Sundown Rising Read online

  Sitting there, staring out the window, I wandered back in time. I could feel the tears welling up as I thought of how Ronnie and I used to walk for hours through the woods. We'd take an entire Saturday and just spend it walking along. We talked about everything. The past, the future, even the present, and how we were going to meet the next electric bill.

  I remembered the time we pulled in off the path and made love on the leaves during a sudden shower. I could still feel the texture of her wet skin beneath my fingers. Before I could stop it, the tears turned into a full crying jag, my whole body wracked with grief and never again to be fulfilled longing.

  At first, I hardly noticed the feeling. But as my sobbing eased to crying, I could distinctly feel a hand stroking the back of my head. I sat bolt upright and swiveled around. There was no one there. I was about to get up when I had an idea. Slowly, I swiveled my chair around so that I faced the window. As I raised the blinds, hoping the willow would cast enough shadow to cause a reflection in the window, I could see her. She appeared thinner, more drawn out than previously, but that was probably due to the brightness of the afternoon.

  Standing about two feet behind me, the woman I'd seen the other night was holding a finger to her lips, a silent gesture for me to be quiet. I ignored it and opened my mouth to speak and could see my breath when I did.

  "Who are you?" I asked

  The woman lowered her hand to her side. Her mouth was moving, but I couldn't hear anything. She moved forward, seeming more to glide than to walk, and pointed. I thought she was pointing at me and didn't understand what she meant.

  "What? What do you want?"

  This time, she mouthed the words she was speaking very slowly and I understood. She wanted me to open the window. I rolled my chair forward, afraid that if I stood, she'd disappear. Grabbing the sash hooks with both hands I lifted the window.

  "I knew you'd come, Richard," she said. I could hear her. Her voice was carried on the breeze outside. It was as if the wind were her lungs. "I knew you would never abandon me." Her long white gown rustled with the breeze and I noticed that its movements matched those of the willow's branches. When they swayed so did her dress. And when the breeze died out so did her voice.

  "How do you know me?" I asked.

  She waited. The air was still outside. With the next wisp of wind came the reply.

  "How could I not know you, my love."

  Losing myself in this, I absent mindedly turned to face her. She wasn't there. Or, rather, I couldn't see her. It seemed that she was only visible as a reflection. But when I turned back, the room behind me was empty. From that moment on, the window in my office was never to be closed.

  3

  The next day I had occasion to go into town on a few errands. At the hardware store I bumped into Jacob Waters, the plumber who had cajoled all my pipes into cooperating. I recognized him immediately by his overalls, which he kept up by a single shoulder strap.

  "Jacob!" I said. "How's it going?"

  "Not bad. Not bad. The question is…how's it going with you?" His face had a strained look on it and his eyes were full of questions.

  "I'm doing ok. Gotta thank you again; great job on the old pipes. Plenty of hot water."

  "E-yeh. They needed some coaxin all right, but I got em right. How you likin it up there in that big ol' place by yerself?" The question was dry, almost rhetorical.

  "I'm getting along." I wondered whether or not I should tell him about what had been happening. I didn't know why, but I somehow felt I could trust him. Still, I wasn't anxious for word to get around that I was a full blown lunatic. I finally settled on keeping things to myself for the present.

  "Well, don't 'spect they will, but if them pipes give ya any more trouble, just give me a holler." He nodded and then stepped past me. Jacob was not much for shaking hands.

  "I'll be sure to do that," I said, hoping to sound amiable, but sounding instead like an over eager teenager trying to talk his dad into letting him use the car.

  After I'd gotten what I needed at the hardware store, a lock bar for sliding windows and some animal repellant for the garden, I skipped over to the grocery store and picked up a few things. At the last minute I went back and bought a few rolls of aluminum foil, although, at the time, I had no idea why.

