Where Darkness Dwells (23 page)

"We can't go home, not if he's out there somewhere."

"But we've looked everywhere. Unless someone has him trapped in their house or something like that, I don't know where else to look."

"I don't either, but I know someone who might."

"Who's that?"

"Old Greta."

"Greta Hildaberg?" He hadn't thought about the crazy old lady in so long. Of course she could help.

"She knows everything."

"If we hurry and beat her home, we can ask my mom to drive us. That way she'll never know we left."

"You know she wouldn't go for that. She wants to believe Jimmy enlisted. Nothing will change her mind. We have to do this. On our own. We might not get another chance to talk to Greta."

"We better hurry then." He knew Ellie was right. His mom would just have to be angry. He took the girl's hand and they started back up the hill. As they went, he made sure to take the quickest route, trying to save as much time as possible. Not just because him mom would be angry for them not being home, but also because Jimmy might still be alive.

Sooty black clouds rolled in from the west, rolled right over their white puffy counterparts, moving quickly, carrying along fat raindrops. A storm was forming to wash the new grave, turning George's death shroud to mud.

13.

Cooper slept the night away curled on the floor in the shadow of the pipe organ. He dreamed his repetitive dreams--stronger now that he was inside the house--the repetitive anxiety of running for his life, the repetitive reverie of finding salvation. When he awoke, he was as calm as a lamb. He had slept late, and would've continued on if not for the driving rain rattling the windows.

Cooper spent yesterday going over the old Blankenship home with a fine-tooth comb. It was a disappointing tour. The more he explored, the more damage he discovered that he would need to address to make the home permanently livable. A roof leak in one of the bedrooms had moldered the wall plaster. The likely cause was the severe warping of the upper floor, which in turn weakened the wall structure and affected the soundness of the roof. He could trace the warping to the sinking foundation at the front of the house. Most likely, the foundation also caused the front porch to list and for its boards to weather badly. The more he explored, the more he pondered his sanity for such a hasty purchase. These repairs were not merely cosmetic, but major projects he felt incapable of tackling on his own. He might be better off simply tearing down the existing structure and starting over. But that wasn't the point, was it? He could build a new house just about anywhere. But he belonged in the old Blankenship house, warts and all. He felt it in his bones.

He didn't know what he had expected when he walked through the front door for the first time. Revelation, maybe? Perhaps nothing so grand, but he'd been hoping for some kind of change to overcome him. Some little
something
. Nothing changed for him. He was still the same man tramping the countryside, searching--searching and not find--some meaning to his life.

He yawned, stood slowly after sleeping for nearly twelve hours. Judging the unmarred expanse of dust covering every visible surface, no one had stepped foot inside the old Blankenship home in many years. Decades maybe. He ran his fingers across the organ's smooth wood. It fairly filled the small room. A framed daguerreotype sat atop the pipe organ. A stern-looking couple, still quite young, stared at him through the grime-coated glass. He picked up the frame and wiped it with his shirtsleeve. The picture and organ were his only clues that anyone had ever lived here.

"Reverend Horace and Mrs. Eunice Blankenship, I presume." His volume surprised him in the empty house. He looked around as if he might receive a stern look from an overbearing librarian, a look he doled out a dozen times a day in his former life. Reverend Blankenship wore a black woolen suit, a stiff white linen shirt beneath. His eyes were piercing and cold. Deep wrinkles creased his face, as if the passion of his convictions had weathered his skin like tidewater carving stone. Mrs. Blankenship wore a dark, simple dress, fitted down to her wrists and binding her up to her chin. She seemed both timid and subservient, yet still somehow strong. He wondered if she had started losing her teeth when the photo was taken.

It wasn't déjà vu he was feeling--he could no longer dismiss it with that mystical explanation. Everything inside the house seemed familiar, expected. That wasn't déjà vu. Dejà vu was about similarity of experience or surroundings. This was something else. Something stronger. Deeper.

He closed his eyes and could see Eunice as an old woman, as she appeared in his dreams. Her stooped and withered posture, the dark hair in the photo dulled to gray. She was there, just behind his closed eyelids, a stranger from another time he had never met. It was her. No doubt. The kind old woman was the same woman in the photo.

Adrenaline surged through him. He looked around again, expecting someone to be there. The room was empty.

"What do you want from me!" he shouted. Hearing himself call out to vacant air, Cooper felt both half-crazed and inexplicably energized. As the words left his lips, it was as if an unknown vault had opened inside himself. He was supposed to buy the Blankenship house, he knew now. They wanted him to. They
demanded
it of him.

A floorboard creaked in the front room--a small cubby area where Cooper pictured the Reverend reading religious tracts or Eunice knitting from homespun wool. A reciprocal creak sounded, as if a weight had been placed then quickly lifted from the floorboards. A footstep.

Another step followed, and then another three in rapid succession. Someone, or something, was charging through the front room, heading for the rear of the house.

He stepped into the hallway to confront the intruder (or perhaps
host
, he thought in the back of his mind). No one was there, at least no one visible. The footfalls intensified--he could feel them reverberate through the treads of his shoes.

