Robert Swartwood
Smashwords Edition
Spooky Nook copyright © 2011 Robert Swartwood
Cover photograph copyright © 2011 Greg Miller
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Robert Swartwood.
Spooky Nook is a “prequel of sorts” to my supernatural thriller The Calling, yet it is written to be a standalone story. Readers do not need to read one to enjoy the other. However, included after the story is an excerpt from The Calling, featuring the prologue and first three chapters.
Two nights before, he had run out of all the food in the house—even the expired cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli and frozen Hungry Man dinners he’d eaten despite his brain’s nasty whispers of possible salmonella and freezer burn. The only things left in the cabinets were a half loaf of Wonder bread (the sell-by date showing yesterday), a half jar of Skippy peanut butter (which expired at the end of the month), and just enough jelly to make one and a half sandwiches. And that had been his dinner last night: peanut butter and jelly made on near-stale bread, along with a glass of water from the tap. He knew he needed groceries or at least some food to hold him over for the next couple of days, but he had no desire to go to the store, or even to the gas station where he could get bread and potato chips and maybe even some fresh meat cuts. There would be people there, people who knew his face, his story, and while he’d dealt with them countless times in the past eight months he had begun to want nothing to do with them at all.
He needed to get out of the house, too. He was tired of seeing his wife in every aspect of the place—her perfumes and jewelry on her stand in the bedroom, her shampoo in the shower, the matching pillows she’d picked out for the living room couch and the green and blue oven mitts for the kitchen. There was more, of course, so much more that sometimes Kevin walked the house and remembered pieces of the past in every room. Like old grainy footage spliced into the film of the present, he saw Cathy in the chair on the patio, where she’d sit with her legs beneath her as she read a book; he saw her at the stove or the sink, actually humming to herself as she stirred the spaghetti sauce or did the dishes. He was reminded about how many times they’d made love in their house, especially after first moving in, when Cathy said they needed to break in every room—and even every closet—with their lovemaking.
And then there was the den, with his computer and the files inside. Paul, his agent who had somehow managed to sweet-talk a major two-book deal out of Random House after his first two novels sold so well, had been calling the house almost every other day. His excuse was he wanted to check on Kevin, see how he was holding up, but still Paul asked about the new novel, wondered if Kevin had managed to produce any new chapters ... and if no new chapters, then how about some new pages?
Kevin hadn’t written anything in eight months. He hadn’t even opened the Word file his latest novel was saved under.
Last time he’d been at the grocery store he’d stocked up like it was the end of the world, and even that reminded him of Cathy, how during the whole Y2K scare she had been skeptical but still had talked him into going with her to the store, where they stocked up on two carts full of food and water and batteries and snacks. But that had been over a month ago, and he had since run completely out.
Restaurants were out of the question—even small places that weren’t chains like Friendly’s or Denny’s he didn’t want to go to. He didn’t want to have to walk inside and give his name, then say that he only needed a table for one. It would bring the reality of his entire hapless existence down on him even harder. Ordering in was an option but for some reason he just couldn’t decide what he wanted, as he looked up and down nearly every page of the phonebook, his index finger with the cracked nail skimming the names and numbers of takeout places. In the end the finger stopped on Wang’s Chinese Restaurant, which was only a half-mile away and which had been his and Cathy’s favorite place to eat. Sometimes, when Cathy wasn’t working, they’d go there for the lunch specials, where the owner dressed in one of his smart suits would welcome them with a smile and lead them to their table, asking Kevin when his next book was coming out and then telling him he couldn’t wait to read it—even though Kevin very much doubted the man had read any of his books to begin with.
What the hell, he thought. He grabbed a pair of jeans, a red T-shirt, applied some Old Spice to his underarms. He picked up the most recent issue of The Paris Review—Number 165, Spring 2003—that had come in the mail only a few weeks before and had gone unread this entire time, then got in his car and made the effortless drive to the shopping mall and the restaurant sandwiched in between a state store and an H&R Block.
It was a Tuesday night, so the place wasn’t busy, and once he walked through the front door—plaques hung on the wall just inside, Wang’s having been voted “Best Chinese Restaurant” by the readers of Lanton County Magazine for ten straight years; Zagat had given its prestigious approval—he was seated in no time. They put him at one of the back tables, where he ignored his menu and ordered General Tso’s Chicken and wanton soup, then just sat there, staring dumbly at the pink and white carnations and the bottle of soy sauce resting on the table. He hardly paged through the magazine he’d brought with him, and two and a half hours later, when the last customers left, Kevin barely noticed.
