Ghost Summer, Stories Page 4

  The strange thing didn’t happen until nearly a week after Odetta’s visit, when Danielle had all but forgotten the flies and Odetta’s story about leeches. A loud noise overhead woke her one night. It sounded like a boot clomping on the rooftop.

  Danielle opened her eyes, staring at the shadow of the telephone pole on her ceiling. Her bedroom always captured the light from the single streetlamp on this end of Tobacco Road. Sometimes her eyes played tricks on her and made her think she could see shadows moving. But shadows don’t make noise, Danielle thought.

  Karl would have sprung from bed to get his rifle out of the closet. But Karl wasn’t here, and Danielle didn’t know the first thing about the rifle, so she lay there and stared above her. That hadn’t sounded like breathing wood or any of the old house’s other aches and pains. Someone was on the roof. That was plain.

  Not a rat. Not a raccoon. Not an owl. The only thing big enough to make that noise was a deer, and she’d stopped believing in creatures with hooves flying to the roof when she was eight. The clomping sound came again, and this time it was directly above her.

  Danielle imagined she saw a large shadow on the ceiling above her, as if something was bleeding through. Imagined, because she couldn’t be sure. But it seemed to be more than just the darkness. It was a long, large black space, perfectly still. Waiting. Danielle’s heart galloped, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  The thing on the rooftop made up its mind about what to do next. The shadow glided, and Danielle heard three purposeful strides on the rooftop above the mass. The sound was moving away from her bed—toward the baby’s crib. The baby was still asleep, breathing in slow, heavy bursts. Danielle could hear Lola over the noise.

  Too late, Danielle realized what she should have done: she should have jumped up, grabbed the baby, and run out of the room as fast as she could. It wouldn’t have hurt to grab her Bible from inside her nightstand drawer while she was at it. But Danielle had done none of that, so she only lay there in helpless horror while a shadow-thing marched toward her baby girl.

  As soon as the last clambering step sounded above—CLOMP—the baby let out a loud gasp.

  The rooftop went silent, and the baby’s breathing was normal again. Well, almost. Lola’s breathing was shallower than it had been before, more hurried, but it was the steady breath of sleep.

  After listening in the dark for five more minutes, feeling muscle cramps from lying so still beneath her blanket, Danielle began to wonder if the horrific sound on the rooftop had been in her imagination. After all, Lola woke up if she sneezed too close to her door—so wouldn’t the baby have heard that racket and started wailing right away? Suddenly, it seemed all too plausible that the sound had been from a raccoon or an owl. Just magnified in the darkness, that was all. Served her right for letting family too close to her. Just crazy talk and nightmares.

  But although she didn’t hear another peep from the rooftop—and Lola’s breathing was as steady as clockwork running only slightly fast—Danielle couldn’t get back to sleep that night. She lay awake, listening to her baby breathe.

  The next thing Danielle knew, sunlight was bright in her bedroom.

  Lola woke up at six o’clock every morning no matter how late she went to bed, so Danielle hadn’t lingered in bed long enough for the sun to get this bright all summer. Danielle looked at her alarm clock: It was ten o’clock! Midmorning. All at once, Danielle remembered the racket on the rooftop and her baby’s little gasp. She fully expected to find Lola dead.

  But Lola was sitting up in a corner of the crib, legs folded under her tailor-fashion patiently waiting. She wasn’t whining, cooing, babbling, or whimpering. The baby was just staring and waiting for her to wake up.

  Danielle felt a surge of warmth and relief, a calm feeling she wished she could have every morning. “Well, look at Mommy’s big girl!” Danielle said, propping herself up on her elbows.

  The baby sat straighter, and her mouth peeled back into a wide grin as she leaned forward, toward Danielle. Her eyes hung on Danielle, not missing a single movement or detail. She looked like a model baby on the diaper package, too good to be true.

  And Danielle knew, just that fast. Something was wrong with the baby.

  This isn’t Lola, she thought. She would swear on her grave that she knew right away.

  There were a hundred and one reasons. First, Lola started her days in a bad mood, crying until she got her baa-baa. The new sleeping arrangement hadn’t changed that. And Lola never sat that way, cross-legged like a Girl Scout by a campfire. The pose didn’t look right on her.