Almost as soon as it started, the unsettling noise disappeared. As if the noise itself could unfurl a rush of air in his direction, a frigid gust washed over him. A second wave followed on the heels of the first, dosing him a second time with air the temperature of Hank Calder's icehouse. Goosebumps broke against his skin, but the cold air was gone. Gone just as quickly as the thunderous footsteps.

It took a moment for Cooper to catch his breath, and when he did, his lungs hitched in his chest.
Okay. I'm here, and now I know
you're
here. But I still don't know
why
I'm here,
he thought. He wondered if ghosts could read thoughts, then concluded that he might be a step or two beyond half-crazed at this point.

He looked at his shaking hands and noticed he still held the Blankenship family daguerreotype. On weak legs he walked to the organ and carefully returned the frame to its rightful place. After the burst of cold, the closed-in air felt stifling. He felt compelled to run through the empty house, flinging wide the doors as he went, opening the windows to let in a fresh, rain-cleansed breeze.

"One step at a time, folks," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "I'm here now. I'm not going anywhere." His heartbeat was slowing, but the jolt of adrenaline left him nauseous. "Let's just take this one step at a time. We'll figure this whole thing out. What do you say?"

The house gave no response. He felt like his feet would never leave their rooted position. But they did. He took one tentative step away from the backroom and the Blankenships' portrait. One step followed by another.

He came to the front cubby of a room, looking for any trace of the Blankenships. He found nothing. Not even the dust looked unsettled.

He wondered if he was hearing things. How could there be any other explanation? The Blankenships didn't call him here, didn't compel him to buy their home. Did they?

The sound of breaking glass pulled him away from pondering his own lucidity.

His initial thought was that he'd been caught. Someone had caught him sneaking through a house that wasn't his. His second thought was that Horace or Eunice were trying to communicate with him. The noise had come from upstairs. He bolted up the warped risers, hoping to catch them by surprise.

A bedroom window was spider webbed with cracks. The room was empty--more importantly, the room felt
empty
. After a moment's disappointment he looked through the window and saw a blond head bobbing out of sight. The rain obscured his view, and the dirty window made it almost impossible to make out any details. He pulled up hard on the window and managed to budge it open before the left side seized up.

He heard another unsettling noise, stone shattering stone.

Cursing under his breath, he forced the window open far enough to stick his head through. Lightning lit the dark afternoon. Thunder grumbled across the prairie. He saw Jacob Fowler, obviously in a foul mood, flinging stones at Cooper's new home. The boy stood in ankle-deep mud, apparently oblivious to the rain.

As Cooper craned further out the window, he could just make out a girl's mud-streaked shoes hanging over the edge of the wrap-around porch, safely out of reach of the rain.

Another rock smashed against the foundation.

"Hey! Knock it off!"

Jacob Fowler was so shocked that when he looked up he fell onto his back, still staring at the window. Realization set in. The boy recognized Cooper.

"Jacob, you wait right there. I'm coming down."

14.

"We gotta get outta this rain." Ellie's clothes clung to her skin, and her legs were splashed with mud. They had been walking toward Greta's for half an hour. If Jacob was uncertain of his hunger when they were picking flowers, then he was beyond certainty now. He would eat his own shoe if he didn't need it for walking.

"It was sunny when we left the house," he said defensively. The day had turned into such a mess, and not just because of the turn in weather. "We can take shelter at the Blankenship house. It's not far off."

"Not in there. It's haunted."

"It's not haunted."

"Sure it is. Ghosts walk the halls at night. The old reverend and his wife carry torches and read passages from the bible."

"If there's ghosts, which there aren't, why in the world would they do something like that?"

"Maybe it wasn't their time to die."

"There's no ghosts, 'cause they didn't die there, Ellie. They moved away, or didn't Greta tell you that part of the story? It's just abandoned. Besides, we aren't going in. We'll just duck under that big porch until this rain lets up some. We'll dry out in no time."

"Fine. As long as we don't step foot inside. But let's hurry, though. I'm getting cold." Lightning flashed across the darkening sky.

"We can head back."

"No, you're right. Let's try to wait it out under the porch. If we turn back now, your mom won't let us back out to talk to Greta. This is our only chance."

When they could see the ramshackle house, they ran up the driveway, splashing mud from the deepening puddles. Jacob's chest burned by the time they reached the house. He was surprised Ellie followed so close behind. She ran past him, all the way up the steps, only reining in her speed by grabbing the circular banister supporting the porch's roof.

"You're quick for a girl." Jacob leaned over with his hands on his knees.

"Well, you're slow for a boy."

Ellie sat at the edge of the porch, her muddy shoes dangling along its edge. The fabric of her rag doll had turned gray with wetness. It now looked cheaply made instead of merely quaint. "I'm hungry."

Bushes walled off the porch from the road. Ripe blackberries hung heavily from the leafy branches. Jacob plucked a wild berry and plopped it into his mouth. At first sour, the berry dissolved, becoming sweeter, making his stomach grumble. "Look, we've got food right here." Jacob plucked the fruit into his palm, eating half of his take. "Try some." He offered Ellie the other half.

She gobbled the berries, barely chewing. As if the proffered berries gave her a sudden burst of energy, she reached into the rain to pick her own. The rain didn't ease in the slightest as they ate all the berries within easy reach. Another wave of black clouds rolled in from the horizon and extended clear over the roof of the house.