A Summer with the Dead Read online

  The bottom drawer was tight and opened with a screech. It contained a dozen pair of wool socks and cotton underwear, folded in neat stacks on the left side. The right side of the drawer was empty. In the drawer above that lay three cardigan sweaters, all gray, all stacked on the left side. The middle drawer held two pair of pajamas and one nightgown, its bodice and sleeve ruffles yellowed with age. The drawer second from the top shrieked as Maya forced it open. It held one pair of men’s slippers, seldom worn, a pair of men’s pajamas, a pair of boxer shorts and one white t-shirt, all in one clear, zippered bag. Beside the bag were two, heavy flannel shirts, size small, folded. They looked almost new.

  “You just can’t let him go, can you, Elly?”

  The top drawer refused to open. Maya checked all the way around the front and sides of the dresser but didn’t find a release mechanism. She inched the dresser away from the wall and examined the backside. Nothing.

  Maya rocked the dresser from side to side. She heard something solid and heavy sliding inside the top drawer. It sounded like two or three metallic things, sliding left and right. Tools? Shotgun parts?

  “Maya?” It was Coty’s voice, from downstairs. She shoved the dresser back against the wall and ran to the hall.

  “Be right there, Coty.” It was impossible to think of him as Wayne. She gathered up the sheets from the floor and hurried downstairs. Coty waited in the kitchen.

  “Heard anything from the doctor?” he asked.

  “Yes. Just a while ago. Elly can come home tomorrow, but we’ll know for sure in the morning. The doctor said she’s fine and didn’t have a stroke.”

  Maya tapped the basement door with her toe and smiled at Coty. He opened the door for her and she threw the sheets to the bottom of the stairs before closing the door and locking it.

  “Coty, do you know anything about lights that detect blood?” she asked. “Even old, dried blood, or blood that’s been washed off or painted over?”

  “Sure.” He blinked. “Why?”

  “I’m convinced someone died in this house,” Maya said.

  “Parts of this house were built a century ago. It wouldn’t be unusual for someone to have died here at one time or another.”

  “Someone was murdered in that old well. I saw two skulls down there. I think one had a bullet hole in the temple.”

  “Sheriff Wimple is looking into that, but what makes you so sure someone died in this house?”

  Maya chewed her lower lip. “Not just died. I think someone was murdered in this house.”

  There. I can’t un-say it.

  “Why do you suspect that?”

  How would Coty react if she told him she heard voices? What would he say if she told him she saw a green boy in the upstairs hallway? Would he believe that someone—something—had crawled through the Fedder Prairie tunnel after her, calling to her, begging her to stay there in that underground burrow with him? She knew what to expect. She knew what would happen if she told him. She knew what Coty’s expression would be, two seconds after she said the words.

  Maya shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me,” Coty said.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “No, because I told someone once, about something like this, and I know what happens.”

  “Really. You can tell me,” Coty insisted.

  “No. I told Benson, and he said I was nuts. I don’t need someone else thinking that.”

  “But, I promise–”

  “No, because you’ll promise and you’ll even mean it, but afterward you’d think to yourself … she’s nuts. You might not say it … but you’d think it.”

  “You’re seeing ghosts.”

  A moment passed before Maya asked. “Have you ever seen a ghost?” That’s evasive enough.

  Coty shook his head. “Nope.”

  “And no purple cows either, I suppose.” She heard the irritation in her own voice.

  “Purple cows? What? What are you talking about?”

  “It means forget what I said. Forget about the blood light and about someone dying here. Forget everything I said.”

  “I’m not going to forget the possibility of murder.”

  Maya opened the stove’s cast iron door and shoved a piece of pine inside. She wanted to tell Coty about the green boy, but couldn’t say the words. Fear paralyized her tongue. The two people she had told about hearing voices had turned against her, first Mama, and then Benson after they were married. Maya wouldn’t make that mistake again. She wouldn’t tell Coty anything.

  “What does this ghost look like?” Coty asked.

