by Jim Johanson
"Billy, I want to tell you something about your father. I feel as though... you're ready to receive my testimony, as a servant of Christ, our... our great Lord. I..."
Evelyn Greer, mother, began to cry, tears streaming out from the corners of her eyes down over the dried and wrinkled folds of her cheeks.
"I was unfaithful to your father, and... and not only that, in doing so, I was unfaithful to our Lord. Treachery committed against a woman's husband is tantamount to treachery against God, and for that... and for that!"
Evelyn gripped the bedspread tightly with her hands, digging her jagged, unclipped fingernails into it maliciously.
"For that I am cursed! And I let myself be cursed! To defy my disease is to defy God himself, and I will not cross him again! I will not evade my punishment. Even if I suffer in Hell for a thousand years, for centuries, never again will I cross the Lord! And I'm sorry! I am so sorry! But my tears are meaningless spit in the face of the Lord who trusted me to care for his children, for my children, my own flesh and blood! Oh... Oh William, we are not as we should be! You were born with my original sin, and we did little to repent for it, such worthless a creature am I!"
Billy drew closer to his mother's bedside, knife held tightly behind his back. A draft flowing beneath the bed felt cool against his ankles.
"Oh, it's my fault that he left! Your father, I forgive him for his cruelty! A great demon came into our household, and it was my fault. The demon, seeking to possess the strongest of us, it came into him, and it made him... it forced him into the arms of wickedness.
“You remember... you remember when I couldn't rise to cook for you and for your sister and your father? Before he left? Once, when the great demon had taken him, he made him to take the hammer from the garage, and he held my hand against the kitchen table, and he called me a whore, a slut, all the horrible things that I so needed to hear.
“For years I wondered if even God himself had possessed that demon on that day, to show me the wickedness of my way, that I was living in sin, and your father, possessed by that demon, held me by the wrist, held me down to the table. I cried and begged, but his eyes were cold and his body was drunk. The devil took him when he imbibed, and he... and he took the hammer and he brought it down like the wrath of God on my hand, and I deserved it! I deserved it!"
The light from the Virgin Mary lamp shined on Billy's face as he crept to Mother’s bedside, illuminating him like a grimacing angel. Unseen by mother, the light too shined on the ten-inch blade behind Billy's back, setting a beautiful arrangement of colors like a rainbow in the reflection on its cold steel.
Mother's countenance seemed to change suddenly, as though a whole other assortment of thoughts had suddenly pervaded her consciousness. She reached her hand up and grabbed at Billy's flannel shirt, pulling him closer to her.
Evelyn's eyes closed in a tight grip of personal agony. Billy drew the knife from behind his back and held it aloft above his mother's stomach like a guillotine ready to drop. Her eyelids parted to see her youngest child holding the knife that she had used in preparation for so many meals for her family dangling, but clenched firmly, angrily and without remorse in Billy's hand above the center of her body.
"My son, oh Lord, you've made him an angel! The angel of judgment has finally come, he wields the great sword of heaven, he slays the demon in me! The seven hundred and seventy-seven angels of our Lord add now the name of William Greer to their rank, as he purges me of my wickedness! I am saved!"
Billy drove the knife downward into her stomach. The knife passed straight through her abdomen, down into the feather mattress, coating the feathers in blood and viscera. Blood seeped out and saturated both the bed sheets beneath her and her dirty white gown above.
The light of the Virgin Mary still shined brightly on Billy's face. With the same ferocity as he'd given at the first stab, he yanked the knife back out of her. Blood erupted from her stomach, severed veins and capillaries rapidly emptying themselves.
Evelyn tried her best to constrain her screams against the pain, believing that she was finally suffering God's final wrath upon her living body. It was just a passage, and such a wonderful way to pass, she thought, to be taken by a living angel.
With a grunt and an exasperated intake of air to his lungs, Billy flipped the knife around in his hand so that it was facing outward away from his knuckles. He swung at a wide angle and slashed Evelyn high in the abdomen, just below her breasts. The last part of the slash was sloppy; it cut straight through a portion of Evelyn's left breast.
