Chapter 3

Third hour. Joe sat down for Mr. Burns' biology class and he was instantly mired in distraction. He was supposed to hear a lecture about deoxyribonucleic acid, better known as DNA, but he couldn't concentrate. He actually liked the subject and did pretty well when he concentrated, but his mind wasn't on point today, and it wasn't because of the break-in he and Burt had planned that evening.

It was her.

Lisa Grant turned Joe's head the first day he met her back in sixth grade when she kicked him in the shin and called him a "Big Dork." Something about her giggle got him. Her snarky attitude-thing got him thinking about her and it never went away.

She wasn't one of the popular students, a cheerleader type or socialite no one could stand. She hung around a few other students, had her clique and stayed there, rarely intruding into other circles. There was something dark about her as well, a mystery surrounding her that accompanied the gloomy clothes she wore and the occasional black makeup.

And she was in his biology class.

"Hey, Joe," she said as she sat down beside him, and Joe snapped to attention, watching her. She wore a baggy leather purse over her shoulder that she tucked neatly beneath her chair. Long strands of black hair fall across her cheek as she reached down, and Joe didn't even notice she had been watching him as well.

He blushed.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked.

Joe cleared his throat. "Nothing. Uh, nice purse."

She laughed at him. "Don't even tell me you're into purses. I could lend you an old one if you'd like."

He kicked himself. He didn’t want her to see him like the “dork” she called him years ago.

Partway through class, Lisa tore a piece of paper from her notebook and scrawled something out on it. She passed him the note which he promptly unfolded and read, "Joe: What are you doing tonight?"

It wasn't a big deal to receive a note from Lisa Grant in this way. She had been passing him notes all semester, not as an act of flirtation, but in a way to pass the time. At least that’s how he saw it. Since you couldn't talk in class, it was Lisa's next best thing to having a conversation, especially when the only other option was to listen to a biology lecture. It was safer than texting. Mr. Burns hated when students texted in his class, and if he caught you he made you read it out loud to everyone.

"Nothing," he wrote back and passed the note to her.

She glanced at it and gave a weak smirk. He loved it when she smirked. "That's not what Burt told me,” Joe read when she returned the paper.

This pummeled Joe. What had Burt told her? He knew Burt had a big mouth, but not this big, especially after all of his lecturing. He tried to play it cool.

"Sure," he wrote, "if you call poker, potato chips, and grape juice a big deal."

Lisa smirked and doodled on her desk, gave the teacher a short glance, her bit of attention, then scribbled back on the note.

"Sounds…interesting."

What that was supposed to mean? He tried to read her expression but didn’t get anything. She had beguiling eyes, the innate ability to hide her thoughts, much like his mother. He wondered if he’d ever grow old enough to understand women.

Not wanting his teacher to see the note, he folded it up and stuffed it into his left shoe, the same place he kept his dollar bills when he had them. It was an odd habit to keep his money there when he had pockets, but hey, he was from the city and your stuff was a lot harder to steal when it was in your shoe.

By the end of the hour, which seemed more like two, Joe had forgotten about his note-conversation with Lisa Grant and fell to thinking about the more immediate task at hand: being nervous about this evening.

##

"Don't forget what I said." Joe kicked a stone into the street. "We have to be cool about this. Just stay cool."

Burt snorted. "Hey, cool is my middle name."

Joe scoffed as they separated, knowing full well Burt's middle name was far from "cool." In the years he’d known Burt, he’d witnessed several of his uncool activities, like freaking out during gym sports, wisecracking during teachers' lectures, bullying, and a boatload of other unsavory events.

But what was the alternative? Joe couldn’t go alone. No way. Purely unacceptable. As loose-cannon as Burt was, he was the perfect person to take into the den of a killer with you. What if he needed Burt's exuberance inside? What if the killer found them and attacked? Burt would be perfect in that situation, second only to a couple of pit bulls and a submachine gun.

Joe let that last thought slide away as he approached the front door of his house and reached for the handle. Locked. He fished his key from his pocket, thinking it wasn’t all that long ago when doors didn’t need locks. When they first came to Devonshire, the town had been a safe haven, but things were different now. At least he was doing something about it. He was going to nail Stanley Gruber.

He sat with a book in his hand when his mother came home, not really reading but waiting. His eyes focused on the far wall when he heard her voice.

"Why do you have to read that weird stuff?" she asked. The words drug him from his reverie.

"Huh?"

