Spooked: Friday
Original Fiction - Part 5/5
Friday
The drizzle from the day before cleared overnight and an early brittle cold settled in. In the morning, I dropped Annabelle off at daycare then went straight to school to give back-to-back lectures. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Nell and I had experienced last night, the footsteps down the stairs, the chair on the porch, the disembodied giggle, and a curious unsure dread lingered with me all day. Was I experiencing something supernatural or was I losing it? I didn’t know for sure, but I did know that I’d be returning to the park again tonight.
After picking Annabelle up in the afternoon and having an early dinner, I could tell Sarah wanted to get back to her book before Leila and Camille stopped by later. I bundled Annabelle up and loaded her into her stroller and she, Nell, and I went for a walk.
A few houses down, Ken, standing on a ladder, continued to wrestle with his Christmas lights. “Starting to feel a lot like the holidays, huh Ben?” And he wrapped his arms around his chest and mocked a shiver, but the ladder rattled beneath him, so he quickly steadied himself.
“Careful up there!” I called back without stopping. Annabelle waved and giggled from her stroller while Nell tugged toward the wooded path that led to the park.
The path felt darker than the previous night. The air was calm, and the skies were clear. Fallen leaves crunched beneath us as we slowly made our way over the uneven terrain through the grove of slender trees.
Ahead, the lamppost cast a dim golden light across the tiny park where it appeared a small crowd was gathered atop the hill in the park. I felt myself grow anxious, worried that something had happened, so I picked up the pace once we made it to the road. As we approached, I saw Leila wearing Riley facing away from us, toward the center of the crowd. Ginger sat beside her. Beside Leila was the matching couple, who today both wore long identical parkas, their two Portuguese Water Dogs also wore identical parkas. A couple of the park urchins fidgeted nearby and the dad with the twins stood opposite Leila, both twins pressed against each of his legs. At the center stood Prue.
Leila noticed us approach and met us before we made it to the crowd.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “We’d just arrived when we heard someone yelling from over there and turned to see Prue walking up the street toward the park waving a stick.”
“Is she okay?”
“I mean, I think so? She keeps talking about those kids though. No one else seems to know what to do.” Her eyes were wide, and I could tell she was both concerned and excited.
“I’ll talk to her.” I felt a responsibility to Prue after that first night and wanted to be the one to help her if she was confused. I also wanted to know what she’d seen.
“I can hold on to Nell and hang out with Annabelle over here if you want.” Leila took Nell’s leash and grabbed hold of the stroller.
“Dada, I want to get out and play!”
“In a minute, Annabelle, I just have to go help Prue, okay?” I bent down and kissed her forehead before approaching the crowd.
Resigned, Annabelle slouched in her stroller and waited.
I smiled at the others standing by Prue and gently inserted myself into the circle around her. “Hi Prue, did you see those kids again?”
Prue nodded emphatically and pointed her long walking stick toward the gothic house. “Over there. Coming out of Mary’s door.”
“None of us saw anyone come out of the house,” the woman of the matching couple said to me, half looking at Prue.
“Oh?” I said, and moved closer to Prue, gently boxing the other woman out. “Would you show me where?” I wanted us to get away from the others so I could ask her some questions.
“Come on.” She lifted her walking stick and led me out of the small crowd of neighbors who began to disperse. I looked back and Leila gave me a subtle thumbs up. Nell and Ginger sniffed the ground while Riley looked up at the sky and Annabelle stared off to the side pointing toward an old maple tree.
“They ran right out the front door, down the steps, then tore off around the house,” said Prue. “I bet they’re hiding down there in the back garden somewhere.” She peered over the fence and looked like she was about to hop over it to continue her chase.
“And you’re sure they aren’t those kids over there?” I pointed to some of the urchins now playing in a front yard on the other side of the park.
“No, no, not them. These were the same kids as the other night.”
I decided to take another approach. “Are you looking after Mary’s house while it’s empty?” I asked then glanced back over my shoulder to the park where Annabelle was fidgeting in her stroller. Leila tied each dog up to the black metal bench where they both laid down, then crouched down and engaged Annabelle.
“Hm?” she said, still straining to peer over the fence toward the garden.
“I mean, have you been helping her family take care of her house before they move in or sell it?” I actually had no idea if Mary had even had children, but I assumed someone somewhere was going to do something with it and wanted to keep engaging Prue.
“Ben, can I let Annabelle out of her stroller?” Leila called from the park. “She really wants to get out.”
“Please Dada!”