  Danielle went through the usual motions—seeing if Lola’s eyes would follow her index finger (they did, like a cat’s), testing her appetite (Lola drank a full bottle and ate a banana), and checking Lola’s temperature (exactly 98.6). Apparently, Lola was fine.

  Danielle’s heart slowed down from its gallop and she laughed at herself, laying Lola down flat on the wicker changing-table. The baby didn’t fuss or wriggle, her eyes still following Danielle’s every movement with a contented smile.

  But when Danielle opened the flaps of the Pampers Cruisers and the soiled diaper fell away between Lola’s chunky thighs, something dark and slick lay there in its folds. Danielle’s first glance told her that Lola had gotten her bowel movement out of the way early—until the mess in her diaper shuddered.

  It was five inches long, and thin, the color of the shadow that had been on her ceiling. The unnamable thing came toward Danielle, slumping over the diaper’s elastic border to the table surface. Then, moving more quickly with its body hunched like a caterpillar, the thing flung itself to the floor. A swamp leech. A smell wafted up from its wake like soggy, rotting flesh.

  For the next hour, while Lola lay in silence on the changing table, Danielle could hardly stop screaming, standing high on top of her bed.

  Danielle didn’t remember calling Odetta from the portable phone on her nightstand, but the phone was in her hand. The next thing she knew, Odetta was standing in her bedroom doorway, waving a bath towel like a matador, trying to coax her off the bed. Danielle tried to warn Odetta not to touch the baby, but Odetta didn’t listen. Odetta finished changing Lola’s diaper and took her out of the room. The next time Danielle saw Lola, she was dressed up in her purple overalls, sitting in the car seat like they were on their way to lunch at Cracker Barrel.

  “We’re going to Uncle June’s,” Odetta said, guiding Danielle into the car.

  Danielle didn’t remember the drive, except that she could feel Lola watching her in the rearview mirror the whole way. Danielle was sure she would faint if she tried to look back.

  Uncle June lived at the corner of Live Oak and Glory Road, near the woods. He was waiting outside his front door with a mug, wearing his pajama pants and nothing else. A smallish, overfed white dog sat beside him. Odetta kept saying Uncle June could help her, he would know just what to do, but the man standing outside the house at the end of the block looked like Fred Sanford in his junkyard. His overgrown grass was covered with dead cars.

  Odetta opened the car door, unbuckled Lola from her car seat, and hoisted the baby into her arms. As if it were an everyday thing. Then she opened Danielle’s car door and took her hand, helping her remember how to come to her feet.

  “Just like with Ruby’s boy in ninety-seven,” Odetta told Uncle June, slightly breathless.

  Uncle June just waved them in, opening his door. The dog glared back at Lola, but turned around and trotted into the house, where it made itself scarce.

  “Let’s put her in the bathtub, in case another one comes out of her,” Odetta said.

  “Won’t be, but do what you want.” Uncle June sounded sleepy.

  Lola sat placidly in the center of the bathtub while the warm water came up to her waist. Her legs were crossed the way they had been in her crib. Danielle couldn’t stare at her too long before she was sure a madwoman’s wail would begin sliding from her throat.

  She looked away.


  Danielle gasped when she saw a long blue bathrobe hanging on a hook on back of the bathroom door. It looked like a man floating behind her. And the mirror on the medicine cabinet was askew, swinging to and fro, making her reflection tremble the way her mind was trembling. Danielle wondered how she hadn’t fainted already.

  “I told you,” Uncle June said, and Danielle realized some time must have gone by. Uncle June had been standing before, but now he was sitting on top of the closed toilet lid, reading a well-worn copy of The Man Who Said I Am. “Won’t never be but one o’ them things.” When the water splashed in the tub, they all looked down at Lola.

  Danielle didn’t look away this time; she just felt her body coil, ready for whatever was next. Lola’s face was moony, upturned toward Danielle with the same intense gaze she had followed her with all morning. But the water around her still looked clear. No more leeches. Lola had only changed position slightly, one of the rare times she had moved at all.

  “That thing I saw . . . ” Danielle whispered. Her fingers were shaking, but not as much as they had been up until then. “Was it a demon?”

