Rivers of Red

“WANTED: House sitter. Four weeks starting in mid-September. Must be reliable and responsible. Salary to be discussed at interview.”

This was going to be the easiest money Josh Walker ever made.

On the day of his interview, he drove down busy highways and one-lane roads until he reached a long gravel drive through a heavily wooded area. And now he sat across from Cora Hammond, the house’s owner. Cora had long white hair and intense brown eyes that never left Josh’s as she spoke to him.

“You’re sure you can take a month to do this, Josh? Your parents won’t mind?”

Josh glanced down at his red high tops. “My mother’s dead, and my dad … he’s in Alaska with his new wife. He won’t care.” Indeed, Josh’s father had made it clear that he didn’t want to come back from his honeymoon to find his unemployed son still crashing in his old bedroom.

“I see. My sister is ill, and I’ll be staying with her for about a month until her daughter can take over. I might come back earlier if the situation changes, but you’ll be paid for the full month regardless.”

“Great.”

“Let me show you the rest of the house, then.”

Cora got up slowly, smoothed the front of her faded black dress, and led Josh down the hallway.

“You’ll have free use of everything in here, of course,” she said, showing him a kitchen with appliances that looked older than Josh.

“What’s the WiFi like here?” he asked her.

She turned around to look at him, a white eyebrow arched.

“I don’t have anything like that. I suggest you bring some entertainment that doesn’t involve the Internet, if such things still exist.” She chuckled as she turned back to her tour. They passed by a closed wooden door, and Cora stopped in front of it.

“You may stay in any other room of the house. But you may not go in my study. There’s nothing in there you need to see. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And no parties. I don’t want strangers running all over here and making a mess. If I find out that you’ve done this — and I will — our agreement is canceled and you get no payment for the time you were here.”

“That won’t be a problem, Ms. Hammond.” The few friends he’d had in college were all over the country now. Even if Josh wanted to throw a real rager, who would come?

She showed him the rest of the house and then returned to the kitchen, where she pointed out several flashlights of various sizes and colors lined up on the counter. “I suggest you keep these handy. I lose power rather easily if there’s a storm, and it gets stormy here in late summer.”

And then she turned to him. “Can I trust you, Josh Walker?”

He stood up straight and put on his friendliest smile. “You bet, Ms. Hammond.”

She studied him for a moment through narrowed eyes and then sighed.

“Very well.” She didn’t seem too happy about her decision, but Josh decided that this wasn’t his problem as long as he got paid. “You’ll receive a check for $5,000 as soon as I’m satisfied that everything looks OK.”

Josh held back a gasp. That was crazy money for sitting around a house for a month. He could move out and maybe even make a dent in his student loans.

“I’ll make sure it’s OK. In fact, if you need me to stay longer, I can.”

She stared at him for a moment and then shook her head. “I don’t believe that will be necessary. But thank you.”

Josh returned to the house to start his watch the following Sunday. He took his stuff out of the car and stared up at his temporary home. The old house might have been a vivid green once upon a time, but the paint had faded to a dull light gray. Maybe it was just reflecting the gloomy sky.

He froze when he saw the front door. Cora had walked him in and out of the house, so he hadn’t noticed before that the brass doorknob was shaped like a hand hanging over the keyhole. He had to raise the hand as he turned the key in the lock. It took him a couple of tries to get it right. The inside doorknob was another hand. Where had she found those ugly things?

The floor welcomed him with a creak as he walked inside. He looked around and saw peeling wallpaper and cobwebs up in the high corners of the room. The house smelled of furniture polish and of another odor underneath that, something musty and damp.

This was going to be a long month.

Josh managed to stay out of Cora’s study for almost two whole days before the boredom got to him.

He was on his phone telling George about the house. George wasn’t all that interesting but he still returned Josh’s calls, which pretty much made him Josh’s best friend at the moment.

“Dare me to go in that room she told me to stay out of?”

“I dunno, dude. That’s probably where she keeps all her dead husbands or something.”

The door to the study was locked, of course.

“Looks like a job for Visa,” Josh said. After jiggling the knob and wedging a credit card into the doorjamb, he managed to work it open. The door swung inward with a creak.

“Holy shit,” Josh said.

“What? What is it?”

“It’s a desk.” He and George laughed.

An old wooden desk and a dusty bookcase dominated the room. A picture of Cora with a girl who had masses of dark red curls and looked like a younger version of her hung over the desk. Weird; Cora hadn’t mentioned a daughter.

Josh couldn’t imagine why the old lady had wanted him to stay out of here. He glanced down at a spiral notebook sitting on the desk. Something was written in red ink on the open page.

“Oh, here we go. Listen to this.” And Josh read the words to George.

“the daughters of death walk through rivers of red/ and the one in the darkness surrenders his head.”

They both howled.

“Hope she didn’t quit her day job to write that crap,” Josh said, leaving the room and shutting the door behind him.

“Pretty creepy.”

“So. Was Melanie at Mason’s party the other night?” Josh asked, a little too casually. There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Hello? G? Not gonna get mad if she was or anything.”

He thought George was refusing to answer him. And then he looked at his phone and realized he’d lost the signal. He dialed George again, but got another No Signal message.

Great. Josh slammed the phone down on the coffee table.

He tried his MacBook, but the phone no longer worked as a hotspot and he kept getting a “You are not connected to the Internet” message that made him want to hurl the laptop through the window.

