Dead Echo

  *

  Having a sandwich at eleven-thirty, she had to admit the work had done her good. She felt rejuvenated, relaxed even. Her muscles needed work; her mind had been doing too much of it lately. She needed a happy medium. Nice, she thought, looking around. The floor was spotless, along with the gas range. It was the first time she’d really looked at it since buying the house, and she was surprised at its newness. Someone had spent the bucks there. She’d also wiped down all the cabinet fronts and counter space but still had be make a run to the Wal-Mart (wherever the closest one was) to get some liner paper for inside. Another thing her grandmother had never done, something that she must do. She nibbled the last bite of the sandwich and stood up, taking her plate to the dishwasher which she hadn’t turned on yet. She snapped her fingers, detergent, she mustn’t forget that. She quickly added it to the growing list of things she’d placed by the phone.

  She nodded and smiled because she felt good. Amazing but true. Out of the depths she’d suddenly broken to the surface and it was a bright, sunny day. The sandwich and the cleaning, the most mundane activities, had cleansed her somehow. It was truly amazing. It was said idle hands did the devil’s work. So yeah, maybe. Best not be idle. She thought about the list of things, but again, she’d not seen a Wal-Mart and that’s where she did her shopping. Besides, she really didn’t feel like doing that yet anyway. The house was calling; it needed her attention. Ever since she’d moved in, that is the one thing that’d been elsewhere. Her sorrow, the encounter on the path, the laughter from the attic; all these things had distracted her from the very thing she’d sought with the purchase of the place: peace. Until this moment she’d not realized it and now it was almost sad. As if she were unconsciously attempting to boobytrap her life at every step. A welcoming veil had been lifted, and it had come with the familiarity of a little physical work. She liked the feeling and wanted to keep it going. And of course the house was not without a multitude of things that needed addressing. The rest of the floors, for one; the kitchen now looked nice enough to throw a pale over the rest of the house and she thought she’d finish that first. One thing at a time. It didn’t go jumping from task to task, completing none of them.

  She refilled the bucket with fresh hot water and soap and began working from back to front. By the time she got to the hallway she was whistling. She hummed in the study, and was actually singing lightly in her bedroom when she heard it.

  Children playing.

  It was not coming from the attic and a half-wash of thankfulness coursed through her without a thought. She remembered the kids playing in the neighbor’s yard, earlier, but she hadn’t been able to hear them even from the kitchen. She placed the mop back in the bucket. Her backyard was surrounded on two sides by the six-foot wood fence and in the back by a roughly four-foot hedge in front of a neighbor’s hurricane fence.

  There…again.

  Her hands had gone clammy and uncertain. The late night in the room when she’d been awakened was upon her suddenly and she had to admit the laughter was the same. Whether in dream or reality, it was the same.

  The window that looked out to the backyard was covered with a beach towel she’d hung from a couple of nails. She’d always hated the early morning sunlight stealing away her sleep and had hung it up the first night she’d slept here. She could hear the children out there right now, just on the other side of that towel. All she had to do was…

  She stopped her hand in mid-motion, a foot from the towel. She didn’t even remember covering the ten feet in between. Her heart was pounding, the midnight pounding. But it was not midnight now. It was not and that made a difference. A big difference. This was not waking up out of a dead sleep to something that was still unclear the next morning. This was the next morning. Along the edge of the towel she could see the blocked sunlight scrabbling for purchase on the sheetrock. This would take it to a whole different level altogether, if she went with this thing.

  The laughter seemed to recede a bit and for just a moment her hand stayed the course. Let it go, let it go! the voice screamed, but of course she couldn’t. Already, in her mind’s eye, she saw Terri out there in her new back yard, playing with the friends who’d just come in through the back gate. She lurched forward and grabbed the towel, pulled it violently away from the nails, freeing the window.

  Across the yard, near the back hedge, stood two little girls. They were facing each other with their hands clasped but their heads were turned and their eyes were on the house. Staring at the window. They were not moving and there was no laughter now. There was also no Terri.

