The Heirloom
Not all skeletons are kept in closets.
Author’s Note: Many of you are familiar with my Baxton County stories. However, this story does not take place in that world.
“My Mama is a little eccentric,” Spencer said, slowing down to a stop at the red light, “but she means well. And she’s kind of protective of me. Just keep that in mind.”
Celeste made a face. “Like, how protective? Are we talking be-nice-to-my-boy-please or if-you-break-his-heart-no-one-will-find-your-body-and-oh-by-the-way-are-you-enjoying-your-barbecue?”
“Ha. Very funny.”
“I’m serious. A girl can’t be too careful about this.”
He rolled his eyes. “She’s more the former than the latter.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“As for the barbecue--” He grinned. “Everyone knows the secret’s in the sauce.”
They laughed. The light turned green.
“What about your dad?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ll like him. He’s very laidback. He’s a retired judge and takes the retired part very seriously. It’s hard to believe he used to pull fourteen-hour days.”
Celeste nodded and turned her attention to the scenery rolling past her window. They’d flown into Charlotte and had taken a rental car down into the green humidity of South Carolina. For over two hours, there hadn’t been much to look at other than pine trees, small towns, fields full of corn and cotton, and lifted pick-up trucks. Celeste’s legs ached to be stretched.
Spencer turned off the road onto a private drive, passing through an open, wrought-iron gate. Enormous live oak trees arched their arms overhead, Spanish moss hanging down like Christmas tinsel.
Images of a white antebellum manse, mint juleps, and women in big hats filled Celeste’s mind. But the house, though large, was built of red brick. The main portion was two stories, with two one-story wings jutting out. In front of the house, the statue of a Roman maiden poured water from a jug into a large basin at her feet.
On the broad porch, an old lady in a fitted blue dress stood from a rocking chair. Light glinted off jewelry at her throat and on her wrist. Her dark brown hair, shot through with silver, was cut short and artfully styled. She crossed her arms, watching them as they pulled in.
“Not exactly what I was expecting,” Celeste said as Spencer parked on the far side of the fountain. “Not very Gone with the Wind.”
“The original house burned down shortly after World War II. My great-grandfather, Milton Jr, had this place built.”
“It’s nice.”
He grunted and shrugged. “It’s big.”
“You don’t sound really enthused.”
Spencer switched off the car. “Well, I moved up to Pennsylvania for a reason.”
“Spence, you’re scaring me a little. Seriously, do I need to be worried?”
“No.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Just don’t take anything personally.”
Before she could reply to that, he opened his door and hopped out. She slowly followed suit.
The droning of cicadas in the trees made the air feel heavier with moisture and heat. A thin layer of sweat sprung up over her body before she finished walking around the front of the car to meet up with Spencer. The woman in blue hadn’t moved from the front porch.
Spencer smiled at Celeste and took her hand, leading her around the fountain and up to the house. “Hey, Mama!”
He released Celeste’s hand to hug his mother.
“Oh, sweetie, I missed you.” His mother tightened her arms, not releasing until he pulled away. “And who’s your friend?”
“Mama, this is my girlfriend, Celeste. Celeste, this is my mother, Janie Roberts.”
Celeste put out her hand. “Hello, Mrs. Roberts.”
Mrs. Roberts looked her up and down before taking her hand for a brief, slight squeeze. “Pleasure to meet you. Spencer, I’m so glad y’all were able to come out. Why don’t you get your things and get settled? I’ve put your friend up in the Yellow Room.”
And with that, Mrs. Roberts disappeared back into the house. They returned to the car.
As Celeste got out her weekend bag, she said, “That was a little chilly.”
“Give her time, babe. She’ll warm up.”
“What did you mean about her being eccentric?”
“She’s just got some quirks. Don’t worry about it.”
The Yellow Room was on the second floor, on the opposite end of the house from Spencer’s room. Celeste dropped her bag onto the bed and looked out a window.
Below her, an expansive backyard stretched out, stopping at the foot of a tree line. A neat garden filled up the center of the yard, with meandering brick paths and a small koi pond in the middle. A few benches scattered around encouraged people to sit and enjoy the flowers.
