Prologue

Only nine, David Upton knew the secrets of the universe: leave the nest…have fun. For far too long he had been a chubby pink baby squirrel while his mama had staved off hungry falcons. Today, finally he was beyond the backyard and boldly teasing any bird of prey that dared to come his way.

The back yard was a buffer between his house and those dark magical woods beyond. The gate had been unlocked and he had accepted the invitation. His stroll down the forest path however quickly became a jungle adventure as the path disappeared and the heat and humidity of the forest was causing him to reconsider his adventure. Now, after an hour of battling tangling vines and a larger variety of thorns and brambles than he imagined possible, he longed for that predatory falcon so he could scramble once more across the wide-open expanse of his back yard to the protective cover of his jungle-gym and then with a mad dash to his home…and safety…and Mom!

However, that currently wasn’t an option, and with no path to guide him, the journey backward was equally as difficult as the trek forward, so onward he went. Stumbling over rotting logs, pushing through thickets, two steps forward, three steps back, swiping smears of blood from squashed mosquitoes and the prick of thorns onto his arm or jeans—whichever came first—he explored his “jungle.”

Focusing intently on blazing a path, he had long since tuned out the sounds of insects and other animals. Knowing what creatures were near was just not the right thing if fear was to be avoided. This journey was scary enough without thinking a wolf or mountain lion was lurking behind every tree! But after listening to his own grunts and groans for what must have been hours (one and a quarter, actually), the loud calling of a jay made him pause. He looked up to a small patch of blue sky through the canopy and waited, catching his breath.

It called again.

David’s dirt and sweat began to attract flies and mosquitoes as he stood motionless. After several moments more, he brushed at his neck and face when it called again.

Although no biologist, he sensed the jay was a bird of open spaces and not a forest bird. He could follow the jay to such open spaces…and home. This adventure could be finished some other time, he reasoned.

Among the creaks and squeaks and chirps and whispers of the forest he looked in all directions and listened intently…and the calls of the jay stopped. Instead, all the other sounds intensified—the crickets, the cicadas, the frogs, songbirds, even a pileated woodpecker with its resounding and insistent thok, thok, thok as it pounded its dagger-like beak into a dead tree looking for insects. Once more, he tuned out each sound until all around was silence.

Not even the buzzing of a mosquito.

The calling of the jay was also gone…as if it had never existed.

Then, as a matter of fact, especially for a nine-year-old, he questioned why any of that should even matter. He liked birds, their colors, their sounds, the way they danced in the wind, the way they dove at cats and then found safety in the skies—but one bird was pretty much like any other. He certainly didn’t need any bird to lead him home! Why would this bird sound so enticing—so alluring—so attractive?

Then…it called again.

~ * ~

Years like days.

Days like years.

And those eternally-long nights with a thousand eyes peering through ink-stained skies with infinite curses…damning one’s soul to misery and doom. However, at last, the sun had risen once more, and the misty morning had festered into the heat of mid-afternoon.

Wandering aimlessly from hill to valley, from treetop to the forest floor like a drugged beast having escaped from a madman’s laboratory.

He wandered.

He waited.

He longed for release.

And then…the youth approached…clumsily, stumbling over logs and vines along the forest floor.

The youth was clumsy and exhausted, but also vibrant…and alive.

~ * ~

The call of the jay sounded again. David cocked an ear in its direction, moved a step, then waited for the next enticing call. And with each call the sound became more beautiful, more lyrically haunting than the time before. David repeated his actions each time the jay repeated its song. For the moment, nothing else mattered—being lost or separated from home and family, being exhausted and soaked in sweat, being covered with dust and dirt, pierced with insect bites and the cuts and scratches from a thousand alien barbs and brambles and bushes.

It didn’t matter.

The song came again. And he wandered deeper into the shaded forest—the dark and foreboding shaded forest.

~ * ~ 

Long ago he had possessed a yo-yo…a toy…a simple wheel on a string that responded faithfully to his every command. Those were simple times…like the simple times now.

He called…and the music played like honey joyfully dripping from a bee’s sweet home.

~ * ~

Was it there before? There, right there in the middle of the vibrant, overcrowded, stuffed-to-the-rafters forest David suddenly noticed…a path that began without rhyme or reason as if plucked from deep within his secret wishes. It was right there just twenty yards ahead. The music and extinct bird songs filled his ears.

