Free Scary Creek by Thomas Cater Page A

Ryder house.”
    The skin on her hand was soft and smooth, but she had
a firm healthy grip. I tried to convey in a handshake my own flawed
fallibility.
    “I want to understand what’s going on out there, Mrs.
Taylor, and I think I need your help.”
    She nodded and withdrew her hand. The understanding
that seemed to fill her eyes was encouraging.
    “I hope your memory is better than mine,” I said. “If
someone asked me about events that happened a few years ago, I wouldn’t know
where to begin.”
    She smiled, secure in the visions and memories of the
past surrounding her.
    “Can you tell me about the Ryders?” I asked.
    “I know all about ‘em,” she said. “I lived with ‘em
for 15 years.”
    I leaned back in the chair relieved. Her voice was
strong and her words were slow but clear, the sign of a sound mind.
    “Do you mind talking about them, now that they’re
gone?” I asked.
    Her smile was playful, implying that some things
understood were better left unsaid. She shook her head and her jowls waddled.
    “What you want to know, Frank?” she asked.
    The use of my unmentioned middle name caught me off
guard. Everyone stared, waiting to see how I would respond.
    “Tell me about Elinore,” I said.
    Her eyes closed and a smile softened her face.
    “What can I tell you that you don’t already know?” she
said, and then her expression changed. Her eyes filled with tears and I thought
she was going to cry.
    “That poor baby was locked up all those years. It’s no
wonder she went crazy. If it hadn’t been for you, Frank…” and then she was
silent.
    The room also filled with silence. Even the grandson
removed the pipe from his mouth so his teeth would not knock against the wood.
He acted as if he were hearing this account for the first time.
    “Please go on,” I said.
    The old woman’s lower lip trembled. “He said she had
‘organic weaknesses’ and couldn’t go anywhere. But when he went away, the mice
would play,” she said, and chuckled until tears spilled from her eyes. Her
expression changed again. “Then he sent her up to the attic,” she said.
    The hair on the back of my neck was starting to stand
on end, but the others were too engrossed in Amy’s story and their own stunned
surprise to notice.
    “We know she was nearly blind, but what kind of
organic weaknesses was ‘he’ talking about?” I asked.
    “She wasn’t always that way,” Amy said. “She could see
some things well. She could see frogs and lizards in the grass and on the trees
thirty feet away. She had those big funny pop-eyes that stared at you hard. There
were a lot of people scared to look that baby in the eyes.”
    “Were you scared of her, Amy?” I asked.
    “She was my friend,” Amy said. “We grew up together. Still,
I tried not to look in her eyes, ‘cept maybe once or twice. The poor thing was
blind as a mole before too long. Her pappy made me learn to read and write so’s
I could be her eyes.”
    “Were pop eyes her organic weakness, Amy,” I asked. If
it wasn't for her age, I might have suspected cataracts could have caused the
problem. Science knew next to nothing about the ‘milky white rain’ of the eyes,
until recently.
    The old woman grinned and laughed. I was expecting to
hear her describe some anatomical ambiguities involving things as radical as
the shape of her skull.
    “She liked to talk about her powers,” Amy said. Breath
did not come easily to her lungs. “She said she could speak in tongues, call
down lightning and thunder, makes dogs howl and people do her bidding.”
    I glanced at Virgil. He quickly averted his eyes. Violet
was hanging on every word, as was the old woman’s grandson.
    “Did you ever hear her speak in tongues?” I asked.
    “Of course, often; she could go on for hours.”
    “Did she fancy herself a witch?” I asked, knowing that
Svengalis and spiritualists were the fashion in those days.
    Amy shrugged.  “Not really. She said she could make
people living or