“No,” she said, not wanting to fall into the void.
But she was too tired to fight. She heard the crow caw from somewhere outside before her grandfather got into the truck. He draped something warm, soft and dry around her shoulders. In seconds, her world turned to darkness.
Chapter Nine
IT WAS 5:30 p.m. and around the time Vree ran from the headless man when Lenny sat at the table and waited to eat. Jack Lybrook and Karrie Erickson had returned with Dave, and Lenny hoped to taste some of Mrs. Lybrook’s delicious baked chicken and homemade mashed potatoes and gravy soon. But Vree refused to come when Karrie called for her from the bottom of the stairs, so Lenny and Vree’s family waited at the long dining room table while Karrie went upstairs to check on the girl. Lenny sat at Dave’s right and listened to the brown-haired boy describe his visit of the hospital’s ER.
“I wanted one of those blue fiberglass casts,” Dave said, looking down at the old-fashioned white plaster cast around his left forearm that rested in a blue sling. “But the doctor said she needed to mold the cast around the break so it would stitch better, whatever that means.”
“It means you won’t be swimming or playing any baseball for a while, thanks to Vree,” Amy said. She sat at Lenny’s right and stared at the large yellow bowl of mashed potatoes in front of her. Someone’s stomach gurgled and Lenny was sure the noise had come from him.
“You’ll need to make sure you don’t sleep on that arm,” Jack said to Dave. “We can prop your body in bed with some pillows to keep you from turning too much while you sleep.”
“But I was hoping I could sleep in one of the tents tonight.”
“Well,” Jack said, looking thoughtful, “I do have an air mattress we can prop you on. And as long as we keep your arm covered and warm, I don’t see why not.”
“Sweet.” Dave grinned. “I love sleeping outside. Maybe we could have a campfire and hotdogs and s’mores.” He looked at Lenny. “And you could come, too.”
“So, you want an old-fashioned backyard campout, do you?” Jack said before Lenny could respond. “Well, I’ll see what your grandmother has in the kitchen cupboards.” He winked at Evelyn.
“But only if it’s okay with your mother,” Evelyn said to Dave from her seat across from Amy. Then she looked at the girl and asked if she would like to sleep outside, too.
“Sounds okay,” Amy said. “But if it gets too damp, I’m coming inside. The last time I slept outside, I had a cold for three days. Daddy made me gargle with warm garlic water with cayenne pepper. To this day, I still can’t eat food with garlic or cayenne pepper in it. Makes me gag.”
Lenny chuckled and was about to share some of his least favorite foods when he saw the faces in the room had become somber. Their heads turned when Karrie entered the dining room.
“Vree’s not in her bedroom or anywhere else upstairs,” she said. Her body slumped as she crossed the room, and she leaned and rested her hands on the table when she stopped and faced Jack. Her arms quivered as though they held up a tremendous weight. She said, “I looked in all the rooms.”
Evelyn stood. “Maybe she came downstairs and we didn’t see her. I’ll check the bathroom and laundry room, Karrie. You sit and eat.”
“Go on and sit,” Jack said to Karrie when Evelyn hurried into the kitchen. But Karrie continued leaning on the table.
Jack stood and helped his daughter to her chair. She fell heavily into the seat and took a deep breath.
“Supper smells delicious,” she said.
“Dig in,” Jack said. He looked at the kitchen door; so did Lenny. Evelyn stood there and shook her head twice. Her eyes were wide.
Karrie saw her and said, “Dammit.”
“Eat,” Jack said. “I’ll look outside.”
“She’s my responsibility, Dad.”
“True,” Jack said. “But you’re all under my roof now, so that makes every one of you my responsibility.”
Karrie stood. “Then help me look.”
“I’ll help you, Mom,” Dave said.
Lenny heard a groan from Amy before she stood. She followed Jack into the kitchen; Dave followed Karrie out the front door. Lenny paused, still seated at the table, uncertain of where to go or what to do.
