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The Porch
The jury found James J. Janway guilty of first degree murder. He was sentenced to death row. Janway refused to appeal the decision, released his attorney, and retreated into silence.
Janway's blunt testimony at the trial sealed his fate. He had his reasons for lying on the witness stand. He wished desperately to mourn his dead wife, but there was room for nothing but the fear. He refused the authorities offer to allow him to attend his wife's funeral; just sitting in the township courthouse during the trial, fifteen miles from the neighborhood where she died and Pine Home Cemetery where she now lay buried, made him panicky. For Janway, death row was the safest place he knew.
Both Janway and his wife, Mandy, were tired of the California lifestyle. So when the packaging company Mandy worked for opened a new branch in Pennsylvania, they jumped at the chance to transfer. Janway, who had been laid off his civil service job of ten years three months before, traveled to Pennsylvania to find a new place to live. The depressed economy of the region provided many choices and Janway examined numerous houses in the week he had to look. He chose a small three bedroom house, just the right size for a mature, childless couple. The area had seen some development, but that had slowed with the economy, and the atmosphere was still fundamentally country. This part of Pennsylvania consisted of rolling hills and farmland planted primarily in feed corn. The country atmosphere and the eagerly friendly neighbors were a main attraction. Mandy liked Janway's description of the farm within walking distance of the house. Both horses and milk cows were pastured there, to Mandy's delight. They moved in in July.
Both Janway and Mandy were happy with the move despite the inevitable problems and unexpected annoyances. Janway, unable to land a job in his field, took a low paying job in a carpentry shop. The job did not help their financial situation, but Janway found he enjoyed the physical work and the creation of something tangible. The location of their dream home also proved a little disappointing; the narrow two lane road their house perched next to was surprisingly busy, and the friendly neighbors turned out to be very nosy ones as well. The road was the biggest flaw. Neither Janway nor Mandy were comfortable walking along its almost non-existent shoulder on their regular treasured evening walks. They flinched every time a vehicle hurtled by.
It took some exploration, but they eventually found a nearby intersecting road that offered the country scenery and privacy they sought. A small housing development crowded the intersection of the two roads, but once they were past the row of large, over-priced houses, a graveled road wound through the hills for two miles before doubling back on itself. Farmland cut into only a portion of the woods here. They were delighted at the rabbits, groundhogs, and occasional deer they saw along the road and the edge of the woods.
On September 15 Janway and Mandy began their regular walk a little later than usual. The weather was getting increasingly fall-like, and darkness was coming earlier every day. They knew there would be little light left by the time they returned, but the area was now familiar and neither wanted to disrupt their evening ritual. They left the house, stopped to say hello to the horses and feed them a carrot apiece, then turned onto Old Spring Road, passing the development and into the woods. Mandy was wearing a light sweater and Janway was wearing a short sleeve shirt. The temperature was in the low sixties and breezy; they knew they would be comfortable as long they were walking.
It was too late for the rabbits to be out feeding, but there were still many birds to watch. Janway talked about the cabinet he was building. Janway had designed it himself on commission from one of their neighbors. It would be the first thing he had designed and built without assistance and he was excited about it. Mandy talked about the letter she had received from her sister Janet in South Carolina. Mandy and Janet were very close. Janet was due any day with their third child.
Talk turned to children in general. Both Janway and Mandy needed constant reassurance from each other on their decision not to have children. Even after seven years of marriage, well meaning pressure from both sets of parents raised old insecurities. They occasionally held hands as they walked, but the closeness between them went far beyond the physical.
The rain started as light sprinkles. They joked about the rain, and their ill-preparedness for it. Janway suggested they turn around and cut the walk short, but Mandy wanted to finish their walk. Janway agreed. They continued.
The back loop of their regular route consisted of occasional corn fields cut into the tangle of woods and heavy underbrush. The road was gravel instead of asphalt. Once or twice on their walks a car would pass, or horseback riders, and they would wave and smile. They never encountered other pedestrians. Weathered farmhouses where Janway assumed the owners of the fields lived were a common sight. There were also large, expensive homes built back from the road and set well apart from other houses. These houses, surrounded by out of place suburbia lawns, were inevitably built on a part of an old farm. A crumbling barn and a boarded up house engulfed by vegetation usually shared the lot and looked less incongruous than the two story Tudor or split-level ranch that sat behind it. These expensive homes were normally deserted. Mandy, disgust and more than a little envy in her voice, described the homes as weekend retreats for the very well off from the city twenty miles north.
