The tragedy occurred at 124 Buckingham Road. Friends and neighbors are in a state of shock at the news of young James’s premature death.
124 Buckingham Road.
It happened in this house.
James is survived by his father, Daniel Thomas, and his uncle and aunt, Paul and Edith Thomas, who reside in the neighboring home.
Edith Thomas! She must have slipped them in his pocket when he picked her up out of her chair.
“We brought him back,” Brian said.
“What’s that honey?” Alice called out from the kitchen.
“We brought him back and he thinks Cassandra is his mother.”
He rose from the couch, walking on legs that didn’t feel attached to his body, opened the door and sprinted to Edith’s front door. He rang the bell, knocked loudly, but there was no answer. Every window in the house was dark.
A loud current of wind whistled down the street, blowing the lid off a metal garbage can in someone’s yard.
Edith had said all she was going to say.
It was his job now to stop the boy from repeating the same mistake.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Louisa came in the morning when most people were shuttering themselves up for the day. She gave Cassandra and her life support a thorough examination. Brian sat in the room with her the entire time, wrapped in his own thoughts.
She noticed the second mattress in the room and was concerned, but knew not to probe.
When she was finished, Brian said, “Louisa, can I show you something?”
“Of course.”
“You might want to take a seat.”
He handed a pair of old news articles to her. She placed her bag on the floor and opened them up.
Oh dear.
When she was done, she felt terrible for not telling him everything about the
bhoot
. Worse still, she felt sick to her stomach knowing they had something far worse to face than a simple lost soul.
“Brian, you can’t leave Cassandra’s side, especially not tonight. The storm is full of energy. A
bhoot
thrives on the power of nature. The boy will be strong tonight. His obsession with Cassandra can be harmful. Because of what James Thomas did to his mother, he can never be reunited with her. He sees your wife as his mother, all over again. He’s just a boy. He’ll repeat what he did if given the chance. As long as Cassandra remains close to death, she’s vulnerable.”
Brian rubbed his hands across his face. “What do I do? How do I convince him that she’s not his goddamn mother?”
Louisa felt pressure around her heart. She reached out to him and said, “You can’t. He won’t listen to you. He wants Cassandra. Right now, she’s in a place that’s not quite life, not quite death. It’s a place where the
bhoot
can grab hold of her. She’s in his domain. She’s the one person who can fight him off, if she has the spiritual strength.”
Her words seemed to sap away what little stamina he had left. His mouth hung open and he stared at Cassandra with lost, helpless eyes.
“Be with her,” she said. “When the boy appears, keep talking to her. Let her know you’re here, waiting for her. Tell her not to be tricked by the boy. Do whatever you can to keep her from slipping away.” She felt hot tears well in the corners of her eyes.
Brian looked angry, but not at her.
“None of this seems real,” he said. “A part of me keeps saying it
can’t
be real. I know that’s just wishful thinking.”
“Don’t let her go, Brian. When the time comes, bring her back to you.”
She left him sitting on the bed with his wife, his fingers entwined with hers.
When she was back in her car, her body shook with chills and her teeth chattered so hard they hurt. She’d told Brian she would be back tomorrow. She prayed they would get through the night.
The rain came first. The skies went from sunny to pitch black in minutes. Rain lashed against the house in driving buckets.
“Alice, we have to talk.”
Brian called her into the bedroom. He sat at the foot of Cassandra’s hospital bed. Alice looked worried.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
He tried not to sound as bone weary as he felt. If he had to be strong tonight, he would be. And so would his MIL.
He told her about Edith slipping the articles in his coat and gave them to her. There were tears in her eyes as she read them. He told her what Louisa had said, and how the boy would try to take her from them to ease her suffering, just as he did to his mother.
“She said that because he had killed his mother, even though it was an accident, he could never be with her in the afterlife. He thinks Cassandra is his second chance. We can’t let that happen.”
“What do we do?”
“We keep Cassandra grounded, here. It’s all we can do.”
The house’s frame popped as a gust of wind slammed into it. They heard the
thunk
of lawn chairs that had been left unsecured, scattering between narrow alleys.
Brian said, “We’ll eat in here and make sure she’s never alone. We need to keep our strength up and keep talking to her. That sound like a plan?”
Alice nodded. “I have to go upstairs and get my Bible. I’ll come back with dinner.”
Brian heard her sneakers thump up the stairs, and the storm rattled the window.
He wrapped his hands around Cassandra’s. “I’m with you, baby. It’s Brian. You stay with me, you hear? Just stay with my voice. If you do, I promise to take you to Aruba when this is done. Palm trees, fruity drinks, walks in the sand, you name it. Just…just stay with me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Brian forced himself to eat some sausage and peppers, along with a side of pasta and a salad. He noticed Alice tuck more into her dinner, too. They were both preparing.
The news said the hurricane was expected to hit the Bronx in an hour. It was almost nine o’clock. They had spent the entire day waiting for two forces of nature; one outside, and one inside.
