Black Creek Crossing

Chapter 11

HE SOUND WAS SO LOW THAT AT FIRST ANGEL WASN’T sure she heard it at all. She was sitting in her bedroom in the new house, looking out the window. Across the road she saw a tree, a huge maple, whose limbs seemed to be reaching toward the house — toward Angel herself. At first the branches appeared friendly, as if they wanted to cradle her, and she felt an urge to go out into the night and climb the tree, disappearing into its foliage — able to see out, but knowing that no one could see in. But then the branches took on a threatening look, as if the giant maple wanted to reach across the road and through the window and pluck her from the safety of her room. Though she told herself that it was only a tree — that it couldn’t hurt her — she’d still been unable to tear her eyes away from it.

Until the sound came.

Its first faint whisper wasn’t enough to penetrate Angel’s consciousness. The sound grew, though, almost imperceptibly, so that when she finally became conscious of it, it didn’t seem out of place.

Rather, it seemed just one more of the sounds that filled the night — the chirping and whirring noises of insects, the soft croaking of frogs, and the muted hooting of owls. Yet as the sound crept out of the background and grew, it began to take on form as well.

By the time Angel recognized it as being apart from the rest of the sounds of the night, she also realized what it sounded like.

A girl.

A girl her age.

A girl crying.

Her attention torn from the tree beyond the window, Angel turned, half expecting to see the crying girl behind her. But except for herself, the room was empty.

Herself and the shadows, deep and dark, that filled the corners, for there was barely a moon tonight, and even its faint light kept fading as clouds scudded across it.

Yet she could still hear the crying, and she no longer felt alone in the room.

She squinted, straining her eyes to see where the girl might be hidden.

The crying grew louder, and finally Angel left the window and moved into the center of the room. At first the crying seemed to be coming from everywhere, echoing off the walls and ceiling and even the bare floor. It grew louder, until Angel was certain her mother or father would wake up and hear it.

Then she realized that it wasn’t coming from inside the room at all.

It was coming from the closet.

The crying became harsher, as if the girl was in some kind of pain.

A ray of light, barely visible, crept from under the closet door, then brightened, turning from a faint orange to a brighter yellow. Angel stared at the light, and it began pulsating, mesmerizing her.

Meanwhile, the sound grew, until Angel could feel it as well as hear it.

Yet somehow she didn’t feel frightened.

Instead, she felt herself being drawn toward the closet door.

Slowly, she moved toward it, her eyes fixed on the yellow light pulsing from the gap beneath the closet door, her ears filled with the now-howling sound of the girl’s cries.

She reached for the door. Heat seemed to radiate from it, yet still Angel felt no fear.

Her fingers tightened on the knob, and she turned it and pulled the door open.

To her amazement, the closet was filled with flames, and in the midst of the flames stood a figure, its back to her. As Angel stood rooted to the spot, the figure turned.

The face of the girl was gone, its flesh burned away. But the empty sockets where the girl’s eyes had been stared straight at Angel.

The girl raised her right arm and reached toward Angel in eerie imitation of the branches of the tree she’d been staring at moments earlier.

Just before the fingers touched her face, Angel stepped back and slammed the closet door.

And as the door slammed shut, she jerked awake, sitting bolt upright in her bed.

Her heart was pounding and she was covered with a sheen of sweat that felt hot but quickly turned cold and clammy. She was gasping for breath and her lungs hurt.

Hurt almost as if they’d been burned.

Angel sat perfectly still, waiting for the terror of the nightmare to pass, but even as her breathing returned to normal and her heartbeat calmed, the image of the girl, her flesh burned away by the raging flames, remained vivid in her mind. Finally, when even the sweat that covered her skin had dried, she lay back down and pulled the covers up until they were snug around her throat.

A nightmare, she told herself. That’s all it was.

She turned over, wrapped her arms around the pillow, and closed her eyes. But the vision still hung in the darkness, and a moment later she rolled over again, this time opening her eyes to look at the dimly glowing hands of the alarm clock that sat on the scarred table next to the bed.

Just a little after midnight.

Though she felt so tired from unpacking boxes all day that her whole body ached, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she banished the terrible image of her dream from her mind.