She turned away. The walls were painted soft yellow and decorated with paintings of blooming azalea bushes and white magnolia blossoms. A door led into a private bathroom complete with clawed foot tub. A large secretary sat against one wall, along with a wardrobe. An old-fashioned stand with a basin and pitcher stood in a corner. A large four-poster bed dominated the space. It was dark wood and made up with yellow and white bedding.
As Celeste unpacked, she noticed the eerie silence of the house. She’d grown up in the city and was used to always hearing some sort of background noise: cars, people, distant music. Apartments were small, so she was never far away from the quiet hum of the refrigerator.
All she heard right now, though, was--nothing. She shivered.
Footsteps thumped down the hall toward her. Fear scrabbled up her spine. Spencer appeared in the doorway. She let out a sigh of relief, feeling a little confused by her reaction.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I’d rather be in your room.”
“Mama would lose her mind. She already doesn’t like that you sleep over at my place sometimes. But it’s a nice room, though, right?”
“Sure.”
Spencer nodded at the bed. “That bedframe is original to the first house, you know.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. A real antique.”
“I feel like I’m in a bed and breakfast.”
“But a free one.” Smiling, he walked into the room.
“Careful. Your mom might get upset if she catches you in here.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Spencer wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close.
“You rebel.”
Spencer chuckled and kissed her. Her mind went pleasantly blank, her whole focus narrowing down to the feel of his mouth on hers, his palms pressed to her back. All too soon, he pulled away.
“Let’s go downstairs,” he said. “Mama and Dad are waiting in the parlor.”
“Ooh, fancy.”
The parlor was surprisingly cozy. A small piano stood in a corner and family photos crowded the soft pink walls. The furniture looked comfortable and used.
An older man with a gut hauled himself off the couch when they came in.
“Spence, my boy!” the man said, going into a handshake that quickly turned into a back-slapping hug. “And this your girl?”
“Yeah,” Spencer said. “This is Celeste.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Roberts,” she said.
“Call me Tom.” He held out his arms. “Give us a hug, yeah?”
Before she could reply, Tom swept his arms around her and gave her a tight hug. For a second, all she smelled was Bengay and Old Spice before he released her.
“Janie is gettin’ the tea,” Tom said. “Let’s have a seat. You like your room, Celeste?” He settled onto the couch again.
“It’s nice.” She sat on the couch across from him and Spencer sat beside her, sliding his arm across the back of the seat.
“Yeah, but I bet you wished you were closer to Spence.” Tom wiggled his eyebrows and laughed.
The clinking of glasses and entrance of Mrs. Roberts saved Celeste from making more than an awkward laugh. Mrs. Roberts set a tray of glasses on the coffee table between them. She picked up one and handed it to Spencer. She took two and settled beside her husband.
Celeste picked up her own glass from the tray.
Mrs. Roberts said, “I tried not to make it too sweet. I know you Yankees aren’t used to it.”
“Mama,” Spencer said, his tone chiding.
“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it, sweetheart.”
Celeste took a sip and nearly gagged on the sugar. She forced a smile. “It’s really good, Mrs. Roberts.”
“Mrs. Roberts?” Tom said. “Call her Janie. Or Ms. Janie if you still want to be a bit formal.”
Janie frowned slightly.
After an awkward beat, Celeste said, “I saw your garden outside. With the koi pond.”
“Oh, yeah,” Tom said. “I like feeding the fish, though I don’t really enjoy the garden between the months of May and September. It’s a good thing we got a landscaper.”
“And it is really hot today,” Janie said. “Enough to make the devil sigh.”
Spencer said, “I was telling Celeste that her bed in the Yellow Room was from the original house.”
“Not a lot survived that fire. We treasure what little did.” She focused on Spencer. “Sweetheart, why don’t you tell us about your work. I think you mentioned you might be getting a promotion?”
After a while, Celeste wondered if ‘eccentric’ was Southern for ‘royal bitch.’
Tom was amazing. Before too long, he was calling her ‘Celly’ and asking her a hundred different questions about her work and hobbies.
She could see where Spencer resembled him. They both had the same blue hazel eyes, high forehead, and easy nature. Spencer’s laugh, though, was quieter, while Tom’s filled the room.
Ms. Janie, on the other hand, went out of her way to pretend that Celeste didn’t exist and constantly tried to turn the conversation back to Spencer, her ‘sweetheart.’ When Celeste tried to make conversation with her, asking after her interests and hobbies, all Celeste got in return were a few clipped comments about enjoying rose gardening and playing the piano.