It was almost ten o’clock, which was closing time at Wang’s, but he knew they wouldn’t kick him out just yet. He heard them speaking their Mandarin in the kitchen, even over the Muzak playing quietly from the overhead speakers. Nothing oriental but simple American contemporary. He’d been staring at his plate for a long time, using his fork to push the red peppers around his chicken, and didn’t know how long ago his waiter had left him his check. On top of the black plastic tray rested his fortune cookie.
He thought about the novel he was supposed to finish, the one his publisher was waiting on. His fourth novel, which would end his contract and possibly open another. He had already taken the advance and now worried that he would have to pay it back. The working title was Walk the Sky. It dealt with a tribe of modern Native Americans living out in Nevada, the inspiration coming to him years before when he first read Leslie Silko’s Ceremony in one of his graduate classes.
“It’s useless,” he whispered. He placed his finger on the cover of The Paris Review, pressed his chipped nail down as hard as he could.
The front door opened. Kevin hadn’t realized it until now, because he had never been in this place when it was so quiet and near the back like he was, but the action caused some kind of bell to buzz in the kitchen. One of the waiters came out. In broken English he apologized that they were closing in five minutes.
“That’s all right,” said a voice, a woman’s. “I’m with him.”
At once Kevin stopped punishing his finger and the cover of the magazine. He kept staring at it though, while he wondered who else was here. Obviously no one, but surely the speaker didn’t mean him.
Maybe it’s Cathy, he thought, but he knew it wasn’t, because a) the voice belonged to an elderly woman, not someone in her early thirties, and b) it was highly unlikely that his wife, missing now for eight months, would come walking into Wang’s casually, as if meeting him here for a late dinner had all been part of her plan.
He was so wrapped up in his thoughts he wasn’t aware that the woman had threaded through the tables toward the back, wasn’t even aware of her standing in front of him, until she cleared her throat and said, “Kevin Parker?”
A fan. Of course it was a fan. Just someone who’d picked up one of his novels in the bookstore or library, someone who’d been impressed by what he wrote and wanted an autograph, wanted maybe to say some kind words. Ever since his last book had been added to Oprah’s Book Club, it seemed his readership had become mostly all women. Not that he minded really, except that recently it seemed those who now saw him felt true pity for him. They would ask him how he was doing, always whispering his wife’s name as if it were cursed. But nowadays it seemed the news had become old, almost taboo, as if speaking it would admit they weren’t up on current events, like that double-homicide that shocked the entire county just four nights back.
She said his name again, and this time he blinked, managed to pull his eyes away from his table and glance up. An old woman in her sixties, maybe even her seventies, with a wrinkled but kind face, and even kinder eyes. She smiled at him, her teeth yellowed, and said, “Kevin, don’t you remember me? It’s Anna Wilbanks, your first grade teacher.”
He stared for a moment, unsure of what to think, but then he remembered back thirty years ago, the woman who’d read to them during story time and let them use the paint brushes during art and who would sometimes give them naptime, even though she wasn’t supposed to.
“Mrs. Wilbanks,” he said, a shadow of a smile crossing his face. “I can’t believe it. How are you?”
“It’s Anna now, Kevin. We’re both adults.”
He smiled and nodded, but said nothing else. This woman was the last person in the world he’d expected to see. Just what was he supposed to say?
Before he could ask anything though, the woman said, “I know you’re probably wondering why I stopped in here. And while I know this will sound silly, I was hoping you could do me a favor. I’m an old woman whose eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and I haven’t been behind the wheel of a car in ages. But there’s someplace I need to go, someplace I was hoping you could take me. And don’t think I just happened to see you in here and thought I’d ask because you were the only one around. Kevin, you know how you were one of my favorite students. I always knew if there was anyone I could count on, it would be you.”
He stared up at her, still stunned to see her after all these years. Above them, the Muzak—now playing “Strangers in the Night”—cut off completely.
“What is it?” he asked, because he knew it was true, he was the only person she could count on, even after all this time. He didn’t want to disappoint her, not at all.
As it turned out, she was a fan.
Just not a fan of his.
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SCRANTON and the Pennsylvania state line, his cell phone went off. He glanced at the name on the front, saw it was his agent, and answered it with a hesitant hello.
“Tell me you’re joking,” Paul said.
