Dead Reflections (9 page)

“Well, it
is
your room, and it’s bigger than the one you had in the old house.”

“I’d rather have my old room back.”

Robbie sighed and stood up. “Don’t be bummed about the move, Cory. I’m pretty sure you’ll meet at least one or two good friends before the summer’s over. We’re going to have a barbecue out back tonight. I’ll make a bonfire pit and we can roast some marshmallows. What do you think?”

Cory shut his eyes. “I suppose.”

“It’ll get better soon,” Robbie told him, kissing him on the forehead. “I promise you. By the end of the summer, it’ll feel like home.”

He got up. Cory said something that made him stop.

“Dad?”

“Yeah son?”

“Do you like this house?”

Robbie looked at him. “We bought it because we liked it. It has more room than the old one, which is pretty important to three growing boys who all enjoy lots of space.”

“I don’t think I like it.”

Robbie leaned against the doorframe. “Why do you say that?”

“It feels weird.”

“It’s still new. Give it more time. Have your nap, if you’re tired. The Internet company said they’ll be here tomorrow, so you’ll have your computer back up and running again.”

Cory seemed to cheer up a little at that. “Really?”

“Definitely, sport. We’ll come out of the Stone Age soon enough.”

Cory laughed at this, and Robbie was glad. “We’ll have fun tonight.”

“Okay,” Cory said.

* * *

Robbie walked back downstairs, musing over his son’s words. He had to admit he felt a kind of eeriness about the house too, the news from Hawkins about the former couples’ baby, and Tanya thinking she’d heard a baby cry in Cory’s bedroom. And the mutilated mouse in the basement. They were well overdue for some positive stuff to occur. He strode back into the kitchen, determined to fix what needed fixing, put their mark on the house, manipulate it into being their own. No more bad memories from other families or sad stories from real estate agents. He couldn’t blame Hawkins for not having mentioned the crib death; it wasn’t exactly a selling feature. It was in the past. With that, he set back to work.

“He okay?” Tanya asked.

“He’ll be fine. He’s just homesick. He perked up when I mentioned that we’d have Internet by tomorrow.”

Tanya smiled. “What would today’s kids do without computers? Remember how we used to pass our time with board games, just hanging out, telephone calls?”

“Oh yeah, I remember my two-hour-long calls to you that would tie up the phone line. It drove my parents nuts. They used to tell me that exercising my jaws wasn’t an adequate pastime. Grant you, the said the same thing every time I went into the refrigerator. I disagreed highly, of course. So they started letting me have the second car a lot more often, so that we could see each other and I could eat out.”

“We were so bad,” Tanya laughed.

“Bad to the bone,” he said. “You game for a barbecue tonight? I’ll make a fire in the little fire pit for marshmallows, and take out some of those steaks? Maybe Chris and Cole can take Cory back into the downtown core for a bit after supper—show him some of the area. We can sit in our deck chairs and admire the stars.”

“And the mosquitoes,” she said. “The mosquito tent is still packed away.”

“We’ll survive.”

“I am so happy,” Tanya said. She walked over to him and kissed him full on the mouth. “I love the house. I know the kids feel displaced, but it’ll grow on them. It’s all going to be good.”

“Of course it is,” Robbie agreed. “How can it not with us adding our touch to it?”

Gina swung on her backyard swing set, alone in the yard while her mother stood inside, washing dishes, and her father sat in front of the television. She’d been born in this town and although she had a couple of friends, she only saw them on occasion once school was out. She was an only child and a lonely kid. They lived at the opposite end of Amberstead, too far to walk or even bike. She kept her eyes on the old stone property where the new kid, Cory, had moved in. The house looked dark and brooding as the sun hit its opposite side, throwing her view of it into shadow. Its chimneys poked into the sky like daggers. Its barn sat quite far from the house, in a field whose eastern edge was ringed by thick woods. The barn looked black without any interior light.

She swung back and forth, her legs dipping down as she retrograded, and sticking out straight as she moved forward again.