He took his cellphone from a pant leg pocket, saw that it had one bar, and called his dad and hoped the phone’s signal wouldn’t quit on him.
“I may be late getting to the restaurant,” he said when his father answered. It was after five thirty and nearing the start of the dinner shift at his mom’s old restaurant still called Becca’s and now owned by his oldest sister. His family often helped out there on Saturday nights. He and his two youngest sisters bused tables and washed dishes while his oldest sister and dad prepared the food.
“One of Mr. Lybrook’s granddaughters is missing,” he told Howard Stevens. “And Mrs. Erickson looks really worried. They’re searching for her now … the girl … her name’s Verawenda. I need to go and help look for her. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Stay away from the property next door,” Howard said.
“But what if she went there?” Anxiety thrummed across Lenny’s shoulders like electricity. He jumped when he heard a pot bang in the background. His dad was in the restaurant’s kitchen, cooking.
“Butter, not margarine,” Howard said. Then, “I’m sure she’s okay, Lenny … as long as she stays away from the house next door.”
“That’s what I mean, Dad.” Lenny had gone to the front door and now peered out the screen. The light had dimmed and the sky showed signs of an approaching storm. “She’s been having a really bad go of things. I think she may have run away. What if she did go next door?”
Another pot banged. Outside the Lybrook home, a silver F-150 pickup truck left the driveway and turned right, followed by a gray four-door Highlander and Karrie’s Sorento. The Highlander and Sorento turned left, and Lenny described to his dad what he had seen.
“What should I do?” he asked.
“If they find her, go ahead and stay for supper,” his dad said. “Help Mrs. Lybrook with the dishes. Finish any chores that need done, then see if Mr. Lybrook can bring you to the restaurant.”
“But what if they don’t find her?”
“Leave. But thank Mr. and Mrs. Lybrook for their hospitality before you go. Hurry home and call me so I can come get you. And wear your raincoat. It’s gonna storm on Myers Ridge, just like every year.”
“I should have told her about the haunting,” Lenny said.
“That’s her parents’ and grandparents’ responsibility and none of your concern.”
“But Mr. and Mrs. Lybrook just moved to this side of the ridge. They don’t know about—”
“Trust me, Leonard, they know all about the haunting. Everyone in the blasted neighborhood does. Just promise me you’ll stay away from your great-grandparents’ place tonight.”
Lenny promised. Then, “Is it okay if I campout with David tonight?” he asked. “He’s the grandson. He broke his arm and—”
“We’ll talk later. I have to go. And be here by seven. I mean it.” His father’s voice and the kitchen noise stopped.
The rain came in fat drops as soon as Lenny pocketed his phone. He watched the drops increase in quantity until he could no longer see across the road. But before the road vanished, he thought he saw an orange face with red eyes stare at him from the brush across the road.
He peered at the wall of rain and wondered if he had seen a Roualen. He hoped so. For as long as he could remember, he had always hoped to see the creature that sometimes haunted his dreams.
* * *
JACK RETURNED WITH Vree amidst heavy rain, thunder, and lots of lightning. They came through the back door drenched. Vree looked exhausted and ill. The green blanket Jack kept draped over the driver’s seat in his truck was wrapped around her upper body.
Vree left him and went straight to her bedroom. The others returned moments later and the place became a bustle of changing clothes
, towel-drying hair, washing up, reheating dinner, and finally joining Lenny at the dining room table.
“I’m glad Vree’s okay,” Lenny said after Jack said grace.
“Me, too,” Evelyn said. But although she breathed a sigh that sounded like she was relieved, her worrisome look said otherwise.
Karrie, who looked worn and tired, blamed Vree’s actions on adjusting to the loss of Charles and their home, and moving to a new home. Lenny nodded. He knew about the loss of a parent. But because of the way his mother had died, he also knew about fear. Running away always crossed his mind this time of year. Whatever had caused Vree to run off must have terrified her. But it was too early for the haunting next door to start, so something else had caused her to run off.
But what?
He longed for the moment when the two of them would be together again. He really cared about her.
