The Summer We Lost Alice (33 page)

"They hoped the whole matter would blow over. It might have, too, if
Mother had been able to undo the exorcism. But she was out of her depth. Her spells were about growing and nurturing and healing, not confronting the evil in a man's soul. She'd acted rashly and made a bad situation worse. Correcting it required research and consultation with other witches more experienced in this area. Meanwhile, events spun even further out of control."

Miss
Lilian pulled herself up straight in her chair. She was tired and her back hurt, but there was no going back now, only onward.

"The question arose in Sam's mind, 'Had
Perla told?' She hadn't spoken to any adult, he was certain of that. If she had, there would have been inquiries. But could a young girl keep a secret like that? Wouldn't she have to tell someone? A friend, a classmate—someone?

"Under the lie of his investigation, he obtained a list of
Perla's friends. Only one seemed particularly close. Martin Dale."

"Poor little Martin Dale," Flo said. "Not a mean bone in his body."

"Yes. He had been upset by Perla's disappearance, of course. But when Sam visited the family, he thought he saw something more in the boy's eyes. Fear. Fear of Sam. It wasn't much, just a look, the way Martin clamped his mouth shut and wouldn't let his eyes meet Sam's. When Sam spoke to him, he saw a wet spot appear on Martin's pants. The boy ran from the room, to the bathroom. Mrs. Dale said he was probably embarrassed, that that happened to Martin sometimes. She didn't think anything of it, but Sam took it as a sign that Martin knew more than he was telling."

"Had
Perla told Martin what happened?" Cat asked.

"No one knows for certain, but it doesn't matter. The suspicion entered Sam's mind. Try as he did to keep the thought away, it came back again and again.
You can't
not
think of something."

"So the evil took Martin Dale," Heather said.

"It took the boy and delivered his body to Sam.

"As my mother related it, as told to her by Sam, it was around three in the morning. Sam was in bed debating whether he was awake or asleep, as we often do in dreams. The world around him did not feel real, yet every detail of the room was in place. He could find no flaw in his surroundings other than
a heaviness to the atmosphere, an indefinable palpability to the shadows of the room, as if he could reach out and feel them between his fingers. He described the sensation quite vividly to my mother.

"It was then that the evil appeared, as it had before, racing across the ceiling. But this time the whirlpool descended and engulfed Sam himself. He felt the icy coldness of it, which took his breath away. He struggled to draw air, felt the freezing of his lungs. He wondered for a moment if it was killing him to retain its freedom. He wondered if this was how
Perla Ingram had felt when the evil took her. He sat up choking and shivering inside the black maelstrom. When he thought for certain that he was dying, the whirlpool disappeared, racing in all directions as if exploding from within.

"It left behind, at the foot of Sam's bed, the dead body of Martin Dale."

"It could have been a dream," Ethan said. "He might have been dreaming, and he woke up to find the evidence of his own handiwork in bed with him, where he'd placed it earlier."

Miss
Lilian persevered, ignoring Ethan's comment.

"You can imagine the torment he endured for the next several hours as he debated what to do. Suicide, of course, entered his thoughts. He wondered if the evil's embrace had been the work of his own mind longing to put an end to his suffering. He would have killed himself gladly but for my mother's insistence that he stay alive long enough to absorb the evil back into his own being.

"That night he ventured out once more with a dead child over his shoulder and a shovel in hand, back to the hills to conceal the evidence of murder by his own inner demon. He would have preferred a darker night, but it was a full moon."

"This was the night Alice disappeared," Ethan said.

"So he was burying the body when I—that is, Alice—saw him!" Heather said.

"That was the end for him," Miss
Lilian said. "He knew right then that it couldn't go on. He'd have to turn himself in and live with the consequences. But the evil was watching."

"I ran," Heather said. "I knew I'd seen something I shouldn't have. I saw Ethan standing there, a long ways away. I yelled out for him to run. Then
... I don't know what happened."

"The evil descended. Sam saw it swallow you, engulf you. It flew toward him. It hovered there, churning and swirling, its darkness obliterating the moon, and then it dropped you at his feet."

"Dead," Heather said.

"Dead.
He carried the body to the home where he kept it until he could bury it with Martin Dale's. During the search, he was in a unique position to steer the FBI away from the graves."

A sob broke out of Flo's chest that she had harbored for twenty-five years. Cat tended to her mother, knowing there was nothing to say or do but be there and share the heartbreak. They retreated to Flo's bedroom for a time while Ethan and Heather peppered Miss
Lilian with questions.

Why didn't Sam turn himself in after he'd resolved to do so? Is this evil responsible for the current disappearances? If so, where did it go for twenty-five years? How do they fight it? What happens if Sam dies with the evil still uncontained?

Miss Lilian dismissed the questions with a wave of her hand.

"In good time," she said, "when the others return."

Boo, who had been sleeping through most of Miss Lilian's narrative, roused himself. He stretched and yawned and ambled over to Heather for a scratch. She scratched his head and then told him to go lie down. He obeyed as if he understood, returning to the spot he had just left. He circled three times and plopped onto the floor. He let out a huff and laid his head between his legs.

"Where does he fit into all this?" Ethan asked, nodding toward Boo.

"Soon," Miss Lilian said.

* * *

When Flo had recovered her composure, she returned, against Cat's protests, to hear the rest of Miss Lilian's story. As incredible as the story was, she was prepared to believe it for the night. She might change her mind in the morning when the tale's credibility evaporated with the dew, but for one night she would take comfort in knowing what had happened to her little girl and who was responsible.