  “Green,” Maya blurted. Damn!

  “Green?”

  “Transparent and … green.”

  Coty raised a brow.

  They sat down at the kitchen table. “I saw my grandmother once, sixteen years after she died,” Maya said. “I made the mistake of telling my mother. Afterward, Mom dragged me to a child psychiatrist.”

  Coty nodded.

  Maya told herself to stop, right there, to say nothing more, but the words strew like marbles from a shattered jar. “I described my grandmother in detail, even how she called my mother by her nickname and what her voice sounded like. My mother’s face turned white because she had never told me about my grandmother. I never saw my grandmother. Never met her. She died before I was born and my mother kept no photos of her. Mom never told me that her mother called her Maudy. Maude is my mother’s middle name.”

  “So the doctor tried to convince you that you had imagined it, or dreamed it … that you hadn’t really seen anything?”

  “She’s still trying.”

  “How often do you see this green apparition?”

  “Four times so far.”

  “Male or female?”

  “He’s young. Mohawk hair. Nose ring. Brow ring. Baggy shorts and Nike high tops.”

  Coty stared at Maya for a moment, mouth open, looking as if he had a pinecone stuck in his throat. Then he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and sighed. “Aw hell.” He dug in his back pocket, flipped open his wallet and held it across the table toward Maya. “Is this him?”

  The photo was the exact image of the green boy upstairs, right down to those penetrating eyes. Coty’s eyes. She recognized the family resemblance now.

  “Your nephew?”

  Coty nodded. “It’s Danny, my sister’s only child. After Port Angeles I tracked him to Graceville. Someone saw Danny hitchhiking on the road a half mile from here.”

  “I’m sorry, Coty. I wish I hadn’t told you.”

  “I’m glad you did. I need to find out what happened, and why.”

  “How does one go about doing that?” Maya asked.

  “Maybe we can start with that blood light you asked about.”

  “You have one?”

  “No, but I know a hunter who uses one to follow wounded game.”

  “You don’t have to have a permit to use one?”

  Coty shook his head no. “Did Danny say anything to you?”

  “The first time I saw him, his lips moved but I couldn’t hear anything. Then later, in the middle of the night, he whispered, ‘Don’t leave me here’. Now, he usually just says, ‘Help me’.”

  Coty got up and leaned against the counter, staring out the window. His fingers gripped the sink’s edge, the tendons in the backs of his hands bulging and flexing so tight his skin turned white and Maya wondered if he might pull the counter from the wall.

  “If you see Danny again, tell him Uncle Wayne will find him and take him home.” Coty stepped to the back door and opened it. He paused there, his back to Maya. “Okay?” Coty’s voice cracked. He finished with a rough whisper. “Tell him I said that.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  AFTER COTY LEFT, MAYA shoved Elly’s sheets into the Maytag and pushed Hot / Large. The machine gurgled, filling with water. Steam floated up through the cool air. She added a scoop of soap and dropped the
lid.

  From the bottom step she studied the shadows in the back corner, far over to the right of the outside door at the end of the walkway. Over there the air was so black it looked like India ink. Unfathomable. Something gray moved in the murky air in that far corner. Something rustled, a sound like canvas against ice. Something sighed.

  “Hello?” Maya called. She backed up one step. The step creaked beneath her foot. Behind and above, the flickering glow from the woodstove highlighted the top step and the open door. Overhead, the single light bulb flickered and dimmed. She called again. “Hello?”

  Another deep sigh came from the shadows, along with the sound of something scratching and the sound of dirt dropping on dirt.

  “Coty?” Maya backed up another step. She squinted into the blackness, at the gray thing, the thing bunching up on itself, round-backed, like a bear, digging, clawing, backing up and lunging forward. It looked bigger than before. It looked closer.

  The flashlight was stuck to the side of the refrigerator at the top of the stairs. The flashlight would have helped but it was twenty feet away. Out of reach.

