The Abandoned - A Horror Novel (Horror, Thriller, Supernatural) (The Harrow Haunting Series) (7 page)

“Impossible,” she said. “You have the biggest block of all.”

“Honest?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in this.”

“Well,” he said, “I always believe in keeping the window open a crack to let the fresh air in.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m just crazy. But, Thad, I don’t think so. Not about this. Something bad is brewing. I know it. It’s like—well, you know how sometimes you smell a fire before you see it? Like there’s smoke coming from somewhere and you can’t quite figure out where and it’s still kind of faint and you think maybe you’re just imagining it? That’s what it’s like. Meeting that guy. And him asking about that place. It’s like a little smoke and it’s either nothing or it’s going to become a fire when nobody’s looking because it’s too late if you ignored the smoke all along.”

“So maybe he won’t even get the job. He’ll probably just take off again.”

“Thad, it was weeks ago when he came by here. He got the job. They hired him. He’s been there for at least three or four weeks. And I haven’t seen him in the village at all. In all that time. Hasn’t come to Mighty Mart for groceries, hasn’t rented a DVD, hasn’t grabbed a dinner anywhere, and hasn’t even gone for a walk off that property. Nothing.”

“He might just be going to Beacon for groceries. Or Parham. Their shopping district ain’t too shabby.”

“No, I don’t think so. He’s either dead or he struck a match over there.”

“Oh,” Thad said. “Gee, wonder if his daughter’s had her baby yet?”

“Had to. That girl was so big she looked like she would’ve popped right then and there in the car,” Alice said. She tried to push her fears out of her mind. She offered to make a fresh pot of coffee in the back of her shop so that he wouldn’t have to suffer through another one of those dirty sock cups from the bookstore. As they got up from the porch chairs and turned to go into her shop, Alice glanced back to the street and the stores across the way.

She thought she saw some man who shouldn’t be there. She said to Thad, “Who’s that?”

Thad turned about, glancing to where she pointed her finger. “Ah. Well, I’ll tell you about him once I get a little more caffeine in my system.”

“A malingerer. I don’t like him,” Alice said, and as she drew back the door to her shop, she wondered if it might not be time to leave this town.

3

Across the street, not looking over at the shops at all, Bert White leaned back against the Parham Bank, near the ATM machine by the front door, so as not to be noticed. Twenty years old, Bert was small and wiry and took on the odd jobs in town nobody else seemed to want, whether it was a storm drain cleanup, shoveling snow, laying asphalt or repairing a rooftop or two. He was a guy who just got by, and that was fine by him because it allowed him to pursue his favorite hobbies.

Watching and waiting.

He watched her pass by.

Ronnie Pond.

Veronica.
He liked the name Veronica better. She was a twin. Twins were hot. Twins had all kinds of possibilities.

It was as if he were invisible to her, although he figured it probably was because she seemed to be in a hurry. She was headed toward the post office. She was lookin’ good and she’d never understand how he liked her pretty hair so much when it swung back and forth like it did.

He liked to follow the teenager wherever she went, and when he could, he made himself as invisible as possible. He hid behind the columns at the post office, or he slipped into a shop like the bookstore and just watched her from the front window. Some nights, he went to her home and stood outside her window to watch her. Sometimes she’d just be reading in bed. Or she’d have headphones on, listening to some rock group on her CD player, and she’d dance around her room as if she’d forgotten where she was. Now and then, she seemed to look right at him through the window, and it would make him catch his breath—and then he’d remember that she probably couldn’t see him at all out in the darkness. He would be just another inky shadow among the shadows of bushes and trees that were in the yard.

Back at his place, his mother had written him letters, and he flipped through them, hoping there’d be some money. By the third letter, he’d found just under a hundred bucks. It made him feel that his luck had changed a little. Things were going damn good, and only the thought that he might not get the girl alone anytime soon ... well, that thought drove him a little wacko, and he realized that she was the one at fault because he had tried talking to her once upon a time about how it felt all over his insides, all runny and gooey for her and yet terrified that she’d say something to hurt him at the same time. She had pretended he hadn’t even been there. That was worse than if she’d been mean.

