The Haunting of Bonner Springs Page 4

  “What can you tell me, sweetheart?” Matt asked gently as he feathered back the damp hair from Melody’s face.

  She struggled to contain her tears and finally took a deep breath and spoke.

  “I heard him squawking. The way you hate, you know?”

  Matt grimaced now feeling really guilty at his comments to Darby earlier.

  “So I came down here to see what was up. To calm him down. But all I found was…”

  She fell into a new round of tears and pressed hard into Darby’s arms.

  “His cover was on? Cage locked as usual?” Matt asked.

  Melody nodded vigorously, still crying.

  “Who would do such a thing, Dad?”

  “I don’t know, honey…”

  ……….

  Darby got Melody back to her room and in bed, though she knew the impact of this event had just begun. She sat with her for a bit after telling her they would have a service for Bertie in the morning. She knew it would be painful for Melody, recalling how bad it had been for her as a child when she had lost a pet. She stroked Melody’s brow and finally doused the light when her breathing came back to normal, and it appeared as if she was falling asleep. She tiptoed down the hall and let Jasper know what would happen the next day as well.

  “How, Mom? How could this happen? Bertie wouldn’t hurt a fly…”

  “I don’t know, Jasper. We just have to make the best of it and go on, OK?”

  He nodded, but the pain in his chest sure did not feel like “making the best of it.”

  Melody listened as her mother spoke in Jasper’s room and as argumentative as she and Jasper were at times, even in the midst of her own grief and suffering, Melody was truly touched by how hard Jasper was taking this as well. She closed her eyes as a stray tear dribbled down her cheek before nodding off from fatigue and exhaustion. Melody slept for a while—how long she was not sure—before bolting awake again as the harsh memory of the night hit her once more. But she was all cried out. However, she listened again and just as before she was sure she was hearing some odd creaks and squeaks all through the house. She tried as hard as she could to tell herself that it was just an old house settling. And that worked until the footsteps began again. She knew everyone else was asleep. And she also knew that her Dad had searched everywhere. Was she going crazy? With that in her head, Melody finally nodded off sleeping until daybreak.

  In Jasper’s Eyes

  Bonner Springs, Kansas

  August - October 2018

  Never having had pets as a kid, Matt let Darby take the lead on Bertie’s service and burial. He watched with fascination as she wrapped the parrot’s body in a rich velvet cloth and then laid him delicately in a shoebox. He was impressed that she did not make either Melody nor Jasper have to go through that procedure, but did have them be the ones to complete the actual burial and say what they needed to say during the service. He filled in Bertie’s grave and secured the small cross Melody had made as Darby, and the kids went back inside.

  “I’m very impressed, Darby. This was all new to me too,” he said later when they were alone.

  “Thanks. It goes back to my days at that age. I lost my best friend at the time, a cat we had for many years. It was heart-wrenching for me, but actually having a hand in its burial and all sure helped me through it. I hate that expression ‘closure,’ but I guess that is what it is.”

  Matt said nothing.

  “They need to see that life is a circle. That nothing lasts forever. Good life lesson, even as hard as it was. Especially on Melody.”

  Matt kissed her on top of the head and headed off to work on a new book he had begun just before all of the furor over Bertie had hit the fan. Another month or so went by, and little by little, the kids fell back into a routine. Jasper had been enrolled in school and was focused on what the new classes and his new friends would be like now that he would be seeing them on a daily basis. Melody was still hurting from the inexplicable demise of Bertie…Matt had never been able to figure out just what had happened. Both he and Darby were concerned for her, anxious that this might send her into a real tailspin on top of her already bleak mood. But as kids often do, Melody surprised them one day announcing she was enrolling at Pratt Community College near Topeka.

  She had thought it over long and hard, especially in the wake of the loss of Bertie, and just could not continue sitting around and moping. She was still not sure a full 4-year school was right for her, and seeing as how she had zero ideas as to what she wanted to pursue, a community college seemed like a good way to dip her toe in the scholastic waters. It would not require all the testing and other requirements of a university application either. Matt and Darby were simultaneously shocked and thrilled. They were sure this would give Melody a better social life as well as maybe introducing her to some ideas as to what she wanted to do with her life. Before this announcement, Darby had considered suggesting a replacement pet for Melody, but this decision seemed to help her avoid a conversation she had been avoiding thus far.

  Darby had stored away Bertie’s old cage after cleaning it up, thinking putting it out of sight would be most therapeutic for Melody. It had been that way for her as a child. With the Bertie trauma behind them, the kids went back to school, Matt went back to writing while Verdant was setting up a possible tour for him, and Darby worked sporadically with established and new clients as she put the final touches on the house following Matt’s herculean efforts at the renovation that had been needed. Things fell into a comfortable rhythm, and Matt and Darby were sure they had made the right decision coming to Bonner Springs after all.