  On my way out of the store I ran into Jacob again. He was sitting in his old grey F250, two spaces down from my jeep. We didn't speak. I nodded as I carried my bags past him and he nodded back. I had the strangest feeling that he was keeping an eye on me. I tried to dismiss it as being overly sensitive because of what had been happening at the house, but couldn't.

  I climbed into my jeep and pulled out of my space. Purposely, I turned right so that I wouldn't have to drive past him. But in my rearview mirror I saw him watch me pull out into the street. It gave me the same feeling I'd had when I'd found the undead-dead cat under the bush.

  Back at home, I put the groceries away and went upstairs to the office, aluminum foil and stay bar in hand. The window was closed. I stood there looking around. Nothing else seemed to be disturbed. Tucking the boxes of foil underneath my arm, I walked over and pulled the window up. As soon as I let go of it, it slammed shut again, hard enough to crack the glass.

  The room's temperature plummeted. Crystals of ice began to form on the edges of the windowpanes. Without any kind of warning, I felt myself being shoved to the floor. I could actually feel the unseen icy fingers around the back of my neck as I was pushed downward.

  When I hit my knees, I whirled around, sweeping my arm out in a wide circle. It contacted something solid, something that felt like legs. Strong legs. I could feel them give a little but remain in place. The next blow I got came to the back of my head and I could literally see swimming points of light dance across the backs of my eyes. I lurched forward and hit my forehead on the oak floor. Everything went grey, then black.

  I finally came to, rolling over on my back and slowly opening my eyes. I couldn't see a thing. The room was totally black. With a great deal of effort and a strong throbbing in my head, I managed to push myself up onto my elbow, then onto my knees and finally up onto my feet. I staggered over and sat in my desk chair and turned on the lamp. The little brass clock told me it was ten minutes to ten. I'd been out cold for over seven hours.

  As my vision slowly cleared, I looked about me, wondering what had been done while I was out. The room was the same, except for the windows. There were only two in the room and both of them had been nailed shut. It was beginning to become clear to me what was happening. Or, at least, part of what was happening. What ever had attacked me didn't want me speaking with the woman. Without the window being open...no breeze...no wind...no voice.

  At the time, I didn't stop to wonder how something incorporeal could have nailed a window shut. All that was on my mind was getting it open again. Permanently! The aluminum foil and stay rods were lying on the floor where they'd fallen when I was attacked. I retrieved them and set them on the windowsill while I went in search of a hammer to remove the nails.

  I had made it to the door, when the strangest notion took hold. Not understanding why, I turned around and walked back over to the window. I stood there for a few moments, doubting what was running through my head but unable to resist the temptation of what it was suggesting. I reached out and grabbed one of the nails by its bent head and pulled. It slid out of the wood as easily as if I were pulling a spoon out of a peanut butter jar. The same thing with the other one.

  I held them up, examining them, thinking that there must be something wrong with them. But they looked just like ordinary rusted nails. Somehow I knew I could do that, but had no idea how I knew. And I stood there, still amazed that I actually had.

  "Ok, Richard. You can figure this all out later. Let's get these windows open and keep em open." I pushed the sashes up and jammed the stay rods in place. Then, without even thinking about it, I p
ushed the nails back into the widow grooves and bent the heads around the stays. These windows were not coming down again. I then affixed a few layers of aluminum foil over the panes on the outside. Permanent reflection.

  Satisfied with my work, I went back and sat at my desk. I rubbed my hand through the back of my hair, expecting to find a sizeable lump from the pounding I took. Nothing!

  "Another curious piece to this puzzle, my boy," I said, trying to force out a laugh, but succeeding only in a choked off cough.

  4

  The next few weeks were uneventful. July quietly dissipated into August, and August into September. Most of the things that I'd wanted done around the house were finished. What remained now was to figure out what I wanted to do with the back yard. I considered moving the tree line back a few yards. I wasn't much for cutting down trees, and the willow certainly wouldn't be touched, but I kept getting a nagging feeling that I should clear a little more space around the back of the house.

