The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (6 page)

“Wanna go for a walk, buddy?” Evan asked
, as he placed their dirty dishes onto the counter.

Shaun nodded
, and he smiled at how rested his little face looked. Sleep was his ally, and Evan tried not to wake him if at all possible, no matter the time of day.

They left the house and made their way around the right side of the building
, toward the heavy cover of trees, Evan walking backward and holding Shaun’s hands while Shaun tottered along, concentration etched across his features. Evan had him walk until they reached the boundary of the yard, and then picked him up, swinging him high in the air before depositing him on his shoulders. They threaded their way between the massive trunks and a few brambles that were beginning to sprout, into green foliage. A worn path no more than a foot wide appeared and he angled them toward it. The trail looked beaten, whether by animals or humans, he didn’t know. They followed the track as it snaked ever downward, over exposed rocks and roots. Eventually the wavering surface of the lake became visible. A small ring of rocks sat in a clearing above the waterline, the earth permanently black in its center.

“Wow, nice party spot, buddy,” Evan
said, holding Shaun’s hands. “Fire ring,” he annunciated, hoping that Shaun would mimic his words.

“Help!”

The cry was loud and came out of nowhere, turning Evan’s guts with icy surprise. He stopped, trying to determine where the call came from.

“Help! I dropped my paddle in the water
.”

He
hurried down to the clearing and caught sight of a woman in a canoe some fifteen yards offshore. Her hands gripped the sides of the little boat, and her dark brown hair was buffeted by the wind that pushed across the lake.

“My paddle
,” she yelled, pointing toward a clump of reeds growing from the foremost tip of the island. A faded wooden canoe paddle floated there, its handle hooked on a bent reed.

Evan glanced back at the canoe and saw the woman’s dilemma. The wind was gradually pushing her
farther and farther away, turning her in a gentle circle. He moved to the nearest tree and took Shaun off his shoulders, setting him at the pine’s base with his back resting against its trunk.

“You sit right here, don’t move.
”

Evan jogged to the water’s edge and looked for a way to grab the paddle without getting soaked
, but soon saw the canoe and the woman would be out of sight before he devised a plan. With a grimace, he waded into the water, the cold spring lake rushing in to fill his shoes and socks. Leaning forward, he reached out and snagged the paddle’s handle and drew it toward him.

“I’m
going to toss it to you, okay?”

“Okay
.”

He took aim and
launched the paddle over the water with an underhand push. It sailed up and flipped once, and came down within feet of the canoe, bumping its side with a hollow thud. The woman pulled the paddle into the canoe, then stroked at the lake with long, practiced movements. Evan sidestepped through the muddy bottom until his feet were on solid ground again. To his relief, Shaun still sat where he’d left him. When he turned back to the lake, he saw that the canoe was closer and the woman aboard smiled at him as she neared.

“Where’s Elle?”

Evan’s heart jittered in his chest, and his mouth dropped open. “Wha ... what did you say?”

The front of the canoe scraped
onto the bank and stopped, and its rear end drifted sideways. The woman placed a hand against her brow, blocking the setting sun, and looked at him.

“I said, it fell.” When Evan didn’t move
, she lifted the paddle up and set it back down. “I was floating by your island and thought I saw a cardinal. When I set the paddle down and picked up my binoculars, it slipped into the water and drifted out of reach.”

Evan shut his mouth and blinked. “Sorry,” he said
, stepping forward to pull the bow of the canoe farther onto land.

It was an old craft
, with chunks of paint peeling off here and there, the inside speckled with bits of twigs and mud. He steadied the front as the woman stood and made her way out of the canoe and onto the island.

She was
thin, in a way that spoke of athleticism and lean muscle rather than frailty, and not much over five feet tall. She wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and brown cargo pants that nearly matched the shade of her hair. Evan straightened up and broke from his inspection when the woman held her hand out.

“
Selena Belgaurd.”

Evan grasped her sm
all hand. “Evan Tormer, and this is my son, Shaun,” he said, motioning to Shaun, who tried to wave.

“Very nice to meet you both, and thank you,”
Selena said, letting go of his hand. She smiled. Her lips curved up in a way that accentuated her blue eyes.

“You’re welcome,” Evan said
. He glanced away.

“Do you guys live here?”

“Yeah, kind of. We moved in today. We’re house-sitting for my friend who owns it.”

“Well, it’s a beautiful plac
e. Do you like it here, Shaun?”

Shaun smiled and his small mouth
worked to form a word.

“He
doesn’t speak well,” Evan said.

Selena
’s face fell, and it looked as if she wanted to ask more. But Evan turned away.

“We really have to
be getting back to the house.”

Selena
nodded. “Sure, okay. Well, thank you again. If you wouldn’t have come along, I don’t know where I would’ve ended up.”

“You’re
welcome,” Evan said, and picked up Shaun.

Selena
raised a hand and then turned, shoving the canoe back into the water and jumping inside in one motion. Evan hitched Shaun a little higher onto his hip and didn’t wait until the canoe was out of sight before climbing up the hill, toward the house.

6

They sat on the porch and watched the sun bleed its last rays onto the water. The trees ceased their movement, and birds washed the evening with song that seemed to fill up not only the island but the whole world.

A
fter some rummaging through their belongings, Evan found two tracing books and a dry-erase marker. He stood behind Shaun, guiding his son’s hand beneath his own over letters and numbers alike, pronouncing their names as the marker traced the dotted lines.

“Okay, now you’re gonna do it on your own,” Evan said
, letting go of Shaun’s hand.

