The Ashes (The Rebecca Underhill Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  “Joseph William Whalen,” I say. “He’s dead now.”

  “I know the whole story.”

  “The papers?” I question. “You read about it there?”

  He cocks his head.

  “Your housemate, Robyn, filled in the details. I was worried about her daughter, Molly. If the little girl was confusing the Boogeyman in her mind for the killer who stalked you. The little girl’s deepest fears appear to parallel your traumatic experiences. A Boogeyman who pulls her down into a hole or a cellar. He does unspeakable things to her.”

  “Molly doesn’t know anything about Whalen,” I say.

  “You sure about that?”

  Me, slowly nodding my head, my eyes locked onto his wet eyes, his pale, stiff face.

  “We don’t talk about it,” I assure him.

  “No, but other people might. People at school. Children. Teachers. What happened to you, Ms. Underhill, has become the stuff of urban legend. It’s been the subject of many articles, news programs, and even a novel if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’ve done your research.”

  “That I have,” he says. “Tell me something. The horrible events of that night with Joseph William Whalen occurred in the woods behind the home you now live in. Why do you stay there if, at the very least, it brings back such awful memories? Why not move away? Far away?”

  “My father was a trooper, Dr. Cuther,” I say. “The home was his home. The home I grew up in. That my twin sister, Molly, grew up in. Sure, there are the bad memories, but no matter where I go, I will still have the bad memories. My father taught my sister and me never to run away from fear but to face it. Besides . . .”

  “Besides,” he says like a question.

  “Molly,” I say. “She’s been dead a long, long time now. But I still talk to her, and she still talks to me.” I smile, laugh a little under my breath. “I know it sounds crazy, but I feel if I were to leave that house for good, I would be leaving Molly behind. I’d be abandoning her memory, her soul.”

  “Her ghost,” he adds.

  “Yes,” I say. “I suppose that’s right.”

  “So you and Mike have something in common,” he says. “You talk to people who don’t exist.”

  “I guess I never looked at it that way,” I say. “But for me, it’s not just an overactive imagination. It’s memory. Memory is everything. Good and bad.”

  “You can run from the bad memories, no matter how hard you try to put them out of your mind.”

  “But you can’t escape them. Am I right, Doc?”

  The doctor, gently nodding. “What’s happening to little Mike, the songs, his father . . . I agree that much of this can be chalked up to the vivid imagination of a young boy. Especially one so gifted. Many kids have imaginary friends, and your son is no exception. The cornfield and the woods beyond it are lovely but mysterious places, and your son is tapping into that mystery. It entertains him.”

  His eyes drift until he’s no longer focusing on me or his notes. Rather, something deep inside the well of his mind. A sharp, youngish mind that exists behind an old mask of a face.

  I run my hands through my hair, then rest them on my lap.

  “I’m sensing a but here, Doc,” I say.

  “But,” he says, “what we need to do for young Mike is keep an eye on him. Especially when he’s playing in the woods or near the cornfield.”

  My pulse picking up, stomach cramping tighter. “I don’t allow him to go any farther than the edge of the field.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.”

  “Why?” I say as if the last thing I want is for him to validate my suspicion. “Do you think there could be something out there? A man? A stalker?”

  He smiles warmly. “No worries, Ms. Underhill. I’m sure what we’re dealing with here is eighty percent Mike’s imagination and twenty percent paranoia on the part of his mom.” The smile fades. “That said, however, I’ll once more stress the fact that lots of words have been written about what happened to you all those years ago. I wouldn’t be truthful if I didn’t tell you I’m worried about copycat stalkers.”

  “Trust me,” I say, “I’ve already thought of that many, many times over.”

  “Tell me, Ms. Underhill, do you own a gun?”

  Jesus H. What I want from the old guy is to tell me my fears are irrational not based in reality.

  “I don’t have one,” I admit. “But then, since Whalen’s death, I never felt that I needed one.”

  Dr. Cuther shrugs his shoulders.