How could she be such a bitch and still the love of his life?

After pocketing the money his mother sent him and tossing out her letters, he went outside again, down the back stairs of the house where he rented the room, then knocked on the back door.

His landlady eventually came to the door. “Glad to see you, Bert.”

“Bathroom or kitchen?”

“Bathroom,” she said.

His landlady let him into the house, and because she trusted him to work on the toilet that probably just needed a little handle-jiggling, she wouldn’t even follow him down to the bathroom, which was right next to her daughters’ rooms.

He would go in there and imagine the girl was with him. She was practically all grown up. As soon as she was ready—the right age was just around the corner, in less than a month she’d be eighteen and then he could have her legally—he intended to keep her quiet somewhere.

Maybe even in the apartment above her home. Maybe tied to the bed with duct tape on her mouth. Maybe,
he thought.

Then he’d train her. She’d do what he wanted.

She’d love him.

In her bedroom, he would smell the things in her dresser drawers, then fold them neatly before putting them back.

He would rub himself on the bed until his mind went to the place where the girl also was, and in that imaginary place she’d be holding him, accepting him.

When he was done with Veronica’s room, he’d go to her sister’s room. Sometimes she slept in the bed in the late afternoons. Elizabeth had begun taking naps, and that made him happy to see her with her eyes closed, her breathing heavy and deep in a dream.

He would own them both someday, and they would love him.

He’d bet his life on it.

4

The Love house was not exactly like its name. The family was named Love, which led to many jokes at poor Bari’s expense, as it had for her father years before, and as it always would for anyone with their last name. But the house they lived in was anything but loved. Jim Love didn’t take great care of it because he’d been out of work too much— having been laid off from a plum job in Westchester County a year before, and having only picked up temporary work since then. His wife battled depression, his son seemed obsessed with religion, and his daughter demanded more and more from her father as a result of a distant mother. He still felt the meaning of his last name there—for he was a good man and had love for all of them—but one day in the fall, his daughter came down with a sudden illness and he wondered whether he could handle all that was about to befall him.

Jim pressed his hand against Bari’s forehead. “No fever.”

“I’m just sleeping. Maybe it’s that sleeping illness,” his daughter said. “I saw a show about it. Something bar.”

“You’re too young for Epstein-Barr.” He grinned.

“I heard somebody had it,” she said, and settled back against the pillow.

“Have you been feeling a little down?”

“No,” she said.

“Is this about that boy?”

“What boy?”

“The one who called. The older boy.”

“No, Dad. He’s seventeen. He’s not that much older.”

“Too old to run around with a girl your age.”

She made a lip-fart sound. He knew he wouldn’t win this argument today—not the one about some seventeen-year-old hoodlum calling his daughter, who had only just finished her freshman year a few months before. Too young to date. Bari would not date until she was sixteen, and that was final. But he didn’t want to harp on it too much. He had grown worried about her over the past few days.

“You weren’t with him on Friday, were you?”

“Jesus.”

“Do not talk to me like that, Bari. You know the rules.”

She shot him a glare that probably was meant to be angry, but she just looked exhausted. Her normally bright eyes were encircled with dark smudges, bloodshot. Was she doing drugs? Is that what he had to worry about now? He had hoped by living in a small town and making sure they were in church every Sunday that his kids would avoid all that. Was it that boy? Drugs? Just insomnia?

So many things went through his mind, but he genuinely worried for her. She’d been too tired lately, and in bed too much on the weekend.

“I should never have let you go to that party in June.”

“Nobody drank. It wasn’t like that.”

“I didn’t say they did.”

“Well, you thought it. We just talked. We had a campfire. It was so wholesome it might as well have been the church youth group,” she said, her voice growing faint. “I’m just tired.”

“How’s your throat?”

“Not sore. Fine, Dad. Daddy, I’m not sick. I’m just... really sleepy.”

“Maybe it’s the humidity.”

“I just want to sleep,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering.

“Okay, honey. Tomorrow, if you’re still feeling like this, we’ll take you over to see Dr. Winters. Okay?”