He headed for the path and the underbrush seemed to part like the Red Sea. Amazingly, it reached him before he reached it. He stepped onto what seemed like fresh earth. The soil was cool and moist even through the soles of his sneakers. Within three steps down the path David Upton was already refreshed as if he had just begun his adventuresome trek. There was no sweat on his forehead or under his arms; the scratches on his arms and neck were gone, as was the blood. He strolled along the path as if he was a young man in love for the first time and the path was a lilac-lined boulevard.

The path twisted luxuriously through the woods beneath dappled sunlight.

He walked briskly, contentedly, without looking beyond his immediate frame of view. He heard the music. He heard the melodious song of the birds. He heard life and love enter his ears and his heart all without knowing that the path would soon end in utter darkness. And, high above, the sun did its best to shine.

~ * ~

Closer, the music and the muse willed the boy. The cave is cool and black…dark and deep.

~ * ~

At the cave’s entrance David heard the music end. He flinched at the darkness of the cave and attempted to back-peddle.

It didn’t work. He slipped and reached for the cave wall, but didn’t find it—all that was there, forty feet below, was the cave’s rocky floor. He strained to hear the music, his music—there was none. He longed to hear the magical song of birds—again, none. He scanned the darkness of the cave’s interior and found nothing but a gray mist that snaked its way from the back of the cave until it created a path of its own toward David and the front of the cave. This was the only promise he could fathom. He breathed in deeply, stepped forward onto the misty path and fell instantly to the cave floor more than three stories below. There was no time to think. There was no time for regret. There wasn’t even time to scream…just time enough to fall. The rocks below pushed upward through his tender skin and growing tendons and bones like hungry teeth. His blood began to pool around him. He let out a last sigh and his warm breath created a trembling mist against the cool cave air.

~ * ~

The song of the jay rang out.

Release….

Years go by.

Chapter One

The back of the house was darker than Benjamin Hatcher remembered, but then, given what had just occurred, the reason that he had returned, maybe it was supposed to look dark…black, brooding, like excess ink dripping slowly down a slickened page. The mid-afternoon sun along with the singing of birds and the humming of insects should have inspired warmth and a world filled with light and joy. Instead, his boyhood home was somehow shrouded in both a physical and emotional cloak. The wrap-around front porch was shaded by oaks and maples that towered over the Country-style house on the edge of suburbia. Behind the home were woods, thick and oppressive. Funny, he thought, the word oppressive had never before come to mind when describing the house or the woods that flanked the property. Why now?

But he knew the answer. It didn’t take years of endless psychobabble to determine the cause…the answer was simple. His mother had just died, and the funeral was one day away. So, the woods seemed oppressive, darker, larger, and nearer to the house than when he was a child. But things always seemed on a grander scale to children, and the expanse of thinning grass was now proof since it currently seemed comparatively small. Yes, all things were relative…and inversely related to the age of the viewer…it was the simple mathematics of growing up. But if the woods and the shaded porch seemed foreboding, then the house, with its closed curtains and sealed window blinds, seemed absolutely sinister.

Why?

He had a very happy childhood here. Why these feelings? Where were the words to describe just such a feeling, he wondered, and gripped the brass doorknob to the house that he once called home. Locked.

Fishing in his pocket for the key, he scraped his shoe across the rough texture of the wooden planks of the porch. The surface was splintered and sorely in need of sanding, some patching, and some refinishing. It was amazing just how quickly things went into a state of disrepair. Or had he been away so long and neglected the way his mother truly lived, he wondered. The key slid easily into the lock and the knob turned in his grip until a faint metallic click allowed the door to glide inward as if someone were on the inside pulling, tugging, desperately longing for him, anyone, to gain entry.

Once inside, rather than scan the surroundings that held so many special memories, he turned his back to the interior of the house and gazed instead into the mirror beside the front door. The mirror was framed by dark-stained wood on all sides with pegs above to hang apparel as one entered the room. Benjamin noticed immediately that he needed a haircut as he ran a hand down the back of his head through the excess sandy-colored hair that dribbled down like a waterfall of curly silk. His mother had always bragged about his hair, how it was so fine and curly when he was a baby that all the other mothers were jealous, how she really didn’t need a girl since her first born was so pretty. How was she to know that two male siblings lay ahead?

“Sorry, Mom,” he muttered. “I had planned to get a trim the day I got the news.” After that it didn’t matter anymore, and he decided to drive overnight to make it in time to attend to the arrangements. After all, he, as the eldest son, had been chosen as the executor of her estate.

