Fallen Stones (52 page)

The cadre of the undead floated slowly across the room toward the large rear windows, which were currently hidden by a wall of closed curtains. They paid little attention to Sammy, as he no longer posed a threat to them. They could not see the ethereal forms of the two Livingston boys but the boys were definitely aware of their every move.

They told Sammy, "You must do it, Sammy. You must get your Daddy to come home. If not you will die. Do you know what it means to be dead?" Their questioned made Sammy feel very scared in his tummy. Sammy knew about dead stuff. He knew about not being alive. He had squashed bugs and made them dead. He saw the dead deer in the field with all the bugs. If that was being dead, he didn't want to be dead. He didn't want bugs and birds eating him up a little bit every day. Dead stuff was yucky, and Sammy hated yucky stuff.

He looked down at the lighted face of his mommy's cell phone and saw the little picture of his daddy. The boys were telling him in his head to call his daddy.  His mommy was screaming and shouting all kinds of bad stuff; a lot of words he didn't know and had never heard her say before. Sammy didn't know what to do. He didn't want to be a bad boy, but he really wanted his daddy to come home. He took a deep breath, sighed then reached down and pressed Daddy's picture on his mommy's phone.

He could hear the phone begin to ring as he waited to hear his Daddy's voice. He knew what he would say: "Help Daddy peaze." If he did that, Daddy would come home and help him to not be dead and help Mommy too. Daddy could make the bad people go away. The boys told him so.

Across the room, Dwight Livingston lifted his withered arm and pointed it at the back wall of the loft. The drapes flew open revealing a panoramic view of the rear of the property through the wall of windows. The yard was awash with moonlight. Dwight approached the windows and began saying something silently while looking out into the yard.

The ground, near the back of the property began to tremble. Suddenly in an area about five feet around, the ground began to rise up as if a force from somewhere down below was burrowing, pushing the dirt outward. Within a few moments, a large round hole was present in the ground and soon it began to fill with icy December water from some unknown underground source. The dirt around the hole began to mold itself into a shape resembling a cylindrical structure of field stone and mortar, while maintaining the texture and color of soil. The well, which had claimed the lives of Matthew and Charles Livingston almost a century earlier, had returned, and it waited for its next victim and for the final phase of the creatures' evil plan.

Chapter 37

 

Jason was at his office desk deeply engrossed in a series of charts and spreadsheets, the results of the same project he had originally been assigned during his time at the Lancaster division of his company. Since that time, all manufacturing at the facility had ceased and rumors of an impending sale of the building and closing of the facility were rampant throughout the company. None of these stories were of any surprise to Jason however, as he had recognized the warning signs many months earlier. In fact, since taking the job in Ashton and moving his family north, he had never had any need or desire to return to the Lancaster facility. He felt it was better to cut all ties with the people at that plant from the beginning, and so he allowed his engineers to handle the equipment movement to the Ashton factory and likewise kept his email correspondence with the Lancaster facility to a bare necessary minimum.

Now almost seven months later he was in the implementation phase of the project and unfortunately things were not progressing as closely to plan, as either he or his managers would have liked. Because of the special nature and complexity of the parts being run across the machine, it was becoming a challenge to make the numbers he had forecasted in the justification phase of the project. Likewise, the upfront work to get the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) programs written for the multifaceted machine tool, as well as development time for those programs, were taking a lot more time and manpower than he had originally estimated.

The result was he had been getting a lot of heat lately from his new manager, Bill Bostwick, who was not nearly as laid back or understanding as Tom McClellan
had been. Unfortunately, with all the negative press the project had been getting around the plant of late, it was apparent to all that the project was not the immediate success they had hoped it would be. Jason was sure the project would eventually be a winner and would give them everything they expected from it. But the ramp up time was longer than they had anticipated due to a steep learning curve. This excuse however did nothing to fight back the fecal storm brewing in the executive offices.  And as Jason well knew, crap rolled downhill. So, every time the defecation hit the ventilation, Jason found himself covered in it. As a result, he had been forced to abandon much of his free time once again and return to his schedule of working long days and even weekends.
 

He missed his family so much. He worried about Stephanie. He hated the long hours, and if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, he was really starting to hate his job. Part of him wished he could get fired so he would be forced to take the initiative to either find another job or start his own consulting company. Jason often wondered if he would have been better off had he chosen to be fired from the Lancaster facility. He had allowed Stephanie's inheritance to cloud his judgment; hell, they both had. Now in hindsight, he was questioning the logic of their decisions, which seemed to have been way off base. Not for the first time, Jason had the strange feeling that many of the decisions they thought they had made on their own were actually being made for them by someone else, or at least somehow remotely manipulated. Each time he had these thoughts he recognized just how bizarre they were, yet he still had the feelings stirring deep in his gut nonetheless.

Suddenly Jason was startled by a vibration, than a ringing of his cell phone in his shirt pocket. It was almost 8:30 at night. Surely, any call he might receive on his personal cell had to come from home. And that could only mean something was wrong. He quickly looked at the digital display and saw the call was from Stephanie's cell; he could also tell by her special ringtone and her picture displayed prominently on his smartphone. Jason looked down at the picture of a happy, smiling Stephanie and was shocked by just how much her appearance, not to mention her mental state had changed for the worst during the past several months.

Jason was a bit apprehensive about answering the call. In fact, he couldn't remember the last time Stephanie had even bothered to call him when he was working late. He suspected it had to have been many weeks. Usually, back when she did call, it was to bug him to come home and she often would dump a major guilt trip on him. The calls usually ended with her yelling at him or crying or just hanging up. And during those calls, Jason couldn't help but remember the happier times before the promotion, before Ashton and before the inheritance. They had little in the line of material possessions back then, but they were so happy simply having each other. Now things seemed to be getting worse between them daily.