"Those crazy books you read," she said. "Why can't you read normal stuff like a normal boy?"

He turned the book so he could read the cover, a book taken arbitrarily from the shelf in his bedroom. It was The Art of Witchcraft: A Definitive Guide. He'd had the book for quite some time but hadn't read it in over a year. The supernatural had fascinated Joe for as long as he could remember. But ever since the ghost of his father’s voice began to appear to him, he hadn't cracked a single book on the subject.

"It's just a little light reading," he told her.

She winked at him and he liked that. Even when she criticized his choice in reading material, or something else he was doing, she winked with that proud mother's smile, shaking her head with an expression that eternally jested, "What am I going to do with you?"

She hung her coat by the door and picked his up off the floor with a funny smirk. She wasn't tired today. He could tell she was excited. She loved Fridays as much as he did, and tonight she had a date with Kevin, getting out of the house for dinner and a movie. He enjoyed seeing her get out for a bit of fun. Maybe someday, he hoped, she would even get to be the same Mom he had always known, the one who didn't have a husband who did such horrible things.

"What do you want for dinner tonight?" she asked him. "I'm making it early because I'm going out."

"You're going out tonight?" he asked, pretending to know nothing about it.

"Yeah, I'm going out with Kevin. Don't you remember?"

"Oh. I invited Burt over tonight," he said. "Is that okay?"

Her smile slipped. She didn't like Burt much. She disapproved of the way he got into trouble at school, but she saw the nice side of him, at least.

"I suppose, but if you get into any trouble, I’ll beat your little booty," she said and went up the stairs.

He watched her with thin eyes, thinking the same thought.

At seven, prompt, Kevin showed up at the door. Joe and Burt were already in the basement, discussing their plans to break into Gruber's place. Before them, on a small table, sat their only tools for the job: a flashlight and a flathead screwdriver. They heard the front door open and Kevin's heavy boots plodding above.

"I hope they don't stay long," Burt said, betraying not the slightest bit of nervousness. Joe tried to hide his own jitters, but they were there, wriggling under his skin like an unwelcomed leech.

"They probably won't. They’re as itching to get out as we are."

As if on cue, the heavy boot-falls above them moved away from the front door and toward the back of the house. The basement door swung open and the heavy steps started down toward them.

"What's he doing?" Burt asked.

Kevin appeared at the bottom of the stairs and gave them a nod. "What’s up, guys?"

Kevin wasn't a tall guy, but he was thick and strong. His shoulders stretched the seams of his jacket. He owned the auto body shop in town. He had enormous hands, Joe thought, perfect for peeling fenders off of cars.

"Nothing," Joe said. "Just hanging out."

Kevin nodded. "Sounds pretty boring for a Friday night, especially for two young studs like yourselves."

They didn't say anything. Kevin came further into the basement.

"Your mother is still getting ready. We're going to a movie."

"Yeah," Joe said. "That's what she said."

"Holy cow!" Kevin said suddenly and gave Burt a close scrutinizing eye. "How tall are you now, Burt? You must be growing an inch a day!"

"Six-foot-four," Burt said, pride beaming through. "That will get me into the NBA."

"Sure would," Kevin said. "Joe, your mother wanted me to tell you boys not to get into any trouble tonight while we're gone. So there. I told you."

Joe rolled his eyes. "I know. She says that every time."

Kevin laughed and turned back toward the stairs. "Just stay close to the house," he said, and then his voice grew more serious. "It would kill your mother if anything happened to you."

"No problem," Burt said after Kevin was gone. "But we're going to deal with a few problems first tonight."

"So the plan is the same," Joe said to his friend. "As soon as they leave, we head over to Gruber's place and sneak in. It will be dark enough, I think, to hide us from the neighbors. We'll get in, have our look around, and get out before nine."

"You got a watch?" Burt asked.

"Right here." Joe produced a beat-up ladies watch from his pocket.

"Nice watch," Burt said, batting his eyes.

Joe smacked him in the arm. "It's my mom's. It's all I could find."

"Well, isn't that cute."

##

Time dragged.

Joe's mother was still finishing up getting ready while Kevin waited in the living room. Burt announced he had to go take a leak and would be back in a couple of minutes. Joe leaned against the wall, alone now, his nerves fraying more and more by the minute.

The basement in Devonshire was nothing like the one in the Iowa. Thankfully. The walls were actual walls, complete with drywall and paint, not the cold and gray cinderblock like the last place. It had a couch as well, a ragged old thing left by the former renters, but it was soft and didn't smell too bad.