Janway and Mandy reached the switch-back that would carry them down a steep hill and then around a tight curve that marked the mid-point of their walk. The rain had begun to pick up force. They were walking briskly; Mandy's sweater was still holding off the bulk of the rain, but Janway was getting very wet and cold. On their right just off the road was one of the abandoned houses with its barn. The house boasted a porch that looked very dry and inviting. Thunder boomed in answer to a flash of lightning and Mandy jumped. The worst of the storm was still on its way.
Janway stopped walking. A chain stretched across the unused driveway with a "No Trespassing" sign hung on it. The barn, on the immediate left of the driveway, held a weather faded "Beware of Dog" sign. Past the barn was a single story unpainted house with shuttered windows and its porch. The house sat on a hillside that sloped down from its right side. The driveway extended to the end of the long side of the narrow, rectangular house. There were no awnings or other protrusions aside from the short porch which extended from the house's front end. It looked indistinguishable from other abandoned houses along Old Spring Road except there was no modern home nearby and no vegetation thrust up against the sides of the house.
Janway hesitated despite the increasing rain. His respect for the rights and property of others was so strong it often interfered with practical considerations. Mandy admired this trait in her husband while at the same time the manifestation of it tried her patience.
Mandy immediately understood why Janway hesitated. She pointed out that no one could possibly be living in the house. The owners would not mind if they stood on the porch to keep from getting soaked and possibly catching their death from cold. Mandy shivered convincingly and jumped again at the flash of lightning. Mandy was not as cold as she wanted Janway to think, but she was definitely afraid of thunder and lightning. Mandy stepped over the chain and headed for the porch. Janway, overcoming his reservations about trespassing, followed.
They stepped gingerly onto the porch. The untreated floorboards were broken along the edges and the wood sagged and groaned where they stepped. Much of it looked rotted. The front railing and the supports for the roof were made from saplings probably cut right on the property. The floorboards were nailed together, but the saplings were held together by hemp rope. They were amazed that the porch roof did not leak. Two large pines sheltered the area between the house and the barn ten feet distant. The two story bulk of the barn kept the wind from driving the rain into the porch. Janway, who had a nervous fear of spiders, looked a bit anxiously for the expected webs and was surprised and relieved there were none.
Attempts to modernize the place was obvious and crude. Wires extend
ing from the porch light socket were anchored to the front of the house and then ran to the outhouse leaning precariously on the hillside. A second pair of wires, split from the first at the anchor, followed a winding course to the side of the barn, where the exposed ends dangled. Janway did not remember seeing a power line connected to the house, but it was raining too hard now to leave the porch and check.
Janway wrapped his arms around his wife, the chill providing a convenient reason to snuggle. Mandy, who knew how cold Janway's hands could get even in mild weather, pulled his hands under her sweater to rest against the light shirt she wore underneath. Mandy rested her head on his chest. They stood this way for a long moment, drawing warmth from each other and watching the rain fall. Without speaking, their hands began slow caressing movements. Mandy raised her head and when their eyes met, both pairs held the same mischievous glint. They kissed lightly, feeling the passion begin to stir.
By unspoken mutual consent, however, the caresses and kisses gradually diminished until they returned to the unmoving snuggle they had started from. Making love outdoors was a favorite fantasy of theirs, and they had gotten carried away more than once in situations similar to this one. The nearness of the road and the openness of the porch, though, were just enough an inhibition to keep the couple from acting on the impulse.
While they were involved with each other the rain had slackened considerably. A heavy mist still fell soundlessly and contributed to the growing darkness. It was very quiet; the light was dim and objects seemed to take on a faint white glow. Janway was reluctant to continue their walk, and would have been content just to snuggle on the porch a while longer. Mandy, more curious, wandered to the other side of the porch to see what that side of the house looked like. Janway, still uncomfortable with the unstable look of the porch floorboards, stepped off on the nearer driveway side and walked around the porch between the house and barn. Both found new things to point out to the other.
Mandy discovered that the house and porch foundation were made only of thick pieces of hand-cut timber; the upper and lower ends of the timber rested on the underside of the house and the ground, respectively, with no other visible support. Over the years the weight of the house had forced the timber out of alignment and it was obviously only a matter of time before the whole structure tumbled down the hillside. Already the house showed a slight lean and some of the porch supports had collapsed. That explained why the side of the porch near the driveway was lower than the opposite side: the porch had already partially fallen to ground level on the higher side of the hill.
