THE POWER OF THREE (7 page)

             
She went running out of her room, her bare feet cold on the wood floor. There was a wind at her back, an impossible wind. She knew something terrible was about to happen. She had to get to her mommy and daddy, she had to save them.

             
Down the hallway she flew fleet as a cat. Her parents' door was closed. She reached for the door knob and turned it. She could hear her mother's frantic voice full of fear and her father now raising his voice in that selfsame fear. She rushed inside and saw...

             
Many things.
Many THINGS.
They were as insubstantial as smoke. They had circled her parents' bed. They looked to be wearing shredded clothes. They were carrying weapons. Some had cleavers like her mother used in the kitchen to cut apart chickens. Some held carpenter hammers. Some raised huge axes.

             
STOP IT! That was her silent cry to the creatures. They ignored her. She said it with the last ragged breath of her voice, STOP IT!

             
They ignored her as if she wasn't even there. There was wind in this room and dark chaos running rampant.

             
Her parents were trying to get out of the bed, but hands came out of darkness and held them fast, pushing them down on their backs. Moonlight from the long windows splashed the bed with ivory beams. Her mommy and daddy had their mouths open on long, unending screams. They had neither the time nor the sense left to even notice she stood impotently by watching.

             
Then the things made of smoke began to use the weapons that worked just as they would have had they been made of wood and metal. The clubbing began abruptly and stopped abruptly. Linda stood by aghast, her mind slipping right away, her mind closing to the carnage and the death of her mommy and daddy, her mind finally giving out altogether to leave her lying on the bedroom floor in an empty and deadly silent house of death.

             
#

             
Linda came to herself. Found
herself
sitting in the bed shaking so hard the bed rattled. Crying so hard she couldn't get her breath.

             
Had she really been there and seen it? Until now she hadn't known that. She had thought she'd found her parents in the morning and run screaming from the house.
All these long years she had believed that.

             
It was so real, the dream or memory she had just relived.

             
You were there. We saw
You
.

             
Linda flinched so hard she pulled a muscle in her back. She gave a little cry of pain. The house had spoken again.

             
"Why didn't you take me then? Why didn't you kill me too?" She was shouting, furious with those who lived in these walls, who made this house evil.

             
We were in no hurry. We knew
You'd
come back. We've been waiting.

             
Despite the pain from her back muscles, Linda hurried from the bed, threw on her house robe and slipped on her shoes. She was down the stairs and standing outside on the front lawn as fast as she could get there.

             
She was bent from the waist. She couldn't straighten up without an intense pain shooting from her back, down her legs and up into her shoulders. She glanced up at the house in the dark that came with the deepest part of the night. It sat brooding, bathed in blue shadow, leering from the windows, hunching like a grotesque beast. It seemed to lean toward her; it seemed to breathe in and out like a bellows, the windows and walls expanding and contracting.

             
She hated it, of course she hated it. She wouldn't let it take her. It couldn't take her or beat her or kill her, not if she didn't let it. There was yet no reason she could accept for the house having murdered her parents. In the walls, yes, THINGS lived, imbuing the house with their mad thoughts. In the walls were the souls, the damned and lost souls who had built the house and held satanic rituals and spilled blood to gain some ground with the master of hell. Were they still committing those blood sacrifices the night they took her parents away? Were they lost in between worlds, trapped in the walls like spiders, ever longing to make amends with blood to their demon god?

             
Limping to her car, Linda climbed carefully into the driver's seat. She started the engine and backed out the drive. She drove around the block thinking and thinking, until her thoughts moved in a circle, round and round.

             
She parked across the street from 2242
Maycroft
and turned off the car's engine. She leaned her head against the steering wheel to wait for the sun to rise.

             
#

             
She woke stiff and hurting, her hand going to her back. She winced, groaning. She would need to take something to help the muscle inflammation.

             
Consulting her wristwatch she saw it was just a few minutes past seven A.M. Her neighbors would be coming out soon to drive to their jobs. She didn't want them to find her in her sleepwear sitting in her car across from her own house. Whatever she did this was a situation between her and the house. She didn't want anyone interfering.

             
She started the car and drove it into her own driveway, parking it. She hobbled from the car to the house, opening the door slowly, not knowing what might confront her. She stood in the doorway, much more frightened now than she had been before. Now she knew a little about the house that pointed to not only its evil beginning, but how it operated whenever it felt the urge. The walls shimmered and shivered.

             
She willed it to stop.
Be still
, she admonished the house.
I'll leave again if you won't be still.

