Childhood Fears Read online

  Encouraged by the mundane movements of his father, Billy hopped off the stepped and crossed the room. “What are you doing down here, Daddy? How come you’re digging?”

  “Just fixing a few things,” Will said. “Lots to do down here.”

  “What’s that doing down here, Daddy?” Billy pointed to the statue. Will winced. He’d hoped to get rid of it before Billy saw it.

  “It belonged to Gram,” Will said. “It was something she left behind. Your mother and I need to clean this place up for the people that might buy it some day. Before I do that, I have to clear out a few things.” He glanced regretfully at the broken floor. “And, this, there was a big crack in the floor so I’m going to break it up a little and put more concrete down. That’s all. Boring stuff. Now what did I tell you about coming down here? I told you it was dangerous, didn’t I?”

  “It’s doesn’t look dangerous, Daddy. That looks fun, breaking stuff. Can I help?”

  Will was growing impatient. The concrete was broken behind him, and though he knew it was only his nerves, a terror that Billy might see something, a bony hand poking through the exposed dirt, a skull leering up…stop it!

  “You listen to your Daddy now, and go upstairs.”

  Billy stood there, as if deciding what to do next.

  “Go on. Go upstairs.” His heart was racing; he needed to calm down and not lose his cool. He’d been doing that too much but damn it, Billy had to leave. “Now!”

  The boy looked confused and disappointed, but he turned and went back up the staircase.

  Will turned back and stared for a few minutes at the broken shards of concrete, the gray black dirt exposed beneath. No bones, nothing. He should stop, go back upstairs before his work drew Lisa down here as well. But he wanted so badly to get this over with. They already knew he was down here digging. He couldn’t exhume a body at this point, with his wife and son upstairs, but he could at least get it started.

  Lisa’s light footsteps behind him, coming downstairs.

  “Billy told me you were down here digging.”

  The half-smile he pulled onto his face probably looked more like pain than any sense of casualness, but it was all he could do as he turned to her. She was so beautiful. He was doing this for her. For both of them. “The floor was cracked all along this section, I just wanted to re-lay some cement, smooth it over.” His words sounded as bizarre to him as he imagined they must to Lisa, but he forced himself to stay casual.

  She glanced behind him, narrowed her eyebrows. Shit, not a good sign. “I don’t remember any cracks.” No accusation in her tone. This made him feel more like a jerk than ever. Tell her, tell her everything. Too late for that, too long buried in his life, and under this house. Something he couldn’t spit out in the middle of the day to the woman he loved, tell her he was an accomplice to a murder.

  With his mind too cluttered to come up with a believable lie, he simply didn’t answer. Will shrugged, feeling like he was falling down a dark well, never to be saved. Not worth saving.

  “Will,” she said, more tentatively, “why don’t you come upstairs now? I’ll make you some lunch.”

  “I’m not real hungry,” he told her. “Just let me get some work done down here, okay?” Voice tight, wanting to scream.

  “Okay,” she said, then hesitated on the bottom step, as if trying to think of something else to ask. After a minute of watching his back as he turned to the work but doing nothing more than hunkering over the broken concrete, stalling, she went back upstairs.

  “Can you close the door?” he shouted over his shoulder. “I don’t want Billy coming down while I’m working.”

  The door closed above him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Past

  We must sanctify the ground where your father rests, his mother had told him, two weeks after his father’s body had been buried below the house. Perhaps it had taken that long to find a Mary statue with just the right level of eeriness, or it had taken that long for the illusion of her final plans for this place to take hold. She propped the statue onto the old card table which had been covered with a large square of velvet and scattered a half dozen votive candles—which she’d likely bought at the same place as the statue—around it.

  Pray with me, she said, pulling him down to his knees beside her. Pray that God keeps him in Hell forever. Lucy Pallasso had looked upon the rest of her life as a burden ordained by God to stop a man who had become pure evil. It had been a burden she accepted, but never recovered from.