  The basement’s musty smell was trapped beneath the house by its mausoleum walls. The walls and floor held the stale, stagnant air motionless. Dead air. Imprisoned. Buried.

  Nothing breathes down here. The only living things were rats, spiders and worms. Except for the concrete walkway the floor was all dirt. The worms were in the dirt.

  What else was in the dirt? Who was that sighing? Who was digging over there? What was hunching its back, and lunging.

  The smell changed. It smelled like fresh churned earth. It smelled like crops rotated and fallow fields plowed, like recent compost mixed with decayed crops, all returning to the soil, becoming soil, returning to what it was decades before.

  Something was digging under the house. Did raccoons grow that big? What was that gray thing that bunched its back and rocked back and forth? That thing was bigger than a raccoon. It really was more like a bear, a bear caught in a trap and fighting hard to free itself, a bear thrashing and straining, ready to lose a claw or an arm in its struggle to escape. The bear moaned.

  There was no way for a bear to get into the basement. The door at the other end was closed and locked. Maya was sure of that, having checked it yesterday and the day before that, from outside. She ran up the stairs and grabbed the flashlight. She pushed the button all the way to bright and headed back down, aiming the light into the shadows. Halfway down the stairs, she halted, open-mouthed. Her eyes widened.

  The thing was not a bear. It was two people, pulling a third from the dirt. All three turned toward Maya’s bright, flashlight beam, as if only then aware of her presence. They halted their struggle, staring over their shoulders, and Maya stared back—at skeletons, their bones stained by time and by their damp grave. Strips of rotten clothing clung to their shoulders and arms. Long, stained femurs stabbed the brown dirt floor. Three luminous skulls with empty eye sockets tilted left and then right, aimed in Maya’s direction. The black sockets focused on her. A dull glow radiated from inside their craniums. The same dull glow exited their nasal slots and out through gaps in their teeth. The third skeleton struggled to pull his feet from the soil, flicking black dirt into the air. Clumps of dirt landed at Maya’s feet.

  Maya ran back up the stairs, dropping the flashlight on the top step in her haste. She slammed the door behind her and locked it. She heard the flashlight rolling and dropping, rolling and dropping, all the way down the eight wooden steps.

  Maya ran upstairs to the bathroom. She grabbed the bottle of Lorazapam and rattled a pill into her palm. She tossed it into her mouth, leaned down, and gulped tap water straight from the faucet. She splashed cold water on her face and leaned, breathless and shaking against the sink.

  “That didn’t happen,” she told her reflection. “You didn’t see anything down there. Not anything real. Not anything.”

  “Mama?”

  “Maya. It’s good to hear your voice. How’s things at the farm?” Jennifer Pederson’s voice sounded cheerful, as if she had not missed Maya at all in the past month.

  “Things are interesting. I thought Elly had a stroke, but apparently not. She spent two nights at the hospital, but she’s coming home today.”

  “My goodness! That must have been upsetting. How are you, dear?”

  “I’m fine, Mama.” Maya crossed her fingers behind her back for telling a lie.

  “Benson phoned,” Mama said. “He wanted to know where you’re at.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “I’m afraid I forgot that you asked me not to tell, so yes, he knows where you are. I told him you’re helping your aunt get the place ready to sell.” After a moment’s silence, Mama added, “I’m sorry, Maya. It just flew out of my mouth before I stopped to think.”

  “That’s okay. He would have found out eventually anyway. I’ve used my credit card twice. If he calls again, just tell him to forward my mail here.”

  “What does Elly have you doing up there at the farm?”

  “Cleaning and painting mostly. She’s getting rid of a lot of stuff, donating things to charities and we also had a yard sale. The house is almost empty.”

  “I’ll need to have a garage sale pretty soon too.”

  “Any prospects on the house yet, Mama?”

  “One couple has been back twice. So, maybe.”

  “Mama? Can I ask you something?”

  “Certainly, dear.”

  “Did we ever have a kitten? Or did I just imagine that?”