A dull green light popped on in the barn’s upstairs window. It flickered a little like cold fire. A similar light appeared in one of the house’s attic windows. It left the attic window, a watery green ball, and floated along through the waning evening sky until it disappeared inside the barn. Then a moment later, two glowing orbs, round like distant dinner plates, floated back to the house and disappeared down one of its chimneys. Gina’s legs froze. The swing came down hard, making her heels scrape the ground. She knew what she had seen, what had looked to her like floating balls of verdant electricity.

“Ghosts,” she said. So, the stories were true. She’d never actually
seen
anything until now. She wondered if something might happen to Cory’s family. A shiver tickled her arms, making the hairs stand up despite the warmth of the evening. Her curiosity grew, and yet she felt afraid. It was a feeling akin to having friends dare you to walk a rickety bridge; she wanted to visit the new boy, but she understood that the place prevailed in its spiritual activity, and that the spirits there were aware of her growing curiosity about them. When she’d been a bit younger, she’d had a friend who used to walk with her along the path beside that house; a girl who always disappeared the moment she reached the edge of the road. Her name had been Wanda. One day Wanda just ceased to appear.

“Gina.”

She whirled on the swing to stare in the direction of the voice. It was Cory. He stood behind her. Although he looked at her, he seemed to look beyond her too, as if he was trying to see something on the other side of her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, startled. How had he gotten here without her seeing him? Perhaps he had jumped the fence, afraid for her mother to notice him.

“I can go wherever I want,” he said. “So can you. Will you still come over tomorrow?”

She couldn’t get up from the swing. The wood felt different, everything buzzed as if the air around her had changed and become alive with soft electricity.

“Yes. I will.”

“You promise?”

“Yes,” she said.

He didn’t say another word. He turned and walked back towards her house, squeezing through the shrubs.

Gina broke out of her paralysis and ran to the spot where he’d stood. She peered through the shrubs. He wasn’t there. He couldn’t have reached the street that soon.

“Cory?” she whispered, fierce. “Where are you?”

The night fell quiet around her, broken only on occasion by a sound from the nearby kitchen as her mother finished cleaning the supper dishes.

* * *

With steaks set to sizzling on the barbecue, potatoes baking on the side, and a pot of corn on the cob boiling, Robbie unscrewed a bottle of beer and took a long, grateful mouthful of the foamy liquid. Chris played a game of Frisbee with Cory out in the field. Cole sat in a deck chair, engrossed in his cell phone and text messaging some of his old friends.

“Everything cool back in the old place?” Robbie asked.

Cole stretched, glanced up. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What do you think of downtown Amberstead?”

“It’s all right.”

Robbie flipped steaks. “You like it enough here?”

“It’ll grow on me.”

“We’re going to give you guys part of the attic for a study and recreation area,” Robbie continued. “Mom will turn that last bedroom into a guest room for when the grandparents or other folks come to stay.”

Cole shrugged. “You don’t like that room, do you? You think it’s haunted or something.”

Robbie almost dropped the steak. He caught it at the last second and hurled it back onto the grill. “I didn’t say that. I’m just not sure where your brother went for over an hour the other day. And he appeared in that bathroom after I’d been in there just minutes earlier.”

“So, he crawled out from somewhere between your first and second visit, that’s all,” Cole said.

“Cole, there was nowhere in that room for him to crawl out from. There’s no opening, crevice, crawlspace, or hidey hole that I can find—I’ve checked everywhere where he could have remained hidden while I’d looked for him.”

“Somewhere else in the house then,” Cole said, “and he managed to stumble into the bathroom at the last minute. It’s an old house. Maybe he’d snuck into that thing you call a dumb waiter, in the kitchen.”

Robbie’s brow rose at this; the boy had a point. He’d never thought of that. Yet, there was very little room in the dumb waiter, other than straight down.

“That’s possible, although he would have landed in the basement, not the upstairs bathroom.”

Cole waved a hand. “He probably didn’t want to get in crap with you if you found him there, so he ran back upstairs.”

“Did he tell you that?” Robbie prodded.

“No. I just know the kind of thing I’d have done at his age.”

Robbie felt a little better. “I’ll have to ask him about the dumb waiter.”

“Don’t,” Cole said quickly. “You ask him, he’ll deny it. Just look there the next time you can’t find him.”

Robbie grinned. “Ya think?”

“Yeah.”