  Uncle June shook his head. “What you saw . . . the leech . . . that ain’t it. Just a sign it’s visiting. Evidence. They crawl for dark as fast as they can. Slide through cracks. No one’s been able to find one, the way they scoot. Probably ’cause most folks head in the other direction.”

  “It’s under my bed,” Danielle said.

  “Not anymore, it’s not. It’s halfway back to the swamp by now.”

  Danielle shivered for what seemed like a full minute. Her body was rejecting the memory of the thing she had found in her baby’s diaper. She waited for her shivering to pass, until she realized it wouldn’t pass any time soon. She would have to get used to it.

  Lola, in the tub, wrapped her arms around herself with a studious expression as she stared up at Danielle. Lola was still smiling softly, as if she was going out of her way not to alarm her, but her creased eyebrows looked like a grown woman’s. On any other day, Lola would be splashing water out of the tub, or else sliding against the slick porcelain with shrieks of glee. This creature with Lola’s face might be a child, but it wasn’t hers. Water wasn’t novel anymore.

  “If that isn’t Lola . . . then where is she?” Danielle said, against the ball of mud in her throat.

  “Lola’s still in there, I expect,” Uncle June said. “Dottie Stephens’s baby was touched by it for a month . . . but come fall, it was like nothing happened. And Dottie’s baby is a doctor now.”

  “Unnnnh-hnnnh . . . ” Odetta said with an encouraging smile.

  Danielle’s heart cracked. A month!

  “Course, you don’t have to wait that long,” Uncle June said. He stood up, lifted the toilet lid, and spat into the bowl. “I’ve got a remedy. They’ll eat anything you put in front of them, so it won’t be hard. Put about six drops on a peanut butter cracker, or whatever you have, but no more than six. Give it to her at midnight. That’s when they come and go.”

  “And it won’t hurt Lola?” Danielle said.

  “Might give her the runs.” Uncle June sat again.

  “Lola’s gonna be fine, Danny,” Odetta said, squeezing her hand.

  Karl’s nickname for her was Danny, too. She should call Karl to tell him, she realized. But how could she explain this emergency to the Red Cross?

  “What if . . . I don’t give her the remedy? What would happen?” God only knew what was in that so-called remedy. What if she accidentally killed Lola trying to chase away the demon?

  Uncle June shrugged. “Anybody’s guess. It might stay in there a week. Maybe two. Maybe a month. But it’ll be gone by the end of summer. I know that.”

  “Summer’s the only time,” Odetta said.

  Danielle stared at Lola’s face again. The baby’s eyes danced with delight when Danielle looked at her, and the joy startled Danielle. The baby seemed like Lola again, except that she was looking at her with the love she saved for Karl.

  “So how many is it now, Odetta? At McCormack’s place?” Uncle June said. He had moved on, making conversation. Unlike Danielle, he was not suffering the worst day of his life.

  “Six. Turns out they’d counted one too many. Still . . . ”

  Uncle June sighed, grieved. He wiped his brow with a washcloth.

  “That’s a goddamn shame.” The way he said it caught Danielle’s ear, as if he’d lost a good friend a hundred years ago who had just been brought out to light.

  “Nobody has to wait on C.S.I. experts to tell us it’s black folks,” Odetta said.

  Uncle June nodded, sighing. “That whole family ought to be run out of town.”

  Six dead bodies on McCormack Farm. Six of Gracetown’s secrets finally unburied.

  The other one, in the bathtub, had just been born.

  “Tel-e-vi-sion.”

  Lola repeated the word with perfect diction. “Tel-e-vision.”

  All morning, while Danielle had sat wrapped up in Uncle June’s blue bathrobe on the sofa with a mug of peppermint tea she had yet to sip from, Odetta had passed the time by propping Lola up in a dining room chair and identifying items in the room.

  Lola pointed at the bookcase, which Uncle June had crammed top to bottom.

  “Bookcase,” Odetta said.

  “Bookcase,” the Lola-thing said. She pointed up at the chandelier, which was only a skeleton, missing all of its bulbs. “Chan-de-lier,” Odetta said.

  “Chandelier.”