  “Couldn’t help to have one around,” he says. “Especially out in the country.”

  Just then, Michael Jr. comes back into the office. In his hands, he holds his drawing.

  “All finished,” he says.

  Mike slowly walks across the office floor, sets the drawing on the couch so that Cuther and I have no choice but to get up and view it from a standing position. What I see not only takes me aback, it makes me feel as if the floor were turning to mush. Dizziness sets in, and for a brief moment, I feel like I need to return to my chair, sit down.

  Dr. Cuther takes notice and holds out his hand, which I take with mine. But as soon as I grab it, I let it go. The hand is cold and hard with calluses. His fingernails are yellowed and far too long. But then, they are the fingernails of an old man who seems to be growing older not by the day, but by the minute.

  “Are you okay, Ms. Underhill?” he asks. “Would you like to sit back down? Would you like a glass of water maybe?”

  I shake my head, swallow something dry and bitter.

  “No thank you, Doctor,” I say. “I think I just got up too fast.”

  But I’m lying, and he knows it. Because it’s my eight-year-old son’s drawing that has me so off balance, so distraught.

  “What do have we here, Mike?” Cuther says, feigning a tone of optimism when I’m certain that he, too, is disturbed. “You are indeed quite the artist. Your skills are those, not of a boy, but of someone far older. A man.”

  I breathe. I also lay my hand flat on my stomach. The move is as much involuntary as it is becoming a habit. My son’s painting summons me like a voice because the image illustrated is one I am very familiar with. It’s my late ex-husband’s face.

  Michael Hoffman, Sr.

  In the drawing, his torso and head are depicted. He’s standing to the right of a boy. Our boy. Even though Mike’s face can’t be seen, I know it can only be him. Situated directly in front of Mike is the cornfield with the stalks tall, gray, and dead. But there’s something inside the stalks, in the dark spaces that block out the sun. It’s a face, and the vaguest outline of a too thin body to go with the face.

  Initially, I am reminded of The Scream, by Yung. That’s how obscurely depicted the man in the corn is. The face is hairless, missing brows and a nose. The mouth is wide open, the head bald, and the body nondescript and featureless. Naked, but without sex. His hands are not held up to his mouth but instead held out for the boy in the picture. As if he is welcoming the boy . . . The monster, encouraging my son to step into the corn.

  For the briefest of moments, I try to convince myself that I’m not even seeing a man, or monster, in the corn. But the more I look at the drawing, the more he pops out at me. His obscure face staring into mine.

  “Mike,” Dr. Cuther says, index finger pressed gently against the man on the right-hand side, “is that your dad?”

  “Yup,” my son says proudly. “That’s Dad. Told you, you can see right through him. It’s kinda weird.”

  He’s right. Mike depicted his father as if he were transparent so that you can still make out the landscape behind him, and even the far north edge of the red, art barn.

  “Is he a ghost, Boo?” I say. “Is your dad a ghost?”

  He smiles. “Aren’t I supposed to be afraid of ghosts?”

  “You’re not afraid of your dad?” Cuther presses.

  “No way,” the boy says, smiling as if he were saying Duh’uhhhh.

  Cuther
nods, shoots me a glance. Then, “Mike, the image in the corn. Can you tell us who that is?”

  Mike’s composure changes noticeably. Like a switch has been pulled inside his brain. His face loses its color, his eyes glaze over. I see his Adam’s apple bob up and down in his neck.

  “That’s the man who sings to me,” he says.

  “I see,” Dr. Cuther says. “Are you afraid of him?”

  “Yes,” Mike admits.

  “Does he have a name, Mike?”

  I see the boy’s eyes well up.

  “Yes,” he whispers. “His name is Mr. Skinner.”

  My heart beating in my throat, my stomach now in agony. My intestines on fire.

  “Mr. Skinner,” Dr. Cuther repeats. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Yes,” Mike says. “He’s the Boogeyman.”