Evelyn could no longer contain herself. The pain was too sharp and strong. She bellowed out a mournful shriek. She reached her arms up into the air, grasping for God. Billy swung the knife again, cutting her deeply at the middle of her left forearm. Her hand slumped feebly, the severed tendons no longer functional, but still she held her arm aloft.
"Oh Lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy will be done, as it—”
Evelyn's prayer was cut short as Billy sliced her from the bottom of her throat downward. The knife dug shallowly, repelled by Evelyn's breastbone, until it reached her stomach where it sank. The cuts in summation, from her neck to her pelvis and laterally beneath her breasts, formed a cross in blood on her gown.
Evelyn’s sight faded at the corners, a black tunnel collapsing. As the world closed itself around her, from somewhere deep inside, she heard a joyous choir singing:
What peace he bringeth to my heart,
deep as the soundless sea,
how sweetly singeth
the soul that clingeth,
My loving Lord, to thee.
How calm and even sinks the sun,
beyond the clouded west,
so, tempest driven,
into the haven,
I reach the longed for rest.
Chapter 12
"Mary it's okay, you can stay here tonight," said Jackie. She had her hand on Mary’s shoulder, standing in the doorway.
"My parents are gone, they left Thursday. They said something about 'rekindling their marriage' and I pretty much stopped listening at that point, but I got the impression that they won't be back all weekend."
"That's... really gross," said Mary.
The intense glaze over Mary's teary eyes broke for a moment at the humor of the situation. Jackie appeared concerned, but she was happy that Mary's unexpected arrival had interrupted her own boredom.
"I know! I don't even want to think about it. You'd think I'd have a little sister by this point. Ugh, can we talk about something else?"
"Yes, please. Let's talk about anything. I don't... I just don't even want to think right now."
Mary's forearms were clad with goosebumps and her hands were trembling as though she had been standing out in the cold for too long.
"I made popcorn. Want some?" said Jackie.
Jackie turned and walked toward the kitchen, expecting Mary to follow. As Jackie rounded the corner of the doorway to the kitchen, she noticed that Mary was not following her. Instead, Mary stood fixated on her hand, trying to make it stop shaking, but she seemed unable to control herself. Her mouth hung open. She bit her bottom lip.
"Mary…”
Mary sniffled and swallowed, realizing that she needed to regain her composure. The sight of Jackie's concerned facial expression was enough to get her moving. She had to carry on, if not just for the sake of Jackie not worrying about her.
"Sorry, yeah, I'm... my stomach is a little upset, but, maybe popcorn would be good."
Mary took a deep breath and hobbled over to where Jackie stood. Jackie could hear the short, hastened breaths that Mary was taking.
"Here," said Jackie, putting her hand on Mary's upper arm.
"Just... here sit down on the couch. I'll get us some popcorn. I already pigged out and ate a ton of it but there's still some left."
Mary retired to the couch. The thick, white, leather cushions made a poof sound as she sunk into them. The lavender smell of Jackie’s house was comfor
ting.
By the time Jackie had put the remaining popcorn into a bowl for Mary and returned to the living room, Mary was slumped over and clutching a throw pillow. She held it tightly against her chest, rocking silently back and forth, her face pressed down into the top of the pillow.
Jackie moved hesitantly forward until she reached the couch. She lowered herself down gently next to Mary's head. Mary's auburn hair lay draped across her face, like a velvet curtain hiding the stage of a tragedy.
Chapter 13
A red mini-van, driven by Kathryn Delefont, drifted casually down the long country road nearing the break in the trees where the Greer household was located. Kathryn was a careful driver, making particularly sure to avoid any potholes that might shake the car and cause her four-year-old girl in the backseat to wake up.
