The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(78)
“Another day, then,” he said, and she wondered if he’d heard the change in her voice.
They hung up and Patricia looked at the locked garage room door. She smelled the carpet shampoo she used to use in Miss Mary’s room, and the pine-scented Lysol Mrs. Greene sprayed after Miss Mary had an accident. Any minute she expected to see the door swing open and Mrs. Greene come up the steps in her white pants and blouse, a balled-up bundle of sheets in her arms.
She made herself stand up and walk to the door, the smell of Miss Mary’s room getting stronger with every step. She took the key off the hook by the door and watched her hand float out on the end of her arm and insert the key into the deadbolt. She twisted and the door popped open and it swung wide and the garage room stood empty. She smelled nothing but cool air and dust.
Patricia locked the door and decided to clean all the newspapers off the sun porch and then finish the kitchen cabinets. She walked through the dining room, where Ragtag lay sunbathing, twitching one ear as she passed. On the sun porch, light bounced off newspapers and glossy magazine covers, dazzling her. She picked up the papers Carter had left on the ottoman and walked back through the dining room to the kitchen. As she stepped into the den, a voice behind the dining room door said:
patricia
She turned. No one was there. And then, through the crack along the hinges of the dining room door, she saw a staring blue eye crowned by gray hair, and then nothing but the yellow wall behind the door.
Patricia stood for a moment, skin crawling, shoulders twitching. She felt a muscle tremble in one cheek. There was nothing there. She’d had some kind of olfactory hallucination and it made her believe she’d heard Miss Mary’s voice. That was all.
Ragtag sat up, eyes focused on the open dining room door. Patricia put the papers in the garbage and made herself walk back through the dining room to the sun porch.
She picked up copies of Redbook and Ladies’ Home Journal and Time and hesitated briefly, then walked back through the dining room to the den. As she passed the open dining room door again, Miss Mary whispered from behind it:
patricia
Her breath stopped in her throat. Her knuckles cramped around the magazines. She could not move. She felt Miss Mary’s eyes boring into the back of her neck. She felt Miss Mary standing behind the dining room door, staring madly through the crack, and then came a torrent of whispers.
he’s coming for the children, he’s taken the child, he’s taken my grandchild, he’s come for my grandchild, the nightwalking man, hoyt pickens suckles on the babies, on the sweet fat babies with their fat little legs, he’s dug in like a tick, he’s dug in like a tick and he’s sucking everything out of you patricia, he’s come for my grandchild, wake up patricia, wake up, the nightwalking man is in your house, he’s on my grandchild, wake up patricia, patricia wake up, wake up, wake up…
Dead words, a lunatic river of syllables hissing from between cold lips.
“Miss Mary?” Patricia said, but her tongue felt thick and her words were barely a whisper.
he’s the devil’s son the nightwalking man and he’s taking my grandchild, wake up wake up wake up, go to ursula, she has my photograph, it’s in her house, go to ursula…
“I can’t,” Patricia said, and this time she had enough strength to make her voice echo off the den walls.
The whispers stopped. Patricia turned and the crack in the door stood empty. She jumped at the sound of fingernails tapping, but it was only Ragtag getting up and trotting out of the room.
Patricia didn’t believe in ghosts. She had always considered Miss Mary’s kitchen-table magic something that might be interesting to a sociologist from a local college. When women she knew said Grandmama appeared in their dreams and told them where to find a lost wedding ring or that Cousin Eddie had just died, she got irritated. It wasn’t real.
But this was real. More real than anything she’d experienced over the past three years. Miss Mary had been in this room, standing behind the dining room door and whispering a warning that James Harris wanted her children, that James Harris wanted Blue. Ghosts weren’t real. But this was real.
She worried for a moment that she was confused again. Her judgment was thin ice and she hesitated to trust it. But this had been real. It wouldn’t hurt to make sure. After all, she was only a housewife. What else did she have to do?
wake up, patricia
“How?”
wake up, patricia
“How?”
go to ursula
“Who?”
ursula greene
CHAPTER 27
Patricia didn’t know her palms could sweat so much, but they left wet marks all over her steering wheel as she drove up Rifle Range Road toward Six Mile. She had sent Mrs. Greene Christmas cards, and the phone worked both ways, and maybe Mrs. Greene hadn’t wanted to see her, and maybe she was just respecting her personal space. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Sometimes you just didn’t talk to someone for a while. She wiped her palms on her slacks, one at a time, trying to get them dry.
Mrs. Greene probably wasn’t even home because it was the middle of the afternoon. She was probably at work. If her car isn’t in the driveway, I’ll just turn around and go home, she told herself, and felt a huge wave of relief at the decision.
Rifle Range Road had changed. The trees along the side of the road had been cut back and the shoulders were bare. A shining new black asphalt turnoff led past a green-and-white plywood sign bearing a picture of a nouveau plantation house and Gracious Cay—coming 1999—Paley Realty. Beyond it, the raw, yellow skeletons of Gracious Cay rose up from behind the few remaining trees.