
Jeff moved over to his father’s side of the desk. The typing suddenly stopped and his father sat motionless, his head still facing the monitor but his hands now dead on his lap.
“Forgive me,” the old man said. His voice was weak and sullen.
He rose and offered Jeff his seat in front of the computer. He refused to look at Jeff as they changed positions, staring down at the floor, his arms hanging limply at his sides now.
Bewildered, Jeff took the seat offered him. The monitor held a pattern, one sentence written continuously.
I HAVE TO KILL YOU I HAVE TO KILL YOU
Jeff looked back at his father, who was now crying. His face looked as if it had been bathed in water but not dried off. Jeff was horrified.
“I’m sorry,” the old man said. “He wants you. He wants a place in your body, my son. But if you die, he won’t have a place to stay. I have to kill you. You see that now, don’t you? He would take you from me, and I can’t allow that.”
The dream lost all light. The computer went black. The sound of a fluorescent light struggling and flickering could be heard somewhere. The window let only the dark blues that raced in the sky shade the room. His father, who stood with his back to the window, was a threatening silhouette.
“I won’t let him in, Dad,” Jeff protested. “I won’t let him in!”
Jeff suddenly felt like a child trying to avoid punishment.
“It’s too late.” His father’s voice sounded distant. “There’s nothing you can do. He’s watching you. He’s watching Chloe.”
The blue light would not let Jeff see his father clearly. The computer monitor flicked back to life and Jeff turned to face it. He had barely read the words that filled the screen
AND I WON’T BE STOPPED
before he felt his father take hold of his chin and tip his head back. Sharpness was drawn across Jeff’s throat as he looked into his father’s eyes.
Jeff woke screaming in the cottage. Ethan rushed to his side. He held him, wiping away the sweat from Jeff’s forehead as they both shook.
“It’s a nightmare,” Ethan comforted his brother. “It was just a nightmare. That’s all. You’re okay.”
Ethan was there, Jeff thought. Ethan was really there. Jeff wanted to tell him how sick he was. He wanted to tell Ethan of the illness he had inherited.
“Ethan. He’s trying to kill me!” Jeff said in the frantic, tired dialect of the terminally ill. He had never been, nor had he ever sounded, he was sure, more frightened.
“No, no, no. Shhh. It’s a nightmare. No one is trying to harm you.”
Jeff was not comforted. “Dad! Dad is trying to kill me. Help me, Ethan! Help me!”
Jeff held tight to his brother. He felt Ethan’s arms tighten around him, trying to match his strength with desperate force. Jeff remembered Ethan playing baseball in the yard with their father. He remembered the moment he saw his father hit Ethan with the bat.
“He’s trying to kill us, Ethan.”
“Dad’s been dead for years, Jeff. Shhh.”
And they rocked together on the old couch, both in tears.
Miles away in a care facility that prided itself on its record of quick turnover, a now-empty room was being readied for a new resident. There were new bed linens and new flowers on order. The previous occupant had passed away during the night, a woman who had come to them with long silver hair.
Lost Girl
The cottage was silent but for its now-incessant, nervous creaking. Jeff lay quiet again. Ethan had rocked him until the trauma had passed and he fell once more into a deep sleep. Ethan wrapped his brother up tight in the blanket and the sleeping bag and watched him from the kitchen doorway as he tried to call Kelton once more. He needed a comforting voice. A voice that he was certain loved him. But the weather and the hill was not letting him connect. Relationships, it seemed, in this age of advancement and breakthroughs depended on climate.
He tried calling again in the hopes that something would get through, even if it was only a single ring. But by his third attempt, he huffed in resignation and put the cell phone back in his pants pocket.
The creaking, especially in the kitchen, was turning into quite an annoyance. It was as if the house were crawling, shaking, and creeping its way right to the edge of the hill. The walls stretched and groaned like unused tendons and pummeled bones. The old place was whining and waiting to pitch itself off the cliff side.
Ethan walked to the kitchen sink and looked out the window at the red barn covered in snow. Every so often when a breeze would kick up, a large patch of snow would fall to the ground from tree limbs or the roofline. Ethan’s eyelids grew heavy as he stood there, as if he had taken a sleeping aid and it was kicking in. Something pulled at him, a heavy warmth, lulling him like a brush through the hair. He felt covered by the sensation.