Kevin glanced at the woman in the passenger seat of his Audi, yet another thing that reminded him of Cathy—the butterscotch lollipop she’d given him on their third date was still in the ashtray where he kept singles for tollbooths. The old woman, her hair puffy and white, her skin pale, had fallen asleep an hour ago. They’d been driving for nearly three hours, neither saying much of anything. The radio was turned off; he hadn’t put in any CDs to listen to because the majority of them were Cathy’s. Kevin had apologized for the car’s appearance—gum wrappers littered the floor, the backseat was a mess with shirts and slacks he had been meaning to take to the dry cleaner’s—but Anna had said that was fine, she was just thankful he could oblige her like this. Now he wondered just what he’d gotten himself into.
“I can’t,” he whispered. He kept his left hand on the steering wheel, his attention fixed on the stretch of I-81 before them. Only two cars were up ahead, faint red eyes listlessly staring back at him.
“Jesus H. Christ. Kevin, what the hell are you thinking?” He could imagine his agent now, a small black man pacing somewhere in his Manhattan loft. He probably had a cigarette in his free hand, his fifth in the past hour. His tie was still on but loosened, the first two buttons of his shirt undone. “Are you there? Seriously, man, are you taking any medication you should be telling me about?”
“Paul, it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Oh isn’t it? I’m sorry, then tell me who in their right mind decides to take off in the middle of the night and drive up to Maine? Not only that, but with a woman he hasn’t seen in ... what did you say? Thirty years? Christ, I wish you wouldn’t have even left me your stupid goddamned message.”
Kevin was beginning to wish the same.
“Well?” Paul said after a moment of silence. “What do you have to say?”
“I’m sorry, Paul, but I have to do this.”
“Do what, for fuck’s sake? I still don’t understand what’s going on here.”
“She asked me to do her a favor. To take her to see someone.”
“Oh, that’s right. This mysterious someone you failed to mention in your message. Okay, so who is it?”
Kevin hadn’t failed to mention it in his message; he had simply left it out. He didn’t know why, but telling his agent seemed like the wrong move. Now he still wasn’t sure, though it mostly had to do with the fact that saying it aloud gave it certain credence. Anna could say it as much as she wanted, that was all well and good, but if Kevin said it ... it was like admitting his own association with this crazy business.
“Stephen King,” he said finally. He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again and saw that no, he wasn’t dreaming. “He’s having a special book signing or something, and she—”
Somewhere in Manhattan, his agent was choking on the smoke from his cigarette. What Kevin at first thought was coughing, he quickly realized was laughing.
“Son of a bitch,” Paul murmured. The irascible tone was gone from his voice. “This is some kind of joke, right?”
Kevin said nothing. He concentrated on the road. There were trees and mountains all around him, the dark sky above cloudy. He didn’t want to say anything else, didn’t want to tell his agent how his first grade teacher expressed her fondness for Stephen King, how she had collected all his books since the beginning. She had just found out about this special signing being held in Bangor that Wednesday afternoon, and she had no car of her own, was terrified of any and all planes or trains (a fear, she admitted sheepishly, she had kept to herself for almost her entire life). And as she spoke he stared into her eyes, knew that the last thing he wanted to do now was disappoint her. Besides, what she was asking was nothing more than a simple road trip, and really, he had to get out of Lanton, had to clear his head. He figured this might just be the best thing for him.
“Well?” Paul sounding petulant again. “Is this a joke or what?”
Kevin opened his mouth, started to tell Paul that no, this wasn’t a joke, but movement caught his attention. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Anna’s body jerk. He glanced over. She now sat up straight, her eyes open, staring ahead but not seeing anything in front of her. Unconsciously he took his foot off the gas but she shook her head quickly and whispered, “No, keep going,” so he pressed his foot down on the pedal again, maintaining his speed.
“Kevin?” Paul said.
Anna’s body was still motionless, her eyes still staring forward. Kevin wanted to say something, was about to even reach across the middle consol to touch her arm, when the woman blinked twice and then stared again—only now Kevin knew she was seeing the road before them, that she was back from wherever she’d gone.
She smiled at him. “So how are we doing?”
In his ear, Paul muttered, “Fucking cell phones,” and hung up. Minutes later, when his agent tried calling back, Kevin dropped the call. A voicemail message came up but he ignored it and kept driving.
ANNA SAID SHE needed to use the bathroom, so they stopped at the first rest area after the New York state border. By then it was almost two in the morning and besides a row of tractor-trailers, the parking lot was virtually deserted. Kevin went to stretch his legs and take a piss and came out to find Anna talking with a young black boy. They stood by an RV, a small car hitched to the back. He glanced at them briefly before getting into the car and waiting only a minute until the passenger door opened.
He wanted to say something as Anna got in, ask her just what that was all about (and why hadn’t she gone to the bathroom?), but before he even had a chance to open his mouth she shut the door and said, “We’re going the wrong way.”