The boy’s
head bent closer to the book, and his fingers began to slip off the marker before he could trace a row of figure eights. Shaun grunted in frustration and tried to re-grip the marker, but it fell from his hand and rolled off the table.

“It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay,” Evan said, kneeling to retrieve the fallen writing utensil.
He placed it back between his son’s fingers. “Try again.”

Shaun started the eight and made it only inc
hes before the marker spun away, this time to the opposite side of the porch.

“No
,” Shaun yelled, and banged both his hands against the table.

“Hey, hey, it’s
all right, you did good. We just need more practice,” Evan said, and wrapped his arms around Shaun.

The
boy strained against him, anger fueling his motions. A hot burning filled the back of Evan’s eyes. What terrible karmic atrocity had he committed that made the universe glance his family’s way and shake its head? In response, he heard the same answer he received each time he asked the question, spoken by the voice he hated inside his own mind.

Because this is your life
, this is what it is.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, we can be done for tonight. You did really good.” Slowly Shaun
calmed, and Evan released him, repeating the words in his mind,
it’s okay, it’s okay.
“Do you want to watch trains?”

Shaun whimpered one more time and
then stilled, his breathing slowing, skin sweaty from his exertions. “Tains?”

“Okay, b
uddy, we’ll watch some trains.”

He
centered Shaun in the couch and sought out the DVD from the duffel in his room. After a few moments of fussing with the unfamiliar player, Thomas the Train began to race across the screen. Evan adjusted the volume and returned to the couch, putting an arm around Shaun’s slight shoulders. The sun fell completely out of sight as they watched, replaced by an inky darkness that crept closer until the lake sat in gloom, the open windows no longer admitting birdsong.

Evan glanced to the left, his eyes straying from the episode playing out on the screen, and found himself staring at the basement door. Shaun giggled at one of the train’s antics
, and Evan focused again on the TV. Minutes later, his eyes rested once more on the door. He watched it. He studied the knob like prey looking for a predator, waiting, not willing to glance away, afraid that if he did, it would ... turn.

Shaun’s sharp snore tore him out of his trance
, and he jerked with the sound. Evan shifted, sliding his arm from beneath the boy’s back. He breathed even and deep, his eyes shut, mouth open.

“Tired guy,” Evan whispered. “Long day.”

With gentle movements, he laid Shaun on his side, nestling him into the couch. Evan unfurled a folded comforter that hung from the arm of an easy chair, and spread it over his sleeping son. He listened to Shaun’s soft inhalations for a long time in the faint glow of the only lamp burning in the room. Gradually his attention returned to the basement door.

In a few strides he crossed the room
, and flipped on two of the kitchen lights, chasing the shadows from beneath the long table and behind the breakfast bar. He paused, listening for what? Sounds from below? Evan huffed and walked to the door, throwing it wide.

Darkness greeted him, deeper than earlier that afternoon, thicker. It swallowed the treads a
nd gave nothing in return, rebuffing the cheerful light of the kitchen. His earlier desire for exploring the basement wilted, and he nearly slammed the door shut, the muscles in his arm already tensing to do so.

However,
he reached out and found the switch once again, knowing the outcome but having to flip it on and off several times without effect before he was satisfied. The overwhelming urge to step back and close the door came again. Revolting against the warnings sounding within him, he took the first step. The wooden stair emitted a short shriek beneath his weight. He swallowed, looked over his shoulder at the rounded shape of Shaun on the couch, then continued down.

The
light at his back died within the dark. In all his years, the only other experience he could compare it to was at a lock-in party at his high school. Several other boys in his grade had snuck out of the locker room in which they’d been changing, knowing full well Evan was sitting on the toilet. He’d been lost in thought about how to ask Kimberly Shell to the dance later that evening when the fluorescents winked out, the silence broken only by the retreating laughter of the other boys. He’d sat there, petrified on the toilet, frozen in the cold darkness of a place that held no malice in the light, but without it, became something else.

Memories of staggering out of the windowless locker room and into the hall full of giggling teenagers left him as he stepped
down again, the shadows rising ever upward as though he were dropping deeper and deeper into a subterranean sea.

His left hand
brushed against the smooth wall, the only sound above his hushed breathing. Five steps, six, seven. The eighth tread wasn’t where it should have been, and he almost fell headlong, the surface under his foot remaining level instead of dropping away—a landing.

Evan slid his hand forward
and found that the wall turned, and he pivoted with it, his opposite arm now out before him, stretched into the black maw. The next step edge met his foot, and he went down. One, two, three. At the fourth stair his arm brushed something, and he nearly cried out before realizing it was a pillar near the foot of the stairway.

He
searched blindly until his fingers met a switch box. Knowing full well if this switch produced no light he would retreat up the stairs, he flipped it up. Three dim bulbs blinked on in a line across the basement, casting everything in a sick glow. He was about to step onto the basement floor when he looked down—

—
and saw a small child standing less than a foot away.

Hi
s feet tried to backpedal, and a strangled moan fell from his mouth as he tripped and landed hard on the stairs behind him. The treads bit into his ass and lower back, but he barely noticed, his gaping eyes locked on the child facing away from him. As he was about to spin and flee up the stairs, already forming a plan to grab Shaun from the couch and haul him to the pontoon, Evan realized that the child hadn’t moved. He waited, his breath too large for his lungs. His eyes traveled down the back of a little girl with dark hair wearing a purple dress, except something was wrong. Several slits were cut into the back of her knees.