Like most everything else in the house, the mirror was dusty and faded, and his reflection barely showed the tiredness that registered in his usually bright blue eyes. He had to strain to make out the stubble on his chin and cheeks. And as he leaned in close enough to see the detail of his own reflection, there was something else in the mirror looking back at him over his shoulder. It was close, real close, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He couldn’t feel breath on his neck or feel any kind of warmth from a physical presence, but the look was unmistakable…two eyes, gray and alert, searching the private confines of his soul…staring into his reflection for all it was worth.

Benjamin stumbled backward as he spun around, arms flailing, “what the hell.” His foot hit something solid and he fell backward onto his butt, what would tomorrow be a very sore butt! He didn’t hear the thud he made, just the sound of his own excited voice. He looked around wildly, quickly regaining his standing position. “Billy?” he whispered.

Then, he realized just what he had said. Billy?? The thought crystallized. Why had he thought of Billy? What he had intended to say was the name of his brother, Mark, who was expected to arrive at the house at about the same time that he himself arrived at their deceased parent’s home. Then he realized as he brushed the dust from his jeans with a swipe of his hand across his seat, those penetrating gray eyes could not belong to just anyone…they were the eyes of his youngest brother.

But neither brother was anywhere to be seen. In fact, one of them couldn’t be in the house, the one with the penetrating gray eyes, since he had died years ago…more years than Benjamin cared to remember. But if Mark wasn’t in the house, then who was it that looked him in the eyes just a minute before? Nervously, he scanned the remainder of the downstairs of the house.

He heard silence.

He saw dusty shadows…and memories.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Benjamin’s hometown of Kosmosdale had fallen prey to a rampant spurt of suburban sprawl. The subdivision, like many others, pushed right up against a tract of forest known locally as Saunder’s Woods. Benjamin’s parents, Robert and Jessica, bought the Country-style home just as the house had finished being constructed with sweet-smelling sawdust nearly hanging in the air. The house wasn’t large by any means, but it suited their needs at the time, and as Benjamin gained a brother and then a second brother, the house grew also. The attic was finished and became the bedroom that two of the three brothers eventually shared when they became old enough to be moved from their parent’s bedroom that temporarily acted as a nursery. This addition was followed by the construction of a wrap-around back porch that could be blocked off so that a couple of young children could play outside without wandering off into the woods as children of any age are tempted to do. So the house, although not a Gothic mansion, was to a growing boy, a home of epic, sometimes mythic, proportions.

As a boy, Benjamin Hatcher loved this house.

In fact, he still did.

Most people visiting the Hatcher household began by knocking on the front door, but family and close friends entered through the rear. Here, it was inviting, warm and comforting, as least to Benjamin as he eyed the interior of 1109 Mountain View Drive. It was amazing how the designers of suburban subdivisions named the roads with titles that belied impossible settings or conjured visions of long destroyed realities. There was obviously no mountain view here. The view that was here as revealed in the mirror beside the door, was dusty and faded, but, other than that, just as he remembered. Had it been so long since he last visited? He tried to remember, and after shaking his head in disgust and embarrassment, realized that it had been over two months since his last trip home.

Two months doesn’t seem like that long a duration until you factor in such information that his mother was widowed and aging.

Had she been so sick she couldn’t care for the house? he wondered, as he flicked on the light switch just inside the front door. Immediately, he wished that he hadn’t and the answer to the question he had just posed became painstakingly clear. This wasn’t the way his mother had lived. She had always taken pride in a clean house. She had never been a “neat freak” or anything, but housework had always been high on her list of priorities, although always below insuring her family was happy and cared for. Benjamin smiled with straight teeth drying in the stale air as he remembered a tiny fraction of the times that his mother had stopped doing chores so that she could toss a water-filled balloon, play a quick game of two-square, or push one of her three children on the swings.

But that was before Billy had died.

After that, she still worked at her chores that needed to be done, but never as hard, and never did they seem to truly matter. Benjamin remembered, and the smile evaporated from his face as he scanned his immediate surroundings.

The house in its present condition was nothing less than shocking. Dust covered the furniture. Cobwebs hung from the dining room chandelier in sheets like sails billowing in a summer breeze. And the beige carpet on the dining room floor, which had always been vacuumed at least twice a week, was now littered with dirt, scraps of paper, even dried leaves which was especially odd since it was the beginning of summer. The leaves from last fall would have been raked, bagged and mulched or discarded months ago. None were hanging around outside in the yard, nor blown by the wind into the corners of the porch or against the house.

Why were they inside on the floor?

But reason and logic didn’t really matter right now, he decided. If reason were present, he thought, then his mother would still be alive and he wouldn’t be seeing faces in the mirror beside the door.