Jason wasn't sure why Stephanie had chosen to call him this time, but he suspected she must have had a good reason for doing so tonight. As the phone rang again, Jason suddenly began to worry more about some possible family emergency with his kids. He knew Jeremy and Cindy were staying with their Uncle Chuck overnight so he assumed things were ok with them. Otherwise, he would have heard directly from his brother-in-law. Jason was not thrilled with the idea of the kids being away on Sammy's birthday but here he was working late again so what right did he have to stop them?  Also, Chuck was well aware of Stephanie's problems and knew to call Jason first in the event of an emergency. So putting all apprehension aside he pressed the button to answer the call.

Jason cautiously asked, "Hello? Steph? Honey? Is everything OK?"

He listened carefully and thought he could hear breathing on the other end of the phone, as well as strange indistinguishable noises in the background.

"Steph? Is that you, honey? Is everything all right?" Still the breathing continued and the strange noises seemed to be increasing in volume, sounding like a woman shouting about something. The strange quality of the voice made Jason's stomach constrict like some primitive warning sign of impending danger.

Then he relaxed somewhat when Jason realized what must have happened. Sammy was a very bright and precocious child who never ceased to be amazed by both of their cell phones. Although he couldn't yet understand numbers and letters, he did like to press the buttons on Stephanie's smart phone. Stephanie had the numbers in her phone associated with pictures so Sammy could easily call Jason and had accidentally done so on more than one occasion. Stephanie was in the habit of leaving her cell lying around where he could easily get to it as well.

Jason assumed Sammy had either deliberately or accidentally called him again. Perhaps the background noises were simply one of his cartoon shows. They were always so loud and the dialogue sounding like people were shouting all the time. He often wondered why cartoon voices all seemed to have that same noisy and irritating quality. He listened for the young boys breathing on the other end.

"Sammy? Hey, baby boy. Is that you, sweetie? Are you calling Daddy again?" Jason said with the hopes Sammy might respond. Then Jason heard something that made his stomach knot up all over again. His little boy, his precious Sammy said in a small voice, one obviously filled with fear, "Daddy... help... peaze."

"Sammy! What's wrong, honey?" Jason said terrified but trying desperately to sound calm as he stood at his desk and began putting on his winter coat.

"Sammy? Please put Mommy on the phone," Jason pleaded. "Can you please get Mommy, sweetie?

Again Sammy said, "Peaze... Daddy... Help" and then the boy started to whimper. That sound of terror in his young son's voice drove a spike of pain deep into his very soul. It was then that Jason again heard the shouting in the background and realized for the first time the voice he was hearing was not that of some animation voice-over, but it was Stephanie's. She sounded like a madwoman shouting and screaming at the top of her lungs. Keeping the phone in the crook of his neck, Jason finished putting on his coat as he hurried out through the main office area. Those of his staff who were working late watched him leave with concern, seeing the expression on his face and assuming something bad must have happened at home.

He skipped the elevator and as Jason ran down the stairs taking them two at a time, he could hear Stephanie shouting words like "whoremonger", "bastard child" and threats like "he'll die for this" and other equally horrifying phrases the likes of which he had never heard his beautiful wife utter before.

Jason realized it must have finally happened. Stephanie's mind must have broken, and now his son was alone in the house trapped with a raving lunatic. He didn't know for sure, but it was very possible Stephanie might be a real threat to both herself and Sammy. He had to get home as soon as possible. He jumped into this new Ford pickup truck and sped out of the parking lot. He knew he could be home in less than ten minutes, but he hoped with all of his heart that would be time enough. The last thing he heard before the phone went dead was the voice of his little boy crying "No, Mommy. No peaze."

 

 Chapter 38

 

Stephanie walked barefoot across the frozen field between the garage and the strange hexagonal spa building toward the menacing well, which had appeared near the back of the property. In her spellbound state, she was oblivious to the frigid conditions around her, including how her feet ached from the ice covered grass. The area was illuminated brightly by the motion activated security lighting which Jason had installed giving the icy ground an otherworldly appearance. Under her right arm she carried her small son, Sammy who was kicking and screaming fiercely, trying in vain to escape. He had no idea what fate awaited him, but he knew the woman carrying him was not acting anything like his mother.

Behind the newly reawakened version of the deadly well located on a slightly raised area of frozen meadow, bordering the forest, Stephanie could see the assembly of the undead beings all lined up as if waiting to participate in a very special ceremony; which was exactly why they were there. In her present state, it didn't faze Stephanie that she was staring at five dead beings. Stephanie seemed to not comprehend the fact that the demonic spirits had risen up from the bowels of Hell itself and were planning some horrible fate for her and her family. It was as if she knew what they were, but didn't really grasp the significance of their being there. In fact, it seemed quite natural and acceptable to her, as if it were something she somehow always knew it was some event in which she was destined to partake.

Focusing on the creatures she, of course, recognized Dwight and Marie Livingston as well as her former lawyer, H. Mason Armstrong. She also recognized Emerson Washburn from photos she had found during her research, although in his emaciated condition she was barely able to do so. She had no idea who the fifth being was, but she assumed it might be another relative of hers, whom she simply didn't recognize. She suspected she wouldn't have been able to identify the relative anyway. The wretched thing was barely more than charred flesh pinched tightly over blackened bones.

The five waited for her along the back of the property as the menacing icy well glowed in the bright security lights. Some of the water had bubbled up over the top of the well during its formation and spilled over the sides coating the circular dirt structure with a thick layer of shimmering ice before dropping back down to its normal depth. This was likely done on purpose to fortify the sides of the well. The resulting feature resembled a beautiful ice sculpture of a well, but there was nothing beautiful or pleasant about the purpose for this well.