The Summoning (3 page)

He shut the car off and got out. He stepped out onto the driveway, his sneakers grinding down into the gravel, crunching it like the tires of his car. He glanced at the Room For Rent sign in the yard. He could ask whoever answered the door about the room for rent – he needed somewhere to stay the night anyway.

The walkway up to the front porch was made up of pieces of flagstone set down in the grass like stepping stones. He climbed the steps of the front porch and walked across the wood floorboards to the front door. His sneakers clomped on the wood deck of the front porch; it was a loud sound and he almost expected someone to come rushing to the front door just from his loud approach.

But no one came.

He pressed the doorbell button, and then he knocked on the door. He waited and glanced around at the neighborhood, trying to see if anything jogged his blank memory. On his drive into town he hadn’t seen anything that triggered any memories, yet he couldn’t help feeling like he’d been in this town before; he wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he was so certain.

The front door opened and tore Ryan from his thoughts. A woman stood in the doorway. She was small and thin, late forties or early fifties maybe. Her dark hair was just beginning to show strands of gray and she had it pulled back in a severe bun. She had an even more severe look on her face. She stood there in the doorway for a long moment, saying nothing.

Ryan wasn’t sure how to react – he’d been hoping for some clue from whoever answered the door as to why he had this address written down on a piece of scrap paper in his wallet. But this woman wasn’t saying anything, and he sure didn’t see any kind of recognition in her eyes.

“Uh … I was just wondering about your room for rent,” Ryan finally stammered out.

Carol eyed Ryan for a few seconds like she was sizing him up. “Just one of you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You smoke?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Any pets?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I need the first month’s rent up front, along with a security deposit. Is that going to be a problem?”

Ryan shook his head no and tried a smile on her. “Not a problem at all.”

She didn’t smile back. She opened the door wider and gestured for him to come inside. “The room’s upstairs.”

For a moment Ryan thought of telling her about the scrap of paper with her address on it and about his lost memory. But he decided against it. She didn’t seem to know him and he didn’t want to freak her out. She might kick him out of the house, and he didn’t want that to happen because he was sure that he needed to be here.

Carol closed the front door after Ryan stepped inside. Ryan looked around at the formal living room he was standing in. There were two antique couches and a recliner situated around a small coffee table in the middle of the room. There was no TV, no computer, no signs of recent technology. The whole room seemed like it had been decorated around the time the home was built and hadn’t changed much since.

Ryan followed Carol to a wood stairway at the other end of the living room that led upstairs. A hallway to the right led to more rooms, and an archway to the left led to a dining room with an immaculate dining room table and chairs that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades – saved for special occasions, Ryan thought.

Carol climbed the steps quickly and Ryan followed her to an upstairs hallway under a high ceiling of rough and uneven plaster. She stopped at the first room on the right-hand side of the hallway. She dug an old-fashioned skeleton key out of her front pants pocket and unlocked the door.

As she unlocked the door, Ryan saw something move out of the corner of his eye; he turned and looked down the hallway and he saw a door shutting very quietly, making no noise at all. Someone had been watching them, and now that person had closed the door.

“You coming inside?” Carol asked.

Ryan looked back at Carol who was already inside the bedroom, waiting for him to enter. She stared at him with a disapproving look. He smiled and ducked quickly into the room.

The bedroom was larger than Ryan expected. There was a bed in the middle of the room; the bed was neatly made and its headboard rested against the wall. There was a bright comforter folded up at the foot of the bed – it looked handmade. Across from the foot of the bed was a dresser against the opposite wall with an ancient TV balanced on top of it. A bookcase crammed with books was pushed up against another wall. Homey pictures of country settings hung on the walls. An area rug was laid out on the wood floor between the bed and the large window set in the far wall – the window looked out onto the branches of one of the gigantic trees in the backyard.