Throwing back the covers, she got up, pulling the blanket off the bed and wrapping it around her shoulders. She moved toward the closet, intending to open the door to prove to herself that nothing was inside except the clothes she’d hung there herself. Yet when she reached out to turn the knob, her hand hovered in the air a few inches from it, and she found herself unable to close her fingers on the brass.

She went to the window then and gazed out at the huge maple across the street, and slowly the vision of the horror inside the closet began to fade as the memory of the tree’s branches reaching out to her rose in her mind once more.

But in the dream, the tree had been covered with the bright green foliage of summer, and now, as she gazed out into the autumn night, she could see that its leaves had shriveled and fallen, until now its branches were almost bare.

It didn’t look at all as it had in the dream.

Turning away from the window, Angel gazed again at the closed door of the closet. There’s nothing in it, she told herself. Nothing but my clothes and a bunch of other junk. Yet even as she steeled herself and started toward the closet again, her heart began to race, and a clammy sheen of cold sweat once more broke out on her body. But she didn’t stop. She forced herself to keep going until she once more stood before the door.

This time she closed her fingers on the cold brass, she turned the knob, and pulled the door open.

Just as she had told herself, there was nothing inside the closet except the clothes she’d hung up this afternoon.

On the floor were her three pairs of shoes.

On the shelves were some boxes filled with stuff she hadn’t been able to bring herself to throw away.

And nothing else, except for a strange odor.

The odor of something burning…

“Angel?” Myra Sullivan said as her daughter came into the kitchen the next morning. “Are you all right?”

“I guess I didn’t sleep very well,” Angel replied, rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her bathrobe. “I had a bad dream—”

“Well, that’s hardly a good sign, is it? You should have had wonderful dreams on your first night in our new house. What was it?”

As Angel tried to recall and relate the strange dream she’d had, Myra found the box she’d packed especially for this morning — buried, of course, under half a dozen other boxes, all of them heavier than the one she was after — opened it, and began taking out cereal bowls, glasses, and plates. “Rinse these for me while we talk,” she told Angel, stacking them on the counter next to the sink. “Everything gets so dirty when you pack it up.”

Angel ran the hot water and began rinsing and drying the dishes and silverware as she began once more to reconstruct the strange dream she’d had the night before, but already some of the details were starting to slip away.

“But the weirdest thing was that when I finally woke up, the whole thing still seemed so real that I got up and looked in the closet.”

Her mother smiled thinly. “Just like when you were little, remember? You always made me open the closet door in your room to prove that there were no monsters inside.” She looked up from the oatmeal she was stirring. “And you didn’t find anything, did you?” she asked, her voice taking on an edge. “It was just a nightmare then, and it was just a nightmare last night. You didn’t actually hear anything, or see anything, did you?” Angel shook her head. Yet the look on her face told Myra there was something her daughter hadn’t yet told her. “What is it?” she pressed. “There’s something you’re holding back.”

“I–I don’t know,” Angel stammered. “It’s just — well, it sounds sort of crazy… ”

Myra stopped stirring the oatmeal. “I think I can be the judge of that. Why don’t you just tell me what you think happened, and maybe I can figure it out.”

Angel hesitated, and then blurted it out: “I smelled smoke.”

Myra frowned. “Smoke? You mean like wood smoke?”

Again Angel hesitated. “Well, sort of, but not really — I mean, it sort of smelled like burning wood, but there was something else too.”

“Something else?” Myra prodded when Angel fell silent. “Am I supposed to figure it out myself, or are you going to tell me?”

“Well, it was weird,” Angel said. “Remember when you burned yourself with the iron?”

Myra winced at the memory, and her eyes went to the scar that still showed clearly on the back of her left hand. It had happened five years ago, when she’d been talking to Angel while pressing Father Raphaello’s vestments and accidentally placed the scorching steam iron on her own hand.

“It smelled like that,” Angel said. “And like the time I scorched my hair trying to blow out the candles on my birthday cake.”

“Good heavens! I thought you would have forgotten about that years ago. You were only two.”

“Forget it?” Angel echoed. “I’ll never forget it — I thought I was going to burn up!”

