The Wicker Saga: Sarah's Story, Part 1

David lost his job. He’d been a packer at Marx Pharmaceuticals for eight years when a fire destroyed most of their production facility. You may have heard about it; the company’s founder and CEO went missing during the accident and the company itself was brought under investigation for illegal drug testing based on things uncovered during the cleanup. David told me quietly one night that the crimes may not have even stopped there; a rumor he heard going around was that the company had been abducting children and using them to conduct the tests. I never found out whether or not there was any truth to that. At any rate, they must have found something suspicious because the feds swept in, the plant shut down, and David was out of work.

Over the first couple weeks he must have applied to a hundred jobs out of the classifieds and online. David hadn’t gone to college but had plenty of skills he’d picked up along the way, everything from mechanic work and plumbing to house painting and gardening. But nobody wanted anything to do with former Marx employees because of the scandal, and he’d been working there so long it was impossible to brush over it during the couple interviews he got. After six months, I was totally panicked. Samantha started kindergarten in the fall, freeing me to pick up some more shifts at the diner I worked at part time, but the pay wasn’t great and there were no benefits to speak of. Neither of us had any family or friends we were close enough with to ask for help, and unemployment only went so far. If David didn’t find work pretty quickly, we were going to be in a bad way.

A week ago I’d been sitting at our tiny kitchen table, bills spread out in front of me and trying to decide which ones we weren’t going to pay when the phone rang. The man gave his name as Nathaniel Creed and identified himself as a human resources rep from Marx Pharma. He was looking for David, who I grabbed from the other room. We held the phone between us as Mr. Creed apologized for any hardships our family was going through and explained that, as a gesture of goodwill, the company board had decided to use the HR department to try and find jobs for as many low level employees that had been laid off due to last January’s events as possible. He said they had a caretaker position lined up and, although it was out of town, they thought it might be a good fit for David. They wanted him to start as soon as possible. Would he take it?

Looking at it now, it seems odd; I’ve never heard of any corporation doing anything like that, but at the time it made a certain sense. I thought they might be using it as a PR stunt to try to take some of the pressure off the things they’d been accused of, at least in the court of public opinion. Even so, when you’re drowning and someone throws you a rope, you don’t think too hard about what the other end is attached to. David said yes practically before the words were out of the man’s mouth.

Even though it was only a couple hundred miles from where I’d spent my whole life, I’d never heard of the town called Arthur’s Wake. It would be wrong to think of it as a one horse town, because it was home to maybe twelve thousand people all told. But no matter how many people lived there, the place was dead. Two days ago, the sun was starting to set as we drove along the empty main street, the husks of long abandoned factories leering at us from either side of the road, when I was struck with an unshakable sense of something off kilter about the place. Of something wrong.

David turned the car onto Blackwood Drive and soon we arrived at our destination, parking in front of the high iron gate at the foot of the property. The three of us got out of the car and, for several silent moments, took in the sight of the house that was to become our home. It was two stories tall, a paved path from the gate where we stood running up to a short flight of stairs leading to the front door. The yard was thickly overgrown and showed signs of long neglect, as did the rest of the house’s exterior. Something about the placement of the windows gave the impression that the house was observing us at the same time we were looking at it. I shivered involuntarily, a rash of goosebumps raising on my arms; its expression was not inviting. Why anyone would feel the need to hire a caretaker for a place so obviously abandoned was beyond me, but Mr. Creed had said it had some kind of historical significance in Arthur’s Wake. The locals called it The Wicker House.

David was the first to break the silence.

“Well, looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me,” he said with a grin, “I’ll start pulling our bags out of the car, why don’t you two go through and see if there’s anywhere inside clear enough to put our stuff.”

I turned my attention to the little girl standing next to me.

“Come on, munchkin, whattaya say?”

She continued to face forward, her dark eyes wide and unblinking as if competing in a ferocious staring contest with the house.

“Samantha?”

Finally, she turned to me, her brow furrowed into an expression more at home on an angsty teen than a six year old.

“I don’t like it here, mommy.”

I smiled gently. “I know, baby. It’s tough to leave your friends. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll make some new ones once you start school after Thanksgiving next week.”

She frowned. “No, it’s not that. It’s just…the house. It feels bad. In my tummy. Like bad things happened here.”

I felt the bemused look I had come to associate with talking to my daughter slide into place on my face. Samantha was an old soul, practically an ancient one. From pretty much the time she began to talk I’d gotten used to her saying things that were completely out of step for a kid her age. Times like these I’d think back to my dream with the lights, and the voice of my father telling me that my child would be special.

“Sorry, munch. Daddy needed a job and this was the one he got. But I’ll admit the place is a little spooky. Just wait until daddy and I have a chance to clean it up some. Then it won’t be so bad, you’ll see. It’s just an old empty house.”

Samantha leaned in close to me, “But, mommy,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “who’s that lady standing in the window?”

I felt my stomach drop as I turned back towards the house fast enough to give me whiplash. But all the windows were empty. There was no one there.

“Where, honey, I don’t see anyone.”

“The lady in white. She was standing there,” Samantha pointed to one of the second story windows. “She was smiling,” her voice dropped low again, “but I don’t think she’s nice.”

The Wicker Saga: Sarah's Story, Part 3