Cora’s old TV had only basic cable. Very basic. He tried watching soap operas, but the bad acting drove him crazy. He didn’t want to watch infomercials. Or public TV, god forbid. He left the TV on anyhow; the voices made him feel a little less alone.

He went to the kitchen, opened the ancient Frigidaire, and took out one of the Pabst Blue Ribbons he’d brought.

This is definitely going to be a long month, he thought as he popped it open.

The next day, Josh woke up to a tremendous windstorm outside. The howling gusts made it feel twenty degrees colder inside. The walls shook. The spaces under the doors whistled.

Would he still get paid if the house just up and blew to Oz? Josh ate a bowl of granola and watched the trees swaying outside. At least Oz would be interesting.

Josh hadn’t really thought about what he’d do with himself if he lost the Internet and if the TV didn’t get anything good. He drank some more PBR and spent the day watching game shows, talk shows, and sitcom reruns.

The sun set and Josh realized he’d had nothing other than beer since breakfast. He was going to the kitchen to heat up a can of soup when the power went out.

Josh walked right into a wall and swore. He was drunk, and he didn’t know the house well enough to get around it in the dark. Where the hell had Cora put those flashlights? He staggered into the kitchen and fumbled around the counter until his hand closed around what felt like one of the bigger ones.

The gas stove would work even if the power went out, Cora had told him. She had a long box of wooden kitchen matches he could use to light a burner just in case. But being alone in a strange, pitch black house made Josh lose his appetite.

And then he heard something upstairs.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

He caught his breath. It had to be a tree that the wind was knocking into the house. Had to be.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“It’s the wind, Josh. Stop being a baby,” he said.

He decided to go up and look, just to prove to himself that there was nothing there. He swept the flashlight beam around until he found the staircase.

The old wooden steps creaked under his feet as he crept upstairs, keeping one hand against the railing to brace himself as he held the flashlight out and followed the narrow circle of light in the darkness.

Halfway up, he stopped. Something — someone — was whispering. His stomach turned cold.

He must have left the TV on downstairs, he told himself. Except that this was impossible, what with the power being out. Maybe something on the computer had started itself up. That could happen, right?

He hovered on the staircase for a second. Afraid to go up. Afraid to go down.

The whispers were definitely coming from upstairs.

“Shit,” Josh muttered. He was going to have to sneak back downstairs, find his phone, and hope it worked.

And then he heard footsteps. Very light ones, coming from the master bedroom. He was pretty sure he hadn’t closed that door this morning, but it was shut now.

Some kids had probably broken into the house, not expecting anyone to be there. That had to be it. He decided that he’d have to confront them before they cost him his paycheck.

He took a deep breath and walked up to the master bedroom, wondering if he’d be able to clock someone with the flashlight if he had to.

“Hello? I don’t want any problems, guys,” he called out. “But you gotta get out of here. The old lady’ll have my head if she thinks I had people over.”

He held up the flashlight and swung the door open.

The stink of rotted meat and dirt hit him as women in long crimson robes glared with eyes burning red. Their paper-white skin glowed so brightly that he didn’t even need the flashlight to see them.

The woman standing closest to him had a mass of dark red curls cascading over her shoulders. Cora’s daughter?

She flashed sharp gray teeth at him and hissed, but it was what she held that made him stumble backwards. She raised a sword that gleamed in the darkness. And she pointed a long, skinny finger at him.

“What the fuck?” he screamed.

Josh turned and fled. Halfway down the stairs he missed a step and almost crashed through the railing. The flashlight flew from his hand and clattered down the stairs, making arcs of light in the darkness. A strip of moonlight shone under the front door and he tore across the landing and grabbed the creepy hand-shaped doorknob.

And the doorknob grabbed him back.

Ice-cold metal fingers closed around his wrist and twisted his arm, making it impossible for him to work the knob. The metal fingers squeezed his hand tighter and tighter.

Josh looked back and screamed, hoping against hope that someone outside could hear him as the women came down after him with their crimson cloaks flowing over the stairs like blood, their sharp gray teeth bared, their white skin glowing. Their voices were louder now and in between his screams, he could hear what they said:

“The daughters of death walk through rivers of red.”

Cora’s daughter stopped in front of him, her red eyes burning.

“Please,” he sobbed as the metal hand snapped a bone in his wrist.

She raised her sword.

“And the one in the darkness surrenders his —

Cora left her apartment and returned to the house a month later. No cars were outside. She knocked before entering, but she suspected there’d be no answer. And indeed, there was not.

She walked into the living room and glanced around. The place looked exactly as it had when she’d left it.

“Hello? Josh?” No response.

Cora walked through the kitchen to the back door and stepped out onto the porch.

She saw a very faint rectangle of earth about six feet long in the backyard. It would be covered by snow soon, and she knew that by spring it would be gone, blended with the ground around it.

So the boy had looked in the study. They always looked in the study. And now, every last sign that he’d ever been here was gone.

“Young people,” Cora said to the porch. “Best way to get them to do something is to tell them not to do it.” She had, after all, told Vanessa not to go by herself into the woods behind the house all those years ago.

“Vanessa? Baby?” she said to the empty backyard. She heard nothing. She never did.

“If I could just see you once more,” she said, her voice shaking.

Now that the feeding had taken place, she wouldn’t have to do this for another five years. But what if she wasn’t around by then? She stared at the ground and thought about it, hugging herself in the autumn chill.

Well, then it would be out of her hands.

Her baby was going to have to learn how to feed herself.