This basement was Joe's sanctuary, his second room in the house, and even his mother respected this.

Hopefully his mother would leave soon so they could get this over with. Why the hell was she taking so long? Kevin must be a saint, he thought, for putting up with this.

He heard a scratch at the window well.

He side-glanced the window and saw a pallid hand tapping against it. He sat shoved up and squinted.

"Is that you, Burt? Quit fooling around."

The hand tapped again, slowly, monotonously.

"Kevin? Are you trying to scare me?"

He rolled from the couch and turned off the light. A dim shaft of moonlight bled through the window well. He waited. The hand was gone. His eyes adjusted and he saw more clearly now. Nothing.

“Burt, you’re such a jerk!” he cried.

He reached for the light, but froze still. There, in the darkness, stood his father, staring back at him, his skin the dull, pallid sheen of a dead fish. He wore the same work clothes he wore the night of his suicide. Stretch marks and lesions looped around his neck where the rope chaffed his skin.

"Joe…" His father’s voice was a rusty rumble. Joe stumbled backwards. His calves bumped the couch and he fell backward, dumfounded. This was too real, more than the voices. In the darkness, it felt like being swept into an old horror movie. His mind shuddered.

"What do you want?" Joe’s voice emerged from his throat in a dry squeak. It took everything he had to keep from screaming.

"Joe…" The voice, such a horrible thing, not really the voice of his father, but a pale representation of it, the sound of grave suffering. "Be careful, Joe. There is evil in Devonshire. Get away from it. It is old and it is hungry. It grows hungrier every day. Get away from it. Joe…"

Joe couldn't bear it any longer. He clasped his hands over his ears and clenched his eyes shut. He hummed to himself to block out the sound and he rocked backed and forth, everything he could do to rip the vision of his dead father from his mind.

A pair of hands gripped him by the shoulders and shoved him into the back of the couch. He yelped like a frightened puppy. His eyes flew wide, expecting the gray flesh of his father to be there, only inches away…

…but instead he found Burt, shaking the hell out of him. The lights were back on and his father was gone.

"What's your problem, man?" Burt said. "You cracking up on me?"

Joe searched the basement for any sign of his father, but the ghost was gone. Joe blinked, rubbed the crud from his eyes.

"What time is it?"

"It's almost time to go," Burt said. "Your mom is getting ready to leave. Damn, dude. The hell’s wrong with you? I’m gonna grab a soda."

Burt went to the fridge, leaving Joe with an agonizing retch in his gut. He shook it off but it didn’t help much. If some creeping form of madness held him, he didn’t want to deal with it right now.

He considered Stanley Gruber. Could they have the wrong guy? He doubted it. The strange janitor had those killing bones in him, but…he began to wonder if a ghost could have anything to do with all this death.

Immediately after Kevin's car pulled away from the curb, Joe and Burt hurried into the yard. Joe locked the door before they left, being more cautious than usual. The night was black, darker than he remembered in a long time. A breeze roiled with chill. Perfect October weather. A new moon cut the sky, a sharp sliver.

I should tell Burt about my father, Joe thought, especially with the way Burt was looking at him now. They moved through the yard into the grassy alleyway. He couldn’t say anything. Not just yet. He still reeled from it all. He’ll probably pound my face into the back of my head.

He couldn’t risk it. Not now. If Burt thought Joe had gone off the deep end, it would jeopardize their mission into the Gruber residence and he had to see, had to know.

So for now, he dismissed it. I’m gonna just get this over with and my father is never going to come back again.

If he concentrated hard enough, maybe it just might come true.

Before they reached the end of the alleyway, a dark figure stepped into their line of vision. It stopped and rooted itself, opposing, menacing.

“Who’s that?” Burt cried.

Joe froze. Did his father come back? He clenched himself against a weakening bladder.

Burt hunkered down, a bull before a matador. “Do you think it’s Gruber?”

Joe stepped forward, following the line of a pair of truck tires dug into the grass. “Leave us alone…”

The shadow approached and Joe caught the faint scent of perfume. He craned his neck. The shadow spoke.

“Hello?” A gentle voice, one Joe recognized. “It’s me.”

Joe’s ears perked. Oh no.

“Lisa?”

“Yeah. I thought that was you.”

Lisa Grant. She crept from the darkness like a cat and set her hands on her hips.

“What’s going on, guys?” It was more of a statement than a question.

