haunted. It’s this thought I have when I wake in the dark, struggling to catch my breath. I sit up in the bed and look at the clock. Just after midnight. I shake my head, trying to clear the dream away. But something feels different. Off.
After the sheriff left, it had taken a while to calm Cal down. I could tell he was just one word away from bursting through the door and hunting down Griggs to tear him apart piece by piece. His dark eyes had grown darker, and he ground his teeth together. He clenched and unclenched his hands repeatedly.
I was unsure what to do, as he ignored my entreaties to move away from the door, to stop glaring out the window. Griggs was long gone, I told him, and besides, didn’t he want to go back to the kitchen and have more Lucky Charms? I picked out all the green marshmallows for him. He ignored me.
And since I didn’t know what else to do, I just stood near him, hoping my presence would be enough to calm him. There was a tentative moment when I touched his back through the old white shirt he’d found in a drawer that pulled tight across his shoulders. He said nothing and I began to rub my hand in a slow circle at the base of his spine. Eventually he sighed and I felt the tension bleed from him and he bowed his head.
“He’s just talking,” I told him quietly, meaning the sheriff. “He’s made empty threats before.”
There was a flash of fury in his eyes, and he turned and gripped my shoulders. “He will not threaten you while I stand before you,” he snapped. “Do you understand me?”
“Cal….”
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
He scowled at me and turned to look out the window.
We spent the rest of the day on opposite sides of the house. Cal had still been at the window as night had fallen, but I’d heard him making his nest outside my closed door right before I’d dropped off to sleep.
And now that I’m awake, in the middle of the night, Little House feels different. It feels emptier.
I move from my bed and open the door. His blanket is there. His pillow is there. He is not.
He’s not in the spare bedroom. He’s not in the bathroom. He’s not in Little House. Sunrise is still hours away, but I tell myself I have one last place to look. I open the door and climb up the ladder.
There is no one on the roof.
I will take you and yours into the black.
I slide down the ladder as quickly as I can, my heart starting to thud in my chest. He wouldn’t do that, I think. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.
But, I realize, I don’t know a damned thing about him. I don’t know what he is capable of. I grab the keys to the Ford off the table near the door. I slip on my work boots and grab my father’s coat from the rack on the wall. It smells of earth, of feathers. I shut the door behind me and head out into the night.
Poplar Street is dark as I drive through town. I pass the station as it sits silently.
No one’s out this late. Some shops have low lights that reflect in the front windows. The banner for the “Jump Into Summer Festival” glows briefly as my headlights hit it, but then I pass under it and it is dark again. I leave the main drag behind, turning onto Old Valley Road, which winds up through the hills that surround Roseland. I’m trying to remain calm, but not knowing where Calliel might be is doing nothing for my nerves. I almost expect to get to the sheriff’s house and see it razed to the ground, Calliel standing above it like some dark avenging angel.
I’m a guardian, he whispers in my head. I guard.
Yes, but he also protects. And he’s found someone he’s deemed a threat. I switch off my headlights as I round the final corner, familiar enough with the
road to drive it in the dark. The house is not destroyed as part of me had anticipated, but rather is lit up, as if someone is still awake this late on a Tuesday. I pull the truck into a copse of trees off to the side of the road well away from the house, hiding it in case someone passes by.
I hurry up the side of the road, feeling slightly ridiculous at being crouched over, but I need to make sure nothing has gone horribly wrong, or at least find out what happened. I cross a ditch rather than head directly up the driveway, then cut across the yard. The lights inside are bright in the dark, but still muffled by curtains pulled across the picture windows, three cars in the driveway. One I recognize as the sheriff’s SUV. The other two I don’t know. There’s enough visibility for me to see a floodlight attached to the front of the house. I go toward the rear in a wide arc to avoid setting the light off. There’s another light on in the house at the back. The ground around the house drops off. There must be a cellar, a rarity in Oregon. The light at the back is coming from a window just overhead that I can’t see into, but it’s propped halfway open. I smell cigarette smoke.
Then I hear voices.
“I told you to blow that shit outside,” Griggs rumbles. “I don’t know why you
gotta smoke inside my house.”
“What can I say,” a male voice I don’t recognize says, “it’s an addiction.” Laughter. Several voices. All male.
“I don’t care,” Griggs says. “Blow it out the window.”
“Someone’s in a mood tonight,” another man says. “This has really got you