After dinner, when the evening shadows grew long, Spencer took Celeste out back to visit the garden. It was slightly cooler outside now, but not by much.
“Want to see something really interesting?” he asked, taking her hand.
Before she could answer, he was pulling her away from the orderly garden and along the trimmed lawn, toward the trees that loomed like dark sentinels. As they drew closer, she saw a narrow path cutting through the dark.
She hesitated, pulling on his hand. “Don’t we need a flashlight?”
It was still light out, but it was as if the woods were soaked in night already. In the underbrush, frogs and crickets sang and chirruped.
In answer, he pulled out his phone, releasing her hand long enough to activate its flashlight. Then, Spencer scooped up her hand again and pulled her along, quickening his pace.
As she jogged to keep up, a flash of light caught the corner of her eye. Fireflies danced among the trees and bushes. Soon, they limned both sides of the narrow footpath. She was torn between watching them and her own footing, jumping with Spencer over gnarled roots jutting up from the ground.
Sweat slicked her face and her breath rasped in her throat.
“Slow down!” she cried, a smile tugging at her mouth. There was something childlike and free about their headlong rush into the wood, fireflies dancing around them as frogs sang. But the adult in her worried over broken ankles and scraped shins.
“Almost there,” Spencer said over his shoulder.
And, sure enough, they broke out of the wood into a clearing. They came to a huffing stop.
“There.” He pointed ahead of them.
Out from under the dense canopy, they stood once again under the western-canting sunlight. It was still an hour before true night. But what stood in front of them sent a chill down Celeste’s spine, sunlight be damned.
The ruins of a large brick house loomed over them. Vines trailed along the few remaining, half-broken walls, and shadows swathed the interior. The crumbling remains of three fireplaces jutted up to shove accusing fingers at the sky. The clearing itself was choked with weeds and brambles. Thorns caught at her ankles when she moved closer to Spencer.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“The old homestead. The one that burnt down. You can’t see it, but back that way in the woods are the remains of the old slave cabins.”
“Your family had owned slaves?” The enchantment of the fireflies dissipated under the dark presence of history.
“Well, yeah. This used to be a rice plantation.” He turned to her. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not proud of it. It’s just reality.”
“Right.” She wrapped her arms around her waist.
“Anyway, we don’t own as much of the property as we used to, of course. Over the years, my family sold off chunks of it to keep us afloat. Let’s get a closer look. Come on.”
“Is it safe?” she asked. “I mean, what if we fall through to the cellar?”
Spencer laughed. “There isn’t one. The water table is too high. Besides, there isn’t a floor left.”
He walked through a gap between the half-fallen walls. After a moment’s hesitation, Celeste followed.
“I used to come here a lot to play,” he said. “I’m the only child, and sometimes it was just nice to go off and be alone.” His tone softened and a note of longing creeped in. “There were plenty of days where I just wanted to disappear into the woods, you know.”
She ran a hand along his arm. “Why?”
Spencer cleared his throat. “It’s hard being both the only child and the only son. At the time, Dad was working as a judge and didn’t have a lot of time to be home.”
“Yeah, you mentioned the fourteen-hour days.”
He nodded. “It seemed like all of Mama’s focus just landed on me. And it didn’t help that we don’t exactly have close neighbors. Sometimes, it felt like the emptiness of the house was going to just swallow me up one day.”
“Didn’t you have friends at school?”
“Yeah. They weren’t always the right friends, though.”
“I didn’t always pick ‘the right friends,’ either, so I get that.” She leaned into him slightly, trying to give him a little comfort.
Spencer, though, didn’t seem to notice. “And they weren’t very happy when I decided not to go to law school. When I decided to not marry a debutante. When I moved up North instead of staying.” He shook his head. “Look.” He swept the beam of his phone’s flashlight over the brick. “All that black is from the fire.”
What Celeste thought had been shadows were the remains of the fire that had engulfed the building seventy-five years ago. “What happened?”
“My great-great grandfather, Milton Sr., remarried a year after his first wife died. There wasn’t a real need to. His children were grown, after all. And this woman was half his age. But he married her, and they honeymooned in Europe for six months before coming back here. She set the house on fire the first night.”