             
For a few more moments, as if defying her, the walls moved as if alive, and she stood in the doorway, her hand on the doorknob, her back killing her. She waited.

             
Finally it ended and light spilled through the door that had been held at abeyance before. The colors in the red patterned carpet rug sprung to life. The polished wood paneled walls shone with a mellow brown vigor. The furniture gleamed and the taupe drapes lay quietly at each side of the windows.

             
Sighing, Linda stepped inside and closed the door. In the bathroom, she opened the medicine cabinet and hunted for ibuprofen. She shook out four tablets and ran water in the glass she kept on the sink. On the way out the door of the bathroom she swallowed down the medicine. She still had to walk bent over to keep from having tremendous, debilitating pain.

             
In the living room she made for the rocking chair. She was hungry, wanted coffee, but she had to wait for the medication to help her back first.

             
She sat rocking slowly, carefully, her eyes trained on the walls. She didn't try to talk to them, either aloud or psychically. The minute they began to move, she was going to stand up and go outside again. She'd thwart them until they knew she was going to do this her way.

             
#

             
She woke to a small hand on her arm. She had fallen asleep in the rocker and came
to
suddenly. Diane stood next to her, holding her arm.
Hello
, she said.
I had to come back to help you.

             
"Talk out loud, Diane. It takes a lot of my energy to talk with thoughts."

             
"My mom said I could go out to play."

             
"She doesn't know you're here?"

             
"No, she wouldn't let me come
here,
she doesn't know you. You're a stranger."

             
Linda agreed. She was a stranger, all right.
A stranger in the world, a stranger in her own skin.
"I told you not to come back. It's not safe here."

             
"But I have to help you, Miss Linda."

             
Linda kept silent a moment, glancing first to be sure the walls were sedate, before she said, "You can't help me. This is between me and the house. You have to stay out of it."

             
"I can't."

             
"Why not?"

             
"They told me so." She pointed to the walls.

             
Linda sighed and tried to stand to straighten her back, but a blast of pain forced her to bend over like an old crone from a children's picture book. "I'm going to say this one more time. You
cannot
come here again. You can't be involved in this. I won't be responsible for it. If I have to tell your mother to keep you away, I will."

             
Tears came quick to the girl's eyes. She rubbed at her cheeks and Linda wanted to take it back--both the words and the harshness of the way she'd spoken them. She was used to dealing with college students, not children. She felt helpless to console the girl or to lessen her hurt feelings. She had to try.

             
"Honey, now listen to me. I'm sorry I sounded so mean. You know what's here. You know how bad they are. You can't help me. I don't care what the walls tell you. They're liars, deceivers. You'll get hurt here, Diane...please
don't
cry."

             
The girl sniffed and Linda reached out and wiped the last of the tears from her cheeks. Her skin was pale as driftwood, her eyes dark. Her hair was shoulder length and sandy brown, like wheat in a field. She was a pretty child, and so earnest, so full of compassion.

             
Once she felt under control, Diane said, "I'll go away then. I thought...I thought you needed me."

             
This girl and her small voice, her frank stare and open manner, made Linda love her. "Go home, Diane. Be a good girl. Stay with your mommy."

             
Once she had let her out the door, Linda looked at her watch and saw it was almost noon. She had slept for hours in the
rocker,
no wonder her back hurt worse than before. After taking more ibuprofen, she sat in the kitchen and had coffee and toast.

             
"You see what you've done?" Linda addressed the house, looking up at the ceiling. "You've made me hurt that little girl's feelings trying to keep her away from you. It's
me,
you want, you told me that. Let's keep it straight. Talk to her again and I burn this place down."

             
The ceiling rumbled like heavy boots were treading the floors above on the second floor.

             
"You don't scare me," she lied. "You don't even
belong
here. You just haven't been sent your invitation to dance in hell yet."

             
The rumbling ceased. The rest of the day Linda took care of her back and made phone calls and, finally, an appointment.

             
#

             
It was Friday. She was at the church at exactly eleven A.M. for the appointment. Hayden only supported one small Catholic
church
. The Father met her in the vestibule and led her to his office. He closed the door, took his place behind his desk.

             
"Now how can I help you, Mrs. Broderick?"

             
"It's Miss. I've never married."

             
He smiled and
steepled
his fingers.
"How can I be of help?"

             
"Do you believe in evil?
True evil working in the world today?"

             
He was stingy with his words. He took his time. "Maybe we should define the word a little. By evil, do you mean the evil that people do?"

             
"No, I mean the evil that you can't see, that stands outside the purview of man.
The evil that has to do with a real devil and real demons and damned souls."