Ryan stared at the window – there was something about the window. One of the large tree branches was right outside the window, only inches away from the glass. A perfect place for someone to sneak out, he thought to himself, yet he wasn’t sure why that thought had occurred to him. Smaller branches sprouted off from the main branch and their leaves filled most of the window.

“There’s a closet over here,” Carol said, snapping Ryan’s attention back to her.

She walked to the closet and opened the door. “It’s not a walk-in closet, but there’s a lot of room in here.”

“I don’t have much luggage with me,” Ryan said and then wished he hadn’t volunteered that bit of information when he saw the look on her face.

Carol sighed and gestured across the room at another door. “There’s a bathroom over there; your own private bathroom. That makes this room a little more expensive than the other two rooms I rent out. The other two tenants have to share the bathroom at the end of the hall.”

Ryan nodded. He was about to walk towards the bathroom to check it out, but a scratching noise from the window stopped him in his tracks. His eyes darted to the window. A breeze blew and the branches of the tree brushed against the window and scratched at the glass, making a high-pitched scratching sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Carol studied Ryan as he stared at the window. “I intend to have those branches cut back soon.”

Ryan nodded. He looked at Carol and smiled. “I’ll take the room,” he told her. He dug out the wad of money from his front pants pocket and counted out eight one hundred dollar bills and handed them to Carol. “Is this enough for the rent and deposit?”

Carol counted the money in her hand, and she seemed a little surprised. She looked up at Ryan and nodded. “This will do just fine.”

Carol nodded at the TV on the dresser. “You have cable TV up here. Basic cable. Meals are included with the rent if you want them. I cook three meals a day, but I don’t take any requests. You eat what I prepare, or there’s always the McDonald’s on the outskirts of town.”

“Fair enough, ma’am.”

Carol eyed Ryan. “I don’t make anyone sign a lease. You can leave whenever you want; I just require a week’s notice.”

Ryan nodded in agreement.

“I have an understanding with my tenants. I can evict you at any time if there’s any sort of trouble. Believe me, I know the police pretty well.” She paused for a moment and stared at Ryan. “There isn’t going to be any trouble, is there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good,” Carol said and turned to leave the room. But she turned back around and stared at Ryan. “And you can lose that ma’am crap. Just call me Carol.”

Ryan smiled at her. “Okay, Carol.”

Carol turned and left the room without another word.

Ryan grabbed his only piece of luggage out of the trunk of his car and went up to his room.

In his room, Ryan sat down on the bed and looked around again. He was hoping to see something that would make him remember his past, or at least some kind of clue or hint. But he still couldn’t remember anything.

He got up and walked over to the bedroom door. Carol had left him a skeleton key in the lock. He locked the door – it made a loud clicking sound – and then he pulled out the key and slipped it into his pocket.

He went back to the bed; he lifted up the mattress and flipped it onto its side, revealing the box-spring below. He set his duffel bag on the box-spring and unzipped it. He laid out the stacks of money in an even layer all over the box-spring, and then he pulled the mattress back down over the layer of money. He adjusted the bedspread and eyed his work – it looked pretty good to him.

After stowing his empty duffel bag in the closet, Ryan lay down on the bed, testing it out. It was comfortable; it didn’t squeak when he moved around. Not too lumpy. He lay on his back and slipped his hands underneath his head. He stared up at the ceiling of rough plaster that had a few hairline cracks here and there.

He would need to go to the store and get some supplies: toothbrush, soap, and shampoo for the bathroom. He would also need some deodorant, cologne, razors and shaving cream. He would also need to buy a few changes of clothes. Maybe a light jacket.

His eyes began to close as he made his plans to go to the stores.

He had almost drifted off to sleep when he was jerked awake.

The scratching noise at the window. A shrill screech, like a sharp piece of metal being dragged down the door of a car.

He stared at the branches that scraped against the window’s glass from the sudden breeze that moaned outside.

His eyes closed as he stared at the branches and he drifted off into …

… pitch black.

He stood alone in the pure black darkness. He was afraid. He could hear footsteps from behind him, echoing in the dark. Someone was approaching.