“Why? Ow!” She smacked her arm. “Stupid mosquito.”
“Apparently, there was a history of mental illness in her family. They were supposed to spend a year touring Europe, but she was already showing signs of being unstable. Milton Sr. brought her back here in the hope that the quiet would soothe her. But maybe the quiet was a bit too much.” He snorted a soft laugh.
“That’s not funny, Spence.”
“Oh, come on. It fits, right? The crazy woman burns down the old Southern plantation and supposedly haunts it to this day?” He shined the light under his face, bringing the contours of his cheeks into sharp relief and casting his deep-set eyes into shadow. He dropped his voice low and deep. “They’re coming for you, Barbara.”
Celeste snorted, even as her skin crawled. “You’re mixing metaphors. That line is from a zombie movie, not a ghost story.”
He lowered his phone. “The zombie movie. Nothing since has been better than the original Night of the Living Dead.”
“I disagree and reference our last argument on the question.”
“28 Days Later isn’t even about zombies.”
“I said what I said.” She smiled and then flinched, smacking her shoulder. The mosquitos were starting to close in.
Spencer laughed. “And that’s what I love about you. You stick to your guns.”
She waved her hand in front of her face to discourage another buzzing insect. “So, the new wife died in the fire? And why aren’t the bugs bothering you?”
“Maybe my blood isn’t sweet enough.” His smile slipped away. “But yeah. And so did Milton Sr. He died trying to save her.”
“No wonder your great-grandfather chose to rebuild in a different spot.” She looked around, thinking of the bedframe in the Yellow Room. “I’m surprised anything at all survived the fire.”
In the distance, someone shouted Spencer’s name. It echoed through the trees, bouncing off the thick canopy. Even though Celeste knew it had to have come from the house, the voice sounded as if it had come from everywhere and nowhere.
“Come on,” Spencer said, his shoulders drooping. “It’s time to go back. And next time we come out, I’ll make sure you get doused in bug spray first.”
“Thanks.” She took his hand again as they walked back. “I’m not upset about your mom calling me a Yankee, by the way. It’s a word from another time. It doesn’t mean anything.”
He glanced at her but didn’t answer.
The evening passed with the four of them watching an old black-and-white Western. Celeste tried not to notice the intermittent glares Ms. Janie threw at Spencer’s arm over her shoulder, or at their touching knees. When Spencer walked her up to her room, she half expected to see Janie trailing behind.
“Welp,” he said at her door, “here you are.”
“Here I am.” She smiled. “And you’re all the way down there.”
“Yeah.” He grimaced.
“We could wait for everyone to go to bed and one of us can sneak to the other’s room.”
He snorted. “And you called me a rebel earlier.” Leaning forward, he kissed her. When he began to pull away, she followed, balling her hands in his shirt.
A slamming door jerked them back into the moment and they parted.
“Goodnight,” Celeste said.
“Goodnight.”
Inside her room, Celeste tried to shake off Janie’s weird jealousy. Or perhaps not jealousy. Maybe Janie just thought Celeste wasn’t good enough for her son. Either way, Celeste was already looking forward to leaving.
After her skincare routine, she pulled on her favorite night shirt and went to the windows to draw the curtains closed. Pausing, she looked out.
There was no true night in the city. There were deep shadows, of course, but the glow of streetlamps, car headlights, and people’s dwellings were always pushing back the dark. Here, now that the sun had slid away to blaze upon another part of the world, the night swept in dark and deep.
There were security lights around the house, thankfully, but that only made the darkness of the surrounding trees all that more foreboding. And despite the distant screeching of frogs and insects, it was eerily quiet. No music from a house party down the block. No conversation floating up from the street below. No chatter of televisions and radios bleeding through thin apartment walls.
Something moved at the far tree line, in and out of the stark white light. Celeste went still, staring hard at where she’d seen it. But it was gone, whatever it was. She pulled the curtains closed.
The bed, as it turned out, was as soft and comfortable as it looked. That was rather surprising, given that seldom used beds typically had uncomfortable mattresses, unless the Roberts had people over often. The frame creaked as Celeste settled in.
Getting her phone out, she texted her best friend Katie to tell her how creepy the country house was and how weird Spencer’s mother was behaving. Katie didn’t reply, so Celeste plugged in her phone and turned off the light.
