Microsoft word winterb.., p.25
Microsoft Word - Winterborn_final-ADRoland, page 25
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“Clean yourself up,” Tam groaned. “And I'm serious. Tomorrow, me and your dad are having a
talk. You have major problems. You need professional help.”
“Yeah, a professional hit man to kill you.”
“Chill with that crap, Kevin. You need to get cleaned up.”
“Why are you in here with me? You like looking at naked little boys?”
“Oh dear Lord...” Tam stalked to the bathroom door. “This has got to stop, Kevin.”
He glared at her, sinking lower in the tub until only his bloody, muddy head stuck up over the
edge of the tub. “You're going to die, you know. My mom's going to make sure of it. You killed Jake-O,
and he was hers.” Big tears formed in the kid's eyes and ran down his face. “She's going to make sure
you die. And it's going to be bad and it's going to hurt.”
Tam backed up until she was standing on the threshold, one hand on the doorknob. The kid's
bathwater was pink. He moved and it sloshed over the side of the tub and puddled on the floor, like
watered-down blood.
Her blood. Her baby's blood. The blood that had long since flowed from the deep wounds in her
marriage.
Tam hurried out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
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Chapter Eighteen
Kevin was in his bedroom with the door shut. While he was in the bathroom, Tam used Sean’s
cordless drill to put a sheet of plywood across the broken window in his room. She went downstairs
and nailed the broken cabinet door in place, then drilled two two-by-fours across both doors.
Thank God Sean never started repairing the back stairs. There was plenty of wood to bar up the
broken cabinets and windows.
Tam considered putting a padlock on his door. She settled for locking herself in her bedroom with
all the knives, guns, matches, and candles from all over the house. Just to be on the safe side, she tied a bell to a long piece of yarn and taped it to the top of his doorjamb, and then to the doorknob. If he
opened the door, the cheap tape would come away from either the handle or the frame, and the bell
would ring. She slept lightly without the benefit of drugs, so the slightest sound would wake her.
You know you’re overreacting.
“Shut up, brain.”
Tam showered and dressed in soft pants and a T-shirt. She stretched out on the bed, right in the
middle, and crossed her ankles, then crossed her hands over her chest. Not once in the entire year
they lived in the house had she been alone all night. When Sean worked for the sheriff's department,
he managed to stay on the day shifts. He always knew she hated being alone with Kevin.
She rolled on her side and looked at the clock. Ugh. It was too late to call Sean.
Decisive, Tam slung her legs over the edge of the bed. Sean wasn't going to save them. He was
weak. Too lost in his grief. He surfaced sometimes, and she believed maybe he really tried those times.
But in the end, his pain would always be too strong.
Stronger than me. Stronger than his love―or whatever attachment to me he has.
If she didn't step out and do something herself, she would lose him.
But do I really want him?
After he'd cheated on her for ten years with no remorse— or have I been the other woman the
whole time? —did she really want a man whose loyalty was compromised so deeply?
She heard Sharla's voice in the sounds of the night. “You could walk away right now. Leave him to
me. He's happy here.” Her voice slipped into the bedroom, sugar-sweet. “You want him to be happy,
don't you?”
“Not with you,” Tam replied. The sound of her own voice startled her. She looked around the
room. Empty, the lights blazing, the window blinds open to the moonlight. She climbed up on the bed
and stepped on the headboard, hanging on to the lower edge of the window ledge. She pulled herself
up just enough to see out into the back field, the acre of grass bordered by ominous, black woods. The
wind blew and made the trees sway and dance. A fox bolted across the yard, a moon-silvered streak in
the grass. Her biceps quivered a warning, and she stepped off the headboard to the mattress.
Sleep would be good. Her body yearned for it. Her mind sought the relief of dreams, of the
oblivion of a good, deep rest. With a heavy sigh, she double-checked her bedroom door. It was locked,
and she tucked a straight back chair beneath the knob, just in case.
Just in case what? A skinny eleven-year-old tried to bust down the door?
Tam patted the handgun under Sean's pillow. Reassured, she stretched out on the bed and pulled
the sheet over her hip. She tossed aside the blanket. Stress and tension made her blood pressure high,
and that made her hot. Plus the thermostat was in the hall, and the huge empty house creeped her out
way too much to venture out of the nest she'd turned her bedroom into. The overhead light glared into
her closed eyelids. The more she tried not to, her eyes kept focusing on the bright spots. Annoying.
Can't sleep like this.
But when the lights went out, the crazy came back.
The shadows under the bed would grow and begin to move. They would creep up the dust ruffle
and under the covers, where they would find her bare, vulnerable flesh. They would come out from
under the closet doors, from beneath the furniture. From the room down the hall, where the axis of
evil lived and breathed.
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I want to sleep.
