Dead Echo

  Chapter 12: Decisions

  Patsy found herself in a conundrum. There were two fairly clear routes to pursue but neither of them gave much hope. Or courage for that matter. It had been four days since her encounter. That was all she could safely call it. Had it been ghosts or something else entirely? The bruises on her arms and neck had been real, as had the child’s fingernail, or the foulness she’d spit out in the sink. She had not been imagining them. But if she hadn’t, what did it mean? My God, as far as she remembered there were children in the attic. Terri, for Christ’s sake. Over the previous nights since she scarcely slept, lying there instead with her eyes on the ceiling, waiting for the tiny laughter to begin. And this is what scared her too; inside, just as much as being terrified to hear it, another part of her wanted it. Wanted, at whatever cost, to have her daughter again.

  But it was crazy regardless how she saw it. Whether it was an actual haunting or approaching insanity, how would it bring Terri back? And how would nursing this completely irrational need help her in any way? Terri was dead; John was dead. That was the truth, the end of the matter. It made no difference that her mind was potentially creating this false world for her on the coincidence that the previous owner had mistakenly left a child’s play set in the attic. Yes, something said inside her, if that’s the truth. But what if it isn’t coincidence? She remembered the accident again, lying beside the road looking at the little burnt shoe smoking on the asphalt. It seemed like you’d always known…and the chill the voice brought drove ice into her brain. That was how the headache always began, with that secret insinuation at the core of her being that somehow, someway, she’d known the accident was going to happen. No, she told herself. You just always expected it because that’s how things go with you. You’ve always felt the worst chasing you down, and you just thought that was it.

  Now you’re seeing your dead daughter, among others, in the attic, and you’re wondering if it can’t be a good thing…?

  That was the darkest side, the most unforgiving. Maybe she had lost all contact with reality. The facts seemed to speak for themselves, but then again…what would she be willing to do to get Terri back? That was definitely a point to ponder. She remembered the movie, Pet Sematary, and the lengths the father had gone to have his son back. At the time it had seemed ludicrous (she’d never liked horror movies and had been drawn in by one of her friends; she couldn’t even remember who, it had just been a good excuse to stay away from her grandmother’s one night) but now she saw it differently. She realized now that a chance was a chance. Goddammit, there was no other way to see it. Terri was gone and she’d believed, rationally, that was it, but that had proved wrong. She’d been right there in the attic. Patsy was sure of it; of the other little girls she was not so positive, but she knew her daughter like she knew herself. Terri had been up there. What she could not understand were the circumstances. Why here? Why now? And why like this? Who were the other girls? But most importantly, perhaps, why did the feeling of menace still surround her after four days?

  There were so many questions and as far as she could tell, no answers.

  Here a frown crossed her face. She was not being completely honest with herself and she knew it. Every one of these questions might just so happen to have a perfectly obvious answer. She had gone crazy. That would explain everything; her suicidal urgings, the people on the path, the things she’d seen in the attic. All of it, every little bit, could easily be ascribed to a person losing her mind. Or maybe having already lost it. She knew she’d been under a great deal of strain for a long time, but had always believed she’d feel herself slipping if she ever did lose her mind. Of course she’d heard the stories professing the ill unaware of their illnesses but how could someone outside ever really know? From interviewing the ill? How would you know if they were telling the truth? She thought differently; she believed people would feel themselves losing their minds. It had always made sense to her, though she had to admit, she’d never given it much mileage except as of late. But it had always felt true, like her uncomfortable knowledge that things in her life were weighted for the bad. And even though the latter was still a fixture in her mind, she was no longer so sure about the former. Maybe people didn’t feel themselves losing their senses. Maybe it just happened while you were going about your ordinary life. The thought brought an image to her mind: a young guy in a wheelchair, pulling himself jerkily through an empty mall parking lot several years before. Talking and gesturing to beat the band. It hadn’t been the first such person she’d ever seen, but he had been close, close enough to smell… She shook her head and tried to refocus. She remembered him now, staring blindly ahead as his one good leg chopped at the parking lot. He could have been involved in a courtroom dispute for all the energy he put into it.

  And then there was also the other time.

  She didn’t like to think about it because it was so disturbing and sad, but times like this always brought it back. She’d worked a couple of weeks at a hospital as a sheet-changer dash ass-wiper several years before John. One patient never escaped her. He’d been paralyzed and sick, out of his mind. But he’d been awake and active for the better part of a week, his eyes rolling like a horse’s at a fire. He’d been one she had to have help with; in fact two other girls had been necessary to change the sheets. And the whole time in the room with him his life had played out like a chopped-up movie reel. Every dope deal, every clandestine meeting, every person he’d ever known, loved, or hated had been right there in that room with him, with them. It had been hard to concentrate even on the usually simple task before her, and it had been because of his ghostly, ice pick stare, interspersed between the intervals of madness, as cold as an icy hand on her thigh. She’d never seen it before, hoped she’d never see it again. He had addressed anyone and everyone who happened to fall into that room with that paradoxical stare, those eyes so unfocused but bizarrely intense. He had believed everything he’d said, traveling his whole life it seemed, in that one week. Alone, in his world, with all the ghosts of his life.

  What if this thing with Terri was like that?

  That long ago bedlam had had no qualms about his sanity, so now, here, why should she?

  It was a perplexing question because she knew she could not give up this thing. Even if Hell itself had flung out the bait. But she didn’t want to lose her mind, not if it could be prevented. If not for her, then for whatever Terri had become. Because inside, this is what made her heart beat faster: the belief that her little girl was somehow, someway, closer than she’d been since the accident. It was real, and she could feel it.

  She got up and walked away from the kitchen table to the window above the sink. She looked out and saw children playing in the yard of the house where the boy had died of the overdose. It sent a ripple of unease through her and she wondered if the people who lived there now knew it. It wouldn’t be a strong selling point; that was for sure. But hell, she wondered, here I am with ghosts in my own attic. Who am I to say anything? She turned her eyes from the window to the sink. Only one side had anything in it (she’d been eating a lot of fast food lately) and she quickly put the dishes and assorted silverware into the dishwasher. Then she turned and put her butt against the counter, regarded the floor. Dirty, untouched, not even swept since she’d moved in and that was a damn shame. It reminded her of her grandmother’s, and how Patsy had sworn she’d never live in a mess like that again. But now the world had turned back the clock. Same dirty floor, same dirty life. For just a second a tear threatened to spill but she raked it away and gave the floor a venomous stare. She would not go back to that. John and Terri were both dead and her life had changed for the worse, but she would not go back to that. She crossed straight to the accordion doors that hid the washer and drier from the dining room and pulled the broom, mop, and bucket from the corner, and for the next half hour she mopped away at the floor, doing her savage best to dispel the thoughts in her head.