Thankfully, the room was not pitch black. Some light from outside leaked around the curtains, and there was a night light in the bathroom. With a sigh, she pulled the sheet up to her chin and closed her eyes.
Celeste awoke. She was on her side and the bedside clock stated she’d been sleeping for only a couple of hours.
As she wondered why she was awake, she became aware of a hard lump pressing into her hip.
The bed was large, the size of a queen, so she squirmed and shifted over, adjusting her pillows around her. She closed her eyes again.
A lump pressed against her side, digging into a spot between her ribs.
Weird, she thought, moving over again. She turned onto her back, arranging the pillows under her head.
Just as she began to drift off, something pressed into her back, like a knuckle digging in-between her vertebrae.
With a gasp of shock, she rolled out of the bed entirely. She’d felt that move. Was there a mouse or something in the mattress?
Celeste flicked on the bedside lamp and pulled back the covers. Holding her breath, she watched the fitted sheet. It was taut against the mattress, so if there was anything moving around in it, surely she would see.
After a few seconds, she let out her breath and then ran her hands over the place where she last felt a lump. There was nothing. Kneeling on the bed, she ran her hands over the other places, even pressing down and patting, but felt nothing.
“What is going on?” she whispered.
She pulled her phone off its charger and activated the flashlight app. Kneeling, she peered under the bed. All she saw were dust bunnies. She tilted the light up to sweep the underside of the box springs. However, there were no holes to suggest a mouse had managed to chew its way into the bedding. Though it hadn’t felt like a mouse at all.
Her imagination, maybe? A bad dream leaking into reality?
A wicked little smile crossed Celeste’s face as she imagined sneaking down to Spencer’s room. She could ask to sleep with him because her bed was ‘too lumpy.’
But no. She didn’t want to cause drama, and they still had three more days in the visit. It would be best to keep things as drama-free as possible. She stood back up, switched off the flashlight, and put the cell phone back onto charge.
Celeste slowly got into the bed, waiting for anything to move in the mattress. She laid still for a moment, but nothing happened. She turned off the light, and settled in. She closed her eyes.
A hand grasped her upper arm.
Screaming, she ripped her arm out of the hand and scrambled off the bed, hitting the floor hard on her shoulder. Pain jarred through her. She stumbled to her feet.
A rustling, creaking sound came from the bed. The dim light of the security lamp outside only gave the suggestion of shapes, but it was as if the mattress was coming alive.
She ran to the door, her groping hands fumbling for the knob. From behind her came the sound of boots thumping onto the floor. She twisted the knob and yanked.
The door did not move. The knob turned, but the door would not budge.
Tears slid down her face. She banged a fist against the wood.
“Help!” she shrieked. “Someone, help me!”
Running footsteps came down the hall. She heard a commotion of voices. Janie’s strident voice cut above it all:
“Spencer, get away from that door.”
Shaking, Celeste fumbled for the light switch and flicked it on. She turned around--and screamed.
The corpse bent forward slightly, hunching his shoulders like an old man. He wore the remains of a Confederate soldier’s uniform, the gray hat sitting at an almost jaunty angle on his head. The skin was dried and taut against the bones. One eye was only a cavernous hole. The other was dark brown and bloodshot.
The corpse lurched toward her.
When Spencer first heard the scream, he wondered if there was a bobcat hunting in the woods behind the house again. A hazy thought born of only being partially awake. Then a jolt of adrenaline went through him, as he realized that the scream was too human and had come from inside the house.
Now he stared down at his mother, who stood between him and the Yellow Room’s door. A door that was unlocked but wouldn’t open. From the other side came screams and sounds of struggle.
“Mama, get out of my way,” he said.
“You need to just let it happen.” She held up her hands, smiling reassuringly.
“Let what happen?”
His dad said, “It’s the way of our family, son. I know it’s hard. I like Celly, too. But it’s all for the best. We’re Roberts. We gotta keep the family line in the South.”
Spencer looked between them like they had gone insane. Then he grabbed Janie’s arm and pulled her out of the way.
“Hey, now!” Mama said.