  That was until mid-October. Through September and into the first part of October, Jasper returned home each day full of stories and excitement over his new school and all the new friends he was making. It was not surprising to either Matt nor Darby, and they were thrilled at his quick adjustment to a new home. Melody, though not nearly as demonstrative as Jasper, seemed to be much happier as of late as well. She was trying a taste of a varied curriculum at Pratt, but as was her personality, more reticent about sharing it with them. Once prodded, she was more forthcoming, but it took some nudging and encouragement. Then near the middle of October, an odd reversal took place. Just as Melody was growing more expressive in her experiences at Pratt, Jasper went eerily quiet. It was like the kids had suddenly switched personas.

  The normally bubbly and outgoing Jasper drew into himself, preferring to spend more and more time alone in his room. He looked the same and otherwise was not appearing ill or otherwise affected. But for sure, he was not the same Jasper that Matt and Darby knew. The kid who would have preferred to run and play outdoors until the sun went down was now not very interested in anything but the isolation of his small bedroom. Matt and Darby assumed it was just a phase he was going through, but when he did not even seem to be drawn to the simple act of being out back kicking around his cherished soccer ball, they became concerned.

  On several occasions, Matt had tried to engage Jasper in a casual conversation to figure out if anything was wrong, but it was like pulling teeth. This was also behavior that was not like Jasper. After talking with Darby, he thought maybe getting Melody to give it a try might get better results. Despite being his sister, they figured she was closer to his own age and that he might confide something to her that he might not tell them. Also, ever since the Bertie trauma, the two of them seemed to have grown closer.

  “It’s worth a shot…” Darby said.

  They gave Melody a brief rundown including their concerns, though it had been quite unnecessary as she had seen the changes in Jasper herself. She initially thought of trying some sort of formal approach, but in the end, knowing her brother as she did, Melody just dropped in on him one afternoon deciding to wing it. She made her way upstairs from the kitchen and then down the hall to Jasper’s room, pausing just momentarily to gather her thoughts. Melody was not quite sure what to expect of her brother, based on the trouble her parents were having at figuring out this new side of him. For sure, he was not the same outgoing and optimistic kid she had known her whole life, but maybe as her folks had suggested, he was just going through some adolescent phase. She thought back to when she had been that age, and shuddered.

  However, when Melody knocked gently at his door, there was no response. She called his name. There was silence in return. So, with no other recourse, Melody pushed open Jasper’s door and stepped into the opening with curiosity. What she saw was certainly the last thing she had anticipated. The normally neat and ordered brother she knew was sitting in a room in great disarray. There were clothes and papers strewn about haphazardly. His bed linens were in a pile in the center of his bed, and lots of books lay about him, some opened right-side up while others had the appearance of having been tossed away in frustration. None of this lined up with the Jasper Crawford that Melody was familiar with. But the condition of his room was just the beginning.

  She clicked on the overhead light to chase away the growing dim of the late afternoon to find Jasper sitting back in the far corner of his room, his legs crossed and his back firmly lodged into the corner farthest from the door. He did not look up to acknowledge her when she came in but rather was staring off into space with no real focus on anything as far as she could tell. She looked in the direction of his empty stare, but all she saw were the blank walls in the opposite corner of the room. She tried getting his attention, but Jasper just sat mute, not seeming to notice her. He did not speak at all. He just kept his gaze fixed across his room. As odd as this was to Melody, the more disturbing observation was Jasper’s eyes. They had this glassy, vacant look to them, and unless she was mistaken, they seemed a much darker hue of brown than she remembered. It was not like Melody was keyed into all the minor detail of his appearance, but his eyes did not look right.

  She waved her hand in front of his face, but if he noticed the movement, Jasper sure did not respond. Melody had two thoughts, one just as unsettling as the other. The first thing she considered was that he was perhaps experimenting with drugs. She was no expert, but based on her limited exposure to that sort of thing from Topeka, it was a definite possibility. The other possibility, she thought to herself, was perhaps some real physical illness. Neither option soothed her, and she stood again totally creeped out by what she had found. Without more proof of either, she was hesitant to mention his condition to her parents. Surely if he had been in such a state, they would already know and would never have sent her to try and talk to him. In the end, she decided to just tell them she had had no luck either and maybe check on him later to see if this semi-catatonic state had continued.

  ……….

  Melody did her best to push away the disturbing image that was lingering in her brain over Jasper as she worked on some assignments from Pratt. The courses she had signed up for were interesting and challenging, though so far nothing had really caught her full attention as far as something to pursue more seriously. After a few hours, her eyes grew heavy, and she gave up for the night and turned in. However, as weird as it was, Melody again was having trouble sleeping despite her fatigue from the day. In a combination of information from her studies and that creepy image of Jasper from earlier, she just could not shut off her brain. She exhaled deeply and tried to use some meditation techniques she had read about to calm down her chattering mind. After a few minutes, she was feeling more relaxed and was sure sleep was just around the corner. But in that tiny space between consciousness and sleep, Melody once again detected the same odd creaking and groaning of floorboards as on the night Bertie had met his maker. She felt her heart beat faster as the steady sounds of small footsteps came to her from the hallway and from above her room in the attic.

