And just like that, she was gone. It was a strangely beautiful and touching moment, one that I would think of often as my life started to disintegrate before my eyes.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Knowing that Declan had the same ability as I did, made me feel much less alone. However, though I would often confide in the young boy about the ghosts I saw, he never did the same with me. I would ask him but he wouldn’t say or he’d avoid the question. He liked to hear about it without acknowledging that it happened to him. Who knows, Declan, perhaps you never saw things the way I did. After all, my ability never really worsened until I went to the Thin Veil and back.
Regardless of Declan’s input, it helped to share with him as he was the only one who would and could listen to me without threatening to drag me away to the loony bin. Things were getting worse for me, with the ghosts and with my own family.
No, I hadn’t forgotten my dear daughter, or Karl, but my relationship with both grew more and more strained. I admit, it was also I who was pulling back, devoting more of my time and energy into Declan and Michael, and in my increasingly fragile and paranoid state, I was afraid to talk to Karl and Ingrid.
Ingrid managed to pull herself out of the wrong crowd because she met Perry’s father, Daniel. I met him a few times for lunch and found him to be far better than Stew or Drew or whatever new man Ingrid was shacking up with. I would never have pegged my daughter to be with someone like Daniel. It was almost a comical sight to see his short stocky demeanor beside her tall and willowy one. But Daniel was smart, driven and passionate and was spending a year at the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church as part of his graduate thesis. For whatever reason, Ingrid was drawn to him and he to her. He pulled out grace and goodness from Ingrid that I very rarely saw.
I suppose that’s why I withdrew from them as I did. Before, I would have been adamant about spending time with both of them, but there were some days I was too afraid to leave the house for fear of the reaction I would cause. The dead kept coming for me, multiplying year by year, all wanting a peace of me, whether it was my ear to listen to their sob story, or, at times, my soul.
There was one particular ghoul whom I remembered from my past. The man with the shadowy face who I saw tormenting the girl in my garden, all those years ago in the Swedish countryside. At first I saw him prowling the backyard, then the streets outside the house. He would just stare, watching me. One night as I got up to use the washroom, I had a weird sensation I was being watched. With my nerves on fire, I crept through the house and felt this malevolent intensity rolling out from Declan’s door. He was about twelve now and was a strong kid, back to sleeping in his own room. Some nights the door was locked but tonight it wasn’t and as I quietly opened it, I saw the shadowy black figure standing above his bed. It was just for a second though and when I turned on the light, awaking the poor boy, the man was gone. Declan fell back to sleep unaware of what had been there.
The fact that I could feel the evil from the figure, who was constantly watching me in a most predatory way, made me believe that this was no ghost. No human. This was a demon, a creature. And as the years went on and the creature appeared more frequently, I knew it was true. Jakob had mentioned as much.
There came a point where the day-to-day fear of never knowing what this demon might do to me, or the ones I loved, finally took its toll on my sanity. I began to talk to myself and to the demons, to the ghosts, not caring who saw. Curtis and the boys became increasingly concerned about me. With Michael and Declan I knew the concern came from the worry in their heart but with Curtis I could see his disappointment and annoyance in finding a nanny who acted just as crazy as his wife.
I started to fear I’d be let go. But that didn’t happen. No, it was Curtis who left. One day and without much warning.
Declan was thirteen and Michael was sixteen when Curtis pulled me aside in the kitchen and told me that he recently completed a huge transaction of sorts and that he was putting a large sum of money in a trust for the boys when they both turned eighteen. I never knew how much it was, but I assume it was a lot. Curtis then told me he wanted to thank me for all my hard work (oh, here it comes, I’m being let go, I thought) and that he arranged a trip for me and the boys to Atlantic City for the weekend. They’d both be allowed to bring a friend and that we were free to spend his money as we liked.
Naturally the boys were ecstatic. At this point, Declan was in a band with a few friends and invited his drummer, Joey, to come along. Michael had a beautiful girlfriend, Marguerite, and even though I had been quite strict with the amount of time they spent together alone (no young lady was getting pregnant on my watch), I relented and told him he could bring her, knowing the young ones would all be sharing the same suite.
That was one of the best weekends of my life. Even the ghosts and demons were kept at bay and I was free to enjoy the sweet salty air of the boardwalk, such a nice change from the harshness of the city. It was wonderful to see Declan truly smiling and enjoying himself. At this age he dressed in loose pants and flannel shirts, his hair was shoulder-length, wonderfully wavy and streaked with red. He begged me to let him get his eyebrow pierced with Joey at one of the beachside tattoo parlors but I had to put my foot down somewhere and said no. Ever the rebel, he and Joey pretended to go to a movie later that night and wasn’t I surprised in the slightest when they came back and I saw matching rings on both their faces.
I knew Curtis would kill him for it (indeed, he would publicly lament Declan’s long hair and grunge attire even though the boy was passed the point of caring), and he would most likely reprimand me as well. But I decided not to worry about it until Sunday night. For now, this time and peace and sunshine was all we had and needed.
I am ever so grateful I let the boys be boys, even if it ended up with piercings and Michael and Marguerite sneaking away to the beach at night to canoodle. When we returned, no one would ever be the same.
The house was empty, save for Régine who was quietly weeping at the kitchen table. She was drunk, but not dangerously so, though she could not tell us why she was crying. The sight shocked us since Régine rarely showed any sadness, it was always anger.
On a hunch, I went upstairs to the master bedroom and found the room to be emptied. Everything that belonged to Curtis was gone. His clothes, his shoes, his books.
I ran down to his study and it was emptied too. His degrees and certificates, his computer and files, everything had vanished. There was no note, no anything. He just up and left that day and that was the end of it.