“But ... I’m following the directions you gave me.”
“I was wrong.”
And she gave him new directions, taking them toward Albany on I-88, then through a number of tollbooths in which he used the saved singles, and then onto I-90 through Massachusetts. The closer they drove toward the coast, the stranger Kevin began to feel. He started second-guessing himself, wondering if maybe his agent had been right after all. This was crazy but still, he’d been in Lanton ever since Cathy disappeared, he’d lived with her absence haunting the house ever since.
He finally decided the silence was too much and turned on the radio, scanned through various stations. Country, pop, rock, classic—he was never satisfied with any of them after more than two songs and scanned through them again. Anna didn’t say anything. She glanced at the signs they passed—mile markers for Oxford and Worcester, advertisements for Ramada Inn and Econo Lodge—with little interest. Then finally, after three hours, as they got onto I-95 just outside Boston, Anna spoke.
“Tell me about your wife.”
At first his heart skipped a beat, and he wasn’t sure why. His throat had gone dry. He cursed himself for not grabbing any bottled water at that Exxon station they’d filled up at by Farmingham. He glanced over at her, uncertain, and saw her smiling at him again. She indicated his wedding band.
“Oh,” he said, feeling dumb. He was lost in his thoughts, in the past and the present. He wasn’t sure what to tell this woman. He still couldn’t believe she remembered him, after all this time; for him she had simply been a forgotten memory. He didn’t know what to tell her, what she wanted to hear. Just that his wife’s name was Cathy? Or how they met at Temple their junior year, how they had really hit it off, and had gotten married right after graduation? No one had ever really asked him about Cathy, at least not in the past eight months; it had all been about how he was doing. “I ... I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s all right. What about your writing, then? Are you working on a new book?”
“You ... you’ve read my stuff?”
She dug in her purse, withdrew a can of Altoids. Offered him one and when he shook his head she popped one in her mouth and said, “Of course. You were one of my favorite students, remember? How could I not follow your career? You write spooky nooks.”
Kevin frowned at her, uncertain he’d heard her right. “I’m sorry, what are ... spooky nooks?”
“Life stories that dip below the surface of the, quote-unquote, real world. Think of Flannery O’Connor. In the same way, all three of your books—especially The Man on the Bridge—deal with characters and places that seem to acknowledge there’s more to life than just what they see around them. A spooky nook is, in essence, any story of daily life that doesn’t pretend the world’s this nice and happy place, but is in fact terrible in ways most people are too naïve to see.”
Despite the time of night—it was almost five o’clock in the morning, the sky clear and starting to brighten—there was more traffic on the highway than there had been on 81. They passed a sign that announced an exit for Prospect Hill Park. On the radio, amid faint static, Steely Dan sang about reeling in the years.
“My wife,” Kevin said. Both his hands were on the steering wheel, gripping tightly. His stomach growled, the only food it’d been given besides the Chinese back in Lanton a Snicker’s bar he picked up just before leaving New York. “She was”—he glanced at Anna—“well, you didn’t read it in the papers?”
“Read what?”
He went to tell her about what happened eight months ago, how his wife had gone to the corner store for milk and bread and never came back. How the police hadn’t taken him seriously at first, until two days passed and she still hadn’t returned. Finally the police got involved, then the FBI, but neither managed to come up with anything, and for days on end Kevin had been bombarded by the press—either camping outside his front lawn or calling constantly on the phone. Paul had visited him that first week, staying with him for a few days and telling him everything was going to be all right. He even made a poor joke about the reporters outside, how any publicity was good publicity.
He went to tell her all of this and more, but before he even had a chance to speak Anna’s body went rigid and her eyes widened. Kevin’s foot touched the brake—he had hit the cruise control hours ago—but heard her whisper, “No, don’t,” so he put his foot on the gas and kept driving. He wondered just what he’d do if this woman had a stroke, what exactly he’d say when he called 911.
Then beside him, in an even softer voice, she said, “Don’t answer it.”
He glanced at her, completely perplexed. “What—” he began, and his cell phone went off. It caused him to start, to swerve in his lane. Despite the woman’s imperative sentence (and really, now that he had an extra second to think about it, had she said anything at all?), he had a reason all his own for not answering. He knew it was Paul, ready to scold him again—though why, he asked himself, had it taken his agent this long? But Kevin also knew he had no choice, that he was scared now and didn’t know what to do because the woman in the next seat might be dying.
“Kevin,” Paul said, his normally toneless voice full of life, “get out of the car right now.”
“Paul?”