“Well, there you are, then,” Myra told her. “That’s probably where the dream came from — maybe moving into our own house made your subconscious decide to start clearing out a bunch of old memories. And if lighting your head on fire scared you as much as it scared me, I’m amazed you haven’t had nightmares about it for years.” She moved the oatmeal off the stove and started scooping it into the three bowls Angel had rinsed and dried. “But if it scared you that much, how come you never told me? We could have talked about it.”

“I didn’t want you to think I was a baby.”

Myra laughed out loud. “But you were a baby! And I don’t know why I didn’t understand that you must have been even more scared than I was.” Abandoning the oatmeal, she put her arms around Angel. “I’m sorry, honey. Really I am.”

“Come on, Mom,” Angel groaned, pulling away from the embrace. “I hardly even remember it. Maybe I don’t — maybe I only remember Daddy talking about it on every birthday I’ve ever had, and I just feel like I remember.”

“If you didn’t really remember, I don’t think you would have had that nightmare. And if you thought you smelled smoke, why didn’t you wake me up? Or wake your father up?”

At the mention of her father, the memory of him walking in on her when she’d been changing her clothes yesterday rose in her mind.

Walking in on her and looking at her and—

The image of her father framed in the doorway of her room was abruptly replaced by the reality of his figure framed in the kitchen door.

“Wake me up?” he asked. “I’m awake — what’s going on?”

“It’s Angel,” Myra explained. “She had a nightmare last night.”

“About me?” Marty Sullivan asked, his eyes fixing on Angel with an intensity that made her pull the bathrobe more tightly around her. “Why would she have a nightmare about me?” he asked, speaking to his wife, but his eyes remaining fastened on Angel.

“It wasn’t about you,” Myra said, barely glancing at her husband as she put the dishes of oatmeal on the table. “She had a nightmare about a fire, and when she woke up, she thought she still smelled smoke.”

“In the house?”

“Well, of course in the house,” Myra replied. “She wasn’t sleeping in the backyard, was she?” She glanced at her watch, then shifted her gaze to her husband and daughter. “You’ve got half an hour before we have to leave for church.”

“Today?” Marty groaned. “You gotta be kiddin’ me! We got all this stuff to unpack, and there’s a game on, and I haven’t even got the TV hooked up yet. How about you go, and me and Angel’ll stay here and take care of some of this mess?”

Feeling the same strange knot in her stomach that she’d felt a moment ago, Angel shook her head. “I–I want to go to church,” she said. “And I better go up and get dressed.” She started toward the door and the stairwell beyond, but her father blocked her way.

“Hey,” he said. “Doesn’t daddy still get a kiss from his little Angel?”

Angel froze, but rather than run the risk of getting into a fight with him, she gave her father a quick peck on the cheek.

“I’ve just got to take a shower and get dressed, Mom,” she said as she slipped through the door and started up the stairs. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

“All right,” her mother called back. “But be quick — if you take too long, I’ll have to leave you here.”

Hurrying upstairs, Angel turned on the hot water in the combination shower and bathtub, took off her bathrobe and hung it on the hook on the door, and started to step into the tub.

But before she did, she locked the bathroom door.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Myra asked as she and Angel left the house twenty minutes later.

“I–I guess,” Angel stammered.

The note of uncertainty in her daughter’s voice made Myra turn to look at her. “Angel, it was only a nightmare. Nothing to worry about.”

What about Daddy? Angel thought. Should I worry about him?

“Is there something else?” Myra asked. “Did something happen that you haven’t told me about?”

Maybe I should tell her, Angel thought. Maybe— A flicker of movement distracted her, and she turned to see a cat coming out of the woods.

A black cat.

A black cat with a single blaze of white in the exact center of its chest.

“Houdini?” Angel blurted as the cat ran across the patch of lawn surrounding the house. It came right to Angel and began rubbing up against her legs.

Myra looked disapprovingly down at the cat. “Houdini?” she repeated. “How on earth would you know its name?”

“I don’t,” Angel said, leaning down to scratch the cat’s ears, then picking it up. “It’s just what I call him.” She nuzzled the cat’s neck. “Where’d you go?” she whispered into its ear. “How’d you just disappear like that?”

