JMariotte - Boogeyman Read online

  Arlene dripped sympathy. “I’m sure.”

  Tim swallowed hard. Comparing this huge extended family to his own small, broken one was not unlike the feeling he’d had when he’d parked his shabby old Mustang next to the polished Bentley outside. Only with more emotional freight attached.

  “Anything else you wanted to know, Dad?” Jessica asked, her point made.

  An awkward silence followed. Tim would have words with Jessica later, he was sure. Right now, though, he just wanted someone to move on, to put an end to his anguish.

  Finally, it was Jessica’s grandmother who piped up. “Would someone pass the sweet potatoes?”

  The rest of the meal passed without incident, and after it was over, Tim collapsed in the family’s media room with Jessica, her dad, Chelsea’s husband, Brad, and the kids, and watched a football game on a TV nearly as large as Tim’s front door. Dessert, coffee, and brandy were served in there, and even though Tim was pretty sure his stomach would explode, he couldn’t turn down the pumpkin-ginger cheesecake after he got a whiff of it.

  Finally, it was time to head upstairs for bed. Tim hadn’t had a chance to get Jessica alone until they were on the grand staircase. He clutched her hand, holding it a little tighter than was absolutely necessary. “You have fun down there?” he asked, his anger abated only a little by the cheesecake and brandy.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, the very picture of intransigence. “They could use a little shaking up.” Jessica gave him a sly grin. “Did you see my sister when I said you lived in a tiny room in the back of your uncle’s bar?”

  The trouble with Jessica was that he couldn’t stay mad at her. She liked to stir up trouble, but there was a naïveté to the way she did it that was charming instead of obnoxious. At least, after the fact.

  Way after.

  “I had my own room, you know,” he reminded her.

  “I was just trying to make it a better story.”

  “Is that why you wanted me here? To freak out your family?”

  They came to a stop outside the guest room where he’d tossed his bag earlier, and she turned to him, putting her hands on his chest, pushing close to him. “No. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to get you upset.” She lowered her voice, brought her face close to his ear. He could feel her hot breath when she spoke. “Tell you what…I have to go down and say goodnight to everyone, but I’ll sneak in later and make it up to you, okay?”

  Which was what Tim had been hoping for all along. Something about making love with her in her rich family’s manse was terribly appealing. “In that case,” he teased, “I’ll put on something naughty.” He pulled Jessica to him, kissed her deeply, tasting her, and then released her. She went back to the stairs and he opened the door to the room he had looked at only briefly before. Clicked on the overhead light.

  It was a beautiful guest room. Antique bed with dust ruffle, marble-topped dresser, armoire, framed paintings on the walls, an obviously pricey Persian rug covering some of the hardwood floor. A bedside table held a lamp, a digital clock-radio, a couple of hardcover books, and some magazines.

  A closet, its door standing slightly ajar.

  A chill shook Tim. He gripped the jamb until the moment passed.

  Forcing himself into the room, he switched on the bedside lamp. That was better, but the room was still full of shadows, dark pools where anything could be hiding. And that closet…he went over and pushed the door shut until it clicked firmly in place. Returned to the bed and tucked the dust ruffle underneath the mattress, so the bare floor beneath the bed was exposed. His overnight bag was on a cedar chest at the end of the bed. He would leave it there, to help hold the lid closed.

  Tim felt uncomfortable here, fearful. Shadows everywhere. But there wasn’t much he could do about it, short of leaving. And Jessica would go nuclear if he even thought about doing that.

  He braved the hallway, went across to the bathroom, brushed his teeth. Back in the guest room, he went through the whole inspection procedure again. Nothing under the bed, closet door still closed, armoire tight. The cedar chest hadn’t opened itself and spilled the contents of his overnight bag. Tim stripped down to a T-shirt and boxers, draped his discarded clothing over a chair, and sat down on the edge of the bed, steeling himself to turn off lights and try to sleep.

  Then, remembering that his feet dangled before that big empty space under the bed (space that had been empty a moment ago, at least) he yanked them up, swung them onto the bed, stuffed them safely under the covers.

  Old habits died hard.

  Five

  Okay, sleep wasn’t happening.

  The bedside lamp still burned in Tim’s room. Even with its glow, he couldn’t relax enough to let sleep overtake him. He was tense, on edge. Waiting for something to happen, even though he couldn’t say what. The night before, after his walk home, he hadn’t slept well. He should have been exhausted tonight.

  But there were too many shadows here….

  He fought for sleep, knowing the whole time that the more he tried, the farther away it would remain. After a long stretch of time passed, the doorknob started to turn. He didn’t want to be caught wide awake, half-panicked over nothing. He quickly turned off the light and dropped back down onto the mattress, feigning sleep. Breathing heavily, eyes closed. A moment later, he felt the pressure as Jessica climbed into the bed beside him without saying anything. He shifted, moving toward her warmth, her familiar weight. Wrapped an arm around her, spooning her. She smelled different, somehow—probably washed off the perfume from earlier, he guessed.