Joe shot Burt a quick look of disapproval, but with Burt, that was pointless. He stood there with a goofy grin, like he’d planned the encounter. To Joe’s horror, he thought for a moment he had.

“What are you doing here?” Joe asked.

Lisa shrugged and dipped her shoulders.

"Just thought I'd see what was going on tonight."

Joe shook his head. "Well…Burt and I were just gonna hang out, so if you…"

"I know what you guys are doing." She folded her arms over her chest. It wasn't an accusing gesture, but Joe could see her setting herself for something. "I want in."

"You what?" Joe said.

Burt laughed. "No problem. We could use an extra pair of eyes anyway, right?"

Joe spun to him. "Why did you tell her? Another person increases our chances of getting caught. Exponentially!"

Burt gave him a friendly shove. "Where's your sense of adventure, dude? Nobody’s getting caught. Trust me. She’s cool."

Joe squinted at Lisa with uncertainty. "I don't know…"

"Come on," she said. "I won't tell anyone. Besides, I know something about Stanley Gruber you don't know."

This caught Joe’s attention, despite the clear manipulation.

"Okay, I’ll bite. What do you know that I don't?" The question filled him with dread. He had a bad feeling he already knew the answer.

"Let me go with you and I'll tell you."

Yep. Damn.

"Of course. Fine. Just don’t screw anything up. Got it?” He glanced at his watch. "If we're going to do this, we better move."

“Yes, sir.” Lisa gave a mocking salute.

Suddenly, a light flicked on. They found themselves exposed. Instinct took over and Joe ran. He bolted through the alley to the street. Lisa and Burt laughed up a riot behind him as he caught his breath.

“It was just a neighbor turning on her light.” Burt panted, smirking.

"That scared the crap out of me!" Lisa said beneath sharp breaths.

Burt slapped Joe's back. "Man, the way you took off like that made me think the killer grabbed your ass!"

"Ha ha. Come on. Let's just get out of here. We have work to do."

They moved on toward Gruber’s.

##

"Could you rub a little harder?" Sheila Tucker shifted her shoulders into the crux of the couch. She’d always loved that couch, the way it grew perfectly soft and molded for the length of her back and width of her shoulders, but lately even the couch couldn’t help her get comfortable. She felt like a whale. The first six months of her pregnancy had been a breeze. Everyone told her being pregnant would be an incredible chore, particularly her mother, but she refused to believe it considering how the first two thirds flew by. But the week before the seven-month mark made her reconsider. It slammed into her like a freight train.

"Sure, hon." Garret happily obliged. It was the least he could do, considering the fact that she had to do the hard part in the whole thing.

They already had two children, Jacob and Sally, seven and eight respectively. They hadn't planned on a third. They considered a tubal ligation after Jacob was born, but decided against it. It was just so permanent. They decided to let fate decide the whole thing for them.

Fate decided to give them another child.

When Sheila's period didn't come that month, she didn't think anything of it at first because her schedule fluctuated as often as the weather. Sometimes it was twenty eight days, other times it was thirty five days. Once it was seventeen days and that had her freaked out. But after the initial week's swing, she grew nervous and picked up a home pregnancy test on the way home from work. She thought she might have to pee in a cup, but it was a lot easier than that.

It came up positive.

Her initial reaction was fear, fear for how Garrett might react, fear for how they might afford another child, especially on Garrett's teaching salary. She worked at the local grocery store, but mostly for the extra spending money. It wouldn’t be enough to raise another child.

But the fear didn’t last when she saw it for the blessing it was. Their love had produced a child for them, and it was God's will that they bring another one into the world.

That night, she told Garrett in bed, still nervous how he might take the news. When she told him, his jaw popped open and his eyes dripped with a pure and lovely joy.

"That’s the best news I’ve heard all year." He rubbed her hands and squeezed them between his own. "I've always wanted another."

"What?" She sat up in bed. "I didn't know you wanted another one. Why didn't you tell me?" She cried now, relieved and happy beyond what she expected.

"I didn't want to pressure you," he said. "I just figured if it happens, it happens. I'm so glad it did. Green Bay’s gonna need another linebacker one day, right?"

“You and your Green Bay.”

They held each other through the night, crying and laughing, reliving old memories, and Sheila realized again why she married Garrett in the first place, why she loved him so much. Seven months later and here they were, happy as any two people could be.

"Ouch!" Sheila cried and Garrett stopped rubbing. He had squeezed too hard.

"Sorry," he said. "I guess I get a little carried away."