He slammed his shoulder into the door. Pain sparked through the him. He backed up, ran, and threw himself against it again. From the other side came the sounds of a desperate struggle: breaking porcelain, scuffling sounds, and the grunts and little screams of someone fighting for her life.
“Spence, son,” Tom said over the noise. “There’s nothing you can do. The bed’s curse has got her. All we can do is wait for morning.”
Spencer backed up again, clutching his shoulder. It had gone eerily quiet in the Yellow Room. Awful scenarios were playing through his mind.
“Spence, listen to your father,” Janie said, her voice soft and gentle. It was the same tone she used when he had been heartbroken over not getting a football scholarship, or when Mary Lou turned him down for the prom. Gentle and kind, full of motherly love.
He took a step forward and kicked the door hard, planting his foot beside the doorknob. The door groaned but didn’t give. Turning around, he stood closer to the door, lifted his leg, and donkey-kicked it.
This time, it popped open, splinters bursting from the jamb. The door flew back to bury the knob into the drywall.
“Celeste!” Spencer shouted.
A decayed Confederate soldier held her aloft by her neck. Her face was reddish purple, and her fingers clawed at the skeletal hands.
Spencer rushed the soldier, tackling it at the waist like Coach Wilson had always taught him. They went down in a tangle of limbs, crashing into the bed. Spencer reared back and began pummeling the creature in the face with his fist.
“Leave! My girl! Alone!” he screamed.
With a wail, the soldier shoved Spencer off. The bed groaned and opened, swallowing the revenant back into itself.
Spencer stared at the bed, trying to understand what he’d just seen. Celeste let out a gagging cough. He knelt beside her and helped her sit up.
“Babe, are you all right?” he whispered.
Her mouth moved, but nothing but a cough came out.
“Just focus on breathing, okay? I’m gonna pick you up.”
Spencer scooped her into his arms and carried her out into the hall.
“This isn’t good,” Tom said, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t’ve interfered.”
“What is this going to mean?” whispered Janie.
“The revenant obeys the family, but…” Tom stared at Spencer like his son had committed the unforgivable sin.
“I’m taking Celeste to my room,” Spencer said. “And while I’m getting dressed so I can take her to a hospital, you’re going to tell me what the hell that was all about.”
He strode down the hall, leaving them to catch up or not, he didn’t really care.
In his room, he laid Celeste onto the bed. She had slipped into unconsciousness. Red finger marks bruised her throat, but she appeared to be breathing fine. He quickly started yanking on his jeans.
“Spencer,” Tom said from the doorway, “we were going to tell you after tonight.”
“Tell me now.” He started pulling on socks.
“The bed is cursed, by one of our ancestors. It was during the Civil War. Her beau died in the bed, and she cursed any Yankee that would lay on it. That’s the long and short of it.”
“That’s insane.”
“Well, to be fair, Union soldiers were occupying many a plantation home at the time. I think she was hoping to take down the bastard who shot her man, but, well, curses do take on a life of their own.”
Spencer straightened up, one shoe on and one in his hand, as he absorbed this. A few hours ago, this whole thing would have been insane, but he knew what he saw.
“Milton Sr.’s wife,” Spencer said, “was from Chicago. She didn’t go crazy the night the big house burned down, did she?”
“No,” Tom replied. “It was his son, Junior, who brought the old bed out of storage. I don’t think Milton Sr, ever knew. Anyhow, she tried to save herself by burning the revenant. And Milton Sr died trying to save her from the fire.”
Spencer looked down at his hands. His knuckles were red from beating the corpse in the face. He had beaten a living corpse in the face. He shivered and finished tying his shoes.
He shoved the rental car’s keys, his wallet, and his phone into his pockets. He scooped Celeste into his arms.
“I’m going,” he said, “and don’t stop me.”
Tom backed up. “And what about us?”
He started down the hall. “What about you?”
“No one has ever interrupted the revenant before. There could be consequences, for you as much as for us.”
Spencer stopped at the head of the stairs. “I’m not the one who sent an innocent woman to lay on a cursed bed.”
He walked down the stairs as fast as he could. Part of him realized he could have called an ambulance, but he couldn’t stay in the house one moment longer.
The police, of course, were called by the hospital staff. It had been a thirty-minute drive to McLeod Hospital in Florence, the nearest city, which had given Spencer plenty of time to come up with a story that sounded semi-plausible.
