“D-d-d-da,” Shaun stuttered, between hitching cries.
“I’m right here, honey, I’m right here.”
Shaun shook his head. “Da!”
Evan wiped away some of the tears and frowned, glancing at the kitchen as Shaun pointed again.
“Da!”
“Okay, okay, I don’t know what you’re saying, honey.”
Shaun glanced around the room through tear-muddled eyes and pointed toward the entertainment center.
“You want the TV off? Was there something scary on the TV?”
He stood, suddenly aware of his nudity, and grabbed a small blanket from a nearby chair. After wrapping it around his waist, he went toward the TV, sure now that something on the program must have disturbed Shaun.
“Dere,” Shaun yelled through another sob, pointing again at the TV.
“Okay, I’ll shut it off,” Evan said, flicking the power switch.
“Dere!”
This time he looked at where Shaun pointed, following his outstretched arm to the iPad lying beside the TV.
“You want the iPad?”
“Na.” Shaun screwed up his face in concentration. “Yesh!”
“Okay,” Evan said, carrying the device to the couch.
Shaun grabbed it from his hand, flipped it on, and found the flash-card application. The app loaded, and he continued to whimper as he scrolled down the rows and rows of pictures with names beneath them. While he searched, Evan glanced over the couch at the kitchen. There weren’t any lights on, and shadows hung beneath the long table and shaded the two doors at its far end.
“Dolldolldolldolldolldoll.”
The thick electronic voice spoke from the iPad as Shaun punched the picture of a doll with brown hair, over and over.
“Dolldolldolldolldolldoll.”
A shudder ran through his body as Shaun quit hitting the screen and pointed, not toward the kitchen, Evan realized, but toward the basement door.
“Da,” Shaun said, his crying tapering off.
Evan tried to form the word but couldn’t. The water beads clinging to his skin were drops of ice.
“It’s okay, buddy,” he whispered, and knelt, hugging Shaun’s quaking body close to him. “It’s okay.”
~
Evan pulled the basement door open and shone the flashlight down the stairs. Panning back and forth, he took the first step, listening.
He’d rocked Shaun to sleep while sitting in his room, humming a tune with words forgotten. Elle had used to sing the song when Shaun was a baby, before the crash, before the cancer, before everything. It was the one thing he could recall from their prior life without feeling the crush of depression. He just wished he could remember the words.
The stairs creaked beneath him as he took another step, the darkness fleeing before his light, only to rush in when he swept it in another direction. He tried not to think about Shaun’s outburst, but in his head the voice from the iPad repeated over and over.
The blue shine of the doll’s eyes met him when he turned on the landing. The doll stood in the exact same place as before. The basement had a vacuum-like silence to it, a held breath, waiting. Evan strode down the last few steps, faking a bravado without anything to back it up. He flipped on the lights and bent forward, examining the doll’s placement on the floor. Were its feet in the same spot as before? He moved around it, trying to recall exactly where he’d left it.
Yes, it hadn’t moved.
Evan rubbed his face with one hand, feeling the urge to cry. What the hell was happening to him? He was in a basement, frightened almost to his wit’s end, wondering if a doll had walked up the stairs and scared his son.
Anger poured over him. Saturated him.
He wound up a kick and booted the doll as hard as he could. It flew a few feet and rebounded off the wall, coming to rest on its face. Its hair fell in a broad fan around its head. Facedown, it reminded him of the body in the lake.
He reached down, meaning to carry the thing out of the house, to throw it away in the trash bin outside, but stopped. Would that be admitting to some kind of insanity on his part? He straightened, pointing his flashlight at the monstrosity of a clock at the other end of the room, its face taciturn in the beam.
“We gotta get some better lights down here.”
Without looking at the doll again, he climbed the steps and shut the door. In the kitchen he grabbed his phone and dialed Jason’s number, glancing at the clock to make sure it wasn’t too late.
“What’s up, man?” Jason answered a moment later. The sounds of a video game in the background filtered through to Evan’s end.
“Hey, not much, am I bothering you?”
“Nah, Lily and I are just playing a game.”
“Gotcha.”
Silence spooled out between them until Jason laughed.
“Ev, you okay?”
Evan sighed and walked into the living room, his blurry reflection in the dark windows looked back at him.
“No, I’m not.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think we can stay here anymore, Jase.”
“What? Why?”
The video game’s sound diminished and then was gone with the snap of a door shutting.
“It’s not working out well with bringing Shaun across the lake.”
“I thought you said he loved the boat rides.”
“Yeah, you know, we feel strange here. The guy before us goes missing, and I don’t know. I don’t think it’s safe here for Shaun.”
“Safe?”
“Yeah.”
“Ev, did something happen?”
All at once he wanted to tell Jason everything: the doll, the body in the lake, his dreams. But what would Jason ask next? Or maybe he wouldn’t ask. They were such good of friends that he couldn’t ask out loud, but he would wonder, Is Shaun safe with you? Stanching the urge to tell Jason all of it, he made his way to Shaun’s room, pausing in the doorway to watch him sleep.
“No. I can’t explain it.”
“Listen, man, sit down for a minute, okay? Do you want to know what I think?”
“No, but I’m guessing you’re going to tell me.”
“I think maybe you’re finally alone with your thoughts, and they’re getting to you.”