“The woman you’re with, she’s crazy. It took awhile because everyone’s fucking asleep, but I checked around and what she told you is bullshit. Stephen King isn’t having any special signing. Shit, he’s been in Florida the past two weeks.”
“What?” Kevin didn’t realize that his foot had fallen off the gas, that the Audi was losing speed. Cars behind him began passing, a few honking. He glanced over at Anna. He expected to see her staring ahead in her catatonic state, but instead he found her staring back at him. Her smile was gone from both her face and eyes.
“Hang up the phone,” she said.
“Did you hear me?” Paul shouted, causing Kevin to actually pull the cell away from his ear. “Do whatever it takes. Get her out of the car. Call the police. Something.”
“You can’t trust him,” Anna said. “You know you can’t. You never could. Ask him about the cabin on Crooked Lane. See what he says.”
He knew that he shouldn’t, that this woman was indeed insane and that he should pull over right now and call the cops. But at the same time he sensed something in her voice, in her eyes, some force willing him to do so, and before he even realized it he said, “Paul, what’s the cabin on Crooked Lane?”
Silence on his agent’s end, and at first Kevin thought the connection had been lost, that he’d entered a dead zone. Then he heard Paul curse under his breath before the line disconnected.
“We’re not going to Bangor,” the woman beside him said. “We never were. I didn’t know where exactly or else I would have told you earlier, but I know now. We’re going to a town just before Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It’s called Greenland. We need to get there in the next hour, or else it’ll be too late.”
His foot was back on the gas, mostly because he didn’t want to stop completely on the highway. Now the Audi was speeding forward, catching up with the cars and trucks that had passed him only seconds before.
“Too late?” He continued staring forward, refused to turn his head in the slightest. “Too late for what?”
“For the boy to have a chance,” Anna said, and he couldn’t believe how calm she was, how collected. “Do you understand me, Kevin? If we don’t reach him in time, she’s going to kill him.”
They arrived a little after five o’clock. The sun had already begun to rise, just a small part of it inching over the horizon. The coast was less than ten miles away, and for some reason Kevin wanted to turn off the A/C and put down the windows, see if he could smell the ocean. For their second anniversary he and Cathy had driven along the coast up to Maine, stayed at a motor lodge in the town of Kennebunkport. She’d gotten him up early that Saturday morning and dragged him out to the beach so they could watch the sunrise together. When she’d asked him how much he loved her, he said not as much as he did when he was sleeping and she poked him in the ribs.
As before, he followed the directions Anna gave him, only now he put more thought into her words, into where she told him to turn off onto, how far until the next road. She’d confessed she didn’t know where to go exactly, but the closer they got, the stronger her feelings grew until they came to a residential area, almost all the houses dark with sleep. Then her body jerked and she pointed at a house and told him to stop.
It was a two-story Cape Cod, much like all the others along the drive. It was painted white, its trim red, a gray satellite dish on the roof. If it weren’t for the Toyota parked in the driveway, Kevin would have assumed no one was home.
“He’s in the basement,” Anna whispered, staring out at the house. “She kidnapped him last week and has kept him down there since. She’s kidnapped three other children over the past two years. Their bodies are rotting in the backyard.” She glanced at him. “Turn off your lights.”
Kevin turned off his lights, then the ignition, and just sat there. The radio was still on, Phil Collins unknowingly involving himself in this egregious mess.
He reached for his cell phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling 911.”
“No, Kevin.” Her voice was flat, nearly emotionless. “There isn’t enough time.”
“So then ... what do we do?”
He kept staring at the house, wishing that it weren’t true, that there wasn’t some madwoman in there right now about to kill a young boy. And as much as he wanted to deny it to himself, he knew that everything Anna told him was the truth. Somehow she knew about the woman inside, she knew about the boy, and the only thing that would save his life now was the two of them.
She closed her eyes and sat motionless for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes again, a small tear ran down her wrinkled cheek and she began to speak quietly.
“I can sense the anger in her soul. She’s a very disturbed woman. She has been for a long time. The boy has been crying since he was locked in the basement and she’s sick of it. Her plan was to torture and kill him later this week, but she’s had enough. She wants to ... to tear his skin off piece by piece. She wants to rip his eyelids—”
“How do we stop her?” Kevin breathed, unaware he’d even spoken until the words were out of his mouth. His heart pounded, his body trembled. He wanted nothing more now than to save this boy, this stranger whose existence hadn’t even mattered to him an hour ago, so that everything would be over.
Anna had been in another one of her catatonic states, but now she blinked and looked at him. “It’s simple, really. I’m going to ring the doorbell. You’re going to break in around the back of the house. One of us will distract her long enough to save the boy.”