  Once more, Michael is ushered into the playroom off the office so Cuther and I can talk. But first, I ask to use the restroom. The pain that’s come over my midsection is so intense I break out in a cold sweat. When people told me how blessed I was to be having a child all those years ago, they never said anything about the nerves that go along with parenting. And what’s all this about it only getting worse as the kid gets older?

  Moments later, the pain has abated, and I’m back inside Cuther’s office. The pale-faced doctor is back to sitting behind his desk, making some notes in what I presume to be Michael’s file. I choose not to sit but, instead, stand before his desk, arms crossed over my chest, my brow pasty, my body still overcome with chills.

  “You feeling well, Ms. Underhill?” he says, looking up.

  “It’ll pass,” I say. “Women’s issues.”

  He bites down on his lip.

  “I understand.” Then, “This Mr. Skinner your boy speaks about. Do you know of anyone named Skinner in your neighborhood?”

  “It’s not much of a neighborhood. It’s Brunswick. It’s the country. Miles and miles of the most gorgeous farmland and hilly green pastures you ever did see. No Skinners that I know of. Certainly not anyone who lives inside the goddamned corn.” Exhaling. “Excuse my French.”

  He holds up his hands as if to say time out, calm down. “There is no cause for alarm, Ms. Underhill. On occasion, I must weigh the theoretical against the practical. In this situation, your son is imagining something good and peaceful to him. Something that gives him security.”

  “My husband.”

  “Exactly.”

  He makes a gesture with his open palm as if to indicate on the other hand.

  “But he is also very insecure at the same time. That man in the corn stalks, Skinner, I believe he is the manifestation of that insecurity.”

  I can’t help it, the cramps in my stomach are replaced with the slightest pangs of anger.

  “Dr. Cuther,” I say. “I am doing everything in my power as a single mother to keep Mike and his sister, Molly, safe. Safe from danger, known and unknown. We are doing everything in our power as single mothers. Meaning Robyn and me.”

  He’s emphatically nodding, his pale, almost white face stiff and without expression.

  “Oh, please do not misunderstand me, Ms. Underhill. I am not accusing you of any such thing. In fact, under the circumstances of your ordeal back in 2008, I consider you one exceptionally strong and courageous woman.”

  And here comes the but again.

  “However,” he goes on. “It might concern me that Mike Jr. would be so specific in his naming of the man in the corn. Skinner. But it is a fairly common name. One used on the Simpsons cartoon even, if memory serves me correct.” He pauses, his eyes not blinking, his lips not moving. “But I still see this as a little boy’s imagination at play.”

  We both retreat into our separate silences for the moment while in the room next door, we can hear Michael quietly humming a tune. Ring around the Rosie, a pocket full of posies . . . I’ve been familiar with the tune since my earliest days. But only now is it beginning to creep me out.

  Cuther raises up his arm, glances at his watch.

  “That’s all for today,” he says, standing slowly from behind the desk.

  I call out for my son. He gets up from the table, enters the room.

  “Well, Mike,” Cuther says, “did you draw me another picture?”

  “Not a very good one. Next time maybe.”

  “That means you’d like to come back and talk with me some more?”

  “Sure. If my mom can come too.”

  The doctor laughs. “She is more than invited.”

  I take hold of Mike’s little hand. “We’ll see you next week, Dr. Cuther.”

  “Very good,” he says, sitting back down to his notes.

  Opening the main office door, Mike and I step out to the rhythm of the words he’s chanting under his breath.

  “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down . . .”

  Before leaving downtown Albany, we pull through a McDonald’s for a Happy Meal for little Mike’s lunch and a hot coffee pick-me-up for me. While we wait to pull up to the window, I text Robyn who is presently handling a dozen or so students at The School of Art all on her own.

  On way. We need to talk, Blondie.

  I still haven’t arrived at the window when I receive a text response.

  Love it when you call me Blondie. Too bad we’re not lesbians. Oh well. Told you Cuther rocks. Be here now. Students suck.

