Take Your Turn, Teddy Read online

  Together, the chain of events spelled one feeling for Teddy—helplessness. He said it aloud through his weak, trembling voice, “I feel helpless.”

  The voice pushed the thoughts aside.

  But you’ve helped me, Teddy. Don’t you see?

  Teddy only cried harder. He wanted the voice to leave him alone. If he was going to be alone, he wanted to do so in peace and without the torment of his memories or whatever wandered the halls of that house. They could both exist, but he wanted them to wander alone.

  Talk to me, Teddy.

  Teddy pressed his hands to his ears.

  “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

  Teddy screamed, each word clawing its way up to his dry throat.

  “Please, just leave me alone!”

  Then, a splintering sound burst through Teddy’s room and shot his bed a few inches from the wall. The wall coughed a cloud of drywall and dust. His small bookcase on the other side of the room fell on its face and spilled the binders of baseball cards.

  Teddy’s eyes widened as he looked at the wall in disbelief. The straggly cracks that began at the trim traveled to the center. The lines tried to curve but were cut off by a harsh hand. In what looked like carvings from sharp claws, the center of the back wall of Teddy’s room read, “Hello.”

  7

  Teddy put his feet on his cold bedroom floor. It creaked in response. With a gentleness, as if not to wake the monster sitting beneath the wood floorboards, Teddy crept to the window. Day or night, the sinister claw-like limbs of the tree outside his window didn’t offer any comfort. Instead, to him, it felt as though they confirmed the living nightmare he was in.

  Teddy missed his room in New Hampshire. At that moment, he missed his baseball curtains the most. He remembered feeling disappointed when his grandmother sent those to him for his birthday instead of another pack of cards like he asked for. It was like getting clothes for Christmas. But now, as the branches seemed fixed on growing outward at an expeditious rate and into his room, to get him, he wished they were in one of the boxes that needed unpacking, marked TEDDY’S STUFF.

  Teddy hated that tree. It reminded him of a scary story Pete’s father told them one Halloween. It was too cold to go trick-or-treating that year, so Pete and Teddy built a fort, and Mr. Marsh added the scare-factor. He turned out the lights and put a flashlight below his chin.

  The story was about four boys, Pete and Teddy’s age, who were playing in the woods and found the skeletal remains of a woman shoved into a cavity of a large elm tree. One of the boys ran back to his house and took an ax from his father’s tool shed. They took turns chopping away at that old tree until they found an entire skeleton, some hair, and a lady’s bloodied blouse.

  The kids argued over telling their parents or keeping it a secret. Two of the boys wanted to bring other kids from their class to see the skeleton. The others were afraid.

  A week later, the boys began seeing notes everywhere—written in the bathroom mirror or the dirt beside their bikes—that said, “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?”

  Pete’s dad lowered his voice and said, “Some say her spirit still wanders, looking for whoever put her in the tree.”

  Teddy looked at the tree outside his window and shivered. He thought if his mother wasn’t crying when he went downstairs, he would ask her about getting curtains.

  Teddy felt himself continually trying to reestablish reality versus imaginary in that house.

  He scanned his room that was beginning to look slightly reminiscent of the one back home. Teddy’s mother bought a cheap and beat-up dresser with cubbies for him to store his baseball cards. His baseball rug tried to cover the dullness of the old, stained wood floors. His walls were still bare. Cracks in the drywall ran from the ceiling to the center of the wall. They looked like straggly fingers chasing something that sank into the floor before they could catch it.

  Teddy pulled apart his accordion closet doors and stacked a pile of baseball jerseys on his bed. He figured he could use them to cover the cracks in the wall. Maybe it would make his mother happy to see him putting them up—a hint of normalcy and familiarity.