“What do you mean, it’s what you call him? Where did you even see him before?”

“He was in my closet,” Angel replied. “Remember when I went up to change my clothes yesterday? He was up there, meowing to get out of the closet.”

“And how did he get in the closet?” Myra asked.

Angel shrugged. “I don’t know — that’s why I call him Houdini. He came out of the closet, and then, when it started thundering again, he disappeared.”

“Cats don’t just disappear,” Myra told her.

“Houdini did. Just like that magician I read about — the one who got out of jail cells and locked trunks and everything.” She scratched the cat again. “Can I keep him?” she asked. “I mean, he doesn’t have a collar or anything, and he likes me.”

“No, you can’t keep him,” Myra said. “Your father’s allergic to cats.”

Angel remembered, then, how Houdini had hissed yesterday, just before her father walked in on her. Again, Angel wondered if she should tell her mother, but the words died in her throat long before they reached her lips. What was she supposed to say? That her father had walked in on her while she was changing her clothes? That he’d looked at her funny?

And even if she told her mother, what would happen? If her mom told her dad, then he’d get mad at her, and she’d seen him mad enough times that she didn’t want that to happen.

“Houdini could live in my room,” she finally said. “Then Dad would never even have to see him.”

“Cats don’t stay in one room,” Myra told her. “Now put it down and forget about it. The longer you hold it and pet it, the more you’ll want to keep it.”

Reluctantly, Angel put the cat back on the ground. As if understanding exactly what had happened, the cat sat down, curled its tail around its feet, and glared up Myra.

“I don’t like you much either,” Myra said, reading the cat’s expression as clearly as if it had spoken out loud. “Shoo!”

The cat ignored her, and began licking its forepaw.

They walked on into the village in silence, but Angel glanced back several times when she thought her mother wasn’t looking.

The cat was behind them, keeping pace.

They were near the church when Myra felt a sudden chill in the air. As she buttoned the collar of her thin wool coat, she looked up at the sky, where fast-scudding clouds were quickly graying the crisp blue the sky had been only a moment earlier. Beside her, Angel seemed oblivious to the sudden cold, and when Myra told her to button up her jacket, her daughter ignored her. They turned the corner, and Myra found herself facing the small white clapboard structure that was the only Catholic church in Roundtree and stopped short, feeling a twinge of something almost like anger.

The tiny Church of the Holy Mother stood kitty-corner from the far larger Congregational church that dominated the east side of the Roundtree common. It didn’t seem right to Myra that a church named for the Blessed Virgin who had actually given birth to the Lord Jesus — who was the true Mother of God, for heaven’s sake — should be completely overshadowed by a temple built by heathen apostates whom Myra knew deep in her heart were condemned to spend eternity in the fires of Hell for having turned their back on the one true Church.

Her anger gave way to sadness as she gazed at the little church, its white paint peeling from the graying clapboard, the shutters at its windows no longer quite straight, the small stained-glass windows themselves coated with grime. The church seemed to huddle beneath the heavy gray sky as if it weren’t certain how much longer it could continue even to stand. And then, as the clouds suddenly parted to let the sun shine through, Myra gasped as the stark silhouette of a cross slashed across the church’s front doors like some mighty sword cleaving the very foundation of her faith. She crossed herself and began a prayer for salvation, and when a voice murmured at her side, she didn’t hear it for a moment. Then, peripherally, she saw the black material of a priest’s cassock, and looked up to see a gentle face with twinkling eyes that transported her back to the day when she was only eight years old…

She’d gone to visit her grandfather, who lay dying in the hospital. She’d been terrified, but her grandfather, even in the last hours of his life, saw her fear and did his best to reassure her. “It’s all right, lassie,” he’d told her, smiling at her as if they were about to be off on some great adventure together. “Soon I’ll be returnin’ to the blessed Isle.”

“Can’t I go with you?” Myra had asked.

Her grandfather shook his head. “This is a trip I have to take by meself,” he’d said. “But not to worry,” he added, his eyes twinkling brightly. “I’ll still be lookin’ after you.”

A few seconds later, his eyes had closed, and until this moment Myra had never seen such a twinkle again.