"One thing held Sam back from turning himself in," Miss
Lilian said. "If he were imprisoned, he would be in no position to fight the evil. His languishing in jail would do no one any good. The evil would still be out there working the will of his subconscious. Once it was safely returned to his body, he would gladly pay for his crimes and its crimes alike.

"By now my mother's research had borne fruit. She could not only reverse the exorcism but go it one better, entrapping the evil in an inanimate object."

"The statue," Ethan said.

"Yes. It was a
Tiki god of no special significance, a tourist item that had been passed down from my grandmother. Once trapped, the evil had only to be buried to be rendered powerless. Evil can't travel through the earth, you know. It's why we bury our secrets.

"The ritual entailed risk
. Sam was against it at first. He'd resigned himself to paying for his crime and the crimes of the evil with his life.

"My mother reminded him that he had a son to
raise. Sammy was a teenager. He needed a father figure. Eventually my mother convinced Sam to give the ritual a try. If it didn't work, there was the ... other solution.

"She
spent the next day assembling the items required. At the appointed hour the next evening, they performed the spell."

"Shortly before I arrived with Boo," Ethan said.

"Yes. You know what happened next."

"I charged in with my witch theory—which was largely on the money, if what you say is true, except for the youth-stealing business—and Boo stole the statue."

"You threw it and yelled 'Fetch,' according to my mother. She was amazed that, of all the things you might have grabbed in that room, you chose the one item of value."

"I saw how she looked at it, that's all. I could tell it mattered somehow. So I threw it, Boo snatched it up and, true to form, headed to the hills with it. Sam shot at him and hit him, but it wasn't a fatal shot, not right away. Boo escaped."

"Sam wanted to follow," Miss Lilian said, "but my mother was ... not well. As I mentioned, the ritual involved risk. She didn't tell Sam the whole truth there, which was—it demanded a sacrifice."

"The cancer," Flo said.

"That's how it would be diagnosed."

Ethan's mind raced back to his encounter with Mrs. Nichols. He remembered how tired and old she'd seemed. How sad. He'd thought it was an act. Now it began to make sense. Mrs. Nichols, if Miss
Lilian's account was to be believed, had given up her own life to save the lives of more children.

"Ethan's intrusion sapped what little strength she had left after the ritual," Miss
Lilian said. "She collapsed. Sam went back to attend to her. She was never the same after that. She could feel the cancer growing inside her, she knew that nothing would stop it. She'd already planned to retire and for me to take over the home, if only long enough to shut it down. She passed away not long after."

Long, silent moments passed. Ethan's head spun. Miss
Lilian had explained it all, if what she said could be believed. But what a stretch! He'd long ago given up the "witch" notion, and now here it was again in full force. The evidence of Alice's reincarnation within Heather was mounting, against everything he believed about the absence of an afterlife, spirits, and such.

He tried to figure Miss
Lilian's angle and couldn't come up with one. If she didn't hit them up for money soon by offering her own exorcism or whatever of the "evil," as she called it, what was she up to? Saving Sam from prosecution? All they'd had before was Heather's outburst, while Miss Lilian had implicated Sam in three murders and a molestation! Was that her game, to impugn Sam's reputation for some reason? Had he spurned her and this was the revenge of a woman scorned? Maybe she just hated him because he was a colossal blowhard.

While these thoughts stewed in Ethan's head, Cat cut to the chase.

"You said he was back," Cat said, "meaning Boo. You said that was why you were here. What does the dog have to do with any of this?"

"Apparently," Miss
Lilian said, "the Tiki has been unearthed. Somehow, the evil is working its will again."

"You mean, Sam's will," Heather said.

Miss Lilian grew thoughtful.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "I'm beginning to think of it as a separate entity, the way Sam has come to regard it. It's developed its own drive—its own agenda—independent of Sam. I'm afraid that if we don't return it soon to its rightful place—within the
Tiki—we may never be able to do so. I pray it isn't already too late.

"The dog is the only one who knows where the
Tiki was buried."

"You say 'was,'" Ethan said.

"Apparently, it has been unearthed. That's where we need to begin, to find how it was uncovered and where it might be now. I used the hairs my mother ripped from the dog's coat that night, and the blood she saved from the ground where he bled. She knew, you see, that this day would come. She did what she could to prepare me for it."

Ethan was now convinced that the woman was certifiably insane, but he had to ask:

"You used the hair and the blood—for what?"

"Why, to bring him back, of course," Miss
Lilian said.

* * *

Matt did not understand much of what he overheard from his place on the stairs. He knew what a witch was, though, and he knew about dead things coming back to life, at least as much as you learned from movies and TV. He couldn't imagine this "evil" that Miss Lilian talked about.

The monsters he knew (and loved) were flesh and blood. They had legs and claws and teeth. He didn't see how something without a shape could be a monster, but they were saying that it killed kids. If it didn't have a body, how did you kill it? You could shoot a zombie in the head, and you could stake a vampire through the heart. But this thing sounded like—nothing. Like a cloud, or fire, or water.

How do you kill a cloud?

Then there was the dog, Boo. If he'd really died and the witch brought him back, how could that be good?

He began to think he was lucky the dog hadn't slept in his room.

It was a lot to think about.

He fell asleep turning these thoughts over and over in his mind. Ethan would find him much later, asleep against the banister, and carry him to bed without his noticing.

* * *

After Miss Lilian left, the family talked into the wee hours. They went over everything so many times that the "facts" became a muddle. One minute it all seemed entirely plausible, and the next it seemed that Miss Lilian's story could be nothing but a hoax or a fever dream.