She tossed and turned for another twenty minutes, trying to ignore the burning craving kindling
in her belly. No, no, no. I’ve worked too hard—
Tam barely felt the cold floor beneath her feet. Stop, stop, stop! She dropped to her knees next to her night stand and wrenched open the drawer.
There has to be, has to be, has to be something in here!
In the back, she made out the cylindrical shape, the dull orange color, of a plastic pill bottle. She
reached in and pulled it out, reverently. Pills clicked together, against the sides.
She read the label, praying it wasn’t an old antibiotic prescription.
Hydrocodone!
Sissy little brother to what she really wanted, but at the moment, she chose not to be picky. She popped off the lid. Four pills.
Good enough. She swallowed them dry and sat back against the bed. The frame dug into her back.
“Why am I doing this?” She hugged her knees to her chest. A tiny black spider crawled up the wall
by the closet. She watched it until it crawled into the closet.
Her gaze traveled around the bedroom. Shabby and old, no matter how many candles she used,
she could never completely eliminate the musty, aged smell. The wallpaper peeled near the top of the
walls, water-stains darkened the ceiling. The plumbing barely worked. During the summer, the drafty
old house kept them cool enough, but in the winter, they froze.
I’m leaving. I don’t love Sean enough to spend the rest of my life in this dump.
The drugs kicked in, wrapping foggy ribbons around her brain. “You can come with me, Seanie-
poo, and…not. Stay here with your demon spawn.”
She sat on the floor long enough for the medicine to take full effect. Heavy-headed, she walked
over to the light switch and flicked off the overhead light. Next, the bathroom light. Barely able to
walk, she crawled into bed. She flailed out with one hand and hit the touch-lamp. She rolled over and
did the same to the lamp on Sean’s side.
Sean’s side.
Tam stroked his pillow. I want to think about this. I want to weigh the pros and cons. Love
Sean, stay here with him, and live in a dead woman’s shadow forever. Or leave, and force him to
choose. Me, or his ghost.
She wanted to figure it all out, but she realized she really didn’t care.
This is why I eat pills like candy, so I don’t have to care.
Immediately, she heard the rush and scrape of scales, the minute click of claws on the floor. “I'm
not scared of you,” she whispered.
The sounds stopped. They were still there, waiting. Waiting for her to get scared again. When she
did, they would be all over her.
She couldn’t focus, couldn’t truly grasp the concept that swirled around in her head. Fear? Was
that it?
Yeah…they can’t get me if I’m not scared.
****
The distinct feeling of being watched, of someone close by, awoke Tam like someone snapped her
with a rubber band. Her eyes popped open and she bit back a scream.
Kevin's face hung over hers, greenish in the darkness, like she looked at him through a night
vision camera.
She opened her mouth to tell him to get out of her room.
He vanished into the surrounding darkness of the room. “Kevin?”
She sat up, one hand going for the gun under the pillow, the other for the lamp on the table next
to her.
The room was empty. The chair was still wedged under the doorknob, and it was still locked.
Something had awakened her. She listened, straining to hear the slightest sound.
There. Was that a footstep?
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Silently, Tam got out of bed, turned off her lamp, and stuck her feet into her sneakers. When
she heard the tell-tale sounds of someone moving down the staircase, she eased the chair away from
the door and opened it as quietly as she could. She held on to the gun.
Kevin's door hung ajar. She peeked in the room, knowing it was empty. Unlike the kid, Tam knew
the silent way down the stairs. As she reached the ground floor, she saw a boy-shape before the front
door. He worked all the deadbolts, then reached up and keyed off the alarm.
He knew the code. Interesting.
Of course he would…the numbers are his mother’s birthday.
He opened the front door. Tam ducked behind the wall as he turned to glance behind him. He
slipped out the front door and pulled it shut. Tam reached it in an instant, waiting until the count of
ten to ease it open.
She watched him jump off the edge of the porch. When the sound of his footsteps receded, she
crept along the wall and looked beyond the house.
There he was, running dead-set for the woods, toward the overgrown path that led to the
Wraithborne Estate.
Why was he going there, at two in the morning?
Because something, or somebody, is waiting for him.
Tam waited until he got to the massive old oak tree and disappeared into the shadows before
bolting across the lawn herself. She couldn't see crap down the path. Couldn't see much of anything.
How was Kevin able to see?
Something big moved in the woods, farther down along the path. Kevin?
Maybe it was just the night magnifying sounds, but it sounded too huge to be the kid. Way too big.
She adjusted her grip on the gun and thumbed the safety off. The wind brought whiffs of
something horrendously foul.
Like something that had been in damp, rich dirt, for a long, long time.
Like something that had been rotting in damp, rich dirt for a long, long time. Smelled like the
compost heap she’d kept for a while, during her gardening phase.
The path widened, cleared out.
Like someone had been using it frequently enough to keep it cleared.