  Michael devours his cheeseburger Happy Meal while we make the drive over the long, tall, bridge that spans the Hudson River and separates Albany County from the more rural hillsides of Rensselaer County. The lack of conversation is just fine by me. Too many things running through my head. My stomach isn’t liking the effects of the coffee, but God pity whatever the hell gets in the way of a woman and her caffeine boost.

  I’m not sure why I should be so bent out of shape over my meeting with Dr. Cuther. He’s right. There’s nothing to worry about. Mike’s imagination has always been more intense than the average bear. Even back when he was only two, he’d put on little plays in the art barn. Plays he’d write and script himself. Plays in which he’d play all the parts. The homespun dramas would last maybe a minute or two, and they were simple, for obvious reasons, but still so very creative. I have some of them on video. Little Mike, the Super Boy who would save the world, his costume a bath towel draped around his neck and back like a cape. Mike, the lost puppy. Mike, the angel sent from heaven to protect his mommy. That one still brings tears to my eyes.

  I glance at him in the rearview, eating his lunch, ketchup on his lips, staring out the window at the green grass and thick woods beyond it. I wonder what he’s thinking about. What he sees inside his head. But then, I think twice before asking him. Better that I just sip my coffee, concentrate on getting us home.

  Minutes later, I’m pulling onto the country road that will lead us to the farm that once belonged to my family and Super Duper Trooper Dan, Molly’s and my dad. Molly and I not only called the big white two-story farmhouse our home, it was our own universe. The woods behind it and the mountain located in its center was our own world for us to discover. We spent countless hours out there despite repeated protests from the ‘rents. But, at the time, we didn’t know about the dangers that could lurk in the woods. Dangers that came in the form of a man named Joseph William Whalen, who would one day catch us playing inside his abandoned house in the woods. The very same home where, as a fourteen-year-old boy, he shot and killed his entire family before being put away inside a prison for the criminally insane which eventually led to his incarceration in Green Haven prison and then to his release decades later. As if a teenage boy who slaughters his parents and siblings is, suddenly, one day free of the psychosis that led him to murder in the first place.

  As I pull into the gravel driveway toward the turnaround outside the front porch, I gaze upon the red barn and, beyond it, the cornfield. Beyond that, the woods and the mountain, I find it almost impossible to believe that anything bad ever happened there. That maybe the horrors of eight years ago a
re only a figment of my imagination. An artist’s mind. Or, at the very least, the unwelcome memory of a bad dream.

  So, why do I still live in this house? Why haven’t I moved far, far away? It’s like I told Dr. Cuther, you can’t exactly run away from memories — good or bad. And this place is my home. It’s the place where I grew up. My blood sweat and tears are a part of the soil. It’s where Molly and I became women, and it’s where Molly spent her final days before the cancer ravaged her entirely. This is where Molly’s spirit resides. Molly saved my life on more than one occasion. Even though she’s no longer alive, in the biological sense of the word, I cannot risk ever being separated from her . . . from her spirit, her memory, her ghost.

  As I get out of the Jeep, I see that the class is being let out at The School of Art. While a dozen adults — some of them young, a couple middle-aged, one or two most definitely over the hill — head to their rides parked in the parking lot we created on a small plot of flat earth between the house and the barn. A much younger, more cheerful, little character barrels toward us across the green lawn.

  Molly.

  Today she’s wearing a jumper with red hearts on it and a matching blue turtleneck. Her hair is dirty blonde, just like her mother’s, her eyes just as blue. She also has her mother’s smile and uncanny ability to light up a room, even if the room is located in a funeral parlor.

  Mike gets himself out of his seat belt and out of the Jeep Liberty. He comes around the front, holding his little white paper package of French fries.

  Molly stops maybe a half a foot away from the boy.

  “McDonalds!” she cries. “I wanna French fry, Mikey!” She reaches for one before he has the chance to say, get lost.

  Protecting the Happy Meal bag with two hands, Michael enters an all-out sprint for the house.

  “Molly, don’t worry,” I say, pulling out a second Happy Meal from the center console cup holder. “I didn’t forget you, hon.”