  Knowing she could not ignore them and ever get back to sleep, Melody sighed with exasperation and threw back the covers on her bed while flipping on the switch to the small lamp on her bedside table. Before she could take another breath or even move from her bed, she looked up to see Jasper standing over her brandishing a large knife. He looked down at her with an evil, twisted grimace that she had never seen on his face before as he raised the weapon high over his head and brought the gleaming, wicked-looking blade down at her, slicing swiftly through the empty air over her prone body.

  Acting purely on instinct and self-preservation, Melody dove from her bed, hitting the hard hardwood floor as the blade whisked by her. Though unharmed physically, the feeling of the displaced air from Jasper’s stab at her and the sheer emotional upset was more than enough to send Melody scrambling across the floor of her room and screaming down the hall to alert her parents. It seemed, she thought, that her earlier assessment of Jasper should have been reported to them. If he was high or just otherwise ill, she felt as if she had just avoided joining Bertie in whatever place he was now living.

  Matt and Darby, partly awake from her screams, came to full alert as Melody shook them violently, urging them to come quickly to her room to see what had happened. Her speech was garbled and jumbled from her highly agitated state, but they followed her quickly as she rushed back to her room. Melody bolted into her room to show them that Jasper had apparently gone crazy, but when they arrived all they saw was Melody’s empty bed with her linens thrown to the side. No Jasper. No knife. No sign that the knife had hit the mattress, though Melody was sure it must have as her escape had been too close for there not to be a laceration in the bed.

  She stood and stared at the bed in dumbfounded disbelief as Matt and Darby looked between her and the empty bed. Not wanting to take the scene at face value, Melody pushed by them and rushed to Jasper’s room. Matt and Darby came right on her heels, but all the three of them found was the sleeping body of Jasper, snuggled deep into his own covers gently breathing in and out. They indicated for Melody to go to the hallway where they joined her after closing Jasper’s door silently behind them.

  “But I saw him!” Melody exclaimed, repeating her story. “He was standing over me with that huge knife from the kitchen! He tried to stab me!”

  “What?” Matt replied in disbelief. “Jasper? You cannot be serious…”

  “Dad! I saw him!”

  Melody was close to hyperventilating as Darby put her hands on her shoulders to calm her down.

  “Mel…honey…” Darby said in her reassuring ‘Mom-voice,’ “that’s impossible. You just saw your brother fast asleep. There was no knife. Your bed is untouched except for your indentation.”

  Melody was now really wondering if she was going mad. She knew what she had seen. Right?

  “I think you just had a really bad nightmare, Melody…” Matt finally offered. “Though why you would ever think Jasper would do such a thing is beyond me.”

  Melody could see there was no more point in trying to convince them. At this point, it was hard enough to convince herself. She exhaled briefly and just nodded her head to diffuse the situation. Something was wrong with Jasper. She was sure of it, but all the evidence was against her. Matt and Darby walked her back to her room, and they all doused their lights again. Once her folks had gone away, and Melody heard their door close, she waited a few beats and returned to Jasper’s room. She padded slowly across his room and just stood at his bedside and stared at him. Had it all just been a really bad dream after all? Just as she was about to talk herself into that explanation, Jasper opened one eye. It was the same glassy, vacant stare she had seen before, and the single horrid, dark orb chilled her to the bone. It was not like an eye could talk, but if it could have, Melody would have described the message it sent in her direction as malevolent and pure evil…

  Dr. Price

  Bonner Springs, Kansas

  October 10, 2018

  Melody arose the next morning, trying to reconcile all that had happened. As slyly as Jasper’s eye had opened in the dim light of his room, it had closed again with no additional movement from him. She had clamped her hands over her mouth to prevent another outburst that would have been dismissed as well. She backed slowly from his room, and the lid covered the menacing and terrifying eye and fled back to her own room on shaky legs wondering what to do next. Melody did not sleep much more that night, but neither was she able to construct any plan of action to address her possibly psychotic little brother.

  As Melody sat at the breakfast table the next morning, across from Jasper, she could not help notice that he kept staring at her. In the light of the morning, Jasper again gave off the appearance of his old self. His skin had more color to it again, and his eyes were the old light brown shade she always remembered. But that stare. Melody had never seen him watch her in such an unnerving manner. It was making her scared as a chill rippled up her spine. Time to take action, she figured. Matt and Darby were out back cleaning up some branches and weeds before winter came calling, and Melody knew she had to act.

  “You might have fooled Mom and Dad, Jasper…” Melody said in a low voice, “but I know what you did last night in my room. I have no idea how you hid the knife or how you got back to your bed so quickly, but you’re not fooling me…”

  Jasper said nothing in return at first. He just dropped his spoon into his bowl on top of the cooling oatmeal and increased the intensity of his gaze at Melody. Though just her imagination, Melody felt as if his stare was burning a hole right through her chest and into the wall behind her. For just a moment, Jasper had been looking down at his bowl, but now with this intensified stare, his eyes changed over from light brown to that dead-looking dark hue, almost black now, that Melody had seen from the previous afternoon when he had been zoned out in his bedroom. Jasper spoke to her in a barely audible whisper, that had the sound more of a disembodied voice than that of a living, breathing human.

  “Leave us alone…” he rasped at her as his lips contorted into a maniacal grimace.