What he saw before him changed. Children were playing in the snow outside, as if they had simply strolled into his sightline. But that was impossible. There were no children around there.
This is a memory. Get to bed before you hurt yourself.
There were two boys in the snow, happy and unencumbered by thoughts of growing up. And there was a little girl too. Maybe a sister. Only Jeff and Ethan hadn’t had a little sister. No matter. The memory played on. Snowballs were thrown and laughs were tossed. Laughing and… cackling. Jeff was
cackling
. Strange that Ethan had never remembered Jeff to cackle before. Not like that. But then, they had never really played together before.
Not like that.
The moment paused. Jeff, the handsome boy he had been, stood tall in the snow and looked at Ethan in the kitchen window. The other two memories—little Ethan and the little girl—ran off to play in the woods, but Jeff stayed and beckoned Ethan out of the cottage with quick, curling finger gestures. Ethan smiled. It had been so long since he and Jeff had spent any real time together. When they were younger, once Jeff had turned to gold, Ethan became rust.
But now… now he wanted to play. How sweet! How wonderful!
***
Chloe made it to Ethan’s car. The inches of snow had allowed her good traction on the road for the most part. She had twice slipped because of the decline, but she reached the creek unscathed and unbruised. When she saw Ethan’s car sitting on its slant, she breathed a sigh of relief. At that moment, it was the most beautiful vehicle she had ever seen. Though heavy clouds still hung in the sky, to her eyes there might as well have been a silver halo surrounding the wreck. She
could
get it started. She chanted that intent to herself in a mantra. Ethan just hadn’t tried. He had said so himself.
She cautiously climbed over the loose and shaky rocks of the creek to the other side where the car sat idle. The creek slabs looked like cold razors. Her heart skipped a few beats at misplaced footsteps, but she reached the door of the car with no problem. She wiped away the snow from the windows, the hood, and the roof. Once she got in the Alero and got it started, she didn’t want to have to get back out to clean the thing off. She pulled at the door handle, the cold digging into her gloveless fingers, biting them numb. Why was everything so cold in her life? Where was the warmth?
Where was the fucking warmth?
Eventually, just as she was thinking she might need to smash a window, the door gave. She jerked back from the force of her pulling, a bit disappointed she was not going to be able to shatter something and get away with it. She got in the car.
Chloe’s attempts at starting the car proved just as futile as Ethan’s. Her fingers began to bleed with the twisting of the keys in the cold. The car gave a few gurgles and teases, but nothing came of them. Chloe hit the dashboard and screamed in frustration, the breath in front of her face making a frenzied design. Her eyes were tearing up, but this was not the time for hysterics.
As she gripped the steering wheel, trying to think of something rational and useful, trying to think of anything to keep from having to go back up the hill, she caught movement in the rearview mirror. She took in a sharp breath and froze. Something had dodged into the trees behind the car. It was very quick, but large and unmistakable. There was no way this was a trick of the eye.
Chloe picked up her phone, her eyes still on the mirror, and dialed for Ethan at the cottage. Nothing. There were no bars.
She heard it this time: movement outside. A crunch of snow and a breaking of brush heightened by the winter stillness. Quickly, she reached around to lock all the doors. Her own, however, seemed set against being fully closed again. The thick layer of ice that had formed the night before was keeping the door from locking back into place now.
She tried to start the car again. Whatever was out there—an animal, most likely—surely couldn’t open doors. But windows were made to be broken.
With every turn of the key and with every dial of the phone, she felt watched. This was not a ‘feeling.’ This was instinct. Chloe’s career had depended on her being aware of her situation, of her surroundings, and of possible danger. She kept her eyes open as she worked, and at last she saw something clearly. A solid dark mass was half hidden behind a large pine tree some distance away. It moved very little, but when it did, the movement was discordant with the pine’s.
“Oh God,” Chloe whispered. “I’m being waited out.”
***
“Where am I?”
Ethan woke with a breathless start. Icy teeth sank into his fingers and the back of his neck. His ears screamed in hellish pitches at the sensation of snow. Above him, the sky was a disinterested and sunless gray, yet it still caused him to squint as he stared into it. He wrenched, seizing as the ice and snow melted into his clothing. The fresh pain of the ice made him cry out.