The leaning house and collapsed foundation suddenly made the porch look dangerously unstable to Janway. The area of the porch where Mandy now stood was supported only by a small boulder which had evidently been dragged to that spot to hold the porch in place. A quick look at Mandy confirmed that she felt the same sudden fear. Moving quickly, Janway pulled Mandy off the porch and they wasted no time getting back to the front of the porch and out from between the structure and the hillside.
Their relief gave them the giggles, and they playfully prodded each other, trying to get the other to admit who was the more scared. Janway remembered what he had found to show Mandy. A rope was tied to one of the railing supports on the driveway side of the porch. The rope stretched to the ground and then disappeared underneath into the ten inch gap left between the half collapsed porch floor and the ground. Near the rope was an ancient iron skillet with something unnamable still crusted in the bottom. Mandy rapidly caught the implications, confirming Janway's own deduction that the rope had been used to lease a dog; a dog that had been fed from the iron skillet.
Janway, still playing up the scare they'd just had, wondered aloud in a foreboding voice if there might still be something attached to the end of the rope which snaked under the porch. Mandy was standing next to the rope. She looked from her husband to the rope and back. The dare had been made, and Janway knew Mandy would be too curious to leave it alone. They played this game often; one dared the other, and if the dare was taken, the roles were later reversed. Mandy smiled. It was getting darker and harder to see; maybe there would be a little lovemaking after all. Mandy knew what her return dare would be when she won this one.
Mandy grasped the rope where it was tied to the railing. When she touched the rope, Janway felt an inexplicable tension. He almost spoke, telling her to let go and forget it, but there was no reason for the feeling and it would only make him look silly. Janway said nothing. She began to pull on the rope, collecting the coils that lay on the ground and wrapping them around her hand. She stopped just before starting to pull the rope from under the porch. She made scary noises at Janway, teasing him, and he mustered back a smile. He told her she should back away from the porch a few steps, teasing her back, but the words came out too seriously. Mandy's smile faltered slightly at his tone. She didn't back away, however, chiding him for being a sore loser, and pulled on the rope.
Janway saw immediately that there was more tension on the rope than there should have been. The logical part of his mind informed him that the rope was probably caught under some part of the collapsed porch; the rest of his mind went numb with terror and his eyes fixed on the rope, unable to look at anything else. Mandy jerked on the stuck rope, and they heard a sharp sound that was half yelp and half whimper. Mandy and Janway looked at each other for a brief moment. Then the whole house shuddered with a sudden jolt, and the rope jerked in the direction of the porch with vicious force. The rope was still wrapped around Mandy's right hand, and Janway heard the bones in her fingers break with grisly snaps. Mandy sucked in her breath to scream and the rope jerked again, this time pulling Mandy off her feet. Her head hit the edge of the porch floorboard; blood from the wound splashed over the porch and ground. Janway stood frozen, thinking stupidly that he'd always been told that even superficial head wounds bled profusely. Whatever was attached to the other end of the rope began pulling Mandy under the porch. Janway heard an obscene, rumbling growl coming from beneath the floorboards.
Mandy found her voice and began screaming. They were throaty, horror-stricken screams, one right after another. Her right arm and most of her head were already under the porch, but her left hand grasped the railing with frantic force and her legs scrambled for some kind of purchase. Mandy's screams released Janway from his paralysis. Rushing forward, he grabbed her legs and pulled backward with everything he had, hollering unintelligibly. The wet earth slipped out from under his feet and he landed hard on his buttocks. Another jerk on the rope and Janway was pulled along with Mandy another foot. Mandy's screams increased another decibel.
The house shuddered again. Nails sprung from the porch floor and boards broke loose, letting in some of the fading light. Janway caught a glimpse of a shape under the floorboards. It might have been a large dog once. There was no way to know how long ago it had been trapped and crushed under the collapsed porch; no way to know how long it lay there with it's broken skull and crushed hindquarters; no way to know how long the changes had been going on. If it had been a dog, all that was left were feral eyes protruding from a cracked skull from which all hair and skin had long since rotted away, forequarters a gangrenous green, forepaws bloated into massive hooked claws, and wet, iridescent, maggot infested hind quarters. The hind quarters were stretched into snake-like length from the effort of pulling away from where it was trapped under the porch. The rope was still attached to the collar around the thing's neck. Into its mouth Mandy's arm had disappeared as far as the elbow.