  Danielle shivered with each new word. Before today, Lola’s few words were gummy and indistinct, never more than two syllables. But Lola was different now.

  Odetta laughed, shaking her head. “You hear that, Danny? Ruby’s baby did this, too. Like damn parrots. But they won’t say anything unless you say it first.”

  The baby pointed at a maroon-colored book on the arm of Uncle June’s couch.

  “Ho-ly Bi-ble,” Odetta said.

  “Ho-ly Bi-ble.”

  At that, honest to God, Danielle almost laughed. Then she shrank further into a ball, trying to sink into the couch’s worn fabric and make herself go away.

  Lola gazed over at Danielle, the steady smile gone. The baby looked concerned. Mommy? That’s what the baby’s face seemed to say.

  “Your mama’s tired,” Odetta said.

  Tears sprang to the baby’s eyes. Suddenly, Lola was a portrait of misery.

  “Don’t worry, she’ll be all right after tomorrow,” Odetta said.

  All misery vanished. The baby smiled again, shining her big brown eyes on Danielle. Just like Odetta’s joke on the day of Grandmother’s funeral, that smile was Danielle’s only light.

  “Ain’t that something else?” Odetta whispered. “Maybe this ain’t Lola, but they seem to come here knowing they’re supposed to love their mamas.”

  No, it sure isn’t Lola, Danielle thought ruefully.

  A deep voice behind Danielle startled her. “Gotta go to work,” Uncle June said, and the door slammed shut behind him. Danielle had forgotten Uncle June was in the house.

  “He never gave me the remedy,” Danielle said, remembering.

  “Later on, we’ll carry Lola with us over to his gas station. It’s just up the street. Besides, I’m hungry. Uncle June’s got the best burgers under his warmer.”

  Some people could eat their way through any situation, Danielle thought.

  After a time, Odetta turned on the television set, and the room became still. The only noise was from the guests on Oprah and a quick snarl from Uncle June’s dog as he slunk past Lola’s high chair. Lola didn’t even notice the dog. Her eyes were still on Danielle, even when Danielle dozed for minutes at a time. Whenever Danielle woke up, Lola was still staring.

  “What do they do?” Danielle asked finally. “Why are they here?”

  “Damned if I know,” Odetta said. “They don’t do much of anything, except smile and try to learn things. Ruby said after she got over her fright, she was sorry to see it go.”

  �
��Then how do you know they’re demons?”

  “Demon ain’t my word. I just call them leeches. What scares people is, they’re unnatural. You don’t ask ’em to come, and they take your babies away for a while. Now, it’s true about that crib death, but Cece can’t say for sure what caused it. Might’ve happened anyway.” Odetta shrugged, her eyes still on the television screen. “They don’t cry. They eat whatever you give ’em. And after that first nasty diaper, Uncle June says they hardly make any mess, maybe a trickle now and then. I bet there’s some folks who see it as a blessing in disguise, even if they’d never say so. Lola, can you say blessing?”

  “Bles-sing,” Lola said, and grinned.

  Danielle had never been more exhausted. “I need a nap,” she said.

  “Go on, girl. Lie down, and I’ll get you a blanket. You could sleep all day if you want. This thing won’t make no noise.”

  And it was true. Once their conversation stopped, the Lola-thing sat in the high chair looking just like Lola, except that she never once whined or cried, or even opened her mouth. She just gazed at Danielle as if she thought Danielle was the most magnificent creature on Earth. That smile from Lola was the last thing Danielle saw before she tumbled into sleep.

  Uncle June had owned the Handi Gas at the corner of Live Oak and Highway 9 for at least twenty-five years, and it smelled like it hadn’t had a good cleaning in that long, filled with the stink of old fruit and motor oil. But business was good. All the pumps outside were taken, and five or six customers were crammed inside, browsing for snacks or waiting in line for the register. The light was so dim Danielle could barely make out the shelves of products that took up a half dozen rows, hardly leaving room to walk.

  Uncle June was busy, and he didn’t acknowledge them when they walked in. Odetta went straight for the hamburgers wrapped in shiny foil inside the glass display case by the cash register.

  “You want one, girl?” Odetta called.