Lisa Miscione - Twice

Lydia craned her head to try to look around her, but she could see nothing in the pitch-black outside the flashlight beam, which was starting to flicker and dim. She felt the barrel of the gun leave her temple and looked up to see Jed moving toward the doorway. He kept the gun pointed at her, and backed away slowly.

“Another day, Lydia,” he said, and disappeared. She heard him clanging down a stairway.

The time was passing slowly and the car was getting cold. Ford could feel the tip of his nose and his toes going numb. The night was silent, the sky riven with stars. Somewhere in the woods around him he could hear the low calling of an owl, slow and mournful. It was giving him the creeps. In all the time he’d been sitting by the side of the road, not one car had passed him. He turned the key in the ignition and pulled out onto the street.

The more he thought about it, Maura Hodge’s residence was probably the last place Annabelle would go. Sitting, freezing his ass, he’d recalled the conversation he’d had with Chief Clay, how the old man had told him the cops wouldn’t go near the Ross home, how they thought it was haunted. He thought of the old house, sitting gated and avoided by the police, and wondered if maybe, were he Annabelle Hodge, it might not be a half-bad place to hide temporarily.

Ford had never heard such silence. Maybe if it had been summer there would have been crickets singing or something. But as he pulled the car onto the side of the road across from the gate leading to the Ross estate and killed the engine, the silence was so loud it felt like a presence. He looked longingly at his cell phone. He even had one of those things that you plug into the cigarette lighter to power it. Malone had given him one after the last time his phone had died. But he’d never used it. It sat still in its stiff plastic packaging in his desk. It just seemed so self-important to have a cell phone, to be so concerned about it and who might be calling you or who you should be calling that you’d have a little rig in your car. But it didn’t seem quite as foolish right now.

He got out of the car and shut the door. Even though he’d tried to do it quietly, the click of the door closing and the crunching gravel beneath his feet seemed to echo through the night. He crossed the street and stood before the gate, noting that it was unlocked and, in fact, ajar. He pushed it open and it emitted a long, slow screech.

As he walked up the long narrow drive, the house rose out of the trees. As he grew closer, he saw that it was completely dark, no sign of life or movement. But he drew his gun anyway. Something about it, its black windows and towering copulas, its shutters hanging askew, its sagging eaves, the great dead oak beside it communicated menace to him. The house seemed to be regarding him with disdain, seemed to bear its teeth. Ford felt the thump of adrenaline in his chest, felt it drain the moisture from the back of his throat.

What the hell are you doing, old man? he thought. You shouldn’t be here alone. What are you trying to prove? That you’re a good cop after all? That it will all have been worth it, everything you threw away for the job, if you can just prove to yourself that you were a good cop?

He heard the conversation he had with Lydia play in his head again.

I don’t even know what I am if I’m not a cop .

Maybe it’s time you figure that out .

He stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the house and the silence around him grew louder. The moonlight dappled the porch, cast the spindly shadow of the dead oak across the shingles.

Inside that door, he might find the answers to the Tad Jenson and Richard Stratton murders. Jenson, one of his cold cases, and Stratton, maybe his last case. The thought of solving them both felt like closure to him. Maybe then he could walk away from the job, from that basement office, and feel like everything he’d forced Jimmy, Katie, and most of all Rose to endure might have some meaning after all. Justice had meaning, didn’t it? It was worth a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice, if it was truly served.

Then he heard a child crying. It was soft and low, just like the owl, but without the peaceful, mournful rhythm. He looked around him and the sound seemed to come from the sky and the trees, not from inside the house. He walked around back, slowly, gun in his hand, staying close to the house. He could see in the moonlight that a path cut into the trees and again heard the sobs of a child. He thought of Nathaniel and how he’d cried that day about the bogeyman. It sounded like him, but Ford couldn’t be sure. With his gun drawn and his heart in his throat, he headed toward the sound.

“Jeffrey,” Lydia yelled, struggling to her feet. “He’s getting away.”

The echo of Jed McIntyre’s footsteps had faded. She ran to the doorway and saw that it led to a stairway into nothingness. She could still just barely hear his footfalls on the metal steps and started to head down after him when Jeffrey emerged from the darkness and came to her side.

“I thought I was never going to see you again,” he said, putting what looked like her Glock in his waistband and taking her into his arms. Relief washed over her, as she let it sink in for a second that they were both safe. But then she pushed herself away from him, as relief was replaced with panic.

“He can’t get away, Jeffrey,” she said, listening to his footfalls fading. “I can’t live like this anymore. Not for one more day.”

“All right,” he said simply. He didn’t offer the usual arguments for why he should go and she should stay, seemed to recognize that they needed to go after him together.

“Where does this staircase come out?” he said.

“How should I know?” she answered. But then she realized he wasn’t talking to her.

Jeffrey motioned with his head behind her and she turned to see what amounted to a small army of men and women. Maybe twenty or thirty people had gathered around them. She remembered what Jetty had called them, the mole people. They were the most beautiful sight Lydia had ever seen. One man stood apart, ahead of them, looking at once regal and strong, in spite of his torn and tattered clothes, the dirt on his face. His gray hair was like a dusting of snow on dark earth and in his eyes Lydia saw wisdom and an inherent goodness.

“This is Rain,” said Jeffrey.

Lydia reached out a hand to Rain, and when he shook it, his hand was callused and rough.

“The staircase leads to other, smaller tunnels, other catwalks beneath the electric wires, there are maybe twenty offshoots from the main stairwell,” said Rain. “But as far as I know, this doorway is the only way back into the main tunnel system. He’s trapped. I’ll take you down. The others will stay here and watch the entrance.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Jeffrey. They stood aside and let Rain pass in front of them.

Ford moved into the trees and the darkness seemed to come alive around him, the shadows and dark spaces in the woods seemed to shift and move, seemed to have life and substance. The ground beneath his feet was soft, covered with dead leaves still wet from the last rain or snow, and it allowed him to move quietly toward the sound. He felt like he’d been walking forever and the sound never seemed to grow louder. Then it ended abruptly. The silence that followed was more frightening than the cries and Ford picked up his pace to a light jog. Up ahead he saw a dancing orange light and smelled the scent of wood burning.

He came to a clearing where he saw several ruined structures, shacks with tin roofs, all but one of which had toppled, grown over with weeds and moss. A wood fence sagged around the area, most of it rotted, eaten by termites. The shacks were arranged in a half circle and in the center was a fire, crackling and smoking. Trees stood all around like an army of dark soldiers. Ford paused, not seeing any movement. He thought of the story Lydia had told him about Annabelle Taylor, about her murdered children, about the curse she’d cast on the Ross family. Standing in the silent, wooded night alone watching the fire burn, looking at the tumbled shacks, he could almost believe it. He was gripping his Smith and Wesson service revolver so hard his hand was starting to hurt.