The floorboards crashed back into place. Mandy, sane and practical to the end, realized she could not pull free. She never truly believed in things that go bump in the night, and although she was terrified, it was not the mind numbing kind of terror usually associated with encounters with the unknown. She had been a fighter all her life, and so she did what she had to do. Freeing her left hand from its grip on the railing, she scrambled under the porch to kill the thing which was devouring her arm. Janway, so much less brave
than his wife, also did the only thing he knew to do. He scrambled under the porch with her.
It was black under the porch and the air was foul. Underneath there was more room than at the edge of the porch, but not much. Mandy grimly fought the beast in that constricted space. She panted in huge gulps that left no room for screams. She clawed, bit and kicked with inhuman violence. Janway did what he could by grabbing and holding one of the beast's forelegs. The beast kept tearing its foreleg from his grasp, leaving sheets of dead skin tangling his fingers, but Janway would grab it again. The thing released the remains of Mandy's arm and lunged at her. The rotting jawbone of its toothless mouth dragged along Mandy's head and tore open the scalp. Mandy and the thing howled together with maniacal sounds so similar Janway could not distinguish between the two. Mandy's entire body stiffened and convulsed violently and Janway lost his hold on the things' foreleg again. Both Mandy and the thing slumped motionlessly to the ground.
Janway ignored the motionless shape of the thing and somehow got Mandy out from under the porch. He laid her on her back on the ground and kneeled beside her. There was little left of her right arm. Bone and severed blood vessels protruded from her shoulder, the artery releasing blood with every beat of her heart. Her head had been ripped open where the beast had chewed and tore at her scalp; blood-soaked bone showed through. The flap of scalp covered her face. Janway gentled folded the skin back onto her head, and when he was done he saw that Mandy's eyes were open.
They did not speak. Both knew she was dying. In the moment they had left, the two lovers relived the seven years they'd had together; the joys and the sorrows; the lovemaking and the companionship; the reassurance for the last time that it was okay there would never be a child between them. She died.
Janway saw her die. He saw the Mandy he knew so well and loved so deeply fade from those eyes. Only those lovely green eyes did not close in death. Those eyes did not grow glassy and unfocused, but continued to regard him. Her chest did not rise and fall because she was no longer breathing. No blood coursed from serrated arteries because her heart no longer pumped; but the eyes watched him as he checked these things.
Janway looked into those eyes and saw something familiar. There was only a spark, but somehow he knew it would grow stronger with time, and sometime over the next few hours, or days, or months, those eyes would look on the world with the same feral madness that Janway had seen in the eyes of the beast. Knowing that, Janway took a rock and began methodically to smash into shards his dead wife's head.
This is what Janway told his lawyer, but it was not what he told the jury. His testimony in court was much shorter. Janway testified that he and his wife had, indeed, stopped on the porch of a deserted house to get out of the rain. He then testified that he tried to convince his wife to have sex with him. She refused and he became angry and tried to force himself on her. She fought back, and he killed her by bashing her repeatedly in the head with a rock. When he described how he had battered her head, Janway looked straight at the jury so they could see the truth in his eyes.
Two months after his sentencing, Janway was found dead in his death row cell. The autopsy report concluded that he had managed to strangle himself by swallowing two pairs of socks. Recordings of his psychiatric counseling revealed he suffered from a recurring nightmare. In the nightmare he was pursued by his headless wife, who had clawed her way out of her grave and come for him. On the single table in his cell were two newspaper clippings from the Pennsylvania Herald dated a week apart, the second just the day before his suicide.
The first clipping began "The abandoned house and barn where James Janway brutally murdered his wife burned to the ground late yesterday afternoon. Authorities have not yet determined the cause of the blaze. Bones found during the investigation are still being inspected, but one source speculated that they were probably from a dog...." The second article began "The empty, broken coffin of a Pine Home Cemetery grave was discovered by the cemetery's caretaker yesterday morning. Authorities are unsure when the grave was opened due to the steady rain of the past week. Vandalism is suspected because of the damage to both the coffin and the headstone. The identity of the missing body has not yet been determined ..."
THE END
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Introduction. "Gates of Delirium" may be a trial for the ebook format to deal with, so this is something of a test. I wanted to retain the look of the poem as well as the words, which is difficult to do as text in an ebook format. I chose to insert the poem as an image, and I hope that turns out well. As for what it all means, well, I leave that to the readers.
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Introduction. "Infant Dawn" was the last story I published before I stopped writing. There is something of lost innocence here. Innocence can never really be regained, but that doesn't mean that there can't be hope.
Raised by the Fox Page 8