“Hey, sis,” he called to her from the side yard as her car crunched into the gravel driveway. “We’re out back. You’re just in time for a barbecue.”
She got out of the car and walked through the yard. Eleven-year-old twins Zac and Callie were splashing in the small lake on the side of the house, making their way through the tall cattails that grew there. Even from the yard Paula could see the dragonflies skittering above the lake. Dean’s wife Linda was placing a blue-and-white checkered tablecloth on the picnic table. Dean himself had returned to the grill, flipping some burgers and dogs. A typical weekend at the Youngs’ house. The perfect picture of a happy family.
As if something dark wasn’t lurking in the shadows, waiting to destroy them all.
“Where’s Karen?” Linda asked.
“Oh,” Paula said uncomfortably. “She had some…errands to run today.”
Flames crackled from the grill. “You want a hamburger or a hot dog?” Dean asked.
Paula smiled. “Neither, at the moment.” She glanced out at the kids in the lake. They were waving up at her, calling “Hi, Auntie!” Paula waved back. Again her heart seemed to splinter into a hundred pieces.
She took a seat at the picnic table as Linda poured her a glass of lemonade from a pitcher. “Something on your mind, Paula?” her sister-in-law asked.
“Well…” She hesitated, then smiled. She took a sip of the lemonade. “Yes, there is.”
“We figured, given how you sounded on the phone.” Linda moved around the table toward the grill. “I think it’s time I relieved the cook of his duties. Give you two some time for a good brother-sister chat.”
“Thanks, Lin.”
She watched as Linda, without saying a word, took the spatula from Dean’s hand and nodded for him to join Paula at the table. How comfortable their relationship was. How easy was their communication. There were no secrets between them. There couldn’t be. Linda had witnessed the family curse up close and personal. She had been there for the last family reunion ten years ago. She’d been there to watch their cousin Douglas enter that room in the basement. And she’d been there when they’d opened the door the next morning…
Paula shuddered.
Her brother was sitting down beside her. “What I’m hoping you’ve come to tell us,” he said, “is that you and Karen have finally set a date to get married.”
Paula felt her eyes moisten. “Oh, I wish that was what I was here for.”
Dean reached over and placed his hand over hers. “Talk to me, sis.”
“How do you do it?” she asked him plainly, looking at him directly.
His brown eyes held hers. “How do I do what?”
She gestured over at Zac and Callie splashing in the lake. “How do you go on, knowing that someday they will have to-” She couldn’t bring herself to speak the words.
Her brother sighed. “It’s a terrible burden. All I can do is pray that soon we will no longer have to deal with that room, that we will find a way to end the curse.”
Paula laughed bitterly. “End the curse? Eighty years, Dean! For eighty years-since our great-grandfather’s time-our family has tried to find a way to do that. But we have always failed.”
Dean’s eyes were fixed on his children. A look of profound sadness had settled over his face. “I know, Paula. Sometimes it feels as if there will never be an end.”
“How could you even bring them into this world, knowing what they would have to face?”
He turned to look at her sharply. “You know why! We had hope then! After Dad died in that room, we brought in that expert, Dr. Hobart. Remember? Remember how optimistic we were? It seemed as if the curse was over. When Aunt Jeanette-”
Paula raised her hands instinctively, almost as if to cover her ears. “Yes, Dean! I remember all that! Let’s not speak it aloud again!” It was too hard for Paula to remember. Such hope. It hurt now to remember that they all had had such hope.
He nodded. “All right. But it was during that period that Zac and Callie were born.”
She studied him. “There was hope then, yes. But there was no guarantee.”
He shook his head. “No. There was no guarantee.”
“And you and Linda had them anyway.”
Once again Dean glanced off at his children. He didn’t speak.
“Karen wants a baby,” Paula said after a silence of about a minute. “She’s been wanting one for some time. And I suspect this time will be decisive for her.” She paused. “She’s going to leave me if I don’t agree.”
Her brother moved his eyes back to her. “That’s it, Paula. That’s the answer to why we need the children.”
“What is?”
He smiled wanly. “We can’t stop living.”
“So you’re saying…you chose to have children even though there was no absolute guarantee that Dr. Hobart would rid the family of the curse? You chose to still have them because we can’t stop living?”
Dean nodded slowly.
“And did you ever regret your decision after it turned out that Hobart was wrong-that the curse was still as strong as ever?”
“Look at them in the lake,” Dean told her. Callie was splashing Zac and he was laughing, his tinkly little voice echoing through the trees. “How could I regret them?”
“You’ll regret it if you ever have to watch one of them go in that room!” Paula charged, her voice getting louder. “The way we watched Daddy! Do you want to open that door one morning and see Zac in there-or Callie-the way we saw Daddy? Or cousin Douglas?”
“Of course not!” Dean stood suddenly, angry now. “Of course I don’t want to see that!”
“I don’t want to see it either! So if it means losing Karen, then so be it! I will not bring a child into this world if it means that!”
Linda had approached the table. Her face was torn with concern and anguish. “Please,” she said. “Don’t let the children hear you.”
“I have to believe,” Dean said, lowering his voice, “that this time, it will end.”
“Why this time?” asked Paula. “What makes this time any different from all the other times?”
“Uncle Howard has spent millions in the last ten years. He’s met with all sorts of people. And this time he’s very encouraged. There’s someone up there with him now…”
“How do you know?”
“I phoned him a few days ago, and he told me he was expecting someone.” Dean sighed. “He seemed optimistic.”
Paula shook her head. “He was optimistic about all the others as well.”
“If only we could all just move far away,” Linda mused out loud, her eyes on her children. “Sever all ties to the rest of the family. Start over. New names…”
Her husband was quick to dismiss the idea. “It was tried. You know that, Linda. Uncle Ernie tried that, and we all know what happened to him.”
They were quiet. Yes, indeed, they all knew what had happened to Ernest Young. After attending two successive family reunions, Uncle Ernie decided he no longer wanted to press his luck. He didn’t want to end up in that room himself. So he bundled up his wife and two young daughters and disappeared to parts unknown. None of the rest of the family had known where he was or how to contact him. But something knew how to find him. When Ernie failed to show for the family reunion, Uncle Howard feared the worst for him. But it wasn’t for a couple of weeks that the family learned that his fears were valid. Dental records confirmed that the identities of a family slaughtered by an unknown assailant in their home in the town of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, were not Jim and Julie Baker and their daughters Kathy and Stephanie, as their neighbors had thought for the past seven years. Rather, they were Ernie, Molly, Ann Marie, and Susie Young. Each had been decapitated, and on the walls of their house, written in their blood, were the words: ABANDON HOPE.
There was no running away. That was the lesson Uncle Ernie had taught them. Instead of just one death that year, there were five. The family did, indeed, abandon hope.
At least until Dr. Kip Hobart, a parapsychologist, had come along. There had been séances. There had been exorcisms. There had been Catholic priests and Wiccan shamans. There had been ghost hunters who vowed the house was “clean.” There had been hope. Paula remembered that hope-so painful now that it seemed to burn in her gut. Because the hope had ended the morning they found poor cousin Douglas dead on the floor of that room, his hands tied behind his back and a plastic bag secured over his head.