The dogs were secure, the park was now empty, and I was close enough, so I turned and gave her a big thumbs up and she quickly freed my wriggling daughter who immediately ran toward the maple tree she’d been pointing at earlier. The others had left, and it was just Leila and Riley, the two dogs, and Annabelle atop the knoll.
“I have a key if that’s what you mean. I don’t think anyone else has been by recently. Mary’s daughter lives in Seattle.” No longer peering so intently over the fence, Prue appeared to settle and be more lucid and focused on me.
But Leila and I had both seen a light turn on earlier this week and I’d seen someone, or at least their shadow, walk past the illuminated window. And it couldn’t have been Prue because when we’d left the park, I remembered seeing her in her house just moments later.
Floorboards creaked and both Prue and I looked toward the front porch of Mary’s house where it sounded like the noise had come from. I couldn’t see anything, except the rocking chair appeared to be moving ever so slightly as if someone had bumped into it. My body tensed and I instinctively turned to check on Annabelle who was running around and around the maple tree, grinning. Leila bounced Riley nearby and the dogs were both still beside the bench.
Starting to feel overwhelmed and anxious by the whole scene, anticipating Annabelle needing to eat soon, and Nell’s attention span waning, I asked, “Can I walk you back to your house, Prue?” I hoped she had settled down and maybe even forgotten why she had run out to the park in the first place, but she didn’t respond. I smelled woodsmoke and that pungent tar smell again. Prue didn’t respond.
My mind, my fear, crawled back to what I’d learned from Sheep Fever about the house and a question formed. “What did Mary do for a living, Pru?” As I waited for Prue to respond, I watched Annabelle run in circles around Leila as Riley giggled along.
“We were both teachers. That’s how we met years ago.”
Giggles floated by on the cold air and we both snapped our heads toward the park. I waved to Leila who bounced Riley, but Prue grabbed my forearm. I assumed she needed to steady herself, but when I looked down at her, she was pointing her walking stick toward the top of the knoll Annabelle played upon. The dogs, still tied to the bench, had stood up and were watching intently as Annabelle ran in circles by herself.
“That’s my daughter, Annabelle. Do you remember her?”
“No that’s them, running around out there like they aren’t up to no good. How did they sneak by us?”
“Them?” When I turned back toward Annabelle, I watched her glance over her shoulder and giggle.
Prue started marching toward the park. Leila noticed and caught my eye with a look of concern, but I stayed frozen. What was Prue looking at? Nell began barking as she watched Annabelle intently.
There atop the knoll, Annabelle spun in a wide circle, her arms outstretched to either side. And on the pale dormant grass, cast by the amber light of the lone lamppost, beside the empty bench where the dogs were tied, danced five small shadows.
I ran to Annabelle and scooped her up into my arms and as I did, the four others shadows dispersed and the sound of children giggling chimed in my ear then dissipated into the cold night air. I spun and looked at Leila whose mouth hung open as she stood frozen in place staring at back at me.
“Did you see that?” I blurted out.
She nodded, her eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them.
I looked into Annabelle’s eyes who stared at the maple tree, a smile on her face. It was a frantic few minutes of me wrestling Annabelle back into her stroller, Leila insisting that she walk Prue home because we all needed to get home ourselves, us untying the dogs from the bench where they strained, eager to sniff the knoll. My thoughts were jumbled, my mind moving rapidly attempting to make sense of what I’d just seen while making sure we all got home
Leila and I spoke quickly on our way back to our house where Sarah and Camille were waiting.
“You saw that, right?”
“Totally.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Back home we were met with skepticism.
“Don’t you think it was just a trick of the light?” asked Sarah.
“Or the breeze rustling the trees,” said Camille.
“There’s no way…There was no wind… We both saw it…”
But as the minutes passed, and jokes were made, and Leila and Camille left, the immediacy of it faded and I began to question whether I’d actually seen what I had been so certain about earlier. Had it been the shadows from the trees? Had the lamp flickered at just that moment? Had Leila and I whipped ourselves and each other into the same heightened state and were both seeing something that wasn’t actually there?
While Sarah put Annabelle to bed, I lay in our bed atop the covers convincing myself that it had been those things. My logical brain fought for control. It was so like me to get spooked like this. How silly.
But then Sarah came into the bedroom with a strange and distant look on her face.
I sat up. “Is everything okay?”
She nodded at first, but then sat down on the bed and shook her head. “Annabelle kept going on and on about her friends at the park. I said, Leila and Riley and Dada? But she said, no Mama, the four big kids. So I said, the ones who live around the corner? And she said, no Mama, not them, not the urchins, the ones who live in the big old house on the hill.”
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