  So, on a bright and sunny morning, I took a legal pad, pen, and a large ball of string and walked around to the back of the house. The yard was starting to be spotted with the earliest of the falling leaves. Oaks and Maples were slowly divesting themselves of their summer outfits and preparing for the winter to come.

  Once out back, the first thing I did was to stop and admire the willow. I gently ran my fingers up and down its slender, tendril-like branches, letting its thin leaves slide across the tips. There was something very special about this tree, something that made me feel calm and safe inside. It felt very much like its sole purpose was to stand guard over me, a trusted friend. Yet, at the same time, there was an underlying sense that it also held a terrible secret. A secret it kept hidden within its long flowing branches and deep roots.

  "Ok," I said, turning away from the willow and toward the woods behind it, "let's see who goes and who stays."

  Looking left and right, I made a quick sketch of the house on the legal pad and the approximate distance to the beginning of the tree line. I wasn't much of an artist, so I just made a series of wavy lines to represent the rows of trees and a square for the house. Shifting my gaze from the pad to the trees, I finally decided where I wanted to begin the cutting. I moved into the woods about ten yards and started with a Poplar that stood about thirty feet tall to the right of the house. I wrapped a length of string around it and slowly made my way left, playing out the string against the reprieved trees as I went. Everything on the house side of the string would go.

  When I reached the left end, and the place I wanted to stop the cutting, I tied off the string and let what was left on the ball drop to the ground at the tree's base. When I looked back at the house to see if I was on target, I saw the little cemetery, its wrought iron fence still rusted and falling. It occurred to me that I'd never even gone to look at it the whole time I'd been here.

  I walked over to it, running my fingertips across the chipped metal. The gate was hanging on one hinge, like a drunk on a lamppost. The bottom of the latch post had worked its way into the ground, so that when I pulled on the gate it only bent forward and then swung back. I had to pry it up to get it open.

  Inside, there were four headstones, two large and two smaller ones. They were sandstone and the names were so weathered that I couldn't really make them out completely. I ran my fingers across the names in a vain attempt to read them like Braille. Some of the letters were easy to figure out; some were just too worn away. But I could guess at the ones that were gone. The family name appeared to be Fleishman. The curious thing to me was that the smaller stones seemed to have never been engraved with first names. Only the last name was on those stones.

  I knelt down in front of the first stone, presumably the father's and tried to get a rubbing. Using a sheet of paper from my legal pad I did my best to bring up a first name, but my pen was inadequate to the job. All I ended up getting was a shredded piece of yellow paper.

  "Oh well, guess you'll have to wait for another time." I left the yard and closed the gate behind me as best I could. When it clanked shut, a sudden wind blew up. It was a very strong wind, strong enough to push me forward before I caught my balance. When I looked down, I noticed that, had I fallen forward completely, I would have impaled myself on one of the gates spikes. Not a pleasant thought.

  Recovering myself, I took a few steps back, the wind still pushing at me, my eyes still on the spike. When I looked up, the bramble bushes beyond the cemetery were being pushed from side to side, allowing a succession of quick glances beyond them. Hidden behind them, there seemed to be some kind of stone building, totally obscured when the bushes stood tightly side by side.

  I made my way around the back of the cemetery's fence, but not without a good deal of effort. It seemed that, with each step I took, the wind blew harder. And above, the clouds had seemed to roll in from nowhere. I figured we were in for one of those freak, pre-autumn, thunder storms, and standing out under trees and near an iron fence probably wasn't the best of ideas. So I beat a hasty retreat back into the house. The building behind the bushes, whatever it was, would have to wait for another time.

  5

  I went upstairs and fumbled around with my copywriting for a while, not really concentrating on it. The whole time, I kept an eye out the window, hoping the storm would blow over quickly. I was really curious about what that building might be, and why it was never mentioned by the realtor when I'd bought the house.