  Things felt off between Teddy and his mother in a way he couldn’t explain. When he told her about the nightmares and the slamming doors, she seemed worn and on edge. Teddy was still getting the hang of trying to think of her in the things he did. His fear told him to run to her, but she was afraid too. Maybe not in the same sense as he was, but of the newness. She said it herself, “Everything is different. And different is scary. But we have each other, Teddy. Just try to make the most of it.”

  Maybe the jerseys on the wall would show his mother he was trying. As his mother’s son, Teddy had to try to answer her efforts with the same forced smile and positivity she had given him all these years.

  Teddy threw his night t-shirt into the potato basket his mother had given him to use as a laundry hamper. He pulled on his nylon shorts that heard the high school kids back home call “hot pants.”

  Teddy opened his door and winced as it creaked. He poked his head out as if expecting a stampeding bull or a walking corpse, asking, “Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?”

  He tiptoed through the hall, trying to minimize the floor’s teases of something or someone walking behind him.

  Why do the creaks always echo?

  He couldn’t help but peek over his shoulder and mumble, “I don’t know who put Bella in the Wych Elm.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, the same torn curtain that Teddy thought he saw move when they first arrived was pulled far to the side. The screenless window was cracked just enough to let in some of the outside air. It, of course, had that same penny smell. Teddy brought his hands to his temples and shook his head from side to side.

  Teddy tried to tell himself not to get worked up. He was supposed to be making the best of things.

  Teddy stepped from the bottom of the stairs, and a green tub in the living room caught his attention. Teddy remembered seeing his mother with it in the garage the night they had pizza with Pete. The night they left.

  Teddy sat beside it and popped the lid off. It was his baseball stuff. On top was a signed baseball he got from a Manchester Yankees game. He couldn’t even remember the name of the non-legible scribble, but Teddy remembered that day with his dad. He and Teddy sat upper deck with their mitts, ready to catch any foul balls. Teddy’s dad told him on the drive there how he and his friends would sit far in the outfield with their mitts ready, hoping to leave with a souvenir. Teddy wanted to catch one to make his dad proud. But the wind carried all the foul balls to the third baseline. Around the same time, Teddy’s dad told him all about a right fielder who was nearing forty home runs that season, a player named Hank Aaron.

  Teddy kept digging in the tub and found two baseball mitts. One was newer, a small, oiled caramel-colored Rawlings mitt. But there was another one. What once was a bright cream color was now dingy and dull. The black stitching was fraying in some places, but overall, the glove was intact. He had seen it a thousand times when he played catch with his dad while his mother sat on the back porch sipping her wine. On a good night, she would throw a few with them too.

  Teddy turned the mitt over and rubbed his thumb over the faded, printed name ARTHUR BLACKWOOD.

  Teddy didn’t know if his mom meant to grab his father’s mitt, but he was glad she did. He threw his glove back into the tub and slid his hand into the larger cream-colored one. Teddy positioned his pointer finger on the outside, just as his father had worn it.

  Teddy threw the signed ball into the mitt again and again as he peeked into the kitchen. Empty.

  “Mom? Are you down here?”

  Teddy went to her bedroom door and knocked. Nothing. He pushed the door open slowly but heard a whining creak behind him. It was the same awful sound the doors made upstairs when they all opened together.

  Teddy threw the ball into the mitt harder and fas
ter. “Mom, where are you?”

  Teddy was alone. The chill, the same one he felt days before standing at the living room window, enveloped him. His shoulders raised. The cold was coming from all over the place as if he was surrounded.

  He started to head for the kitchen and the back door, but with the first step, the air was colder.

  Without turning around, Teddy stepped back into the living room. His eyes swept through the damp wallpaper in the living room. He looked for any kind of movement. But the house was still.

  He felt like the cold demanded something—an explanation or a reason of sorts. All Teddy could think to say was, “I don’t know who put Bella in the Wych Elm.”

  Teddy felt his palms sweating in his father’s baseball mitt. He started to take it off and go back upstairs, but then the doors began once again. Altogether, they creaked open and slammed shut.