Kathryn spotted a bit of roadkill up ahead and slowed down, positioning her tires so that she wouldn't drive over it. On a brightly sunlit Saturday afternoon, the unmistakable red color of blood on the road was hard to miss. Kathryn looked in the rearview mirror to make sure that little Jessica Delafont was still asleep. The last thing that Kathryn wanted was for her daughter to witness a dead animal stuck to the road, especially after it had been cooking in the sun all day. She rolled up her driver’s side window in anticipation of the smell.
As Kathryn coasted past the Greer house on her left, with the entrails passing undisturbed underneath the center of her car, a strange feeling struck her. Something was not quite right.
Prone to taking long road trips, Kathryn was accustomed to seeing roadkill. She had passed countless dead raccoons, deer, possums, and the bodies of all manner of other animals scattered across the road by car tires. Something was different this time. There was no fur. There were no feathers. There was no intact, bloated carcass.
Without much conscious effort, Kathryn took her foot off the gas pedal. The mini-van began slowing down. Kathryn regained her focus. She turned the wheel ever so slightly, allowing her vehicle to come to a stop on the side of the road.
Kathryn read once in a news article about how baby possums inside a mother possum often manage to survive the death of the mother when struck by a car. Ever since, she'd kept a pair of rubber gloves in her car, just in case she came across a possum that might have babies she could save, but despite how many dead possums she'd seen on the road, never once had she come across one with live babies. She was dismayed at realizing that she’d forgotten to store gloves in her new vehicle.
After some deliberation, Kathryn gave in to her curiosity despite not having gloves. She shifted into reverse to turn around and head back toward the awful sight in the road.
To Kathryn's frustration, the interruption of smooth sailing down the mountain roads had woken her daughter.
"Where are we, mommy?"
"Just driving, hunny."
"Are we stopped? I need to go pee."
"Hang on sweetie, we'll stop soon."
"But we're stopped now."
"We can't pee here, just hang on, okay? Go back to sleep."
"But I'm not tired now."
"Alright, just..."
Kathryn put the car back into drive, did a three-point turn, and started back toward the Greer house.
"Just wait, I'll find a rest stop soon."
Kathryn pulled gently back into the area where she had spotted the road-kill. She positioned her car as far to the right as she could without allowing it to spill over into the ditch between the road and the Greer's front yard, then made a u-turn and parked her car on the opposite side of the road where there was flatter ground. She unfastened her seat belt and put the car in park, making sure to the put the emergency brake on.
"Stay in the car, hunny. I'll be right back, then we'll find you a bathroom, okay?"
"Okay, Mommy."
Kathryn checked for oncoming traffic in both directions, and seeing none, exited the vehicle. The red debris was about five feet in front of her car. She moved toward it.
A chill came over Kathryn when she realized that the entrails on the road did not look like anything hit by a car. There were two pale-white strips of flesh with ragged edges, soaked in blood. Kathryn turned her head to follow a trail of blood leading to the side of the road. Checking again for passing cars, she took slow steps toward the edge of the road until she entered the Greer family's lawn.
Most of the lawn had died, leaving way to desolate stretches of dirt and unkempt patches of overgrown, brown, dying grass and weeds. Dried droplets of blood formed dark patches in the loose soil. Streaks of blood coated the longer strands of wilting grass, flies buzzing purposefully between them. The trail led all the way up to the steps of the long-neglected front porch where it stood cracked and crumbling, fallen into disarray.
Kathryn stopped dead in her tracks as she gazed upon the front door. A fake plastic wreath circled the peephole, complete with holly berries and faded gold-colored ribbon. Inside the wreath was an object comparatively bright in coloration, laid fresh inside the coil. Her stigmatism made it difficult to see. The sunlight forced her to squint. She shielded her brow with her hand.
Kathryn took a hesitant step forward, approaching the house with caution as if it were a dangerous animal, trying to see what unusual accoutrement the wreath bore. Afraid to move any closer, her eyes focused at range to see a clear outline of bloodied remains, tied into and around the edges of the wreath, stretched across the center like an animal skin set out to dry in the sun.
