Lost

The world is barely awake, but I sense life and movement as it begins to stir. I keep my eyes closed, wrapped up in a cocoon that’s pulled up to my chin—a habit since childhood to keep the vampires away. If they can’t find my neck or wrists, the can’t bite me. I do it still, this curious little habit. I do it with the knowledge that vampires don’t exist but other things are real—things that could catch me as I sleep.

Monsters or not, the comforter puts a warm, soft barrier between my body and the winter chill that penetrates the worn windows of this old, drafty house. Baba used to complain about it, when she lived here. That was long ago, before Mom inherited the house from Baba, before I inherited it from Mom. An old house for old things. Old things like the painting Mrs. Weldon gave me yesterday.

The lonely old woman who tucks herself away in a two-bedroom house down the street. A house she keeps only so her son will have his old bedroom when he returns home one day. We all know Jeffrey won’t be returning home. We’ve all known for years, but no one has the heart to break Mrs. Weldon’s spirits. The kind woman who invites neighbors passing by to laze on the porch for a nice chat and iced lemonade. The mother of one beloved son who—without him to care for—watches out for all the kids on the street.

Now, she keeps the house as best she can—scraping up the money with jobs that pay too little. Tired and achy, she does little more than pay the bills. The house needed dusting again yesterday. I noticed as we sat in the kitchen and talked. The view into the living room revealed layers of grey dust that took the shine out of every surface. No, not every surface. Not the photos of Jeffrey. Mrs. Weldon grew tired after a few hours of visiting and went to her room for a nap, offering for me to stay until my tea was finished. She rested and I went to work.

The grey was wiped away. The tumbleweeds of dust that rolled across the floor were swept up and banished to the garbage where they mingled with the dirty paper towels and the scent of surface cleaner. The photographs were arranged so she would have a clear view of them from her favorite chair. It would have been quiet work. Soothing, even. If not for the interruptions.

I don’t know where they came from or what could have been the cause. Three times I started to sneak out of the house, thinking Mrs. Weldon was awake and not wanting her to catch me cleaning. Three times I realized what I thought was someone walking about the house, was nothing at all. No one at all. The other interruptions were subtle. Hair standing up on my arm. Cold chills icier than the frost that drew wrinkles on the window panes. The dustpan thought I remembered setting on the coffee table returning to the very back of the closet.

By the time I was finished, I was more than ready to leave. I felt a shard of guilt stab at my heart as I crept out the door, leaving whatever had tormented me alone with Mrs. Weldon. Should I have stayed? How would I explain the things I had heard or felt? Even if she believed me and asked me to stay the night, how long could that last? I couldn’t live with her forever. So I crept out and left her there, asleep in her bed as the afternoon lit up the cloud cover with such a light touch that, if the world were turned on its head you would fall off, unable to tell the sky from the snow covered ground.

She had called me back twenty minutes later, probably as soon as she woke.

“Kendra,” she’d said, “I know you cleaned up again. I will not let it go this time.”

She had a gift for me and if I refused to retrieve it myself, she would march down the street through ice and slush to deliver it to me. I had thought for a moment, considering whether it would be better for her to risk slipping and breaking a hip than staying with whatever it was that I had abandoned her to in her house. I pull the covers tighter around my neck and force myself to believe that I had made the right choice by walking down to her house.

She gave me a painting pulled from a wall in her own house. What surprised me most was that the wall it once called home was in Jeffery’s bedroom. I may never understand why she gave me something of his, something she normally would have kept for his return. I may never be brave enough to ask, but I’m not sure it matters. She had never mentioned my cleaning before, perhaps she never noticed. This could be a sign that she’s finally starting to accept the fact that he’s gone. That he’s never coming back.

Jeffery didn’t leave by choice. He was old enough, but it wasn’t his choice. He was a good guy. Got himself a job as soon as he could get working papers to help his single mother pay the bills. Solid grades throughout high school and college—though he never made it to graduation. He kept good friends in college, but something went wrong while he was helping some old friends who had turned their own lives down a bad road.

I remember the night it happened as clearly as I can see Mrs. Weldon’s gift in the corner of my room. My cousin Jamie was there. Came to our house with blood on his hands. It caused trouble for him. For us. All the things people said. The threats didn’t end with Jamie. They spread to his friends and family, anyone remotely associated with him. Jeffery’s mother never believed the rumors that were spread. She trusted our family; all of us. I’ll always be grateful to her for that. Of course, my own conscious turns when I think of it. I believed every awful thing they said about Jamie; but I never said anything to Mrs. Weldon.

His painting is mine, now. A creation he made with the help of his father who had also died too young. I look over at it where it sits propped up on my nightstand. The sun is stretching into the room now, but the light is still dim enough that the painting looks entirely different than it had as I walked it home yesterday. Where the bright greens and yellows mix with dark blues, I see nothing now but vague swirls that can’t quite decide what color they want to be.

I roll over, facing the side of the bed where the alarm waits for its turn to speak. I still have a few minutes, so I snuggle my head deeper into the pillow and close my eyes.