"No problem. It's all those big strong muscles."

Garrett winked and flexed his bicep. “Got plenty more where that came from.”

He flicked on the television and popped in a DVD.

Sally strolled in from the kitchen. "What are we watching?" She flopped onto the floor between them and curled up beside her father. Jacob followed soon after and dropped, propping his head up in his hands like a tripod in front of the television.

"The Princess Bride," Garrett said. "Okay?"

Sally grinned. "Oh, I love that movie, daddy."

Garrett rubbed her hair. She was such a beautiful child. Sheila couldn't help but think of how ultimately happy they all were, and how wonderful their lives had been up until today, and how much happier they would be with the newborn on the way.

Unfortunately for them all, none of them noticed the figure watching them through the window, enveloped in pure shadow.

Minutes later Garrett Tucker's kids were so completely mesmerized by the movie, as if under the spell of a devious hypnotist, they didn't hear the subtle noises that were now coming from the guest bedroom. Not even Garrett heard it. But Sheila did.

She said nothing at first. She thought it might be her hormones causing her imagination to go off track. She'd heard about this happening to pregnant women, and she didn't want to think she might have gone bonkers like poor Mrs. Lanham across the street. That poor woman, let me tell you, she thought, with all that space ship talk and whatnot. The last thing she wanted was for her husband to think he was married to an unbalanced woman.

But still. She could have sworn the sounds coming from the guest bedroom were the sounds of…breathing.

From where she sat, she could see the guest bedroom door, cracked open about three inches. The door itself fluttered gently back and forth. One of the kids must have left a window open in there. The swaying made the room seem alive and thinking, contemplating. And now breathing.

She heard it again.

She made no immediate moves, still not trusting her own senses. Perhaps it was the movie, toying with her emotions. That was probably it. She settled back into the couch and refocused, convinced of her own paranoia. I have to stop all this. I am not going to be a crazy woman like Mrs. Lanham.

Yet, her mind kept returning to it. She could no longer watch the movie. The guest room obsessed her, the movement of the door, the odd sounds. When she looked, the breathing stopped, as if the room had been caught in the middle of something it should never have been doing. She thought of one book she'd read years ago, The Amityville Horror, and how spirits dwelled within the house and how the walls bled. It kept her up for weeks afterward. She felt this way now. The terror of the past seeped into her, like the spreading pain of a solid kick in the stomach.

On her last glance, the breathing didn't stop this time. It was as if the room knew she was onto it, and it didn't care. In fact, it was as if it taunted her, beckoning her to investigate, to enter…

"Damn," she breathed and shifted her position on the couch. Now she really was starting to think like Rose Lanham, and that was the last thing in the world she wanted. She decided she would rather have her husband just go and check out the room than drive herself crazy with pregnancy-induced paranoid schizophrenia.

Garrett rubbed her leg. "What's the matter? Baby kicking?"

"This might sound really stupid to you, but indulge me, please. It's the guest bedroom. I think one of the kids left the window open. Could you go and close it?"

“What’s so stupid about that?”

“Just…be careful, OK?” she said. “I have a weird feeling, that’s all.”

He gave her his typical crooked smile, the last one she would ever see. "Is there a monster inside, gonna eat me up?"

"Just please close the window."

The kids never moved, absorbed by the movie. Garrett tiptoed toward the guestroom, mocking fear, always the playful one. Sheila tensed. She tried to smile, as it was funny after all, but she wouldn’t feel at ease until he checked the room. She watched him go, telling herself how crazy this was, how completely ridiculous. Of course there was nothing in there. How impossible was that? It would all be over in a moment and she could relax, and laugh at herself for being so crazy. Who could possibly want to break into their guest bedroom and watch them watching television?

She almost laughed at herself when Garrett stopped suddenly.

He reached for the door handle but paused and cocked his ear toward the room before opening the door. What happened next happened so quickly Sheila didn't even have a chance to scream.

Garrett listened for a fraction of a second, and Sheila knew instantly what he heard. The breathing. Her instinct was to scream, to tell him to get away from the door, but the impulse in her brain never reached her mouth.

The remaining moments of Garrett’s life passed quickly, but to Sheila, they were frozen in time, unfolding in slow motion before her.

Garrett cocked his head and pushed the door open. Sheila saw the darkness within, a gaping blackness ready to strike. My God, it's going to happen now. And it did.

Sheila Tucker's world spun when her husband screamed and the door slammed closed behind him.