Right??

With that thought, Benjamin once more turned his back to the interior of the house and faced the mirror by the door. What had he seen before? he wondered. Stepping closer, he pulled a hand up to rub his squared jaw. He needed not only a haircut, but also a shave and the stubble felt like a freshly laid sidewalk with its porous concrete drying in the sun. He was close enough now to see the individual hairs poking out from his chin. Studiously, he swiped at the mirror with his hand to clear away some of the dust for a more detailed study. He switched his focus from his face to the reflection of the house over his shoulder, at the dining room table over his right shoulder with its lace tablecloth pushed askew as if his mother had died right there pulling the cloth partially to the floor as her heart went into some sort of pulmonary gymnastics, straining her systems until finally, at last, she passed away. Then, over his left shoulder, he gazed at the living room couch with its pillows pushed this way and that…one, his favorite green pillow with the tassels, lay on the floor. The image brought back so many memories that it literally hurt. His childhood home had never looked like this. But then again, he was no longer a child. So much had changed.

So again, changing his focus, he brought his face into view. He squinched his face, squinting, and watched the skin fold in all the familiar lines that were beginning to show when he laughed…or grimaced…or frowned…or made most any facial expression. Time made prisoners of all men. He studied his razor-straight nose with the little bulbous end. He glanced at the tiny curls of hair that began to cover the roundness of his ears. Then, again at the eyes. Blue? Or gray…like Billy’s?

It must have been the lighting.

Holding his breath for a moment, he listened to the silence of the house…to the cry of a blue jay outside…to the insects. There was never anyone here looking at him, he finally concluded. It must have been the strain finally catching up.

“Am I going insane or what?” Benjamin said out loud to cast away the powerful presence of the house’s silence.

Just as the final word left his lips, casting the slightest hint of an echo across the room, he heard another sound. A footstep. It stopped near, just outside the door, squarely in the doorway.

“Why, I’ve thought that for years, dear brother.”

There were some sounds in life that can never be forgotten, never mistaken for something they’re not…the sound of your child’s laughter, the purr of the engine on your first car, or the voice of your best friend—even if it has been a while since that voice was last heard. For Benjamin Hatcher, that voice belonged to his brother, Mark Hatcher, and it had been all of one day since he last heard his voice. The last thing they had talked about on the previous evening was death, and now, as Benjamin turned from the mirror to face his brother, he felt, and probably looked, like death slightly warmed over. His face was pale from the incident in the mirror, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead.

“No words, no hug for your little brother, Ben?” Mark Hatcher approached his brother quickly and grabbed his shoulders in a safe embrace with the least amount of bodily contact. Hands on shoulders. Nothing else. This was the way brothers were…the way men were. Playing the game. Keeping score. As if there were cameras hanging from the sky, ever watching, looking for signs of open emotion, honest feelings.

Benjamin, at last, stepped back and cleared his throat to speak but his voice still wasn’t ready. Instead, he sized up the man before him. Mark was two full years his junior but stood nearly three inches taller. The height however was not matched by girth since his younger brother tipped the scales at nearly the same weight which Benjamin attributed to his own love of ice cream and French fries (although not at the same time). The same facial features were there—penetrating eyes, strong nose and jaw, but whereas Benjamin had slightly curly hair, Mark had hair that was straight and considerably longer, brownish-blond hair that covered his ears and spread out like straw beyond his collar. And, of course, the most easily recognizable difference—Mark wore glasses…black rimmed glasses like the kind the nerdy kids used to wear that would later warrant beatings by whoever was at the pinnacle of the pecking order in school. Benjamin had taken up for him on many occasions as adolescents back when he was the larger of the two.

“Didn’t expect to see you, that’s all.” Benjamin finally found his voice.

“You called me, remember?” Mark had placed several steps between his brother and himself and for the first time glanced around at his surroundings…at the entryway of the house that he once called home. “You know, maybe we should separate ourselves from the old house for a while? We should wait until some of the feelings die down…until after Mom is buried.” Benjamin stared at his brother with his jaw agape. He knew the reality of the situation but had never heard the actual words. It was real now. Concrete. His mother was gone. Like his father. Like his brother. Gone…and yet the world went on.

When his older brother failed to answer, Mark again broke the silence. “Hey, did I say the wrong thing, brother?”

