The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller(78)

Evan backpedaled, pausing to grab a flat-blade screwdriver from the workbench before flying up the stairs, three at a time, and bursting into the kitchen. Selena, sitting at the table, a cup of coffee in her hand, recoiled. Coffee spilled over the rim when she jerked, and she winced, setting the cup down.

“Evan, what—”

“Can you stay here with Shaun for me, just for an hour or so?”

“Sure, I—”

But he was gone, running toward the door, grabbing the key ring from the table near the entry.

“Evan, where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back. It’s okay now, I know where it is.”

He shut the door and ran down the dew-slicked bank toward the dock, a grin pulling hard at his features as he went.

~

It misted the entire way to Kluge House, the van’s wipers on intermittent as the day gained more and more gray light, which filled up the land with its cool embrace. The trees that passed on either side were matchsticks, burned in the early day, their crippled branches bent and misshapen against the gunmetal sky.

Evan drove across the small bridge, hearing the tires thunk on the ancient boards, knowing if fate was against him they would break now and leave him stranded. They held, and he emerged in the open yard a minute later.

The door creaked louder than the first time they’d been there, its shriek cutting through him, shaking him from the manic wave he’d rode from the island. The house was a tomb, a crypt of memories stale with history and secrets. Except now he knew one of them, its most precious of all.

The stairs complained under his weight, but he continued up until he stood in the master bedroom, the windows to the east silver squares of light, the floor slanted with dissolving shadows. The clock’s outline looked darker today, more pronounced. Evan walked to it, tracing its borders again, and pivoted, facing the opposite wall. He moved in a straight line and stopped in front of the painting, staring at the hole in the canvas.

Without hesitation, he pulled the screwdriver from his back pocket and slipped it into the hole. The driver’s tip disappeared, and he listened, knowing what he would hear.

The tool’s progress stopped with a little clink of metal.

Smiling, Evan tore at the painting, peeling the dried canvas back from the hole and exposing mildewed wallpaper. The key for the clock was embedded in the wall, its tip driven into the wood from the force that expelled it over ninety years before, splinters in a sharp crown around its black steel. With careful movements, he slipped the tip of the screwdriver into the key’s decorative grip and levered it free of the wall. It let out a short squeak, like a mouse being crushed, and popped into his hand.

Its thickness and heft surprised him.

Heavy with power.

Without another look around the room, Evan walked out and went down the stairs, leaving the house to mutter its creaks and groans alone.

~

When Evan pulled back into the parking lot of Collins Outfitters, he parked the van and shut it off, considering what would happen to it after he went back to the island, what would happen to it if they were able to go back. Would it sit here in the present and rust until Jacob had it towed away? Would it vanish the moment they did? Would Jacob forget they were ever here? Would Selena?

The implications of what he was about to attempt landed upon him like a giant bird of prey. Any assertions about what might happen fell away. He knew nothing about what would be waiting for them. Instead of a malleable past, it might be different. Alien. Unforgiving and unchangeable. An image of a blank wasteland of time, grim as the morning mist, settled before his mind’s eye. An ash-covered stretch that he and Shaun might wander until they died of thirst or starvation. Did the past tolerate visitors?

A rap of knuckles on his driver’s window shocked him, and he jumped in the seat. Turning his head, he found Jacob staring at him through the misted glass, a wide-brimmed hat pulled down close to his eyes. Evan tried to smile, then climbed out of the van.

“Mornin’, boyo, yer up early.”

“Yeah, didn’t see you when I came through.”

“Yeh, took breakfast with me wife this mornin’. She likes me ta cook least once a week.”


Evan nodded and watched as an older golden lab rounded the front of the van and sat beside Jacob’s feet. He stared at the dog, feeling his jaw loosen.

“Somethin’ the matter?”

“Is that your dog?”

Jacob glanced down at the lab. “Oh yeh, her name’s Messy, on accounta how hard she was ta potty train.”

He patted the old dog on the head, and she licked her chops once and began to pant. Jacob looked at Evan again.

“Ya sure yer okay?”

“Yeah, I could’ve sworn I saw a dog almost exactly like her the other day.”

“Wasn’t a picture out at the Fin, was it?”

“What?”

“Oh, I jest wondered if maybe ya seen one of Dan’s pictures. See, we each got a pup from the same litter, both love ta duck hunt and all that. Picked ’em up outside a town almost thirteen years ago from a gal who used ta breed ’em. Ol’ Mess here was a right fine retriever up till her hip went bad a year or so ago.”

“Dan had a dog like her?” Evan asked. In his mind he saw the golden lab sliding its bloody hind end through the grass, its baleful look before it vanished into the trees.