Fear: 13 Stories of Suspense and Horror (13 page)

There was a tinge of sadness in her voice now.

Elizabeth stared into the faceless shadow. “Well, yeah. I'm sure if you could—”

“God Almighty, how I hate to leave him. Especially . . . especially in his condition.”

The implication made Elizabeth uneasy, but the woman continued before she could ask the nature of the boy's “condition.”

“But I got no choice, do I? I got to work to keep him fed and tended to, look after his needs and such. It's just me and him, you see?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Yes. I think I understand. So is there anything . . .
special
I need to know?”

“Anything you need to know, you'll find out, I s'pose.”

It wasn't the answer Elizabeth had hoped for. She slapped a mosquito feasting on the back of her neck. The swarming insects were the only thing making her eager to get inside. “I think I can take it from here. You shouldn't be late for work.”

“No. I surely shouldn't.”

The woman shifted her weight, bringing her face into the glow of the lightbulb dangling from a cord in the room behind her.

Her beauty took Elizabeth aback.

She was younger than Elizabeth had expected given the maturity of her voice, probably mid-twenties. Her skin was flawless and smooth. Her hair was pulled back into a neat bun, stabbed through with a pencil pocked with teeth marks. Her honey-brown eyes looked weary from too much work and too little sleep, and yet, whether she wanted them to or not, the eyes betrayed a palpable kindness. Elizabeth found it strangely disarming and couldn't help but smile.

“What is it?” the woman asked, noticeably defensive.

“Nothing. I just . . .” She didn't know how to answer. Her eyes fell to the charm at the woman's neck—a tarnished
W
hanging from a thin silver chain. “That's pretty,” she said, indicating the necklace. “
W
for Wilbur, I'm guessing. Right? He must be very special to you.”

The woman seemed flustered by the flattery. “Yes,” she said. “He
is
a very special child.” The door creaked open and a hand extended across the threshold. “What do they call you again?”

“Elizabeth.”

“My name's Grace.” They shook. The woman's skin was coarse, but her grip was delicate, feminine. “God bless you for lookin' after my boy.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Take good care of him, won't you? He's all I got. I'll be back at dawn.”

She moved past Elizabeth and stepped off the porch, trailing a scent of cheap perfume. Turning back, she brought her eyes up slowly. “You seem like a nice girl. I'd have liked to get to know you.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Well, who knows? Perhaps you will.”

“No.” The woman shook her head and her smile faded. “You won't be back. None of them ever come back a second time.”

She turned and started off on foot into the darkness.

 

 

The scream came three hours later.

Elizabeth's resting eyes popped open. She shot upright from the tattered sofa and stood quickly.

Too quickly—she became dizzy. The room was like an oven, stifling and airless. Sweat stung her eyes, forcing them shut again and leaving her completely disoriented.

She felt something brush against the back of her head and spun around in fright, swatting at the air.

Glass shattered.

Broken shards rained down on her.

She opened her eyes again to find herself in total darkness.

It was then that she realized she had just swatted the dangling bulb, sending the house's only light source crashing into the ceiling.

Panic gripped her as another scream rang out of the boy's room, louder than the first.

She ran blindly across the living room and continued past the kitchenette to the closed door at the end of the narrow hall. She fumbled for the knob, then flung open the door.

“Mama!”

Elizabeth rubbed the wall in search of a light switch. “No, Wilbur, it's not your—”

“Help me, Mama! The creepers are comi—”

“Calm down, Wilbur, it was just a bad dream . . .”

“Come, Mama! Please!”

“I'm not your mother, Wilbur!” she called into the darkness. “I'm your babysitter. Everything's okay, now.”

“Come! Please!”

Giving up on the search for a light switch, she made a move toward the frightened voice, but tripped on something that sent her tumbling to the floor.

“What happened?” the boy cried.

“It's okay! I just tripped, that's all. Are you all right?”

“I'm s-scared!” he stammered. “I wanna see you! Please, let me touch you!”

She heard his arms slapping the bed.

“I'm coming. Don't be scared.” She managed to get to her knees. “Can you reach a lamp, Wilbur, or tell me where one is? I can't see a thing.”

“Ain't none.”

“You don't have a light in your room?” she exclaimed.

“No, ma'am. No light.”

“Well, do you know where your mother keeps the spare bulbs? I seem to have broken the one in the living room.”

“Don't know about no bulbs,” he said. “She keeps matches in the kitchen, though. Candles, too, I think. I only know 'cause she tole me never to mess with 'em.”

“I'm going to step back into the other room and get them.”

“No!”

“I'll just be right outside, and I'll keep the door open, okay?”

“Don't leave me!”

“I'm not leaving you, Wilbur. I have to get us some light so we can see.”

“Well, then keep talkin',” he pleaded. “Please, miss. Keep on lettin' me hear you when you go.”

“I will.”

“Promise!”

“I promise.”

She made it out of the room and, with her outstretched arms patting madly at the air, she at last found the kitchenette. She could still hear the fright in Wilbur's panting breath and made a point to call out to him every few seconds. After rummaging through cabinets and drawers cluttered with cookware and utensils, her hand fell on what she thought was a candlestick. A quick sniff of vanilla-scented wax confirmed it. She found a box of matches in the same drawer and lit the candle.

When she returned to the bedroom, Wilbur was sitting upright in his bed. His pajamas were soaked with sweat.

Somehow the boy she had pictured in her head didn't look like the boy she saw now. She had imagined a child more . . . well, different—younger perhaps, given the degree of his terror.

He looked to be about eight or nine and had the face of a cherub.

“You okay?” she asked, standing at the door.

“Think so,” he whispered. “For now.” He wiped the tear streaks from his cheeks.