  “I like this sneaking around thing,” he murmured softly. He kissed the hair on the back of her head. “It’s kinda sexy.”

  Jessica didn’t answer, didn’t respond. Her nightgown wasn’t the slinky thing he had expected her to wear; it felt like rough cotton. “You all right?” he asked.

  Still no answer. He moved closer to nuzzle her neck, kiss it. But her lack of responsiveness disturbed him. It wasn’t like her. “Jess, what is it? Did something happ—”

  With the lamp off, the only light in the room was that from the moon, streaming in through curtains Tim had left parted. But that was enough, when he really looked, to see that something was very wrong. He felt his stomach lurch.

  Jessica’s neck was a mass of wrinkles.

  Old skin.

  Her mom? Tim reached over her for the lamp, switched it on.

  And jumped out of bed, away from what he saw, away from what couldn’t possibly be. He landed on the floor, his back against the wall, staring up in horror.

  She was in her fifties, but looked older. She didn’t wear a nightgown at all, but a hospital gown, drab and shapeless. Her straw-blond hair hung in lifeless strings around her face. Wrinkled flesh sagged around weary eyes, lips cracked and caked with drool.

  “Mom?”

  It couldn’t be. Tim’s mother was nowhere near here. If she had shown up, someone would have told him, they wouldn’t have let her just slip into his room. So it wasn’t real, wasn’t his mom, was just another hallucination in a string of them.

  Only this was a bad one.Really bad, Timmy, seeing things like this .

  Then she started to speak, or tried to. But her voice caught and she choked, started coughing. The huge, phlegmy coughs wracked her body, sounded like her lungs were trying to work their way out of her. Finally, blood spewed from her mouth, splattering on the bedspread.

  When his mother brought her hacking under control, she smiled down at Tim, blood coating her teeth. Tim fought down his revulsion, but he knew his terror showed on his face. He couldn’t get any farther away; the wall blocked his retreat.

  She pushed the covers aside and climbed out of the bed. “Where are you going?” she asked. “Don’t run away.”

  It was her voice, Tim knew. He recognized it, had known it all his life, and somehow that made things even worse. A visual hallucination he could deal with—hell, he was almost getting used to those. And those strange noises the night bef
ore, they were scary but somehow okay. But this…his own mother’s voice, the voice that had always soothed, always comforted…he couldn’t take it. He averted his eyes, looked at her feet, the skin cracked and bloody, nails yellow and jagged.

  “Why won’t you look at me?” she asked. She took a step toward him, then another. “Look at me, Tim.” Not a question now, but a command. Even her pace picked up. There was nothing tentative about her movements now. Tim couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream. All he could do was sit on the floor in abject horror, wishing it would just go away.

  His mother bent forward, put a cold hand on his face, the skin of her palm like sandpaper, dry and cracked. “Look…at…me.”

  Unbearable. He closed his eyes. “One, two, three…”

  “Tim.”

  He ignored the voice, kept counting. Usually the counting dispelled the fear, but it wasn’t, not this time. His breath came in wet shudders, and he continued, even louder now. “Four, five…”

  “Tim?”

  That sounded like Jessica, not his mother. He risked opening his eyes, afraid of what might be in front of him when he did. He was on the floor. The bed was a disaster, covers thrown back in a tangle. The closet door hung open. Jessica stood in the doorway wearing a sexy nightie and looking at him with obvious concern. “Tim, what are you doing on the floor?”

  Tim blew out a breath, willing his heart rate to slow. His mother wasn’t there; the blood she had sprayed around the room had vanished when she did. “God, I had the freakiest dream,” he admitted when he could finally find his voice.

  “What was it?”

  “My mom.” He remembered Uncle Mike’s phone call from the day before, and a sudden sense of urgency struck him. “I need to see her.”

  Jessica came fully into the room, closing the door behind her. She favored Tim with a seductive smile and ran her hands down the sides of her breasts, her waist, stopping at her hips. Tim felt arousal competing with the horror that had overwhelmed him just minutes before. “Get back in bed,” she said, her voice husky now, a little breathless. “I’ll make you forget all about your bad dreams.”

  Tim appreciated the promise of that statement, and he started to get up off the floor. He was still more than a little embarrassed at the way she had found him, but the blood stirred in him at the sight of her, the desire she always instilled in him forcing away all other thoughts.

  Before he could reach the bed, though, his cell phone started to chirp insistently. Tim hesitated, disoriented.Who would be calling so late? he wondered. “Where’s my phone?”

  He started digging through his overnight bag, not finding it. The phone kept ringing. “Let it go to voice mail,” Jessica suggested.

  But that wasn’t an option, if he could help it. No one would call him at this hour unless it was important, so he wanted to get it. Or else it was a wrong number, in which case he wanted the opportunity to yell at the caller. Finally, he turned it up, underneath the clothes he’d piled on the chair. Flicked it open. “Hello?”

