The Shaded

Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

"I don't know you, lady!"

She glanced at my nervous image, tampering with my thoughts as she stood there... and just stared. Her eyes shot to the top of the house, presumably the second floor.

"There's something here..." she claimed quietly.

"What do you mean?"

"There's something living here..."

She reached for my chin again in a more desperate attempt to communicate with my anxiety-induced mindset.

"How much has she kept from you?"

"I, uh, I don't understand."

"I, I came here as soon as I heard your voice over the phone. No one believed it. Your mother misses you, dear."

"Are you one of her patients?"

"I'm sorry?"

She whipped out an alcoholic flask and chugged on it hastily. She licked her battered lips and leaned towards me. Her breath smelled of whiskey as she whispered into my chilled ear.

"You've been playing with fire..."

I kept quiet. I was contemplating whether there was anything I should say or anything I shouldn't.

"I know you've been here a while, Timothy, and maybe you just aren't ready to see what's been unveiling in front of you, but I should warn you that there's a bit more than disturbing rag dolls in that house of hers, if one were to go looking..."

"So, WHO ARE YOU?" I asked boisterously.

She chuckled, "You could refer to me as a friend of your mothers."

"Was that you on the phone? The one that warned me before?"

"We've come to help you." Her eyes met the corner window, distracting her as she gained a look of alarm. "You... you can't stay here. It's been years. I know it's hard to understand."

"So help me to." She could hear the worry in my voice.

She chugged at her flask of alcohol while actively tapping her foot against the bitter, dying grass. She swabbed a remaining droop of whiskey from her bottom chin, now sloppily marching toward the house, and dingily pointed at the kitchen window, her finger slanting in the wind.

"That damn thing...hurt so many..." She seemed a bit out of it. By out of it, I meant drunk.

"What are you talking about?"

"I fear for the safety. I knows the... all the lies she fed to you. The things she done to you." Fatigue fell upon her words as she began to sporadically gaze off into aimless sections of the yard around me, chuckling and mumbling incoherently, swigging more and more and that flask.

Her eyes jumped towards the top of the house once again. Immediately, she sprung from below and scurried towards her car, opening her passenger door. Then her eyes jumped at me. The strong-determined, glance in which was being hurled toward my attention... she was giving me an opportunity... to leave?

I didn't understand. What was there to understand?

"She'll never let you go..." she muttered to herself.

My mouth was dormant, and my tongue had migrated south down my throat. I remained completely stationary. I could sense in her eyes that she was releasing hold of a door, possibly one that I would need to obtain somehow... if I even knew what I was running from.

"I never got your name," I mentioned.

"Just call me Elaine."

She grinned for a brief moment, and with that last statement closing off our peculiar chat and an added look of dread she had as she peered at the house before slamming her door, she instantly drove off. I headed over to the front doorsteps, stumbling upon the words I've encountered just a moment ago, both the spoken and the unspoken.

Several of the deer returned to the center of the lawn as the soft vehicular purr of Elaine's station wagon died off beneath an almost harmonic breeze.