“It's all over. You woke up, you see. So it's all over now.”

“That don't always help, miss . . .”

“Elizabeth.”

“Will you come over here, Miss Elizabeth?” His arms reached out toward her.

Taking care about where she stepped this time, she went to him and took a seat on the edge of the bed. The mattress was like a wet sponge. A faded Snoopy sheet lay twisted across it.

“It's okay now.” She took his hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

He quickly took his hand back.

“Lemme touch
you
.” It was the second time he had made the peculiar request. “May I, Miss Elizabeth? Would you mind?”

“Well . . . I . . .”

His hand came up. She winced instinctively as the soft pads of his fingers began to trace the contours of her face—over her eyes, down both sides of her nose, across her mouth, and under her chin. Then his other hand moved to the top of her head and slowly raked down the length of her hair.

He smiled, a grin missing two lower teeth. “Now I can see you. I reckon you can close your mouth now.”

Elizabeth closed her jaw, which had fallen open in shock. “Omigod,” she whispered, unable to mask the astonishment in her voice. “You can't see!”

“I'm blind. But I can still see. I know how you look now, that's for sure. You could help me out by tellin' me the color of your hair and eyes, though.”

“Um . . . blue.”

“You got blue hair?”

“No, I meant . . . I mean I have blue
eyes
. And blond hair.”

“I know. I's just teasin' you.” A frown creased his face. “Blue eyes? Hmm. Mama says blue is cold. And blond is like yellow, right? A hot color.”

“I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

“That's how Mama 'splains colors. Says they got a feelin' to 'em. Blue's cold. Yellow's hot. Orange's warm. White don't feel much like nothing at all. And black . . . well, I got a pretty good idea what black's like. See plenty of that, that's for sure.”

His meaning finally dawned on her. “You were born blind. Right? You've never actually seen colors.”

“Yep, born blind. Nope, never seen colors. But I can still see. Too good sometimes in fact.”

Elizabeth held up the candle and looked around the windowless room. Scattered toys covered the floor. A knife-whittled cross hung from a frayed piece of yarn above the bed. Higher up the wall was what looked like a dotted line of pencil marks, which upon closer inspection was a line of ants moving in single file toward a crack below the ceiling.

There were no posters or picture frames on the scarred walls. She found this odd until it occurred to her that they would make about as much sense as a lamp in the room of a blind child.

He gripped her hand. “Will you stay with me, Miss Elizabeth, beside me, I mean?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“All night?”

“Sure. If you want. Are you hungry?”

“No. Thanks.”

“Can I get you some fresh pajamas?”

“These're all I got, these here Spider-Mans. They
are
Spidies, aren't they?”

“Sure are. How about if I go and get you a glass of water?”

“No!” His grip became a vise on her arm. “Stay.”

“All right, Wilbur. I'll stay.”

Satisfied, his grip loosened. His head fell back to the pillow. Elizabeth pulled up the sheet, using a dry corner of it to blot the beaded sweat from his brow.

“It's late,” she said. “You better try and get some sleep.”

“Please. Can't I stay awake . . . just for a while?”

“Okay. But just a
short
while.”

He nodded, and his eyes blinked slowly closed.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Wilbur's body shuddered at the sound, but Elizabeth's calming hand settled him again.

“Why don't you tell me about your dream,” she said.

“What for?”

“Maybe talking about it will make it seem . . . less scary.”

Wilbur shook his head. “It's best if I don't. Best if I don't think about it at all. That's the only way to keep 'em away.”

“To keep who away?”

“The creepers.”

Elizabeth couldn't suppress her smile and hoped that he couldn't sense it. “Who are the creepers?”

“Best to keep 'em right out of my head, Miss Elizabeth. That way they won't come. It's safe when everything stays dark. In my head, I mean.”

“What a strange thing to say.”

“Why's that?”

“Most people feel just the opposite about the dark. I know when I was a little girl, I was very frightened of it.”

“Not me. I feel good when I just see the dark. It's when stuff starts gettin' into my head that things go bad.”

“Like when you have a scary dream?”

“Yes, ma'am. Or even when I just get to thinkin' on scary things.”

“I was always taught that an active imagination was a good thing, especially for little boys. Wonderful things can come out of it.”

“Bad stuff, too,” he whispered. “ 'Specially for someone like me.”

“Like you?”

“Blind folks. Mama says folks born blind don't know the way things really look, just how we imagine 'em. And she says some blind folks even have a
heightened
imagination.”

“Sounds like a pretty neat gift to me.”

“Yeah. But sometimes mine gets
heightened
too much. Sometimes when I get to thinkin' on things I see in my head, those things just get a little . . .
too
real.”

Elizabeth's eyes drifted down to the candle, which had dribbled a puddle of wax at her feet. “Wilbur . . . what do the creepers look like?”

“They changin' all the time. Depends on how I see 'em in my head, or maybe how I dreamed 'em. You understand?”

“No, Wilbur. I'm afraid I don't. Can you explain it to me?”

His eyes opened again. “Please, Miss Elizabeth, don't get me thinkin' 'bout 'em.”

“But I think it might help.”

“No! Please.” He sat up quickly. “I shouldn't be thinkin' on it.” Panicked, he pressed his back against the headboard; his heels dug trenches into the mattress.

“Okay, Wilbur. Calm down.”

“No.” He shut his eyes tightly. “It's already too late!”

She placed a hand on his churning legs in an attempt to restrain him. “I didn't mean to scare you. Everything's all right.”

“No! It's too late, Miss Elizabeth! It don't take 'em long to come once I start seein' 'em. And I can see 'em now! They're already—”

“Wilbur, calm down! This is silly. It's impossible to see things in your head and then suddenly make them come to—”