Page 114 of Call Off the Dark

“Christ,” Wade said. He gave his head a vigorous shake, trying to rouse himself, trying to ready himself for what was coming.

Helen finished tying the laces on his first shoe, then reached for his second shoe.

He asked, “You believe me then?”

She looked up into his eyes. “I believe you.”

Moments later, they were creeping down the hall. A light peeked out from beneath the closed guest room door. Wade, still trying to regain his equilibrium, stumbled a little right in front of it and Helen steadied him. She held her breath, anticipating the door would swing open, but it stayed shut. She could feel Wade’s fear too, in the stiffness of his shoulders, as she guided him into the living room.

Just then the lights in the house began to flicker, dreadful intervals of complete darkness mixed with flashes of brightness. Helen hesitated and turned to Wade. They looked at each other for only a heartbeat, then rushed into the kitchen.

Wade went to the hook by the door where he kept his truck keys and froze as he remembered the truck was in town. He turned back to her with a horrified expression.

She said, “We have to run. Can you run?”

Suddenly, the sound of violins filled the kitchen. It was her record, the one she’d been playing when Isaac had first arrived.

Wade’s face clouded with confusion.

“He knows we’re trying to leave,” Helen said.

Then they both jumped at the sound of a dull thud. Helen spun around and looked into the living room. Her reading chair was lying on its side. There was the thump of something hitting the wall somewhere farther back in the house, followed by the clatter of a wall hanging smashing to the ground in the hallway, and then the lights cut out altogether.

They clambered for the front door. Wade’s hand found the doorknob first, and he flung it open. Isaac was standing there on the other side of it. The lights popped back on, casting the kitchen in a harsh yellow glow.

“Leaving?” Isaac said.

He stepped inside the house, and Helen and Wade backed up into the center of the kitchen.

One of the kitchen chairs behind them tipped over on its own, and the broom crashed to the floor from behind the refrigerator. Helen flinched.

“Can you please stop doing that?” she said, surprised by how calm she sounded. She was just so tired of it all.

Isaac considered her for a moment, and then he said, “Fine.”

The violin music stopped.

“I’m not really here to play with your furniture anyway,” Isaac said to her, and then he looked at Wade. “I came here for him.”

Isaac lifted his hands in the air. Without making any physical contact, the motion sent Wade flying backward, airborne, crashing off the opposite wall as if he’d been blasted from a cannon.

“Isaac, stop!” Helen shouted.

Isaac ignored her as he strode over to Wade’s crumpled body and stared down at him with restrained fury. “How does it feel, Wade? You’re used to being in control of everything, aren’t you?”

Wade tried to sit up, but Isaac pushed him back down with his boot. She could hear the hatred in Isaac’s voice as he continued to berate Wade. His wrath had been wrapped in silence and hidden behind his strange charm, but now it was plain to see.

Helen slipped backward toward the front door. When she reached it, she and Wade made eye contact, and he gave her a small nod: Go, run!

She raced out the door and immediately ran for the hiding spot where the gun was stowed with her garden tools. It was illogical to run for a weapon in a fight against a ghost, but it was the first thing she thought to do. And she had to do something.

But the gun wasn’t there.

That’s when the crashing and shouting ramped up inside the house, and she wondered if she was hearing the sounds of another husband’s murder. For half a second, she felt defeated as her mind screamed, Not again! But then it was as if all of the anger stored in her muscle memory flooded into the blood of her veins.

She turned toward the side yard and sprinted for the ax.

It was there.