  In a second Patsy knew these were the two from the attic. She had no doubt whatsoever. They were dirty, their dresses caked with blood, mud perhaps, their hair in strings and their faces drawn and white beneath the filth. Their eyes huge white circles staring her way.

  Patsy felt her hand go to her mouth to keep the scream down.

  The girls loosed their hands and turned to face her, side by side. A sinister smile broke through the dirt on their faces and they turned as one and began making for the gate in the corner of the yard at the edge of the hedge.

  Patsy knew she had to stop them. She almost broken a finger trying to wrench the window up, and when it wouldn’t come she saw someone had driven a large screw into the wood above the runner so her effort was in vain. The little girls stopped as she pawed at the window and were once again staring her way, side by side. Their faces had changed on some almost imperceptible level and they were no longer smiling. The one on the left raised her hand and pointed at Patsy and Patsy’s blood ran cold. The window was no use unless she smashed it and there was still the screen on the outside to contend with. Besides, she’d placed a large padlock on the hurricane fence gate after the encounter with the two on the path, whatever that had been. She’d catch them if she was quick.

  She spun away from the window and raced out of her room and down the hall to the kitchen, grabbing the doorjamb to slow her before angling left across the kitchen to the side door. She wrenched it open and blew through the screen door facing the carport. Then it was a short dash left to the sunroom. She went through the doors like they didn’t exist and burst out onto the back patio that opened on the yard.

  The girls were gone.

  She ran through the gravel pit that had obviously been used for a swing set or above ground pool in the past, between the pecan and red maple that flanked it, and out to the spot where she’d seen them. Nothing. She squatted to her knees and ran her hands through the grass. She peered into the hedge that paralleled the fence but could find no one hiding there either as she made her way to the corner where they’d been heading when she left the window. Sure enough, the lock was still in place. She walked up to the gate and put both hands on top. Her heart had stopped pounding but now she felt weak, finished. With everything. The empty lot still opened up behind her house on the pot-holed street and the sprinkling of houses on the other side. Patsy knew without doubt that just past those houses on the other side was the trail where she’d seen the two figures. It had not been the girls; that was another thing she knew for certain. Those had been adults, or something adult-sized. In fact they’d done nothing except slink away into the underbrush. At dusk, she shouldn’t forget that. At dusk your eyes might trick you; a shadow might become a form it had no rightful inheritance to. Or even at midnight when you thought you heard laughter in the attic. All explained through confusion of the senses.

  But now…

  This was a new thing altogether. Ghosts in the daylight. Because there was assuredly no one in her yard or in the empty lot now. She supposed they could have jumped the fence and ran away before she got back here, but her mind told her they hadn’t. They’d disappeared, like ghosts do. And this time Terri hadn’t been with them. Patsy found her mind running over crazy scenarios of kidnapping and torture and placed a hand to her forehead. “You’re losing it,” she said quietly. “She’s dead, dead. Why can’t you face it?” She looked at the empty lot a
gain, straining her eyes for footprints, anything to convince her the little girls she’d seen were real. But all she saw was grass and pine shoots. She looked up and a couple of birds circled high up in the air. She wished she were up there with them too, another fantasy.

  So, she wondered. Where you gonna file this little tidbit? You don’t know anyone in this neighborhood so it pretty well cancels out someone having it in for you, trying to drive you crazy. Second, now you’re to the point where you’re recognizing the ghosts, for Christ’s sake. What’s it going to be next? You got one foot in the fucking loony bin already. She shook her head and looked down at her hands clenching the gate.

  You gotta see somebody.

  It really was just that simple. If she didn’t it wouldn’t be long before she’d be enjoying the comforts of a padded room. But no psychiatrist, they were too expensive. What were those others…? Psychologists, yes, them. She’d seen a couple of them before in treatment. They weren’t too bad if you found the right one and this time she’d be paying. She resolved to go inside, get the phone book, and make some calls.

  This was not working.