by Tarisa Marie
Out of nowhere a man dressed in farmers garb with long, wavy blonde hair and crystal blue eyes is standing in front of me, looking at me curiously.
Before I know it, my knees are becoming weak and I’m kneeling on the floor feeling light headed, a scream of confusion, frustration, and fright ready to escape my lungs, but before it can, everything goes black.
I wake up lying on my back in bed, the room dimly lit by the small bed side lamp that I’ve kept on while staying here. The previous events rush back to me at once and I gasp, racing out of bed to flick the lights on. Knowing that I’d clearly dreamt it all up or else I’d have been on the floor right now, I slowly calm down. I take deep breaths to relax myself and pull my phone from my hoodie pocket to check the time. It’s shortly after two in the morning. Not wanting to go back to sleep after all that, I lie back down in bed and decide to read a book on my phone to calm down.
By four, I’m doing everything I can to keep my eyes open. I take to pacing the house, somehow ending up in my mother’s room for only the second time since I’ve been back here. My eyes land back on the graffiti in red on her wall and anger replaces some of my fright and confusion. I find my mother’s old jewelry box and rifle through it casually. I find a necklace she used to wear often and memories flood back to me. Fond memories. Since that day she attacked me, I’ve always wondered what happened to her. Was she always mentally ill, I was just too young to see it? She was never a bad mother before then. She was an excellent widowed mother, especially after everything. My aunt seems to think that what happened with my dad and brother tipped her over the edge, but why did it take so many years for her to snap after those events? To me, it just doesn’t make sense.
Hours before my mother attacked me, we’d been baking cookies for my school bake sale, eating the dough, and laughing. I drop the necklace back into the case and close the lid.
I was fifteen. In all actuality, I wasn’t all that young. Surely, I’d have noticed if her mental health was declining, no?
I move to her closet and discover her now slightly out dated wardrobe and a pile of shoes. I look through the old clothes remembering more and more of her. I find myself feeling a bit guilty for not visiting her when she was taken into the psych ward, but it’s too late now.
I kneel down to her shoes and can’t help myself from slipping on one of her favorite sparkly, white heels. After years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the woman who shot me was not the woman who raised me. My mother never would’ve done that. She loved me.
I remove the heel and toss it gently into the closet before closing the door. I move to her desk in the corner and lift a picture of her and my grandmother from the cork board, smiling at it before placing it in my pocket. I see the drawer that had been locked when the police searched the house for any clues as to why my mother decided to try and kill me. They’d forced it open and now the wood was chipped and broken. I slide it open, finding it empty. The calendar on the top of the desk dated back over seven years ago shows her shifts at the hospital and my first day of high school marked clearly. My eyes curiously move to the day of the incident. It’s blank besides the simple note ‘cookies for bake sale’. Nothing leads me to think she planned to kill me. If she was to kill me, why waste time making cookies? I flip to the next month where she has my fall dance marked down, the one she was supposed to chaperon. I hadn’t been too happy about that fact at the time, the memory causes me to giggle quietly.
I cough from the dust I sent whirling when I flipped the calendar page, the rush of air causing more dust to fly and then a coughing fit from me. I find myself laughing uncontrollably for no apparent reason.
I quiet myself before I wake up Aunt Betty and sit down in the edge of my mom’s bed for a moment, taking in the room for the very last time. I take in everything from the design of the blinds, to the way the laminate floor is chipped in the one corner from my dad dropping the heavy safe once in a drunken stopper after a Christmas party in town, where he’d won the raffle and decided that he needed to move the safe to a more secured location for the night until he could take the money in to the bank. He’d only won two hundred dollars, so now it seemed silly that he’d have moved that thing across the room to the closet, or at least tried. After dropping it and wrecking the floor, my mom had scolded him and told him to go to bed. She wasn’t really that mad though, because I remember hearing them both giggling from my room. Looking back now I realize that they were flirting, and my dad was probably being the humorous guy he always was. I miss his goofy smile.
Thinking about the safe for the first time in many years makes me wonder what, if anything, would be in there now. Would I find more family pictures or something of the sort that I could take back home with me? Recalling that my dad had ended up actually moving the safe to a more secure location the following day, I go into the spare bedroom next to my mom and dad’s room and attempt to recall where exactly he’d taken apart the floor. I push down on some of the floor boards for a clue but come back empty. It could be anywhere in the whole quarter of this room I’d seen him sitting in that day with a pile of tools.
Then I see something that catches my eye. A small X shaped scratch in the corner of one of the floor boards and I know I’ve found the right spot. I try to pry the board up with my nails, but I fail and have to go grab a flat screw driver from the closet down the hall. I jab it into the crack and then position it at the right angle to pry it up. It snaps up fairly easily and I move to the ones surrounding it. When I’m done, a whole two feet by two feet is visible and the old dusty safe I remember appears. Feeling a bit like a treasure hunter, I smile in triumph before reaching down and pulling it up out of the hole. The thing is heavy, and it takes all I have to pull it up, I barely get it out of the hole.