  With the dark of the approaching storm, the window panes, those not already covered with aluminum, were in perfect light to reflect my office, but no lady today. I was beginning to wonder if I'd hallucinated the whole thing. But the nails in the window frames eradicated those thoughts from my mind.

  A finger of lightning arced across the sky, followed by a rolling rumble of heavy thunder. I moved closer to the window, my hands in my pockets, to watch nature's aerial display of anger. I always enjoyed lightning storms – enjoyed them, but respected their power. I don't know how long I stood there or how many times my little brass clock chalinged away the hours.

  The driving rain, the lightning and the way the wind was whipping the willow branches around held me captive. I couldn't seem to draw myself away from the window. When I finally managed to, it was half past eight.

  I turned and reached over to push the little black button on the bottom of my desk lamp when I felt it. Another hand on mine. I froze in place, my fingertips on the lamp switch. I could feel the cool fingertips gently rubbing the back of my hand. The touch was feather-light and comforting. Immediately, I looked into the window but saw nothing. I wanted to shift my angle so that I could see more of the room, but was unwilling to pull my hand away from the lamp for fear of losing the touch. I stood there, bent over, hand on the switch, not moving.

  "Is it you?" I finally asked. "Have you come back? You've been gone a long time."

  "It's I, Richard. I am here. Have you really missed me?"

  "Yes. Why have you been gone?"

  "It was not my doing. I wanted to come to you. I needed to come to you." Her voice was strong, perhaps because of the strength the storm was imparting to the wind, but it was also melancholy. There was a profound sorrow, almost an anguish, to it.

  "What kept you from coming...and what is your name?" I already felt I knew the answer to the first part of the question. Whatever had attacked me had kept her from coming back.

  "I cannot give you names, Richard. You must come to that by yourself. And you know what kept me from coming, don't you?"

  "Yes. It was him, wasn't it?" I didn't know who "him" was, but I had no doubts that that's who it was, and the it was definitely a male. I only needed to think about how my head felt when it hit the floor to know that.

  "It was. And he will try to keep me from you again. You must remember, Richard. You must remember everything...and soon. Your time grows short."

  "What does that mean? Remember what?" There w
as something about the way she said that that stirred a feeling deep inside me. I had no idea what it was I was supposed to be remembering, but I knew, just from the way she'd said it, that there was something to remember.

  I stood up, taking my hand away from the lamp. When I looked in the window I could see her. Her white lace gown flowing around her, much like the branches of the willow flowed around it in the storm. There was a beautiful innocence to her face, her long black hair, hanging below her shoulders accented its softness.

  "He will come again, Richard. And he is strong. You must be stronger. You must remember. You must find all of your strength."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I said, almost pleading. "What strength? What must I remember?" I wanted desperately to turn around and look at her, to touch her, but I knew I couldn't. I had to content myself with the image in the glass.

  "I must go now. I can linger no longer tonight. Please, Richard, before it's too late – remember."

  Like a movie fading to black, she vanished. Once again, the only thing visible in the window was the storm that raged outside.

  "I need more answers," I shouted. But it was useless. There were no more answers forthcoming.

  6

  The next day I woke up about four-thirty in the afternoon. I must have been more tired than I'd realized. That groggy, can't quite get it together feeling held on tight. I didn't start feeling myself until a little after seven. By then, the day was shot and I was at a loss as to what to do with myself. I could try to get some writing done, but the idea of putting together another useless ad just left a bad taste in my mouth. Then I remembered the building out back. Time to go check that out.

  Although the days were getting shorter, there was still plenty of time and light left to go poking around, but I grabbed a flashlight anyway. I might just want to take a look inside the thing, and I was sure there were no lights.

  It must have been an overcast day. Clouds still hung heavily in the sky, white above with streaks of gray and black moving faster beneath. The grass was soggy and puddles had formed here and there where the drainage was worst. Some of these I managed to avoid, others I squished through.