The Calling (9 page)

“Yeah, well, maybe not at first. But wait until you hear this.” John picked up a stick from the ground, pointed it at the house. “A long time ago—like fifty or a hundred years, something like that—this guy used to live there. Name was Devin Beckett, a real whack-job, and he never came out of his house. A real, ah ... what’s it called ... recluse. Anyway, one night he just snaps. Goes into town and starts killing people. Killed, I don’t know, like thirty or forty people. Used a machete too, sliced them up real good.”
 

For an instant images flooded my mind: my parents in bed, their cut up bodies and all the blood
.
 

John took another long drag of his cigarette. He tapped the stick on the ground and turned back to us, a frown on his face.
 

“Actually wait, that might be wrong. It’s been a while since I last told this story. Maybe he was going around the state killing people, I forget. But all I know for sure is the police tracked him down back to this house. His hideout, if you wanna call it that.”
 

John turned and walked toward the house. Joey and I followed.
 

Inside there was nothing except some discarded bottles of Bud Light and cigarette butts. No tables, no chairs, no bed; only an open hole in the wall which must have once been the fireplace ... and which now, I noticed, contained a few used condoms. The walls were more darkened than the outside. The floor was a mixture of wood and stone, with what looked like a few scratch marks here and there. The scent of alcohol and piss was faint.
 

John snubbed his cigarette out on the floor with the heel of his Nike. Then he grabbed the stick with both hands, lifted it over his head and rested it across his shoulders.
 

“So then there’s this standoff. Something like ten or twelve hours. And this guy, he doesn’t want to come out. He yells at them, tells them there’s no fucking way he’s giving up, and he shoots whoever tries to come near. So these cops, they tell him they’re gonna burn the place down, thinking that’s the only way they’ll get him out, right? Wrong. The sad son of a bitch never comes out, so they torch the place with him in it.”
 

There was silence then. Above us, past the small patch of roofing that was supported by a thick charcoaled piece of wood, a breeze blew through the tops of the trees. A few birds hid somewhere in the branches, chirping aimlessly.
 

“That’s it?” Joey sounded disappointed. “That’s all that happened?”
 

John dropped the stick and held up a finger. “But here’s the really freaky thing. Beckett’s body? They never found it.”
 

“Bullshit,” I said.
 

“Dude, I swear to you, it’s the truth. Never found his body. Burned this place out, had the whole thing surrounded, and they couldn’t find his body.” He grinned again. “But you know, Joe, legend has it that late at night, when the wind’s quiet, you can still hear him screaming to death. You can even smell his roasting flesh. The legend says that the reason his body was never found is because he’s still here, burning forever for his sins.”
 

Joey didn’t look frightened at all. In fact, he looked bored. He asked, “Did you see anything when you stayed?”
 

“Me? Nah, I didn’t see a thing. Really, it wasn’t so bad. Just cold. Course, I stayed here during the fall, but fuck, make sure you got a sleeping bag and you’ll be fine.”
 

“How long do I have to stay?”
 

“I’ll bring you down around midnight, then come and get you before school tomorrow. So, what, around seven hours, give or take.”
 

“School?” I said. “It’s the first week of June.”
 

“Tell me about it, dude.” John gave an overdramatic sigh. “Fucking blizzard back around Christmas used up all our snow days
and
some. We got pushed back an extra week.”
 

“That sucks,” Joey said.
 

“So yeah, sorry to jet, but I need to be getting back.” John clapped me on the shoulder. “Chris, nice meeting you, man. And Joe, I’ll come get you tonight, okay?”
 

“Sure.”
 

Then John was gone.
 

I glanced around the house one last time, still skeptical about the story, when I noticed Joey staring at me.
 

“It started here,” he whispered. “It makes sense it should end here too.”
 

Again, a different voice and tone from the kid’s mouth. Older somehow, more mature. And shouldn’t there have been a stutter on that last word?
 

I frowned and cocked my head. “What was that?”
 

“Can you feel it, Chris?”
 

“Feel what?”
 

Joey stared a moment longer before shaking his head. “Never mind,” he muttered, and headed outside.
 