He turned and saw a reddish-colored light mixed in with the darkness behind him. And someone was walking towards him, emerging from that light. It was a man.

As the man approached, Ryan could see him better, like his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The man seemed to be in his late thirties. He had a shock of red hair on his head and he was dressed in a black suit and tie.

But even from this distance Ryan could tell there was something wrong with the man’s face and hands. His face was a roadmap of scars. Some of the scars wound down his face and snaked down into the white collar of his shirt and tie. But the worst scars were the thick slashes that ran from each corner of his mouth up to his earlobes, almost like his face was split in half. And his lips and the flesh around his mouth seemed to have been pulled away

(chewed away)

from his face, revealing too much of his teeth and gums. Because his teeth and gums were revealed from the missing flesh, it seemed like he was constantly giving Ryan a rictus smile; it gave the man an insane, clown-like appearance. A tortured clown.

The red-haired man’s scarred hands hung down beside him. Ryan could see that all of the man’s fingernails were gone, and the ends of his ruined fingers were dripping blood.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The red-haired man stopped approaching and stood in front of Ryan; he was only ten feet away. The man smiled at Ryan and the scars on each side of his face bunched up grotesquely.

Ryan backed up a step away from the man; he was beginning to panic. “Who … who are you?” Ryan asked as he struggled for breath.

“You know who I am,” the red-haired man whispered.

His ruined fingertips continued to drip blood down to the dark floor below.

“What happened to you?” Ryan whispered.

“You know that, too,” the man said.

Ryan couldn’t take it; he couldn’t stand in front of this monstrosity anymore. He turned and ran into the darkness and he was suddenly …

… drowning in dark, churning water. He tried to swim up to the surface of the water where he could see a dim light. In the strange way that dreams have, Ryan was both inside his body and outside of it; he watched himself swim up towards the light.

And he could see that when he lifted his face up to the light that his own eyes were gone – there were only two deep black holes where his eyes used to be.

Ryan jumped awake in his bed. He sat bolt-upright, breathing hard, staring straight ahead at the dresser with the TV on top of it. It seemed to be late afternoon, but it wasn’t dark yet.

Thank God I didn’t wake up in the dark, he thought.

His hands went to his own eyes, almost like he was making sure they were still there as he remembered seeing himself swimming in the dark water, looking up to the surface with no eyes.

He tried to push away the pictures of the dream and he began to relax a little. His heart and breathing began to slow back down to a normal rate. Then he heard the scratching noise.

He turned and looked at the window.

The red-haired man from his dream was right outside the window among the tree branches – but he wasn’t on the branch, he seemed to be floating in the air. He stared at Ryan with his constant smile of exposed teeth and gums and the deep gashes that ran from his mouth to his ears were bunched up. He ran his ruined fingertips across the glass of the window and left bloody streaks behind.

Ryan backed away from the man in the window without even realizing what he was doing. He fell off the other side of the bed and crashed down to the wood floor. In a panic, he jumped up from the floor onto his knees and he crouched over the bed like someone praying at the side of their bed. He stared at the window.

But the red-haired man was gone.

There was nothing there, no bloody smears on the glass, only the branches scratching at the window.

Downstairs, Victor and Tom sat at the small table in the kitchen. There were plates of half-eaten dinner in front of them. Carol stood at the sink, putting leftover dinner into Tupperware dishes.

They all looked up at the ceiling when they heard the thumping sound from upstairs when Ryan fell onto the floor.

Both Victor and Tom stopped chewing their food as they watched the ceiling for a long moment.

There were no other noises from up there.

Victor looked at Carol. “And you don’t think this one’s going to be trouble?” he asked her.

Carol looked at Victor. “I hope not.”

Ryan got up from the floor and hurried to the bathroom. He washed his face with cold water that shocked his flushed skin. His eyes kept darting up to the mirror; he almost expected to see the red-haired man’s ruined face floating right behind him in the reflection.