Dave interrupted his thoughts by bringing up the possibility of camping in the backyard—rain or no rain. Jack said it was possible, Karrie said it was okay as long as he slept on the air mattress, and Dave again invited Lenny to camp with them.
Lenny thought about the danger of being so close to the witch next door during her witching hours, but promised anyway that he would ask his dad for permission later that evening.
* * *
AFTER DINNER, EVELYN served blueberry pie for dessert; she took a plate of food upstairs to Vree. Meanwhile, Amy finished eating first; she found Evelyn’s black upright piano in the living room and played a song Lenny had never heard before.
“I wrote it,” she told him when he came to the piano’s backside and leaned against its top. She didn’t brag when she said it, but stated it matter-of-factly. “I wrote some lyrics, too, but I’m not crazy about them.”
“Will you sing them?” Lenny asked. “I’d like to hear them, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“They’re not very good.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to. I know what it’s like to sing in front of strangers. I had to do a solo in sixth grade chorus. I thought I would faint in front of the whole auditorium.
Amy smiled. Then she shrugged, began fingering the keys, took a deep breath, and sang.
City winter nights
Ice and snow speak to me
And they’re telling me
Summer’s history
Night rushes in my arms
Where I want it to be
That’s my destiny
Alone at night and free
Free to be alone
Knowing I belong here
That’s my destiny
That’s my victory
Karrie and Dave entered the room, stood next to Lenny, and listened. Amy had a beautiful soprano voice, and her simple lyrics were moving. Lenny felt the chains of his awkwardness around her fall away while she sang, and he nodded his head in time to the beat, impressed by her talents.
Freedom from your love
I will never know it
Never meant for me
Love’s a mystery
This life is cold as ice
I will always show it
True love wins it all
And I will always fall
Amy stopped, sat there for a moment, and stared at her hands poised above the last keys she had played.
“It’s awfully depressing,” she said. “I wrote it the day after Daddy died.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
Karrie sat next to her on the bench and embraced her.
Amy buried her head in Karrie’s bosom and wept.
Lenny stepped back. He hadn’t meant to make the girl cry.
He went to the table, asked Jack for a ride home to get his raincoat, and asked him for a ride to the restaurant at Alice Lake. Jack agreed, but only if Lenny let him finish his second slice of pie and cup of coffee before heading into the rain.
“Verawenda wants to see you before you leave,” Evelyn said as she passed Lenny, on her way to the kitchen. She stopped and said to Jack, “She ate some potatoes and drank some milk.”
Jack lowered his fork and nodded. “She’s eating and she wants to talk. That’s good. It’ll get her outta her shell and on the road to healing.” He looked at Lenny. “She’s taken a shining to you, young man. Be good to her.”
Lenny stammered.
Shining? Wasn’t that an old person’s way of saying love? He recalled the word from an English quiz. Shining meant many things, but the word certainly meant someone developing a fondness or a preference for someone or something.
Fondness meant warm affection … like love. And love meant hugs, kisses, cuddling, caressing … surely Mr. Lybrook didn’t mean boyfriend/girlfriend relationships.
“Son, are you listening to me?” Jack peered with arched eyebrows at Lenny, his elbows planted on the table and at either side of his erect body, and his coffee cup in one hand and an empty fork in the other, both close to his crinkled mouth.
“Yes sir, sorry,” Lenny said. “Um … I should go see what she wants.” He hurried from Jack’s quizzical look and approached the stairs at the end of the living room. He stopped and peered up at the brown-carpeted steps that would lead him to Vree’s bedroom.
He turned to ask Dave to go with him, but the boy now sat on the other side of Amy who had stopped crying. She showed Dave and their mother a tricky chord on the piano.
Lenny gulped and started his long ascent to where Vree waited for him, shining.
