“Oh damn, ouch,” she hissed, pulling her white t-shirt away from her body.
The liquid scalded my bare thighs and knees, and a few drops splashed onto my feet. I barely noticed it as I sank slowly to the porch. I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my head in my knees.
“I’m sorry,” Sarah whispered. “Are you okay?”
I nodded.
“Before Halloween, Sammy said something,” Sarah continued.
I wanted to put my hands over my ears and scream, but now and then her voice merged into Sammy’s. If I didn’t look at her, I could almost believe he stood above me.
“He said you’d been acting strangely, disappearing in the house for hours at a time. He searched everywhere and couldn’t find you.”
“That never happened,” I said, snapping up to look at her. “Why would he say that?”
Sarah’s brow was furrowed, her mouth turned down. She looked on the verge of tears. I had only seen Sarah cry twice in my life - when her and Sammy’s father, died and more recently the night of Sammy’s murder.
“I don’t know why he said it, Corrie.” Sarah crouched before me. “But things aren’t adding up. Do you see that?”
I nodded, and like a song I couldn’t get out of my head, the vision of that night - blood in the water, on my hands, on the rocks - drifted through. A river of memory drowning me.
“Oh God,” I moaned, feeling the familiar pain in my chest like something sharp had lodged there. I wanted to tear open my ribs and wrench it free. “How will I live without him?”
I howled, and Sarah fell back, landing with a thud.
I didn’t care. I moved onto my hands and knees and screamed into the deck, pushed my face down until my nose touched the smooth boards, snot and tears pooling beneath my face. When my throat grew hoarse, I cried, resting my forehead down.
Sarah’s hands found me. She didn’t force me up, just rubbed my back in small circles, whispering over and over, “It’s going to be okay.”
But I knew better.
Sarah
SARAH RELUCTANTLY LEFT Corrie on the porch. Her sister-in-law had refused to come back in, citing a need for more fresh air, though Sarah had seen her lips growing purple and the goosebumps covering her arms and legs.
The towel in the crawl space had unnerved her, but what did it reveal? It might have been there before Sammy’s death. It belonged at the police station. They could forensically test it for blood, blood spatter, all those little nuanced things criminologists did.
Instead, Sarah fished the towel out and stuffed it into a trash bag before throwing it in the garbage can.
She wandered into the study, empty and cold. Sammy’s stuff lay strewn across the desk. A child-sized Chucky doll stood in one corner, a plastic machete clutched in his chubby baby hand.
Sarah heard the sliding glass doors open and sighed, relieved that Corrie had at least come in from the cold.
A notebook filled with Sammy’s drawings lay open on the desk. He’d been working on a new comic book series featuring a man who peered into a dollhouse and became trapped inside. He was being stalked by a wicked little girl with long blonde hair.
“Creepy,” Sarah muttered, returning the notebook and picking up a plastic bobble-head of Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King’s, It. The clown grinned from the red gash in his white face.
Sammy had loved the darker side of life, but what would become of his lifelong collection of horror? Would Corrie save it for Isis? Sarah imagined Isis arriving at school show-and-tell with a Barbie-sized Freddie Krueger.
“Swamp Man,” Sarah murmured, smiling as she touched a finger to the webbed feet of one of Sammy’s original figures. He had gotten it on their tenth birthday, a gift from Grandma Fiona. Sarah, despite her lack of interest in horror characters, had grown jealous of the gift. She had received an art set, beautiful and useful - but the way Sammy gazed at the figure, how he propped it on his dresser and only touched it gingerly, made the toy seem otherworldly, special.
The sound of a child singing drifted into the room.
Sarah paused, listening.
Isis was staying with Amy.
Sarah stepped from the study, gazing down the dark hallway that led to the front of the house.
“One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a funeral…”
She followed the voice, pausing at the great room. The voice sounded like Corrie, and yet…
Sarah took a breath and stepped into the doorway.
Corrie sat on her knees in front of the dollhouse. She held a tiny bureau in her hand and leaned forward, placing it in a room.
“Is there a child in here?” Sarah asked, scanning the room but already knowing the answer to her question.
“What?” Corrie looked up, her expression distant. She stared at Sarah for a moment before her eyes cleared. “What did you say, Sarah?”
Sarah faltered. “I thought I heard singing.”
Corrie shrugged and looked back at the house before climbing to her feet.
“Not from me. Maybe one of Isis’s toys? She has a little green dog that breaks into song at the oddest times. Sammy’s going to take the batteries out one of these days.”
Sarah bit her lip, watching her sister-in-law lumber across the room. Corrie stood in front of the fireplace and gazed into the flames.
“He was going to, you mean?” Sarah said.
Corrie turned back, her expression puzzled.
“Oh yes, of course. Was.”
CHAPTER 11
Then
Corrie
I opened the door and gave Helen a kiss on the cheek.
“Welcome to Kerry Manor,” I said, moving back so she could walk through.
“What do you think, Mom?” Sammy asked, spooking his mom from behind.
She jumped, startled, and I shot Sammy a ‘don’t give your mother a heart attack’ look.
“Sammy, don’t make me paddle your bottom in front of Corrie,” his mother told him through gritted teeth.
He stuck his butt out and grinned. She smacked it before pushing him away.
“I think it’s…” she paused.
I could see her searching for kind words when she wanted to say what a handful of others had said - it’s creepy, spooky, strange.
“I guess it’s perfect for your Halloween party. Beyond that, I don’t think I’d want to spend the night.”
Sammy clutched his heart.
“You wound me, Mother.”
She grinned and touched the embellished molding that surrounded the doorway into the great room.
“My poor little Isis probably gets lost in here.”
“Not yet,” I told her, taking her coat and hanging it on the wrought iron coat tree near the front door.
“Are you kidding me, Mom? This is Disneyland for Isis. She loves it.”
“She loves it, or you love it?”
“Well, you know I love it,” he admitted, grabbing me and twirling me around the room. “The question is, does my bride love it?”
I looked into his laughing brown eyes and nodded.
“I love you,” I told him. “If you love it, I love it.”
“Oh, Corrie,” his mom said. “How did he ever find you?”
Sammy flopped on the couch and propped his legs on a velvet footstool.
“Well, it all started on a sunny afternoon in August,” he began.
I grinned and patted her arm.
“Have a seat. I’ll bring coffee while Sammy regales you with tall tales.”