  Jessica dropped down on the bed, frowning, evidently unhappy at being upstaged by a phone call. Tim tossed her an apologetic shrug and tried to ignore her.

  It was his Uncle Mike on the phone. His voice was agitated, his words unclear, and Tim couldn’t focus on what he was saying. “Hey, Uncle Mike. I got your message. Look, I’m heading over there to see Mom tomorrow—”

  “I thought you were staying here this weekend,” Jessica said, loud enough to drown out Uncle Mike’s voice. Tim turned his back to her, trying to make out his uncle’s words.

  “What?” he asked, having missed something that sounded important. “What happened?”

  His uncle repeated himself, and Tim felt his world falling apart.

  Tim could hardly believe what he had heard—horrible enough by itself, but made even more so by the timing of his awful visitation. Massive heart failure, Uncle Mike called it. The home where she had been living for these past months had telephoned Uncle Mike earlier in the day to tell him that she wasn’t doing well. But, he insisted, they hadn’t told him just how bad she really was—probably had not even known themselves.

  After that, according to what they’d told him, she had faded fast. They had brought around some Thanksgiving dinner, but she hadn’t wanted to eat. Her mood had been sour. She had grouched at the attendants, waved away her neighbors. She had called for Rob—Tim’s dad—who had been gone for so many years, and when he hadn’t come she had complained bitterly.

  Then she had gone quiet, watching TV, ignoring everyone else. Uncle Mike said she had gone to bed early. She had awakened a few hours later, calling out and clutching for the attendant call button beside her bed. By the time anyone made it into her room, she had fallen half out of bed. She was already gone by then, Uncle Mike said. The end had been fast and probably relatively painless.

  Except Tim knew it wasn’t as painless as he thought. Or else, that hadn’t really been the end. Because about the time she had been dying in a nursing home a hundred miles away, she had also been paying an unexpected visit to her only son.

  The world was a strange, often frightening place. That was a lesson he had learned early on in life. He guessed most kids did. But in his case, he kept having it reinforced, time and again. He was, by this time, more than a little tired of it. His earliest lessons, especially his father’s disappearance, had sent him into psychiatric care, and had nearly destroyed his mother. Dr. Jane Matheson had, eventually, helped steer him away from madness. She had been very pragmatic, completely scientific. It was only years later, after he was out of her care, that he started to think maybe there really was more going on than rational science could explain.

  Certainly, everything he had seen and experienced in the last couple of days could have been imaginary. Probably was, in fact.

  But the appearance of his mother, at right around the same time she had been dying, was just a little bit harder to accept. Well, a lot harder, really. Tim drove through the night, away from Jessica’s parents house, toward Danville. He kept remembering his mom in the apparition, blood flecking her teeth like she was some kind of vampire, putting her sandpaper hand against his face.

  That wasn’t real, he told himself. That had just been some kind of nightmare, at best some sort of random electrical impulses generated by her death. Tim wasn’t really up on theories of psychic phenomena, and studying them would have worked against his long effort to deny their reality, but he was sure there was one that would explain such a visitation in scientific, or pseudoscientific, terms.

  Instead of dwelling on it, he tried to remember better times with Mom. Those had all been very long ago, and even they were tempered with the knowledge that Dad had been around then, as well. Almost any happy moment with Mom had carried the risk of becoming a moment of living hell, if he happened along and was in one of his customary nasty moods.

  Still, there were snatches of time that he had tucked away, like a squirrel hoarding nuts against winter’s cold. His mom reading Spider-Man comics to him one day when he’d stayed home from school, sick. She had acted them out, doing all the voices from Peter Parker’s nebbishy weakling to Aunt May’s doddering old lady to a gruff snarl for J. Jonah Jameson.

  Or the time that they had gone to Virginia, for a reason he couldn’t even remember now. It had been just the two of them. The old man had stayed behind. They’d had a hotel room together, and she had let Tim order from room service and watch cartoons, and then in the morning they had played in the hotel pool.

  When his dad had gone away for good, things had changed. He couldn’t remember his mother ever really being happy again after that. Her smile had always seemed strained, like a beauty pageant loser’s forced gaiety while congratulating the winner. She had tried, for a while.

  Then she had stopped doing even that. That’s when he’d gone to live with Uncle Mike. That’s when, to Tim’s mind, her long disintegration had begun. She had seemed ageless before that, as perfect and unchanging as a statue. But
after that, every time he had seen her, she had added a new line, a new wrinkle, some gray hairs.

  It was astonishing, in a way, that she had hung on as long as she did after the time that she seemed to have just given up on life. She had retreated into herself, participating only occasionally. She came to Tim’s high school graduation, and when he got his degree from J-school, she had given him a briefcase. That had been the last time he could remember seeing her truly smiling, really engaged with the world around her.

  Once again, he tried to push his thoughts away from the later years and back toward the happy times. Back to the days when his mother had been blond and lovely and cheerful, glowing like a bright star that had fallen to Earth but, instead of feeling trapped, loved it here and wanted to stay.