Seconds Away

CHAPTER 22

Nobody knows when the Bat Lady first moved to town.

I’m sure that there were housing records and someone could probably figure it out, but if you ask anyone in Kasselton, they will tell you that she has always been in that dark, dilapidated house. Even Uncle Myron remembers the creepy old Bat Lady from his childhood. He told me that kids used to hurry past her house, even way back when he was a kid. He told me that one day, when my own father was twelve or thirteen, he had gone into Bat Lady’s house on a dare…

… and that when my father came out, he was never the same.

I believed that. I had also gone into that house. I had also met Bat Lady. And now I’m not sure that I will ever be the same again.

The rumors that struck fear into the children about Bat Lady were, I knew, completely bogus. Legend had it that she kidnapped children. Some nights, the locals say, if you walked past her house slowly, you could actually hear their cries. Some claimed to see them, dozens of children locked up in her house, ready to be… well, what? Killed, abused, eaten…

Or maybe, just maybe, they were rescued.

It was pitch-black by the time I made it to Bat Lady’s house. The wind howled. It always seemed to pick up when you crossed her property. I’m sure that was just in my mind (and the minds of pretty much everyone else who walked past here), but the willow tree swayed and even from where I stood on the sidewalk, I could hear the porch creak.

All the lights were out, except for a lone lamp in the upstairs bedroom. That was a good sign. Last time I had stopped by, when no one answered the door, the light had been off.

Bat Lady must be back.

The night was silent, almost too quiet, as I approached the house. I knocked on the door. The sound echoed. I felt a chill. I listened for movement. Nothing. I knocked again and pressed my ear against the door. Silence. And then, suddenly, the silence was broken.

By music.

I jumped back. I remembered now that old record player, the one that played vinyls, in her living room. It was hard to picture a weird old lady listening to the albums I’d found stacked there: the Who’s My Generation, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, the Beatles’ Abbey Road, and the album that was currently playing, the one she always seemed to play, Aspect of Juno by HorsePower.

I knocked again. “Open up!”

Still no answer, just the sound of Gabriel Wire, the lead singer of HorsePower, telling me that “time stands still.”

Like hell it does.

I started pounding on the door. No answer. I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t keep pounding-the last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself-but I wasn’t about to leave either.

I tried to look in the window, but they were boarded up in the front. Still, I could see through a sliver into the living room, to where that record player was. It was dark. I kept my eye there for a second.

Then a shadow walked by.

“Hello! Open up!”

I went back to the door and knocked some more. I was tempted to knock the door down, but then I remembered the garage. When I was last inside the house-when Shaved Head brought me to meet Bat Lady and talk face-to-face-he had parked in the garage and taken me via an underground tunnel.

Maybe I could get in that way.

I started toward the back. Bat Lady’s house is set right up against the woods. I don’t mean that the woods are off her backyard-I mean that the house literally sits against the trees, as if the very structure was a part of the forest. I quickly tried the back door, but the new lock held.

I took the small flashlight out of my pocket. It was extra creepy back there. I practically swam through a thick haze of trees until I reached the garage. I knew that inside there was a trapdoor that led to a tunnel. But the garage door was locked. So now what?

I can’t say exactly why, but I headed to the lush garden behind the garage. Something, I don’t know what, drew me there. Ema and I had found it during our last night visit here. I had no idea how Bat Lady kept her plants looking so lively this time of the year, but that was the least of my concerns. There was a path in the middle of the garden. I knew what was at the end of it.

I lifted my flashlight. It found the tombstone in the back. I read the now-familiar words:

LET US LABOR TO MAKE THE HEART GROW LARGER,

AS WE BECOME OLDER,

AS SPREADING OAK GIVES MORE SHELTER.

HERE LIES E.S.

A CHILDHOOD LOST FOR CHILDREN

A30432

I had figured that E.S. stood for Elizabeth “Lizzy” Sobek, but now I realized that it could just as easily be her brother, Emmanuel, or her mother, Esther, though they had died in Poland more than half a century ago; so really, how could they “lie” here?

But that wasn’t the main point.

No, Mrs. Friedman, Lizzy Sobek hadn’t been killed by the Butcher of Lodz. Lizzy Sobek had survived the war and been, well, a hippie at some point and now everyone in town knew her as the Bat Lady, the creepy old lady who lived in the creepy old house.

I wondered what Mrs. Friedman would do if she learned that Lizzy “Butterfly” Sobek, the legendary resistance fighter who lost her family at Auschwitz, lived less than a quarter of a mile from Kasselton High School.

I moved toward the tombstone. In the background, one HorsePower song faded away and another began. I knew what was on the back of the tombstone-that same Abeona butterfly with its animal eyes on the wings. I had seen it here during my previous visit, but again something had drawn me here, so I had to play it out.

My footsteps echoed in the dark. I got my beam ready, aimed it at the spot, and gasped out loud. The butterfly was there, but someone had crossed it out. Someone had spray-painted a giant X across it.

I spun back to the house, and this time I could hear mocking laughter.

The sound ran down my spine.

Go home, Mickey, I told myself.

There was danger. You could feel it. Danger had a certain quality to it. You could almost reach out and touch it. I knew that I should go. I knew that I should regroup and think this out. But there was no way I was going to, not because I was particularly brave or, in this case, foolhardy, and not because I wanted to be as dumb as those teenagers who go into the serial killer’s house in horror movies.

I just didn’t want whatever was haunting me to escape again. If it got the better of me, okay, I could live (or die) with that. But I needed answers and I wasn’t about to let the person who might be able to answer them slip through my fingers again.

I ran to the back door and knocked. Dumb. Nobody had responded before. What did I think would be different now?

I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered into the kitchen through the back window. Dark. But then I saw a shadow cross in the distance. Someone had streaked by and was heading up the stairs.

Why?

I tried picturing Bat Lady moving as fast as that shadow. I couldn’t imagine it.

Someone else was in that house. Someone else had spray-painted an X onto the tombstone. Someone else had turned on the music and mocked me with a laugh.

I ran around to the front and looked up into Bat Lady’s bedroom window with the light. I tilted my head, trying to get an angle, trying to see something-a shadow maybe, a silhouette, anything-and as I did, someone turned off the light.

Total darkness.

Oh no.

I didn’t know what to do. I debated kicking in the door, but then what? This was probably nothing-a visitor or maybe even Bat Lady herself turning the lights down before heading to sleep. Still, my heart was pounding against my chest. I had to do something.

I was just debating my next move when the light in the window came back on. I moved back onto the grass so I could get a better look. I cupped my hands into a megaphone and called out, “Hello?” I didn’t know what to call her. Her identity was a secret, so calling out to “Miss Sobek” wouldn’t work. I wasn’t sure yelling “Bat Lady” was the way to go either.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

Nothing.

“It’s Mickey. Hello? Can you open the door? Please?”

I saw something in the window move. A hand pushed the thin gauzelike curtain to the side and then a face peered out.

I screamed out loud this time.

There, from that upstairs window, the Butcher of Lodz was staring down at me.