The front door, left ajar, seemed to beckon anyone to enter, as though someone had decorated the grisly scene specifically for anticipated guests. The images that invaded Kathryn's mind at the prospect of what other horrors might lie in wait inside the house struck her so deeply that a cold sweat began to form on her skin. Kathryn stood blankly, mentally processing a moment of unreality.
"Mommy, I have to pee!"
Kathryn turned around in terror to see her daughter standing in the right lane of the roadway nearest the edge where the asphalt became dirt.
"Jessica, get out of the road! Get back in the car!"
Kathryn sprinted toward her daughter. Jessica stood calmly but confusedly in place. She gasped and whimpered as her mother clutched her up with great force from the road, carrying her back across the street to the mini-van. Jessica uttered cries of discomfort and pain at the strength with which her mother clenched her. She continued to cry as Kathryn placed her back in the rear seat of the car.
Kathryn ran around to the other side of the car, opened her door, put the vehicle in drive and sped off down the road in search of a police station or any other safe place. The look of fright on Kathryn’s face that day would stay with Jessica for decades, buried deep in her subconscious, a strange memory from her childhood.
Chapter 14
Tim Williams, young deputy of the Racine police department, sipped the remainder of his coffee out of a plain, chipped, white mug before continuing his story.
"Right, so, I see this fella swerving all over the road, and I mean bad, not like he's just messing with his car radio or trying to light a cigarette, he's back and forth across the median for two straight miles, and you know normally how someone sees a cop roll up behind them they straighten out and try to drive right? Well, he just keeps going, like he ain’t even know that I'm there. And I'm running his plates, and, well you know, it's Nick Voshall, from Voshall's Auto Repair. Well I know he's drunk at this point, so I pull him over. All the sudden I see his head perk up and he's looking back at me through the rearview mirror, but he’s still swervin’.
“Before too long he pulls over by the tree-line. Then he starts going again, so I’m right back behind him followin’. I'm starting to worry that if another car comes from the other direction that he's just gonna plow right into them. So I start thinking I’m gonna have to fishtail him, but we come up by a house, and he pulls into the driveway and kills the engine.”
Tim paused to make sure that Sheriff Peter Ford was still listening. Ford nodded.
&
nbsp; “Go on.”
“Right, so, he opens his door, then closes it again, looks in the rearview mirror, then sets his head back against the headrest. I'm thinking he knows for sure that I just got him on intoxication and that's he's just giving up. So I get out, go up to his car and shine my flashlight in, and his eyes are closed, just laying back against the headrest. 'Sir', I say, 'Sir, roll your window down'. And he doesn't move.
“I repeat myself, but he still don’t move. So I tap on the glass with my nightstick. He just sits there, not moving, but I can see him breathing. So at this point I'm thinking that he's either so drunk that he passed out, or he's trying to make me think that he just thought this would be a good place for a nap. Maybe play it off like he was tired from work or something, and if I can't get him out of the car, then I can’t charge him with an OVI.
"And I'm telling you, Peter, I knock three or four more times, and he just keeps on sitting there, not movin'. So now I go back to the car, pop open the trunk, grab one of those tear gas grenades. Then I tap on the window with the grenade, and he’s still playing possum, so I take a step back, I crack open his back window with the nightstick, and, and it's a mess, glass everywhere all over the inside of the car, everywhere. I'm thinking at this point he's starting to regret his decision not to talk to me, but he just sits there like, like he's in a coma or something."
Sheriff Ford pulled the second half of his sandwich out of a napkin and took a bite out of it while listening to Tim. Mayonnaise smeared into his facial hair. Ford always took his first lunch early in the morning. Second lunch came around 2pm.
"Well, I got the pin out like they showed us up at County, and I tossed the thing into the back of the car. Wouldn't you know, I see Nick in there gagging and crying like a rabbit with a broken nose, the car door pops back open, and out he comes. He falls right down into the dirt, didn't even make three steps from the car, hacking up a lung. The tear gas is so damn strong that my eyes are startin' to water, and I just wanna get him out and away from the vehicle.