  In those long ago days his father had kept a half dozen boxes of miscellaneous stuff in the cellar. After he was dead Will’s mother was afraid to look through them, terrified at what she would find. The kinds of souvenirs that killers kept. She had no desire to learn any more of her husband’s repulsive secrets. Nor did Will, although from what he had been able to see, the boxes seemed to be filled with the kinds of appliances and old radios his father had liked to take apart down here. She burned everything that could catch fire in a metal garbage barrel later that fall, along with most of whatever clothes she hadn’t already left to Goodwill—after checking all the pockets for unexpected horrors. She found none, at least none she mentioned.

  Neighbors saw this activity as poor Lucy Pallasso’s way of dealing with her abandonment. Everyone knew Jacob had been a strange sort of man, and they eagerly believed anything she told them about his departure.

  More importantly, and surprisingly, nobody looked into her story, tried to find Will’s father or for that matter ever asked if he’d made contact. It seemed to Will that the world had simply forgotten he’d ever existed. Even Jacob’s victims, none of which were ever found in the years that followed, started getting less press. No one came to the house. No one asked. Aside from Jacob’s long-dead father from Florida, they’d never known of any other family from his side, none living at least. There was simply no one left in the world to question his disappearance.

  Within a month there was no remnant of Jacob Pallasso, no scrap of his existence left. Except the necklace. The night she’d sealed her husband’s grave, Lucy had pressed a nail into the still-damp concrete. It locked into place when the new floor hardened. The chain was then wrapped loosely about it, untouched by anyone for thirty years. If his mother’s ramblings that night after the murder were more than simply mad musings of the bereaved, the necklace had supernatural qualities, some kind of mystical protection bordering on insanity. It had protected him, she’d explained, prevented Jacob from being caught all those years while he killed those poor children, hiding their bodies someplace so remote no one ever found them. All those years, never had he been caught or questioned. Never had he been seen, a too-tall man in nightmarish greasepaint dumping bodies of missing children from the back of his car. At least, that was what she’d always assumed.

  Will was never as certain. When he’d finally summoned the nerve to search out that elusive place in the woods again, Will could never locate the same spot. He’d found glades, clearings in the woods behind their house that might have been the spot, but there were too many trees, even accounting for the time passed, or not enough trees. He’d invariably come upon the neighboring roads well before the place he’d seen his father.

  And never a sign of the murdered boy. Had his father disposed of him before coming to bed, or did Will’s mother take care of that too? He had never had the courage to ask.

  That night, watching his father with that other boy, it had felt as if Will had stepped into another version of the woods. A version that could only be accessed with the necklace.

  Maybe it had all been a dream after all.

  Of course, that would mean they’d murdered him for nothing…no. Will spent years rationalizing what he’d seen, or not seen, where he’d been that night or not been. His mother had no such qualms.

  He wanted you to find him, William, she’d said. He could have prevented us fr
om learning the truth as much as he prevented the rest of the world. It was a cry for help—she positioned the card table over the cement grave—and we did what any loving family would do. We helped him.

  We stopped him.

  From that point on, the necklace with its dark power to conceal, and the shrine with its sanctified blessing had become interlocked, inseparable; one an instrument of hell and the other of heaven. Like two angels guarding forever the lost Eden with flaming swords. Protecting the Pallasso family from the sins of their father.

  Chapter Twelve

  Present

  Billy was waiting in the kitchen for his lunch as soon as she’d come back upstairs, so Lisa leaned over the counter, held back her fear and made the boy his Fluffernutter. She made the sandwich automatically, spreading the peanut butter and marshmallow Fluff as always, moving automatically in a rhythm born of making the same thing so many times before. She tried to lose herself in the task, but thought only of the silence below her. What the hell was he doing down there? She hadn’t seen any fucking cracks in the floor, nothing worth putting a sledgehammer to. Granted, she couldn’t see what had been under the card table, but to dig up the damned floor for a few cracks! That was crazy.