Howling winds shook the house. So much rain had already fallen, the unfinished basement was beginning to flood. That was the least of his concerns.
At one point, the blinds shook, making him go rigid with anticipation.
“It could be the wind,” Alice said, her finger keeping her place in her leather-bound Bible.
“Yeah, it could be.”
The local meteorologist was about to tell them when the storm would pass when the TV winked out. A sharp crack hit the shingles outside.
Brian pulled the blinds back to look but it was too dark, the rain smearing the window, distorting the view. “Well, there goes the cable line. Wind must have snapped it off.”
Alice turned the knob on the battery-powered radio she’d brought into the room. The news blared to life.
“I prefer the radio, anyway,” she said.
The storm shrieked and the house shook like it was caught in a minor earthquake. Brian watched the IV pole shimmy with the vibration. “You’re missing a heck of a storm,” he said to Cassandra. “I know how much you love the rain, especially at night, but this one’s off the charts. I really wish you’d open your eyes so you can see it, too.”
He kept urging her to wake up, to join them as they sat out the storm. Maybe something would get through to her.
Rain pelted the window with renewed fury.
A picture fame fell from the wall. Alice jumped from her chair, the Bible slapping on the floor.
“That picture was hung with two screws,” she said, biting back panic.
Brian bent to pick it up, the glass cracked over his and Cassandra’s smiling faces.
The room went dark.
Cassandra’s life support machine beeped once, more of a high-pitched scream. Then it quieted down as it switched to the battery power.
Alice snapped on the palm-sized flashlight she’d kept looped around her wrist.
“The storm?” she said.
Brian looked out the window again. He saw lights on in Bill/Bob’s house. Other houses in back of them also had their lights.
“Just us.” His stomach clenched.
Alice lit a candle on the night table.
She shrieked when the infusion pump screeched again, this time fading out as the displays went blank. The radio tuned out as well, the volume getting lower and lower until it too was dead.
“He’s coming,” Alice said in a trembling whisper.
Brian could feel it too, like a rush of air that precedes an oncoming train.
“I have to turn the generator on. Stay with Cass, keep talking to her. I’ll be right back.”
He stepped over the cable he’d run from the generator to the life support machine, grabbed the handle to the door and steadied himself.
Be ready for anything on the other side of that door.
He jerked it open and was relieved to see a dark, empty hallway. He flicked on his flashlight and ran to the basement. He could hear Alice reading to Cassandra from the Bible.
The water was an inch high in the basement. He’d put the generator on a makeshift table made of old cinderblocks by a louvered ventilation window. His finger hit the ON button and nothing happened. He tried it again. Still nothing.
Flipping through the manual he kept by the generator, he went through the setup guide to make sure he didn’t do something wrong. But it had worked just fine when he’d tested it this morning.
With terrible clarity, he realized the generator wouldn’t turn on, no matter what he did.
Then Alice screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Brian ran up the stairs and rushed back to the bedroom. Several candles had been lit. Alice stood apart from the bed, her eyes wide, terrified, arms locked at her sides.
The cream-colored sheet they had draped over Cassandra was being pulled haltingly toward the foot of the bed. Invisible fingers gathered the material, pulling it into a tight bunch as Cass’s atrophied body was revealed inch by inch.
Time stopped for Brian. He could no longer hear the storm crashing around the house, or Alice’s helpless cries.
He watched as the sheet slipped over Cassandra’s exposed knees. Her pale flesh broke out in goosebumps. She may have been unconscious, but somehow he knew she could feel the violation of her personal space by the unseen hands.
He gasped when he looked to her face and saw her hair parting along her pillow, as if someone or some
thing
was stroking it.
Alice’s voice cut through the numbness. “Brian, make it stop.”
Yes! Do something! Take her from it!
Brian shook his head, breaking the dull haze that enveloped his brain. He reached down to pull Cassandra to him.
The icy barrier chilled him to his bones. It felt as if Cassandra was immersed in the center of a glacier. The cold was so extreme, it burned.
Stifling back a cry, he covered her as much as he could with his own body.
She trembled beneath him, and at first he thought it was the hurricane shuddering the house again. When he glanced at her face, he saw foam dripping from her anemic lips. Her tremors escalated until she convulsed in a full-on seizure.
“Cass! Cass!” Brian screamed.
Alice held down Cassandra’s legs while Brian kept her shoulders on the bed. The seizure, though violent, was short-lived. Her mouth hung slack while white, frothy bubbles flowed freely. He wiped them away with a corner of a pillowcase.
“I’m calling 9-1-1,” Alice said, fumbling for her cell phone.
“They won’t come out in this storm.”
“I don’t care. We need help.”
A shock ran through him when he placed his hand on Cassandra’s chest.
She’s not breathing!
Brian placed a hand behind her neck and tilted her chin up. He bent an index finger and scooped it along the inside of her mouth.