A man had come in through the window and attacked Celeste. Spencer had fought the intruder. He thought he had knocked the man out, but he fled while Spencer checked on Celeste.
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance?” asked the cop. He was obscenely tall and looked too young, like a kid that had been caught in a taffy machine. His nametag read Grant.
“I don’t know.” Spencer shrugged and then looked over his shoulder into the room where Celeste lay. “I guess I just panicked. All I could think was that she needed to get to a hospital and somewhere safe. That house didn’t feel safe anymore.”
“Anyone else in the house at the time of the attack?”
“Just my parents.”
“We’ll send someone out there to ask them questions and collect evidence. The address?” Grant poised a pen over his pad and stared down at Spencer with tired brown eyes.
Spencer gave it to him. After the cop left, he tried calling home, but no one answered the house line or the cell phones. He left a message on his mother’s voicemail about how he talked to the cops about the “attacker” and the police were on the way. He hung up, feeling concerned at the silence, and angry that he was concerned about them at all.
“Spencer?”
Celeste’s raspy voice cut through his thoughts. He sat on the edge of her bed, taking her hand. “Don’t try to talk too much. The doctor said your windpipe is fine, but your vocal cords need rest. You’re in a hospital right now for observation.”
Her gaze darted around the room. “The--the thing, Spencer--” She stopped and swallowed, her hand gripping his in a vise-like hold.
“I know. I saw it. I got you away. You’re safe. I promise you’re safe.” He cupped her face with his hands. “I love you so much.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Spencer pulled her close and held her, rubbing her back as she wept soundlessly into his shoulder.
The next morning, sunlight poured through the hospital windows as if the events of last night never happened.
“I don’t want you to go,” said Celeste. Her voice still sounded terrible. In front of her on a little table was a half-eaten bowl of grits with butter.
“I know,” Spencer said, “but I need to get our things and go find a hotel somewhere.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back soon.”
During the drive back, Spencer tried to think of what to say to his parents. He didn’t think an apology on anyone’s part was going to make this situation all right. Periodically, he glanced at his phone. Neither of them had called back.
When he parked again in front of the house, he half-expected to see his mother sitting on the porch, waiting with a cup of coffee. But the porch was empty, the rocking chairs still.
He stepped out of the car. The fountain chuckled and gurgled while birds sang, and cicadas screeched in the trees. Everything seemed perfectly fine, other than the sudden, scratchy feeling of fear between his shoulder blades.
He let himself into the house with his key. “Mama? Dad?”
The house should have been full of the scent of coffee and the buzz of early morning living. Instead, it was silent. Almost breathless, as if between screams.
Dread weighed his limbs. He checked the kitchen and living room, finding each room empty. The coffee pot was cold.
With heavy feet, he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He glanced down the hall at the Yellow Room but turned toward his parents’ bedroom. He tapped on the bedroom door.
When no one answered, he entered. It was dim, the curtains closed against the daylight. He fumbled for the light switch.
The bright overhead light revealed rumpled bedding, but no sign of his parents. Had they left? They parked their cars in a little garage to the side of the house, and he started down the hall with the intention of checking. But his feet carried him past the staircase, all the way down to the Yellow Room.
The door was shut. His stomach churned. With a deep breath, he turned the knob and pushed.
The door resisted, opening slightly. Spencer heard something heavy shift. With a grunt, he pushed hard, forcing aside whatever blocked the door. He stepped into the room, and froze.
His mother lay across the bed, her bare feet dangling over the floor.
“Mama?” He rushed to her, but stopped short of touching her. Her face was mottled. Her eyes bugged out of their sockets. Red finger marks bruised her throat.
Tears burned his eyes. He turned, wondering what to do, and his gaze dropped to the floor.
His father had been what blocked the door. His father’s neck was red and finger-marked, as well. His mouth was opened in a never-ending, silent scream.
Spencer became painfully aware of the far distant buzz of summer insect life, and the rapid thud of his heartbeat in his throat. From somewhere in the house, a board creaked.
Chest constricting and fear burning a hole through his soul, Spencer ran out of the room. He ran down the stairs. He ran out the front door into the heat and humidity, the bright and burning sunlight, of the Southern day.
A gripping tale! Well done!
THE FEELZ! THE FEELZ!