  Crazy. She didn’t want to think about that word anymore.

  She put the two slices of bread together, went to the fridge, poured Billy a glass of milk and laid his lunch on the table in front of him.

  “Is Daddy going to come with us to the movie?”

  Lisa froze for a moment, glass in her hand hovering an inch from the table. “What?”

  He took a bite from the sandwich and said with peanut butter and Fluff working to seal his tongue to his teeth, “The movie? Is Daddy going to be done in time so he can come?”

  Slowly, she put the glass down, afraid if she didn’t it would end up spilled across the table. Billy saw nothing odd in what his father was doing. Daddy things, that’s all. Her chest constricted more than it already had. This feeling was well past anything like confusion. Nothing made sense. Turning away from her son before he could see all this in her face, she muttered, “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  Back at the counter, staring out the small window over the sink, Lisa tried to unscramble her thoughts. There must have been some bad cracks, bad enough he might be justified in doing this. Even so, Will was acting so strange with everything else…

  Still no sound below her feet. Nothing but the silence of her husband’s secrets and her growing fear. Will wanted her and Billy out of the house, shopping and a movie, he’d suggested. A good idea. He certainly hadn’t expected them back this soon. Was this what it was like, coming home unexpectedly to find your husband in bed with another woman? That was stupid, he was lying to her, no question, but she’d caught him alone, in the basement, with a fucking sledgehammer.

  The truth, whatever it might be, was something darker and more frightening if only in its unexpectedness. More than ever, as she wiped the bread crumbs off the counter with the sponge from the side of the sink, her determination to find out the truth and get the hell out of this house as soon as possible took firm hold.

  Will hadn’t moved since he’d hunkered down in front of the broken concrete which had so long sealed his father’s grave. He half-heartedly pushed a couple of large pieces aside, ran nervous fingers over the exposed dirt, wondering how far he’d have to press those fingers into the earth before they reached the old rug and, beneath that, the man’s skull. Not far, but he had no inclination to test the theory. The rug had likely long ago disintegrated, and the body… No point in finishing today. Bad enough the floor had been broken apart—the crypt opened as it were—no way was he up for smuggling a decomposed corpse past Billy and Lisa. Still, if they stayed upstairs like he asked, he might be able to get the bones into a couple of the large black trash bags waiting on the shelf across the room, seal them up and maybe toss them in the trash. No, stupid idea. They’d come down once already, probably would again if he stayed much longer, and it was noisy work. He needed privacy, time to complete this task and do it right, make it count.

  Now that he was so close to getting it done, he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have dug the hole at all, if leaving things as they had been might have been more logical. Perhaps no one would have noticed. But logic seemed less and less to a part of the equation. Maybe it was his incredible guilt, or an irrational fear of being found out. But if he was going to sell this house, his father’s bones had to leave here once and for all.

  If he was ever going to move on, it had to be done.

  He knew Lisa was angry, probably worried that he’d flipped his lid. She knew he was lying. He’d broken the seal on more than the grave. The secret was out, or would be soon enough. Two choices remained: tell Lisa the truth and risk her hating him forever, or continue to make her think her husband was insane.

  Both were likely. She’d probably hate him and think he was nuts, but at this point he could not go back. A silent, urgent voice told him to finish exhuming the body, get it out of the house and far away before he told Lisa anything. In that way she’d have no part in his sin. Until then…. Until then, Will would hope she had a few more drops of patience left.

  Tomorrow he’d come down and finish. Then he’d tell her everything. Tomorrow night, one way or another, they’d be free. All of them. The thought made ascending the stairs to the kitchen easier.

  He never looked back, never saw the newly exposed ground swell upward an inch as if from a compressed bubble of gas, or an exhalation. The earth settled. A few feet away the ringed amulet reflected a sudden flash of light, then settled back into tarnished apathy. The basement stilled. The door at the top of the stairs closed, followed by tentative footfalls across the kitchen, muted voices of those unaware that there would be no tomorrow.

