6
The next couple of weeks went by quickly. My days were filled with a new routine, one that was full of unexpected twists and turns at my new job. I learned a lot from Joy in the first week. She showed me how to deal with impatient customers and how to deal with angry artists. Sometimes, when the paint stopped flowing from their brushes, they started to lose their minds a little bit, I had seen it before. But I'd never seen someone deal with them as professionally as Joy did. She really did know what she was doing in this business. She drove a nice car and had nice things, but I never heard her talk about her family and she hadn't mentioned Dave since that first day at the Thai place. It was clear she was very involved in her career. She commented on my fish painting and helped me to attempt to sell it, but so far there hadn’t been any offers. I was okay with that though, at least it was up on someone's wall. It made me finally feel like a legitimate artist, something I had been trying to accomplish for the past two years. It seemed as though Salem was the perfect escape I had been looking for.
Joy and my friendship was advancing nicely too. Twice she had left me alone in the gallery while she went to the bank or post office. It was never for long but while I was alone I took a few moments to enjoy the pieces on display. It was refreshing to like my job so much and to be given the opportunity to focus on my own art, though I hadn’t really had time to start painting yet again. Sometimes when she was gone and it was quiet I would stare at a painting until I felt a chill go down my spine. It felt like I was being watched. I would shake it off and get back to work, realizing the silence probably put the thoughts in my head.
At night I would go home and have dinner with Gran and we'd either watch TV or play a card game out on the Veranda. It was nice to have someone to spend time with and Gran never pushed too hard. She would offer me a book and a glass of iced tea and leave me early enough that I still had time to mess around on the Internet or text the parents. I didn’t talk to them all that much, not wanting to overwhelm them and also wanting my space. Joy had invited me out a few times to do different things and our friendship was growing, so I wasn't surprised when she started walking me home from work. She claimed it was good physical activity for her since she sat most of the day, but I knew it was for both of us. It gave us time to talk about girl stuff away from work and it was fun. I appreciated the company as well. Ever since arriving in Salem I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had been watching me so walking home alone worried me a little.
Joy and I were walking home after closing the gallery one Friday night when we stopped to get some ice cream at the local Tastee Freeze.
“What flavor do you want?” Joy looked at me inquisitively while she laid her hand on the extended counter, “I got this tonight.”
“Umm, how about some of that blue raspberry? Is it any good?” I faked my attention as I scanned the crowd. Again I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as though someone was keeping tabs on me.
The guy behind the counter leaned forward. He had shaggy brown hair and dark green eyes. I could tell he was built as his white Tastee Freeze T-shirt hugged his chest. “Yeah, it’s okay, but if you’re into fruity, I’d try the mango instead.”
Joy smiled, “You should listen to Dave. He’s been working here a long time, he knows all the flavors.” Ah, so this was the infamous Dave. She looked back at him and flirtatiously tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. Her sun-kissed skin glowed in the evening light. There was no competition if you were standing anywhere near her. She had all the boys looking at her. I didn’t mind though. I wasn’t ready to get back into the dating scene just yet.
“All right, I’ll try it. Mango was going to be my second choice anyway.”
“Perfect! And I’ll have a small cone with chocolate sprinkles please.” She winked at Dave for good measure, or maybe for extra sprinkles. Joy looked back at me and said, “They have the best ice cream here, no other place in town has this many flavors.”
“Sure Joy, they also don’t have Dave scooping it out, do they?” I raised an eyebrow at her and she laughed. “I’ll make a mental note of that. I’m always looking for a good ice cream shop. I think Gran would like a milkshake from time to time.”
“You should so get her one right now,” Joy said. “Hey Dave, add a small vanilla milkshake to the order too! Thanks hon!”
I saw him nod from the back of the parlor. It looked like he was deep in thought while extracting my yellow-orange mango ice cream.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, even though I knew she really wanted to. Everyone loved Gran, I felt like the whole town was rallying behind her ever since I had arrived. It was like they wanted her to be able to stay in the house.
