Gayle Wilson - Bogeyman

He resisted the urge to offer more platitudes. The quicker they got through this, the less painful it would be. For both of them.

“I guess I was wrong,” she added.

“I’m sorry.” Despite his intentions, the apology slipped had out.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her. The fact that he wasn’t interested in a relationship didn’t have anything to do with Teresa. Maybe if he told her that…

“It isn’t you.”

“Oh, Lord, Cade. At least spare me the crap.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And for God’s sake, stop saying that.”

He obeyed, willing himself not to prolong this. Again the silence grew.

“You’re a good man, Cade Jackson,” Teresa said finally. “Even if you aren’t, and won’t ever be, my man. You don’t owe me any explanations, so don’t bother trying to think them up. Just…If you ever change your mind…”

He waited, lips pressed together. She never finished the sentence. Instead, there was a low click and then the dial tone in his ear.

After a moment he put the receiver back on the stand, stopping the sound. Despite his exhaustion, despite the promise he’d made to himself, he didn’t move. Not to cut off the light or to head to bed.

You and I are a little old for those kinds of games. That went along with what he’d been thinking when he’d looked into the mirror tonight. Thirty-seven going on a hundred.

In every way that mattered, Teresa Payne was far too young for him. And he no longer believed he was ever going to find someone who wasn’t.

She had been right last night, Blythe realized. There was no overhanging branch up there. No shutter. And absolutely nothing to bang against that window.

“What are you looking at?”

Blythe turned to find Maddie standing at her elbow, blue eyes shifting from her face up to the bedroom window. The little girl was wearing only her nightgown. Although it was made of thick flannel, with long sleeves and a deep flounce, long enough to brush the winter-browned grass, it offered too little protection against the early morning cold.

“There was something bumping against your window last night. I could hear it. I thought maybe I could see whatever it was from down here.”

She had come downstairs and out through the screened porch as soon as she’d woken up, leaving Maddie asleep in her bed. Or so she had thought.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I didn’t hear it.”

This was the same kind of stonewalling with which Maddie replied to questions about her nightmares.

Stonewalling? She’s four. If she says she doesn’t remember, then she doesn’t. She isn’t capable of that kind of deception.

And how does a little girl not remember something tapping against her window? Or dreams that make her scream hysterically?

“Well, whatever it was, it doesn’t seem to be there now,” Blythe said, turning to look down at her daughter with a smile. “How about some breakfast?”

“Egg McMuffin?”

“Not exactly what I had in mind. How about bacon and eggs and toast?” That was the kind of food she never had time to prepare in the mornings as she was rushing to get Maddie ready for Ruth’s and herself ready for work.

“That’s what Delores always fixes.”

Of course. Delores and Miz Ruth couldn’t imagine starting the day without a cooked breakfast.

“So what would you like? Other than McDonald’s.”

“Cereal. Coco Charlies.”

The Egg McMuffin would probably have been a more nutritious choice, Blythe thought. Death by sugar.

Despite the unfortunate choice of words, Blythe managed to hold on to her smile as, hand between the small shoulders, she turned the little girl back toward the house. “Coco Charlies it is.”

“It makes its own chocolate milk,” Maddie said cheerfully, skipping along in front of her.

With its concrete floor and open walls, the screened porch was almost as cold as the outside. The small kitchen, however, had already warmed in the few minutes since Blythe had turned up the heat. This house might have its problems, but at least the plumbing and the furnace were reliable.

Fingers crossed.

While Maddie took her place at the table, Blythe retrieved the box of cereal from the old-fashioned pantry. On her way across the room, she opened the fridge and took out a quart of milk. She set both on the table and reached into the cabinet above the sink for a bowl.

Easier than eggs and bacon. And if the sugar made Maddie hyper, then there was no one to be bothered by it but her.

If Ruth and Delores at their age could put up with her daughter’s energy day after day, then she certainly had nothing to complain about.

Except maybe too many nights of lost sleep.

“So you really didn’t hear anything last night?” She dumped a cup or so of the brown pebbles into the bowl and covered them with milk.

“Rain. And the thunder.”

“You didn’t mind that?”

Maddie shook her head, digging her spoon into the mess in the bowl. She was right, Blythe realized. The milk had already taken on a decidedly brown tinge.

“Do you?” Maddie asked, looking up from under her bangs.

“Do I what?”

“Mind the rain?”

“Not most of the time.”

“Maybe that’s what you heard.”

“I don’t think so.” She didn’t want to make Maddie fearful. “Maybe it was a bird,” she suggested, sticking the milk back in the refrigerator. “Or a squirrel.” She turned back to see Maddie’s eyes come up again, widened with interest.

“Trying to get out of the rain?”

“Maybe. Maybe they were just cold,” she added with a smile.

“Then…would it be all right to open it for them the next time?”

“Open the window?” For some reason, despite the winter sunlight flooding the kitchen, last night’s chill was back.

“So that whatever is knocking can come in.”

In Maddie’s world, the one Blythe herself had created, you took care of those who couldn’t take care of themselves. You fed strays and rescued chipmunks from the neighbor’s cat. And if something was cold and hungry, you let it in.

Except not this time. Even though Blythe couldn’t explain the certainty she felt about that, she knew that whatever had caused the tapping she’d heard last night wasn’t something she wanted to let into her home.

And especially not into Maddie’s bedroom.

“Mama! Help me! Somebody help me!”

The screams pulled Blythe out of a sleep so deep that, despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t believe she’d achieved it. After all, she had tossed and turned in Maddie’s narrow bed for what seemed like hours. Listening for the tapping. Straining to identify every creak of the old house. She had finally drifted off, only to be awakened as suddenly as if someone had poured ice water over her.

She scrambled from under the covers, not stopping to pull on the woolen robe that lay across the foot of the bed. She ran across the heart-pine floors, bare feet skidding across their smooth surfaces as she made the turn through the doorway of Maddie’s bedroom and headed down the hall toward her own.

In the cold light of day—when her heart wasn’t frozen with fear or her mind imagining ridiculous scenarios—she hadn’t been able to justify letting the child sleep with her again. But she also couldn’t bring herself to put her back in that bedroom.

She had wondered if whatever she’d heard tapping at the window last night in Maddie’s room could precipitate the night terrors. Obviously, she’d been wrong.

“Mama, wake up. Please, Jesus. Please, somebody help me. Daddy. No. Daddy.”

By the time Blythe reached the doorway of her bedroom, the panicked screams had increased in volume. Following the now-familiar pattern, the little girl’s shrieks were growing so frenzied, words were no longer distinguishable. Piercing and hysterical, the screams echoed and reechoed through the room, even when Blythe turned on the bedside lamp.