  “I don’t remember ever having a cat, honey. Your father was allergic, remember?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry, Maya, if taking you to Dr. Conover was traumatic. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s all right, Mama. Lately it seems like things are beginning to work themselves out. I’ve been able to tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “I’m so glad. When will you be coming home?”

  “I wasn’t planning on coming back to your house, Mama. I plan on getting an apartment downtown and looking for work within walking distance.”

  “That’s logical.”

  Logical.

  “Oh, I see Elly’s handyman coming across the driveway, Mama. We’re leaving now to go get Elly from the hospital.”

  “Call me again soon, Maya. Please?”

  “Yes.” Maya disconnected and opened the kitchen door.

  “You ready?” Coty wore khaki slacks, a navy blue cotton sweater. His hair looked trimmed. He had nicked his chin shaving. A red dot marked the wound.

  “Want to drive?” Maya asked. Benson always insisted on driving when they were together. It was a man thing, she guessed. The only time Maya drove was when she went somewhere alone.

  “I’ll drive if you don’t want to,” Coty said.

  “Actually, I like to drive,” Maya said. “You can drive coming back, okay?”

  Moments later the Ford Edge rumbled across the wide wooden planks of the bridge and climbed the other side of the valley to the road. She glanced at Coty’s attire.

  “You look nice today.” Her face burned and wished she hadn’t said that.

  “Thanks. I decided bringing Elly home is a bit of an occasion. Let’s hope she remembers me.”

  Maya chuckled. “I’ll introduce you if she doesn’t.”

  Several minutes passed before Coty said. “You look nice too. First time I’ve seen you in a dress.”

  “Well, it is a special occasion.”

  Coty picked imaginary lint from his sleeve. “I have a confession.”

  Maya waited. “Another? What this time?”

  “I lied when I said I’ve never seen a ghost. I’ve seen … things in the upper barn. They’re difficult to describe, though.”

  Maya felt a sense of relief. She understood. There were no words to describe some of the things she had seen.

  “You told me Danny looks green. The people in the barn
are all gray. One guy’s throat was cut from ear to ear. Blood-soaked shirtfront. Even his hands are black with old blood, like he tried to stop the bleeding by applying pressure. He scared the hell out of me. I ran all the way down the hill. Didn’t sleep for forty-eight hours. All the others just look lost.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two days after I arrived. Early February.”

  “Seen anything else since then?” Maya asked.

  “Yeah, three Mexican men, standing outside the basement door.”

  “I was thinking—maybe you should come upstairs, around noon or midnight. That’s when I see Danny. Maybe if he sees you, he’ll communicate,” Maya said.

  “Okay.” Coty sighed. “I never had nightmares before, and believe me, I’ve seen some bloody crime scenes in my day, but they pale in comparison to the stuff I’ve seen here, if what I see is real.”

  The memory of the three corpses pulling themselves from the dirt in the basement flashed before Maya’s eyes. I’m not going to try describing that.

  “Watch out!” Coty grabbed the steering wheel and they missed a mongrel dog by inches. In the rearview mirror Maya spotted the lanky dog loping, unscathed, along the shoulder of the road.

  “He’s okay,” Coty said. “He looks like he’s accustomed to dodging cars, and I’ll be he knows exactly where he’s going.”

  Maya drove for several minutes, her heartbeat finally returning to normal. “How much more work needs to be done around the farm?” Maya asked. “I mean repairs, before it can be sold?”

  “The house is okay the way it is. I see no dry rot, no sign of termites. The place has good bones.”

  Maya grimaced.

  “You know what I mean,” Coty said. “The bunkhouse isn’t worth saving except for the unit I’m in. It can be used as a guesthouse. The other four units are falling down. I’m done with repairs to the floor and toilet. The woodshed is okay, and so is the smaller barn. It’s probably less than twenty years old. The upper barn though—” Coty shook his head. “It’s rotting away, and as far as I’m concerned, it can be struck by lightning and burn to the ground. It’s a nightmare up there.”