Brother, Benjamin thought, he didn’t even care to pronounce the sound of my name, but he was all too glad to shout out how their mother was dead and about to be buried…planted in the ground like a piece of spoiled meat…like a fern or a tree in need of some potting soil and a patch of moistened earth. “How about we take a gaze around the old homestead?” Intentionally, he avoided answering the question that his brother had posed and headed up the stairs. As his foot hit the bottom step, it groaned in agony as if it were a living thing. Benjamin’s face instantly contorted, his eyes squinting, his mouth drawing tight. His apprehension was apparent. He wanted to say something to his brother, or maybe to just anyone so the words would exist as tangible things that could be recorded or heard. He wanted to say something about the groaning step or about the incident with the mirror just before the younger of the two brothers had arrived. But, he didn’t. Surely, his brother had heard the step scream out in protest as if saying don’t tread on me…turn back. But the step was the only one with the guts to speak. If Mark had something to say, then surely he would say it. He was never the kind to hold much in. But no. Nothing.

So up the stairs they went.

The stairs were bare. Having always been devoid of carpeting, they were now covered with a fine layer of dust. As Benjamin walked slowly upward, he looked behind as each foot struck the next step. His footprints were clearly the only ones to have stalked the stairs for some time. Had his mother stopped coming up the stairs, he wondered? But more significant than the covering of dust was the amount of dirt present as if a steady stream of construction workers had repeatedly traveled up and down the stairs to his old bedroom…without leaving footprints. Benjamin continued onward and upward, slowly. As each foot pressed down, the dirt crunched under his weight and he winced, his face once more contorting as if in physical pain.

Did his brother hear, he wondered, but didn’t look down into the stairwell to either confirm or deny.

At the top of the stairs, after a slight turn and three more steps, the door was closed. The door was neither a child’s door, with posters and drawings, or cracks and holes from temper tantrums and arguments, but neither was it an adult’s door with plain, well-manicured features like painted trim or architectural perfection, but rather somewhere in between. As he stood directly in front of the vertical wooden object, Benjamin thought it seemed to be of monolithic proportions. Not just large and solid…but menacing…foreboding. Like a barrier. An obstruction. Like something that shouldn’t be there. Like something that shouldn’t be anywhere!

It had four rectangular indentations like some interior doors, but mostly exterior doors. It had a plain brass colored knob with a tiny hole that allowed entry if locked from the inside.

And it had an aura that surrounded it like something that both physically and emotionally barred his entry.

Benjamin stared at the door. He listened for sounds that might pass though the wood.

None did.

And when no utterance could be heard, he called with a dry, raspy voice for his brother who, for some reason, had stopped on the fourth or fifth step. Benjamin called, once, twice, a third time before Mark came hesitantly the remainder of the way up the stairs. Staring at the door to the room that was once his bedroom, Benjamin Hatcher waited for his younger brother before attempting to reach out to turn the knob. In the stairwell to the attic room, the air was still and tasted stale, even more so than the air in the closed house, and as Benjamin tried to moisten his impossibly dry lips, the bad taste registered on his face.

“Make it quick, would you,” Mark snapped. “Have you forgotten how to open a damned door?”

Benjamin wanted to give his brother a look of anger, or, at least, dissatisfaction, but his head wouldn’t, or couldn’t, turn. The door filled his field of view.

“Is it locked?” Mark asked when Benjamin failed to acknowledge his presence. He was almost literally underneath his brother as he stood directly behind him on the steps. “Just turn the knob and go in! What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Yeah, what the hell was the matter, Benjamin wondered, but it wasn’t that anything was the matter with him…it was the house. SOMETHING WAS THE MATTER WITH THE HOUSE. “I can’t.”

“I can’t open the door,” Benjamin, at last, repeated.

Putting his hand on Benjamin’s shoulder, Mark pulled at his brother. “Then let me.” Benjamin’s body twisted under the pressure from Mark’s pulling motion, but his feet remained firmly planted on the second step from the top. He looked down at the hand that snaked past his body as it reached for the doorknob. The fingers looked much like his own. The hair was dark. The fingernails neatly trimmed. Muscles and tendons positioned the fingers to grasp the knob, when suddenly, from downstairs, the phone rang.

It rang loudly…too loudly. Both men jumped from the sound of the intrusion. Mark’s hand had quickly retracted away from the knob at the sound of the phone and it now rested against the wall for support on the narrow stairs. “I thought the phone had been disconnected,” he said.

“It has been disconnected,” Benjamin replied. He gripped the knob, twisted, and pushed the door open wide. It creaked loudly if only for the effect.

Neither Benjamin nor Mark entered the room at the top of the stairs.