Rites of Spring

Chapter 1 Cameron didn’t have a lot on his walls. Most of the walls were bare. He had a couple of paintings that he’d picked up cheap because his friends had painted them back in school, hanging in different parts of the house. He had a couple of his own pieces too, just because he liked them and didn’t want to get rid of them. And he had one photograph that he’d had restored and blown up, hanging in the most prominent place in the living room. The picture was a portrait of Cameron, his older brother David, and his little sister Ashley. Grandpa had taken the picture right in front of the ancient, gnarled oak tree in their grandpa’s backyard. Cameron couldn’t remember why they’d all been over at Grandpa’s house, but he couldn’t have been older than seven when it was taken. His mother, Catherine, had made sure that visits with Grandpa got to be few and far between after that. Cameron could still remember little details from those mini-vacations without his mother’s looming presence. He remembered the smell of roses, from his grandfather’s beloved bushes. He remembered some kind of a Portuguese stew that Grandpa made for them, filling and delicious. He remembered the quiet most of all. Even with three rambunctious children running around the place, Grandpa’s house had been an oasis of peacefulness. Now that Grandpa’s house was Cameron’s house, he loved coming home and seeing that portrait as soon as he walked in the door. He’d found it among his grandfather’s things when he inherited the place, in a manila folder, along with all of the maintenance records for the appliances and the lease records for the other side of the duplex. The folder had one word on the label: “Cameron,” written in a shaky hand, as though Grandpa had always intended to pass the house down to Cameron. As though Grandpa had anyone else to leave the place to. Cameron had gone out and gotten the picture restored, and framed, and hung it up on the wall. It was the only record he had that they’d been a family, three siblings living together, and as twisted as their childhood had been Cameron wanted to honor the potential they’d had. He hadn’t expected to feel much about it. After all, he’d had years for the wounds to scab over. As January stretched into April, he started to recognize the warm feeling he got every time he saw the photo. He stopped fighting it. It was nice to feel like part of a family again, even if the family had to be in the past tense. Naturally, the thing fell off the wall on a regular basis. Cameron couldn’t figure out why the frame kept falling from the wall. The duplex stood on a side street, with no heavy traffic or big trucks to make it shake. None of the other pictures came down, at all. It had been hung in a good, solid spot, even if the walls were a good two centuries old, but this one lightweight frame flew off the wall at least every other week. It didn’t just fall, it flew. When Cameron complained to an old friend, the friend laughed at him. “Maybe it’s a sign,” Tyler said. “Maybe you should stop kidding yourself about family and look to the future.” If it had come from anyone else, Cameron might have thrown a punch. Tyler had grown up in the system, though, same as Cameron, and Tyler understood more about Cameron than other people. So Cameron just sighed and said, “Maybe.” He bought a new frame and hung the picture right back where it had been, and the cycle began again. He came home the Wednesday after Easter to find the picture on the ground again, glass shattered, and cursed out loud. Sometimes he missed living in a nice, modern apartment up in Boston. Okay, so there hadn’t been any privacy. He’d had to share an apartment with four other guys, which had gotten uncomfortable by the end, but at least the building had been built in the seventies and had absolutely no idiosyncrasies whatsoever. Then again, the price was definitely right here. Worth the occasional bit of glass, anyway. He could pay for replacement frames out of the amount he wasn’t paying in rent or a mortgage. He closed and locked the door behind him and lugged his groceries into the kitchen. The other side of the duplex had gotten a complete kitchen renovation before the current tenants came in; apparently Grandpa didn’t want the Shaladis coming into an old-fashioned kitchen, or maybe the prior tenants had trashed the place. There was no way to tell now. The old man hadn’t left any notes or messages about it. Appliance records and lease records were one thing, but the inner workings of the old man’s mind were a different story. Cameron’s own kitchen had a few newer appliances, but the bones of the room hadn’t changed since Cameron had been a little boy. Eventually Cameron would get around to renovating the kitchen, but for now he could live with the way things were. It wasn’t as though he needed anything fancy to throw together a few salads a week. A knock on the back door shook him out of his reverie. When he looked up, he saw his tenant standing at the door. He relaxed when he saw that she was alone. Mrs. Shaladi had come here from Libya two or three years ago. She was picking up English as quickly as could be expected of anyone, but it was still slow going. When she had something big or complicated to discuss, she brought her son to translate. Otherwise, she was content to communicate in a combination of her half-understood English and Cameron’s half-remembered high school French. Today she’d come alone, so things on the other side of the wall must be good. He opened the door and smiled at her. “Hey, Mrs. Shaladi. How are you?” She smiled back. Her smile was lovely, the kind of smile that improved Cameron’s mood right away. “I am okay,” she said, picking her way around the words. “And you?” Today the tight scarf that framed her face was light pink, perfect for spring. It set off her warm brown skin perfectly. “Not too bad, Mrs. Shaladi. How