I stood then by myself in the Beckett House, and for an instant I
did
feel something, a kind of chill race through my body. Was that what he’d meant? After a few seconds I decided it didn’t matter and started to leave, before glancing down at the wood and stone floor, before noticing the few scratch marks there. It hadn’t been part of John’s story, but I immediately saw a child there on the ground, trying to crawl away, screaming and crying and scratching at the floor. I saw its fingernails cracking and bleeding and tearing apart before that child was pulled back into darkness.

Chapter 8

B
y four o’clock that Sunday afternoon I’d arrived at the conclusion that coming to Bridgton was a mistake. If my parents’ killer did somehow find out where I’d gone, and he came up here planning to finish whatever job he started, he wouldn’t have any trouble at all. Steve had said coming here was the best route right now, that my deputy uncle could keep a constant eye on me, but so far I’d only seen him once, and that was at Luanne’s. I felt like a stranger up there on The Hill, knew that the rest of the old folks were probably whispering to each other, asking who I was, wondering why Lily Myers had never mentioned anything about a grandson before. I just needed to get away for a little, I needed something to pass the time, so I headed to Half Creek Road, paused, then made a right and started walking.
 

Ten minutes later, after walking past Bridgton Calvary Church and four rundown houses, one with a series of wind chimes running the length of the porch, another with a tree stump in its front yard, a weatherworn ceramic gnome standing atop keeping a constant vigil, I came around a slight bend and spotted Shepherd’s Books. The small parking lot beside it was empty, the wooden CLOSED sign rocking slightly back and forth in the breeze.
 

An old man sat in the shade of the house’s porch. He stared out at the road, smoking a cigar, his feet up on the paint-flaked railing.
 

“Excuse me,” I said. “What are your hours?”
 

He glanced at me, puffed smoke, and with only the corner of his mouth muttered, “My what?”
 

“Your hours. When do you open?”
 

“Open?” He coughed a raspy chuckle. “Kid, you ain’t from around here, are you.”
 

I shook my head.
 

“Well then, I’ll let you in on a little secret.” He took his muddy boots off the railing and dropped them on the porch. Leaned forward and said, “I ain’t ever open.”
 

“Okay. And why’s that?”
 

“To keep punks like you off my property.” He puffed more smoke and then squinted at me, his eyebrows white and bushy. “Where’d you come from anyway?”
 

I said, “My mother’s vagina,” and started to turn away to head back up Half Creek Road.
 

The old man sputtered after me, saying, “You little smart ass. You better hurry up and get off my property or else I’ll call the Sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing.”
 

I turned back and nodded. “You do that. Have them send out Dean Myers.”
 

“Deputy Myers? Why him?”
 

“He’s my uncle.”
 

The old man cocked his head, squinted back at me. Then his dry face grinned and he clapped his hands. “Goddamn, he is, ain’t he. Now I’m starting to see the resemblance. Well why didn’t you just say that before?” He stood up, grimacing at the action, and motioned me up onto the porch. “I’m Lewis Shepherd, the owner of this fine establishment.”
 

His hand was small and calloused, and now, standing just a foot away from him, I noticed the mounds of dandruff on the shoulders of his dark shirt. When he turned, his bird’s nest of gray hair was full of it. He opened the door and waved me inside, and I followed him into the house. It was dark and cold, reeking of dust and stale paper. There were rows and rows of books, both tattered hardcover and paperback, on large wooden shelves or in brown unmarked boxes. A counter sat off to the side, an old-fashioned register on top.
 

“Got anything in mind?” His cigar, half-smoked, was still in his mouth.
 

“Not really.”
 

“Well, if you find something you want, just go ahead and take it. Not like any of these books are going anywhere anyhow.”
 

I asked him why he never opened.
 

He shrugged, said, “Just fell out of the love, I guess,” and started toward the back, where steps led upstairs. “You can let yourself out when you’re done.” At the landing he turned back and surveyed his dusty inventory. “Hell, take two or three if you want. I ain’t gonna miss ’em.”
 