“Are you kidding? It’s the least I can do for her since I monopolize all of her granddaughter’s evenings. I mean really, when was the last time you saw her for an extended period of time?”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but hearing Joy say it, it really had been a few days since I’d spent some quality time with Gran. “A couple of days I guess.”
“Well then, tell her the milkshake’s from you because when you see her tonight she is going to be annoyed.” She laughed at her own comment.
I squinted at her, “What do you mean?”
She continued to giggle. It was a light airy sound. “I used to live with my aunt for a little while and even though they say to go out on your own and do your own thing, they actually mean they want you home for dinner every night by five. So just give her the milkshake and I’m sure that all will be well.”
She paid for the ice cream and we started to walk down the cobblestone street back to Gran’s house. The large oak trees that lined the road cast looming shadows over what seemed to be our small figures. Joy continued to chatter about Dave, the gallery, and some of the houses that we went by.
“See that yellow one over there?” I could only nod since my mouth was full of creamy goodness. “They say it’s haunted. I mean they say that about a lot of the houses here, but that one in particular… something weird is going on in there. In the nineteen-forties, when the guys came back from World War II, apparently this soldier went totally crazy. He killed his wife and his young son and then pulled the trigger on himself. It’s one of the darkest stories in Salem’s past. Nobody even does the ghost tours in front of that house, if that tells you how scared even the ghost hunters are.”
I swallowed my ice cream and said, “Weird, I mean shouldn’t they be into all that stuff?”
“You would think so, but some strange things have happened there.” We stopped about twenty feet in front of the dilapidated structure. It was completely falling apart. The roof was missing over a large part of the back of the house and none of the windows had shutters anymore. Most of what was left of the windows were covered up with particle board. There were vines strangling what was remaining of the walls and they snaked inside the roof.
The house gave me a creepy feeling. It was rare that I got those feelings, but sometimes, when I was a kid, I used to feel like someone was watching me. I asked my mom about it one time but she just shrugged it off and told me to stop watching scary movies. Whenever I felt like that I would get goosebumps and the hair on the back my neck would stand up. Sometimes, if it was really bad, I would get this feeling in my stomach like I had just swallowed a brick or something. And I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.
Joy didn’t notice my distress and continued with her tale. “Last year two kids I know broke in. I guess they thought they were being funny, or that it was some type of joke. Nobody really knows what happened to them in there, but they’re on some serious meds now, one of them is practically a vegetable.”
I stared at her, “Oh my God, really?” This place was really horrifying. I didn’t know anybody that had been in the hospital. Even when things were really bad with me, I avoided the place like the plague.
“Yeah, some people say he fell through the second story and hit his head on some of the metal that was remaining in the kitchen. I do know that the police had to go and get them, and fire and rescue were here and everything. One of my friends was a cop on the scene and he said that most of the other police refused to even go in after they got the kid out. My friend wanted to make sure they had secured the scene so he went in to check on things. Nothing happened to him right then, but two days later he got really sick. He was in the hospital for like a week. No one knows what he had, the doctors couldn’t figure it out. I went to visit him once, but he was sleeping. But as I turned to leave the hospital room he started talking.” She shook her head, almost like the story was too much to bear.
“He just kept saying over and over, ‘No, I won’t go with you. I don’t want to be one of them, I’m a good person.’ It was really weird.”
The shivers were getting really bad by then and I wanted to get out of there. Her story, which probably wasn’t true, had really freaked me out and I was ready to go home. But then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Directly under the street lamp was a high-heeled shoe.
“Joy,” I whispered pointing, “do you see that?” I was hoping her story had just scared me enough that my mind was playing tricks on me, but as I saw her eyes travel over to the shoe I realized it was really there.
Her mouth opened slightly but no words came out, she just took a deep breath and walked over to the pool of light. I didn’t hear her say any words, I just heard the whoosh of the milkshake hitting the ground.
I ran over to see what was wrong. My whole body shook when I screamed.