“I think they did it on purpose,” she heard the priest saying now, a smile playing around the corners of his lips.

“Did what?” Myra asked, coming out of her reverie.

“That,” the priest said, his smile broadening, his right hand sweeping upward. “Now you can’t tell me that’s a coincidence.” He was pointing up to the steeple that towered above the Congregational church across the street. Unlike the humble wood-frame building that was the Church of the Holy Mother, Roundtree First Congregational was built of huge blocks of granite hewn from a quarry a mile from the center of town. Its style was Gothic, with a steep slate roof from which the steeple soared another fifty feet toward the sky.

The priest was pointing at the cross that surmounted the steeple. “I can’t prove it,” he said, “but I suspect an engineer spent weeks figuring out exactly where that steeple had to be, and exactly how high, in order for the shadow of their cross to fall across our door. Now of course,” he went on, “it only happens a couple of times a year, you understand, so I suppose it could be only the coincidence they claim it is. But if you ask me, it is just another way for those Protestants to try to stick it to us!”

“Father!” Myra breathed, shocked by the priest’s words. Her eyes flicked toward Angel, who didn’t seem as shocked by what the priest had said as she was.

“It’s a joke, my child,” the priest quickly assured her, his smile fading as he saw the look on Myra’s face. “I’m sure they meant no harm at all.” He held out his hand. “I’m Father Michael Mulroney, but everyone calls me Father Mike,” he offered.

Myra took his hand for only the briefest of moments, introducing herself and Angel as she did so. “We just moved here from Eastbury.”

Father Mike nodded. “Ah, the very ones Father Raphaello wrote me about,” he said. “It will be wonderful to have you as part of our parish. Not as many of us as there are in Eastbury, I’m afraid.” The mischievous twinkle came back into his eyes. “Maybe we just didn’t get here in time.” He nodded toward the huge stone edifice across the street. “If we’d come in 1632, the way they did, maybe we’d have a building like that too.” Now he sighed heavily. “Not that we could fill it, even if we did. These days…” He let his voice trail off, but Myra knew exactly what he meant. The last few years, donations even to the church in Eastbury — where there hadn’t been even a breath of scandal — had dropped so low that she’d been the last person Father Raphaello had been able to pay to take care of the rectory.

“Well, now you’ve got us, and I have a husband too, so that’s three,” Myra said.

“And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it,” Father Mike told her. Then his voice and expression took on a note of regret. “But I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to give you the work you had with Father Raphaello. We’re just too — well, I’m sure you know as well as I do what the last few years have been like.” Taking Myra’s arm, he led her up the steps toward the front door of the church, with Angel following. “And where might you be living?”

“On Black Creek Road,” Myra told him. “It’s a small house, and it needs some work, but I understand it’s one of the oldest houses in town.”

The priest’s eyes clouded. “The house at the Crossing?” he asked. “Where all those terrible—” He stopped abruptly, then said, “Oh, dear — what am I saying? I—”

“It’s all right,” Myra said stiffly. “We know what happened in the house.”

More people were coming up the steps now, and Father Mike began introducing Myra and Angel, then excused himself to go prepare for the mass.

Just before she followed her mother into the church, Angel looked around for Houdini one more time.

The cat was sitting across the street, its tail neatly curled around its feet.

An hour later, as they were leaving the church and saying good-bye, Father Mike took Myra’s hand in both of his. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “And it occurs to me that maybe I can find some work for you. Not in the rectory, but here in the church itself.”

“But you said—” Myra began.

“I know what I said,” the priest cut in. “But I’ll find the money someway.” His eyes shifted over to Angel, then returned to Myra. “It’s a good place to be,” he said. “The church can shelter you from many, many things. So I’ll just find the money, and that’s all we’ll say about that.”

A few minutes later they started the walk home, Father Mike’s words echoing in Myra’s thoughts.

The church can shelter you from many, many things.

What had he meant by that?

Did he think there was something she needed sheltering from? Maybe she should have told him that the Holy Mother had been looking after her for years already, coming to her in visions when her problems were the worst.

And why had he looked at Angel just before he said those words?

The questions so completely occupied her that Myra Sullivan never noticed the black cat following them home.