Robbie flipped the last steak. “I had some reservations about this place…its age, its size…but I think it’s going to be all right.”

“Well, I’m done this year anyway, and then it’s outta here for me, so it doesn’t matter.”

“College boy.”

“That’s right. School, and then ‘cha-ching!’; bring on the money, baby.”

“You’re gonna do well.”

“Yes, I am,” Cole joked. “You can turn my room into a shrine for me, celebrating my brains and beauty.”

Robbie laughed hard. “I’d like to say the humor comes from my side of the family, but I’ll go for the brains instead. That leaves beauty and humor to your mother.”

“She wouldn’t be happy with that,” Cole said.

“Nope; women want it all. I’m just the stud.”

Cole grimaced playfully. “Hey, that’s gross!”

“Food’s done!” Robbie yelled. “Come get it!”

“Isn’t this a great night?” Tanya asked them. “Wonderful weather, good food, a fantastic new house.” She looked at Robbie. “You seem more…upbeat.”

“I’ve got my second wind back,” he told her. “Beer helps.”

Cory picked at his steak.

“You not too hungry, hon?” Tanya asked him.

“Nope.”

“Did you fill up on candy earlier?”

He was apathetic. “It’s still in my bike basket.”

From across the yard came the sound of little kids splashing in a pool, followed by the sound of a new baby crying.

“There’s your baby,” Robbie told Tanya.

“Poor thing’s probably uncomfortable with the dampness,” she said.

Cory’s head twisted at the wailing. He put his fork down, his interest in supper gone.

“At least finish your corn, son,” Robbie told him.

“I’m not hungry.” He looked a little sad.

“You’ll make friends soon,” Chris said. “We’ve only been here two days.”

“Your brother’s right,” Tanya reached over and gave Cory’s arm a gentle squeeze.

“I met a girl at the store today,” Cory said.

Robbie smiled. “Really? Someone your age?”

Cory nodded. “She’s ten. Her name’s Gina. She lives up the street.”

Tanya beamed. “Well, invite her over to play.”

“She said she might come over tomorrow.”

Tanya and Robbie looked at each other, relieved.

“That’s great,” Robbie said. “There you go. Your first friend here.”

Cory fiddled with his fork. He went to say something, then stopped.

“What?” Tanya asked.

“I don’t want a play area in the barn.” Cory looked at Robbie.

“You don’t have to play there if you don’t want to. I just thought you might like me to fix up the loft.”

“No.”

“You don’t like the barn?” Tanya asked Cory.

“It’s creepy,” he said.

Tanya and Robbie giggled, but Cory looked bothered. Chris carried his plate back to the house.

“You coming back?” Tanya asked him.

“Nah. I’m going to watch a movie on my computer. Thanks for supper.”

They turned their attention back to Cory.

“I was going to build a safety rail around the loft and angle a set of stairs out from it, rather than a straight up-and-down ladder.” Robbie said.

“I don’t want it.”

“That’s fine. If you really don’t think you want to play there, we’ll use the space for something else.” Robbie cast Tanya a questioning look.

“Can I leave the table?” Cory asked. “I’m going to go read my comic books.”

“Put your plate by the sink,” Tanya said.

They watched him walk inside the house. Cole got up too.

“Keep an eye on him when he goes in,” Robbie asked Cole.

“Dad, he doesn’t need babysitting. He’s just being a baby, is all. He’ll snap out of it.” Cole walked away, almost disgusted.

“Kids,” Tanya said. “I suppose we can keep tools and stuff in the loft.”

“He’ll change his mind. He’s just being a bit silly. Oh, and Cole made a good point earlier. He thinks Cory may have climbed into the dumb waiter and probably fell a ways down into the basement. Maybe stunned himself a bit, heard us calling, ran upstairs and ended up in the bathroom. It would explain the plaster dust and cobwebs. It’s the one place we didn’t look. He was probably still in the shaft when I went down into the basement and was nervous about letting me know where he was.”

Tanya’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that. We should close that thing up.”

“I think I will.”

“I guess that explains why we couldn’t find the little bugger,” she laughed.

“And maybe that’s why he suddenly doesn’t like heights and isn’t interested in the loft,” Robbie added. “There are logical explanations for everything.”