Had Sean cleared the path? The machete was heavy, too heavy for Kevin to manage.
What if Kevin's monster wasn't the only unearthly creature living in these cursed woods? What if
something else, something more horrible, had been spawned by whatever demons dwelt in that
house?
You should go back, her brain told her. Common sense screamed it, and her instincts were so
strong to turn and run that her entire body twitched once, twice, toward the opposite direction.
But now the sounds came from that way, from behind her. Was it...herding her closer to the
Estate?
She recalled Kevin's crazy threats that his mother wanted to kill her.
Was it possible that Sharla still lived? Hiding in the Estate like some sort of hunted animal? What if she had been living in their house, before they moved in? That would explain the weird garbage she
cleaned out of the fireplace―popcorn pans, newspapers, tin cans, soda bottles―and the clothing she
swept out of the corners of the master bedroom.
And the smell, the strong smell of incense that seemed to be saturated into the wood. Sean said
nobody had lived in the house since his parents died. It would have stood vacant for close to eight or
nine years.
Perfect for someone who was planning―what?
That thing in the woods crashed louder, closer. Tam froze, close to panicking. She hated the dark,
hated the woods, and hated being in the woods in the dark even more. Why didn’t I grab a friggin’
flashlight?
In the dark, she made out branches and trees, and sometimes the moon shone off of the leaves,
but other than that, she was blind. Helpless.
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What good is the gun if I can't see what I’m trying to shoot?
Go back home, and go back now. The little voice didn’t leave her any choice in the matter.
But Kevin…
She turned back.
Light filled the woods. Tam’s muscles clenched, hard and fast. The light didn’t cast a nice, warm
comforting glow.
It was cold. A crazy mix of all the fears she had ever felt through her entire life swelled in her chest and drove her to the ground. She cowered against a rough pine sapling, arms around her knees. The
light drew closer brighter, breaking apart some shadows, deepening others.
The gun lay at her sides, useless against this new threat. How do you fight light?
“You can’t fight us.” Three voices, sweet, childish. The soft tones echoed around the trees, sliding
through the tracery of veins in the leaves, worming beneath the thick mat of pine needles and oak
leaves. Like thread, the voices wrapped around her hands and feet and held her to the earth.
Tam cried and tried to break free. The light broke apart, into three distinct forms.
The children.
Tam wrenched free from the hair-thin tendrils and scrambled away. She flew to her feet,
stumbled, and recovered her balance. Without looking back, she pounded down the path to the
relative safety the house offered.
Behind her, the woods roared, wind whipping wildly. Branches slapped her face and snagged her
clothes. Roots and vines looped around her ankles. She jumped and dodged them as best she could,
but her headlong flight left little room for navigation.
Her foot caught on a huge humped root. She hit the ground and rolled, arms and legs all over the
place. It took a second to get her feet under her. She whipped around, looking for her pursuer.
The woods were silent. Incredibly silent. No bugs. No frogs.
A chill raced down Tam's spine.
Get back to the house.
She spun on her heel and tore off through the field for the back porch. No, that door was locked.
She had to go to the front—
A clamor of breaking branches and brush ripped from the ground made her steps falter. She
forced herself onward. Don't look back. They always die when they look back.
She could hear it breathing as it tore toward her. Its footsteps smacked the earth like an
elephant’s feet. Fear left her dizzy, breathless numb. She ran along the side of the back porch, the side of the house, rounded the sharp corner of the front porch.
As she turned the corner she glanced up. In the space of a fraction of a second, she saw all she
needed to see.
It was right there. Six feet away. It was twice as tall as she was, with a vicious stubby-alligator head filled with small sharp teeth. The kind that would crush and grind instead of tearing. The snake-like body stretched out for fifteen, twenty feet behind it.
This one had legs, scrawny chicken-like legs, and the same arms as the small one she'd killed
earlier. These arms, though, were longer, more defined. Muscled and powerful.
It saw her hesitate and it lunged, teeth snapping. She screamed and dashed for the stairs, taking
them all at once. She burst into the front door and slammed it shut, flicking all the locks. She stepped back from the door. Waiting.
And nothing happened. Nothing tried to break down the door. Slowly, the sound of frogs and bugs
filled the warm November night air with familiar sounds.
She peeked out the downstairs windows, one at a time, until she was satisfied the monster no
longer lurked out there. Dead tired, she trudged up the stairs. Barely three in the morning.
The night lasted forever. It loomed around the house, the Estate, the entire town of Railley like
some sort of sheltering cloud that kept the evil in and the light out. She barricaded her bedroom again and sank into the blankets, into the peaceful darkness, stuck in a hazy world between waking and
sleeping. The remnants of the drug surfaced and stole her away.
Just as the sun began to burn away the fog that shrouded the trees, Tam eased into the first few
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minutes of real sleep, relaxing her tense muscles and letting her guard down.