  The ball he held in the other hand toppled down the basement stairs. It made a continuous thud until it reached the bottom.

  “Crap.”

  Teddy almost hoped his mom would call up the stairs saying, “Teddy, don’t say crap.”

  But the darkness below stayed silent.

  “Mom? Mom?”

  Teddy shouted for his mother, but she didn’t answer.

  “Mom, are you down here?”

  The doors slammed shut again and again. Teddy ran for the front door and was met by the same icy blast. A mental image of Bella’s talking corpse on the other side turned him around.

  Teddy ran through the hall between the living room and the kitchen with the back door in sight, but right as his feet hit the tile, the frozen chill became even more apparent.

  Teddy stood suspended between the two rooms, just above the top of the basement stairs, with his hands over his ears.

  “I don’t know who put Bella in Wych Elm! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  Inch by inch, Teddy felt the cold tiptoe from the living room and the kitchen to meet Teddy in the middle.

  He only had one more place to run. Teddy closed his eyes and beat the wall on the side of the stairs, looking for a light switch.

  There wasn’t a switch. Teddy slammed the basement door shut and ran down the stairs as fast as he could.

  He could feel his heart clobbering in his chest like it was trying to beat its way out of that hell house too.

  The basement was almost entirely dark. A small window that was covered by junk allowed just a slither of light that only allowed Teddy to see a few shapes here and there.

  The smell of the trash replaced the penny smell that dominated upstairs. It also had an undertone of the bathroom when his dad would leave wet towels wadded up in the corner for days.

  Teddy waved his hands before him, unsure what he was looking for in the abyss of darkness that was the basement. He swatted his face as something ran across it. Teddy envisioned creepy spider legs running across his face.

  He moved his face back, but whatever was there only left for a moment before it hit the other cheek.

  Teddy smacked at it harder. “Die. Die.”

  But when he brought his hand to smack at the spider again, he caught something between his fingers and palm—a string. Teddy gave it a good tug, and a static yellow emanated from a dusty bulb.

  So many oddities were piled up in the basement: wooden rocking chairs, mounds of water-stained books, and an old sunburst clock that froze at 3:33.

  A young, sweet voice said, “Please take me with you.”

  Teddy stumbled back and yelled, “Geez!”

  A doll with red hair and pigtails wearing playtime shorts sat in a rocking chair just inside the light’s reach.

  Its grinning face was locked on Teddy. He bit into his lower lip and tasted blood as he tore away the skin.

  He looked closer to see what might’ve set the doll off. He could see its last owner marked the bottom of her foot, JACKIE.

  It was a little girl’s toy. That made it seem less scary to Teddy. He realized the doll was to Jackie what the ball was for him.

  Then he remembered his ball.

  Teddy crouched down to the dark corner his ball rolled to and said, “Get the ball and get out of this creepy place.”

  He moved stacked boxes of old stationery to the floor and pulled a dusty chair out. Mounds of dust rose from it.

  Behind the chair was a pair of yellow-gold eyes.

  Teddy jumped back.

  “Is someone back there?”

  Teddy stepped back and lowered his chin to his chest as he looked down at the eyes.

  They weren’t nearly as fearsome as he first thought they were. They didn’t have circular pupils but vertical slits, and their brightness held Teddy’s attention.

  “Hello?”

  The eyes reminded Teddy of a cat. He went closer and crouched down, still a little afraid himself. But the eyes had a certain softness to them. Maybe even a vulnerability. They made Teddy think it had to be just as scared as he was. Too afraid to move, the feeling had become too familiar to Teddy in the last few days.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. Here, kitty, kitty.” Teddy never had a cat before, but that’s how Pete would call his cat, Roosevelt.

  The eyes seemed warmer and friendlier the more Teddy looked into them.

  “Are you stuck down here all by yourself, buddy?”

