And then after the service itself, she had come home more upset than ever, with stories about voices filtering out of the sea in the middle of the night. She’d gone off her nut with the stress.
A gust of wind hit the house and rattled the windows. The whole wall seemed to shake. From Jip’s room came a scraping sound as if the bed had been pushed across the floor. Downstairs Holly whooped at the noise, an involuntary yell of apprehension. He raced to her quickly and had reached the first floor when the rattling happened again, this time much more violently at the kitchen windows, the wind zeroing in on the spot. Then two thumps, one right after the other, striking against the glass. Holly found him in the dim light, and she latched onto the sleeves of his robe.
“Did you hear that?” she asked. “There’s someone trying to get in.”
“No, it’s the wind.”
As if on cue, the glass rattled till it hummed.
“No, Tim, that’s someone outside the house trying all the windows. Listen.”
The rattling moved, in fact, to the mudroom, the windows shaking one by one, as if the thing outside was testing each as it moved from the back of the house toward the front. The outer door shook briefly, and the doorknob trembled. Tim loosed himself from her grip and went to the front closet and pulled out the brand-new baseball bat he’d bought himself for Christmas for just such emergencies.
“Don’t, Tim.”
“Be quiet. I just want to be protected if there is someone out there, but I tell you it’s the wind.”
They crouched together in the dark. A minute passed in silence, and another, and then they breathed more easily. Another five minutes crawled by, and nothing.
“We could turn on a light,” Tim said.
“Are you kidding? And have whatever’s out there see us in here?”
“There’s nothing out there. Gales. A front moving through.”
“How could it be the wind? Does the wind turn doorknobs? Does the wind knock on the kitchen windows? Something’s trying to get inside, Tim. Inside the house, inside our lives. I hear it all the time.”
“Those back windows are twelve feet off the ground. Just listen, you can still hear the wind in the distance. It’s just moving off. A squall.”
“It’s not the first time,” she said. “It has been going on for weeks. Weird noises around the house, things that go bump in the night.”
He held out his arms and she nestled into him, feeling a light clunk from the baseball bat as he embraced her. “You’re overwrought. It’s about Jip, isn’t it? I know he’s been a handful lately, but I’ve got a plan. A New Year’s resolution to work harder with him.”
She sighed and buried herself deeper in his arms. They stood together in the middle of the room anticipating another sound, but the only noises were the wind whistling and blowing in the distance and the creaks and ticks of the old house.
“You’re tired,” he said. “Been doing too much for the rest of us.”
“I am tired, but my mind won’t shut off.”
He laid the baseball bat on the sofa. “We’ll get you a sleeping pill.”
“Perchance to dream.”
He put his arm around her hips and led her to the bottom of the stairs. Shrouded in darkness at the top of the stairwell, Jip stood looking down upon them.
“Jesus,” she said. “You gave me a fright. How long have you been up there?”
“J.P., what are you doing out of bed?” Tim turned on the light, and the three of them blinked and shielded their eyes from the sudden illumination.
“I had a dream,” he said, rubbing his eye. “There was a monster under my bed.”
They walked up to him, pausing a few steps below, so that they could see him face-to-face.
“Too much turkey and apple pie,” his father said. “Gives you bad dreams. It was just the wind you heard. Shook things up. No monsters, remember?”
“It was a nightmare,” his mother said. “Everything will look better in the morning light.” He stepped toward her and opened his arms. She touched him lightly on the arm and then brushed the hair from his eyes, and he was her little boy again.
vi.