I walked up to a box of paperbacks. They were all thin, less than two hundred pages each. Looked to be dime mysteries. “Are you sure you don’t want me to pay?”
 

But the old man had already started up the steps, taking them slowly, his heavy boots clapping them one at a time. Then there was the sound of the door slamming shut.

•
 
•
 
•

W
HEN
I
RETURNED
a half hour later—with a battered paperback copy of
Billy Budd
—I found Sarah sitting in the same lawn chair Joey had occupied earlier that day. She wore black capris and a large white T-shirt, her strawberry blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. On the ground between her Keds was a plastic cooler.
 

She said, “Hey,” but that was all. Her voice was barely a whisper.
 

“Hey,” I said, surprised to see her. “What’s up?”
 

“I um ... remember what you said yesterday, about hanging out? I was thinking maybe ... I made some sandwiches here.” She glanced down at the white and green Igloo. “They’re Fluffer-Nutters. And there’s some juice boxes and pretzels and ...”
 

While she was the same Sarah Porter I’d met and talked with yesterday, she wasn’t. Something about her had changed. As she sat there, her hands folded in her lap, I glanced at the bulge in her belly, and I knew that was the reason. Except it wasn’t me who was put off by the reality of what now lived inside her. It was Sarah who was making this hard on herself, acting as if she was some kind of outcast.
 

“Sure,” I said. “That sounds great. But ... where do you want to go?”
 

And when she looked up I saw the doubt in her eyes, the worry that I wasn’t being serious. But then, when she realized my sincerity, she smiled. “Harris Hill Park,” she said. “My favorite place in the world.”

•
 
•
 
•

H
ER
DIRECTIONS
WERE
flawless. She took us through Horseheads, past the Arnot Mall and Elmira-Corning Regional Airport, past all the stores and restaurants, then onto Big Flats Road that took us up the mountainside. It was about six o’clock when we arrived at what Sarah called the Lookout. Up on the side of Harris Hill Park (
The Soaring Capital of the World
, according to a large sign off the side of the road), we parked beside a picnic area and walked to a few benches looking down at the valley.
 

“My mom used to bring me up here when I was little,” Sarah said.
 

We sat on a black metal bench, the Igloo between us. A few benches down, an elderly couple sat with their arms around each other. A long wooden split-rail fence ran the entire length of the Lookout, keeping anyone from stumbling off the drop. Behind us was a playground, with slides and swings and a large contraption shaped like a plane. A few teenagers sat there smoking, while a few others juggled a hacky sack.
 

“She used to tell me it was the highest place in the world. I don’t think I ever really believed her. But ... but it was our place, you know? She’d bring me here and sometimes we’d watch the gliders. But mostly we just talked.”
 

I asked, “She doesn’t come up here with you anymore?” without thinking. Then, a moment later, remembering what Joey had told me earlier: “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
 

Sarah shook her head. “No, that’s okay. It’s not your fault.” Then she frowned at me, asked how I’d known. I told her about Joey and she grinned. “I love that kid. He’s so cute.”
 

I didn’t know what to say to that. I glanced out into the valley, watched a jet as it made its approach to the airport.
 

Beside me, Sarah sighed. When I glanced over, she was staring at the ground and shaking her head. I asked her what was wrong.
 

“Just my mom,” she said. “She died the first week of September, two years ago. Right before 9/11. I remember actually crying about it that Tuesday, right after those planes crashed. I don’t know why, it’s not like I knew anybody who died there. But I was crying and my dad walked in. He thought it was about my mom. I told him it wasn’t, then wondered to myself
why
it wasn’t. And my dad said, ‘Thank God your mom died when she did. She’d be more of a wreck than you right now.’ And ... we just started laughing. It was so weird, the way we could actually laugh about something like that. But it wasn’t really laughing, you know? We were just ... getting our grief out. And I’ve always remembered it, because it’s true. My mom
would
have been a complete wreck. She was the kind of person who got sad when she saw dead deer lying on the side of the road. And I actually thought ... that it was good she died when she did, so she wouldn’t have had to see all that terrible stuff. Does that ... does that make me a bad person?”