  Teddy already thought he could convince his mother to let him keep the cat. It would be great. When he would wake up from his nightmares, he could roll over to the cat beside him for comfort. Maybe then Teddy wouldn’t feel so alone. And every noise he heard he would start to think was just the cat.

  With a smile on his face, Teddy said, “I won’t hurt you, honest. We can be friends. Come on out.”

  The eyes closed gently and opened.

  “Come on. Come on out. I’m a friend.”

  Teddy dug into his pockets, hoping he had something that might help draw it out. But his pockets were empty other than a few bubble gum wrappers.

  The eyes closed gently and opened again.

  Teddy, on his hands and knees, leaned down to the eyes. “You need a friend. So do I. It’s okay. Come on out.”

  A whisper, so faint, echoed, You’re right. I could use a friend.

  The voice didn’t seem to come from the corner but just above Teddy. It was as if the words showered over him and sank into his head.

  With his hands that were reaching for what he thought was a cat, Teddy drew back.

  Teddy opened his mouth but found he didn’t have the words.

  The voice continued, We could be friends.

  Again, the voice didn’t come from in front of him, but over him. They stepped in front of Teddy’s thoughts and momentarily took their place.

  The eyes nodded in assurance as if to show its satisfaction with the idea.

  “Wh-Who are you?”

  Teddy turned from the corner and looked to the ceiling. It was full of dust and water stains, but nothing else.

  The whisper seemed to circle Teddy and slither up his back into his ears. As you said, a friend.

  “How are you doing that? Your voice. It’s not normal.”

  The whisper tickled Teddy’s ears and wormed into his head. Oh, it’s a trick. A trick I haven’t done in quite some time. I can only do it with my friends.

  Teddy bit into his lip and looked back up to the closed basement door.

  The figure was still hidden in the dark corner of the basement. But its yellow-gold eyes locked on Teddy’s every move. Without giving it too much thought, Teddy was creeping closer to the stairs.

  Right before he turned to climb them, the voice came again. You must be a very special friend if I can speak to you this way.

  Teddy stood frozen in confusion and fear. “Are you taking my thoughts?”

  The figure closed its eyes and shook its head.

  More like interrupting.
r />   “How did you get down here?”

  Just as Teddy began envisioning a dark figure falling through the damp and dull floorboards above, his thoughts were interrupted.

  My last friend, I needed him, and he left me. I got so weak and scared. I thought I’d hide down here. I wasn’t sure another friend would ever come along. But here you are.

  Teddy looked to the steps again, wondering if he should run for it. Instead, he asked, “What are you?”

  The eyes looked soft and friendly, which seemed to be the only thing that stopped Teddy from running.

  A shadow, Teddy. Shadows only talk to their friends. We could friends. Just like you said.

  Teddy felt guilty. He did say that. How could he tell this thing because it wasn’t a cute little kitten, he didn’t want to be friends?

  Friends.

  The word made him realize how badly he missed Pete. He had known Pete his whole life. It could be a while before he met anyone like that here.

  Teddy felt a chill as the eyes moved closer but still remained in the dark.

  Before Teddy could ask the shadow where that cold air was coming from, the thought took a side-step and was replaced with: You know, Teddy. I can only talk because you want me to.

  Teddy bit into his lip again. “What does that mean?”

  You said you were a friend. You noticed me.

  Teddy’s eyes went from side to side as if something in that dim, wet basement could give him a clue.

  “I thought you were a cat. When I saw your eyes, I was just—”

  Teddy’s thought was finished for him.

  Just looking for a friend.

  Teddy didn’t know what to say. The shadow was right. Even if it was in some mangy barn cat, Teddy was looking for a friend. But he was still afraid.

  Friends play games together, Teddy. Would you want to play a game?

  Teddy looked up the stairs, eyeing his exit.

  “I—uh. I don’t know. My mom wants me to unpack.”

  The shadow rolled the ball to Teddy.

  It’s your turn, Teddy. Roll it back.