“Sure, Daddy,” Bari said, and then closed her eyes completely.

Jim glanced down at his teenage daughter, and then back to the hallway. His wife stood there, a slightly cross look on her face.

“We should take her to the hospital over in Parham,” Margaret whispered. “When she was four and had scarlet fever...”

“She doesn’t have a temperature,” he said, and walked to the bedroom door and flicked the bedroom light off. “Look, I’ll call the doctor and ask him.”

Just as he’d stepped out of his daughter’s bedroom, he heard her voice again. Mumbling. “Honey?” he glanced back at her sleeping figure.

Her lips were moving, and it was as if she was trying to say something.

“It’s a fever,” Margaret gasped. “She was tired all summer long. I told you there was something wrong. I told you it wasn’t normal for a girl her age to sleep ‘til noon so much. And she’s had flu’s and colds ever since the first of September. We need to take her in. No child sleeps for two days in a row. Not like this.”

“Honey, can you turn the volume down a little?” Jim asked, using a hand motion that always drove his wife nuts.

“Son of a.. .”
Margaret whispered under her breath. “She needs to see a doctor now. And what if she’s really sick. Or... or...” As if the sun had come out from behind the clouds of her brain, his wife said, “Dear God, what if she’s pregnant?”

Her husband shot her a harsh look.

“Well, you saw those condoms. It’s not like we can pretend she’s not active anymore,” Margaret whispered, as if the neighbors might hear her.

“She’s
not
pregnant,” Jim said. He stepped back into his daughter’s room, and turned on the light again.

Bari’s eyes were closed, but her lips were moving rapidly.

“Bari?” He stepped over to her bed.

“Ga—Ga—Ga,” she seemed to be saying.

Jim got down on his knees, and leaned in to try to understand her. He touched her shoulder, then gave it a slight shake. “Honey?” He turned back to his wife. “I guess it’s a—” He was about to say, “bad dream,” when he saw the strange look in his wife’s face in the doorway, her eyes going wide. Jim felt goose bumps along the back of his neck even before he turned back to look at his fourteen-year-old daughter in her bed.

Her eyes were open, and she had somehow sat up without him even knowing she had moved.

“The rooms are filling up fast,” his daughter said, her voice no longer her own. It reminded Jim of the one time he’d ever encountered a rabid dog—it had a snapping snarl to it. Her eyes burned with a fierce intensity.

“Hon? Bari?” Jim felt a strange trickle of fear along his spine as his daughter spoke, not looking at him, but through him.

It was as if she were going to strike at any moment.

“Gets me my hatchets,” she whispered.

“Honey?” her father asked, softly, because he hadn’t heard her well enough—she’d swallowed the last of the words. “What is it? Bari baby?”

“Gets me my hatchets ...”

“Sweetie.” Her father felt like crying, seeing his daughter so helpless and weak.

“Hatchets, hatchets...” she mumbled under her breath.

He leaned into her, wondering if he should take her down to the hospital emergency room to make sure this wasn’t something life threatening. “Bari?”

“Hat-chets, rat shits,”
she said into his ear, and it seemed to him that she was shouting and his ear hurt from the sound.
“Pussy don’t smell. Hat-chets, rat shits.”

He drew back from her again, and held his hands to the sides of her face, cupping her beautiful, pale, sweat-soaked face, looking into her lost eyes. “Oh dear God, Bari. Honey, are you all right?” Part of him felt sadness for his daughter, who went to church every Sunday and did not believe in using cuss words at all, and had even gotten after him for taking the Lord’s name in vain; part of him felt as if he should make a joke about calling an exorcist before she went all Linda Blair on him; and a little scared part of him was afraid that it was not his daughter’s face he held, but the muzzle of a rabid dog.

“Honey,” he whispered. “Oh my poor little baby.” Tears came to his eyes, and though he rarely wept over anything, the thought of his daughter being taken and ravaged by disease or some bacterial infection inside her made him think of the death of his mother and of all death and suffering. He wanted to call out to God Almighty for the reason for such suffering of the innocents.

“Daddy?” she whispered as if coming through a fevered moment. “Daddy, is that you?”