are the kids?” He always felt a little too formal when he spoke with Mrs. Shaladi, like he was reading from a teleprompter or something, but it seemed to work for her. She beamed at him. “They are well. Ali is going to All-States.” “That’s fantastic news!” Mrs. Shaladi’s oldest son was a gifted soccer player. He’d be over the moon about getting named to the All-State team for his age group. “We’ll have to go and cheer him on. How about the others—Ibrahim and Nur?” “They are well, thank you. Ibrahim is in school. He does well in math, and Nur is in pre-school. Thank you for finding that school for her.” She passed him an unlabeled white envelope. He could feel the thin paper of the check inside. “Nur still says that she hears something in her closet.” She shrugged, conveying more than words could. “This is normal for a child of her years.” “I guess.” Cameron grinned. “I never spent much time with kids, but you’re the expert. I’m happy to come up and take a look around, if you think it will make her feel better.” Mrs. Shaladi considered this, head turned to the side. “This might help. Ali is a good brother, he checks for her when she is frightened, but he is young and she does not always believe him.” Cameron grinned at that and accepted his tenant’s offering of little walnut cookies before she returned to her own side of the building. Grandpa had been the one to sign the lease with the Shaladis; Cameron had only known them for a few months, but he couldn’t have asked for better neighbors. Sometimes he regretted charging them rent at all. Once he got his groceries put away he went back upstairs to get more work done on the project for Vance & Wollaston up in Maine. Taking a proposal and making it look “pretty” wasn’t the most exciting work he’d ever done, but this client paid very well and he could do the work in his sleep. He’d budgeted two hours to work on the proposal; he’d done other proposals for Vance & Wollaston and he would use the same template, but he wanted to make sure that it looked professional and complete. When his timer went off, he got up and went out for a run. Running helped to clear his mental palate for the next project, and when he got back to the house he was ready to sit down and work on a book cover for another client. He’d been holding it off because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do for this one, but he’d had an epiphany as he’d reached the top of Burial Hill and now he couldn’t wait to get started. When he got to the house, though, he found that his next project was going to have to be delayed. Two men stood on the steps to the porch. Cameron froze. The taller of the pair stood about six foot two, with brown hair, pale skin and shoulders that were broad enough to fill a whole doorway. The smaller had darker, curly hair and a slighter build, but he didn’t hold himself in any kind of subservient posture as he turned toward the taller man. The hair on the back of Cameron’s neck stood up. He didn’t get a lot of visitors, and they always gave plenty of warning before showing up. His friends knew him well, and knew what was likely to set him off. The Shaladis didn’t get any visitors at all, for the most part. Cameron had put up a discreet but unmistakable “no trespassing” sign at the property line; he wasn’t alone among his neighbors in having done that, considering the hordes of tourists wanting to see Plymouth Rock during the season. These men had no excuse for being here. Cameron knew he didn’t react like other people did. He also knew enough to trust his instincts. When something was out of place, and strange people started poking their heads where they didn’t belong, it was right to be cautious. If something was making the hair on the back of his neck stand up, it was better to deal with the problem straight away before he got hurt. Waiting around and giving creepy people the benefit of the doubt had never served him well before. But hey, maybe this time will be different! And maybe the sun will rise in the west, too! He snorted at the thought. People were people. “You need to leave,” Cameron said. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the most inviting or welcoming thing he’d ever said. Tyler would have flicked him behind the ear and chided him for being an antisocial little hermit. His therapist from the group home would have smirked and murmured something about “trust issues.” They’d both have been right, but that wasn’t the issue here. The issue was that these guys were setting off every internal alarm Cameron had. Every cell in his body screamed at him to make them go away, and he hadn’t survived as long as he had by ignoring his instincts. The pair jumped and turned around. The taller one scowled, marring what would have been one of the more handsome faces Cameron had seen in a while. It was too bad, too. Cameron wouldn’t have minded running his hand through those brown curls, otherwise. “How the hell did you sneak up on me?” Cameron pressed his lips together and adjusted his stance. His heart raced. He didn’t want to have to fight. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to. If they’d just leave, like he’d told them, he wouldn’t have to. He had to be ready, though, for when they tried to stay. He’d rather avoid a physical confrontation. It would be two against one, and the taller one looked like he was made from solid muscle. He’d do what he had to, though, and hope Mrs. Shaladi called the police. Not that the police will do much good. “You’re trespassing,” he said. “It’s time for you to leave.” The taller one opened his mouth, pale skin flushing red with anger, and the smaller one stomped on his foot. Hard. “I apologize. My name is Reid Holt. This is my associate, Jason Tighe. We’re paranormal investigators. We were contacted by a tenant here about some unusual activity—” Cameron crossed his arms across his chest. “Contacted by a tenant, huh?”