Chapter Ten
AT 6:15 P.M., rain fell around Sarlic when he met Margga and Blood at the property’s edge. This time, the two other dogs, the shadows she had spoken of earlier, were there. She called them Chaos and Morbid, and Blood chased them around the property as though they were old friends. Like Margga and Blood, Chaos and Morbid were creatures with no valid explanation. At least, none that made any sense to Sarlic. But unlike Blood, the other dogs were featureless, like standing shadows of paled color. Chaos was a dull blue hue and Morbid was a drab burnt orange, matching the tones of Sarlic’s protective suit, which made him feel uneasy to see the similarity. Life here was so very different from the laws of nature on his planet—a place he knew well from the ship’s history logs. The logs were some of the few pieces of equipment that still functioned aboard the dying ship.
As the rain fell, Sarlic’s transparent force field kept him dry, but the hissing of rain evaporating against the field made it difficult to hear all of Margga’s instructions. But they were the same commands as earlier. She wanted the spell book, which was somewhere inside the house. Sarlic was to go in, locate the book, and return with it quickly.
“Before midnight,” Sarlic said over the hissing of evaporating rain.
“Any time sooner than that would be better.” The rain passed through Margga’s spectral body, which caused Sarlic to consider contemplating later on the scientific possibilities of life after death among his own people.
He turned away from Margga and her hellhounds, faced the house, and said, “Golpa is dead.”
“Is that a Roualen prayer before you enter someone’s home?” Margga asked, sneering at Blood who ran by and seemed to sneer back at her.
“The girl killed Golpa after I left with Yetka,” Sarlic said. “Nydru was able to redirect and increase the amplitude of her energy back at her, but it was too late. Golpa’s life support failed.”
Margga raised an eyebrow at Sarlic. “You’ve found a way to attack by redirecting her magic.”
“It did not injure her.”
“And now you must bury Golpa before you will rescue my book. Is that what you’re going to tell me?”
“No. Nydru is burying Golpa.”
“Good.”
“No. Not good. My people are upset. There have been two deaths today and they fear there will be many more now that you brought her back. Some are talking about taking up human weapons and killing the girl if you do not. We are holding council on the matter after Yetka’s body is contained.”
“Then be quick to find my
book. The sooner I kill the girl witch with my magic, the sooner your people will be safe and won’t have to arm themselves.”
Sarlic’s visor blinked three times.
“Where do I begin looking?” he asked.
“Start at the upper level. That’s where I feel its presence strongest. But be careful that the girl doesn’t see you.”
The two red dots of light on Sarlic’s visor scanned the backdoor before he went to it and scanned for life forms in the immediate area inside.
“You have less than three hours,” Margga said before Sarlic entered the house quickly and quietly.
* * *
VREE SAT UP in bed and stretched to hand Lenny the drawing she had removed from inside the floor. He sat at the bed’s foot end and stared at the offering.
“I want you to take it from here,” Vree repeated. Her hair was mussed where someone had taken a towel to it, and she wore a clean white T-shirt. The rest of her was under her bed cover. She nodded at her dresser where the book still lay. “The book, too. I want no drawings of Roualens, or books written in secret code that only I can read. No more weirdness. My bedroom is my safe zone. No crazy woman with a skinning knife who vanishes and reappears. No guy whose head falls off because he was in an accident. And no talking albino crow that says there’s a witch wanting to take my powers … whatever that means.”
Lenny’s stare had traveled to her face. She flicked the drawing to him. It landed and settled on his lap.
He said, “I’ve always wanted to meet someone like you, Verawenda Erickson. Someone who can do what I’ve always want to do. All my life I’ve dreamed of seeing things no one else can see. And today, I think I did. And it’s all because of you. I’m sure of it.”
“No. Don’t you blame me—”
“Listen. I’m not blaming you for a bad thing. I’m saying you’re a good thing. You’re the best thing to happen in my life since … well, forever.”
“Go.” Vree pointed at the stairs. “Leave me alone. And take the book and—” she turned and pulled a white crow feather from beneath her pillow, “—this. It was stuck inside my pant leg.”
Lenny took the long tail feather. His eyes were wide with amazement.