  Part Two

  The Night the Clown Came Home

  Chapter Thirteen

  Will washed up in the bathroom before joining Lisa and Billy at the table. They ate in silence for a time. Then he asked about their day so far. Lisa’s answers to any questions were short and perfunctory, her face masked in a smile while her eyes bore into Will’s.

  They spent the rest of afternoon playing mini-golf, then, after they ate, getting ice cream before going to the movie, another computer-animated 3D extravaganza that Billy wanted to see. Will suggested a late dinner at McDonald’s, anything to keep them out of the house. Lisa balked at the idea. It was almost Billy’s bed time, but he was so excited at the prospect of eating cheeseburgers that Lisa didn’t have the heart to say no. Will knew what she wanted. Get the boy safely tucked away, then, when the time was right, tear her husband a new asshole.

  One more day. A mantra Will played over and over in his mind.

  Lisa tucked the sheets and two blankets around her son. The night was cool, but Billy insisted that both windows in his room be open a crack. Hence the extra blanket. She’d tucked everything under the mattress so tightly Billy complained he wouldn’t be able to get out. She loosened them a little before moving aside to let Will come forward and kiss the boy on the forehead, say goodnight.

  “You sleep good tonight,” he said. Billy nodded then looked past him to his mother.

  “Good night, Mommy.”

  “Good night, Pumpkin,” she said. Before closing the door she reached down and turned on the clown light. Its garish colors stabbed Will in the heart, but he said nothing.

  One more day.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The ground swelled again, then finally burst upward as if releasing gas trapped in the earth. The crater left in its wake wasn’t large, just enough to fit the dirty, painted face pressing itself into the air. Edges of flaking white paint along the cheeks blended with the dirt surrounding it, and fragments of a blackened carpet fell away like a hood, every detail lost in the darkness of the basement. Some of the clown’s skull poked through its face, and the remaining fl
esh was torn and thin like wet tissue, preserved enough to retain only a semblance of the nightmare visage of Jacob Pallasso, nothing more. The red stains still spotting the thin lips and remnants of white on the exposed cheeks, were enough to remind one of the clown it once was. Eyes, long dead and yellow but preternaturally preserved by the necklace now discarded across the room, stared into the darkness. One long-dried cut of black tape curled over the left eye like a false lash. The creature that had been Jacob Pallasso sensed, more than heard, the couple’s whispered debate on the living room couch one floor above. This made it smile, though the act was less an expression than a quivering of tight flesh around the jaw. The face pressed farther from the gray mixture of dirt and rotted carpet. A chunk of concrete slid across its forehead, tearing loose a swath of tissue-thin skin. No blood, the body too long dried out, only the exposing of white bone. The eyes shifted, the leathery tongue licked shredded lips, and somehow it sensed the small bundle of boy sleeping in the smaller of the two bedrooms overhead.

  The mouth twitched, opened to a crevice.

  Billy, it whispered, or tried to. No sound, but something like breath escaped the lips, stale and rotted like garbage at the bottom of a dumpster. The single word drifted up as only a thought, seeking an audience. The utterance was followed by a small avalanche of gray soil when the face pushed up farther, squeezed itself slowly from the grave to expose more of the cheeks. The piece of concrete on its forehead fell away. When the mouth moved again, a clod of earth fell into it.

  Billy, it silently repeated, pushing the dirt free with its tongue.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The show on the television was new, a mixture of old-style western, science fiction and romance. They’d watched the premiere episode last week—autumn was inundated with new shows, most of which would be canceled by Christmas. Tonight, however, both Will and Lisa stared at the screen and saw nothing more than distracting flashes of color. The silence swelled, pushed between them like an insistent child, sucking the air from the room. Lisa finally took in a breath and let it out with a whoosh.