Pam cowered against the stove, one hand on her heart. “Oh God, ’Thena. Oh, I’m so glad, oh God…I got so scared. I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Yeah, me too,” she muttered as she locked the door.
“I kept hearing noises. Oh, ’Thena—all night long, I kept hearing noises. All alone here. An’ things kept moving by themselves and all, I swear to God. By themselves. ’Thena, I heard footsteps outside. I knew it was them dogs coming to get me, or a monster. I know it was Lonny’s ghost. I know it.” She blinked red, swollen eyes. She hadn’t gotten dressed today. When she’d seen it in the catalog, her nightgown had possessed the glamorous shimmer of a frost-covered window pane. Now it hung like an old curtain. “I asked the Ouija board an’ it just kept on saying, ‘danger in house danger.’ Oh, ’Thena. An’ then a rat got in the house, I swear to God, a big black wood rat. I tried to get it with the broom, but it ran behind the stove, an’ then I didn’t see it no more.”
“All right, Pam. I’m home now. It’s all right.” Standing at the stove, she poured herself yet another cup of coffee and wondered if she’d ever sleep again. She marveled to think that just a few weeks ago she’d been worried about sleeping too much. “Could you do me a favor, Pamela? Could we just sit here and be quiet for a few minutes?”
A moth swung about the light globe on the ceiling.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re back. Oh, and you know what else? Y’know what Matty said while I was feeding him dinner?”
“Where is Matthew?”
“Oh, I put him to bed a while ago now. Anyhow, you know what he said? I said, ‘Eat it all up an you’ll grow up big and strong now,’ an’ he said, ‘I don’t wanna grow up!’ Just like that. ‘I don’t wanna grow up!’ Wasn’t that a funny thing for him to say? I’m gonna push the table against the door now you’re home. You think I should?”
She closed her eyes, shutting Pamela out, shutting herself in with bleak thoughts of Matthew’s future. There were times when she didn’t want him to grow up, either. If possible, she felt even more weary than before.
“An’ look—he hit me today. I mean, he didn’t do it on purpose or nothing, but look at that.” She displayed a large bruise on her upper arm, already mottling from purple to green. “The dog ain’t here. I’d like to know where the hell he goes at night. Matty gets all upset. An’ those bad dreams he’s been havin’. Why should he be havin’ bad dreams about Chabwok all of a sudden? What’s that? Oh, what’s that?”
“It’s just Dooley scratching at the door. Let him in, will you. Oh, never mind. I’ll do it. Be quiet, Pam. I’ll lock it again. Get in here, dog.”
“Why should Matty be havin’ bad—?”
“I don’t know.” She sat at the table. “What have you told him about Lonny?” She put her head in her hands. “No, not now. Please, Pamela, I’m so very tired. Could we talk about this some other…?”
Terrible screams obliterated her words. They came from upstairs. The dog went wild. So did Pam. “Matty! Oh my baby! Oh my Matty! Oh God!”
Athena pushed past her, ignoring a twinge of pain in her leg as she took the stairs two at a time. She could hear Pam lumbering behind her, and the cries poured through her as she sprinted down the hallway.
“Not chains! Chabwok! No!”
Horrified, she paused on the attic stairs.
“Chabwok! Not the chains!”
She stood mesmerized. The voice was Matthew’s yet somehow not. With a jarring thud, she was shoved to one side as Pamela thundered past. Picking herself up, she stumbled to the top of the narrow stairs and stood transfixed.
Pam had thrown herself on the boy’s cot. “He’s having a dream,” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s having a bad dream now. Oh Matty. Oh my baby.” The boy’s eyes stared vacantly as the woman rocked him in her fleshy arms. He almost looked dead. Then she saw the way his mouth trembled, the lips drawing back over the teeth, saliva running down his chin and neck.
Pamela wailed. As though an electric current had passed through his body, he stiffened, limbs flailing. One of his arms struck Pamela across the chest and sent her tumbling in a heap to the floor.
“Grab him! Pamela, help me!” Athena leaped onto the bed. “Get hold of him!” She grappled with the thrashing boy, attempted to pin down his arms. “He’s strong! Get up, Pamela, help me! Quick, give me something to put in his mouth. He’s biting his tongue.”
Blood frothed at the boy’s lips, and Pam shrieked. “Oh God oh God oh my God oh Matty oh God oh!”
Athena yelled as his teeth clamped down on her fingers. She struggled with him, forced his mouth open. “That’s it! Now quick, hold this arm down! Do it! Here, just sit on him!”
Swaying and trembling with each violent seizure, the two women struggled to control him while the springs of the old cot sang in loud protest.
Night insects fluttered and ticked against the window, and he found himself listening for the leathern beat of giant wings. An open can of beer in front of him, he just sat at the dining-room table and fought the sourness in his stomach. Then he put one hand on the telephone. Ring marks covered the table’s dusty surface, and the handmade doily in the center had yellowed. His pipe rested in a cut-glass bowl, the red cinders slowly turning gray.
“Ambulance.” She answered on the first ring. “Yeah, this is Doris. Hey, Steve, how you doing?” Her voice sounded odd, and he could picture her cradling the phone with her shoulder while she lit a cigarette. “No, she headed home a while ago, Steve. I’m here by myself, just drawing up the duty roster for next week. Should’ve done it earlier, but Athena needed to talk. What? Yeah, that’s what I figured too. I’m not gonna let her work for a while. She can answer the phone or something. We’ve got a couple new people starting anyway. Listen, Steve, you didn’t call to ask me about the rig. What can I do for you?”
“Right.” He took a deep gulp of beer, the foam gurgling down his throat. “Doris?” He smashed the can and tossed it toward the overflowing wastebasket. “You saw Lonny. Right? I mean, you examined the body and everything? What did it look like to you? Hello?”
“Dogs,” she said at last. “About the other one, the hard hat, I don’t know. But Lonny was all chewed up.”
They listened to each other breathe.
“So?” she asked. “What do we do now?”
Saturday, August 8
“Goddamn middle of the night. Ain’t even awake yet.”
“You want some of this coffee? Duke’s wife made it.” A uniformed trooper passed around the thermos.
“Not enough sugar.” Loosely grouped around the blue and white cars, nine troopers loitered just off the sand road. Nearby, their superior called questions into a radio.
One of the troopers gulped coffee out of the thermos lid, then spoke in a low voice. “How many guys they got out here?”
“Four other groups, I heard,” his buddy replied. “Ten guys each.” He hefted his special-issue shotgun. “When you think we’re gonna get started?”
“Soon’s it gets a little lighter, I guess.”
He’d passed her mailbox ten minutes down the road. Now he gazed up at the astonishing house. Tunneled by termites, it tilted and sloped. He barely glanced at the green things sprouting through the back steps, barely noticed the patches of raw board warping in the sun. His footsteps, drumming across the porch, were echoed by hammerings from within the house. The screen door was off the hinges and leaning against the porch wall, so he knocked on the frame. The banging continued.
“Hullo?”
Athena stopped pounding and turned around in surprise. “Oh, hello.” She smiled a bit awkwardly. “Steven. Almost didn’t recognize you in civilian clothes.” She set the hammer down on the table and brushed at her clothing. “I didn’t hear you drive up.”