Try to lift the lid, I discover that it’s locked of course. How in the hell will I ever find the passcode to this thing? I try the house phone number, family birthdates, everything I can think of. Then I try the obvious ones. One, two, three, four; Two, four, six, eight; and so forth. I am beyond surprised when the green light flashes following the input of four ones. I lift the lid to find a heck of a lot of paper. I assume birth certificates, passports, deeds to the house, all those types of important things, but when I lift up the first envelope and flip it over to see it labeled ‘May. Read at 18.’, I wonder if it’s the will we never found or something along those lines. I can’t help but open it. After all, I’m over eighteen.
A pull out a letter. “May, by now I will be long gone, and hopefully your mother will have remembered to give you this if all is well with her. I understand that if you’re reading this and you’re now an adult, that many years have passed, and many tragic things have probably happened since I’ve passed away. You might wonder why I know this. Well, as I’m sure you’ve come to understand, this place is not normal. Bad things happen here. You might wonder why we never moved away. If we moved away, the bad things would only follow us. We have both everything to do with the tragic events and nothing to do with them. You’ll understand eventually, but until then I hope you live as happily a life as is possible under the circumstances. Know that I am alright where I am now. I am okay. You will be too, no matter what happens. We’re strong. Our family is strong. When the time comes, know that you’re not going insane, you’re not crazy. Don’t be scared. Be strong. I know that right now you’re probably reading this and wondering if I was a bit crazy, but this will all make sense to you one day whether it’s tomorrow or five or ten years from now. Stay strong, dad.”
I close the letter, confused and set it to the side. Was my dad like my mother? Did my dad really pass away from a heart attack at 28 years old like I was told? Who has a heart attack that young? How have I never thought about this before? How did he know he was going to die? With shaking hands, I reach for the next thing in the safe. The next thing is a blue print of the house, and then just the regular safe stuff. Pictures, important documents. I take a few pictures of the stuff and take my long-los
t birth certificate, but leave everything else inside. I could just leave the heavy safe where it is, but for some reason, I feel the need to put it back where it was.
I wipe a tear from my chin. Thinking about my dad always leaves me in tears. He was a good man. I miss him so much.
I decide to head down to the kitchen and make myself some seven-year-old tea.
Chapter 4
It seems like no time has passed before the sun has begun to rise and Aunt Betty has made her way down to the kitchen where I still sit, drinking my third mug of tea. She eyes me carefully before sitting down next to me.
“You couldn’t sleep?” she asks, as if already knowing the answer.
“Bad dream, I guess,” I mutter. “‘No offence. I loved seeing you again, but I can’t wait to get out of here.”
My aunts answering look is filled with sympathy. “I know, dear.” Is it just me or does it look like she’s aged since being here? I’m probably just being dramatic.
After a few minutes of silence, I’m not surprised to hear a knock at the door. Kade is here.
After talking about a few things and agreeing on terms, our conversation turns casual as he asks what I will do now that the property will be out of my hands.
“I think I’ll head back home and go to school. I’ve been saving the money to go,” I admit.
He looks both surprised and content. “What do you wish to take?”
I shrug, unsure. “Maybe psychology. I can’t decide. I hate school, but I need to do something with my life.”
He smiles and nods. “I could see that. Dr. May Thomson the psychiatrist.” He then extends a hand to me, and I reach mine out to his and shake it firmly. “Drive safe, May, and good luck.”
My aunt Betty left to catch her last-minute plane back home before Kade could finish, but she was sure to make sure that Kade was serious about the sale and wasn’t going to try and scam me out of my money. This means, that now that I’m done here with all loose ends tied up, I can go back home to Seattle.
I reach into my pocket and hand over the keys to the property. Kade shoves them into his own pocket and we head towards the door in silence.
I take a last look around the entry way before walking out the door for the last time. Kade shuts it behind us gently and locks it before we begin out walk down the long sidewalk through the trees to where our vehicles are parked.
“Are you going to miss this place?” Kade asks me casually.
I shake my head. “No, it’s time that I officially move on from this and go back to what I’ve found in Seattle. This place is just...”
“Filled with bad memories?” he finishes
I shrug. “And good ones, but it’s just time to move on. I can’t explain it. It all feels so long ago that my whole family lived here, like another lifetime. I think the only reason my mom didn’t ever sell it was because she kept hoping that my brother would come back. He went missing here when we were kids. He and his friend. I’ve never understood why she never sold it after dad died. It was a family property, it’s been in the family for generations, but that doesn’t mean it should remain in the family. I don’t feel that way anyway. It’s just a place.”
Kade nods and tucks his hands into his jacket pockets. It’s a little chilly outside today. It must be his day off because he’s not dressed in his usual formal attire but instead in a black jacket and dark jeans. His hair is tousled in short waves. “I lost siblings too. My younger sisters. One died of cancer and one was murdered.”
My gaze flicks to his quickly. “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Well, at least I know what happened to them, you have no idea what happened to Daniel,” he says sympathetically.
I’m about to nod when I realize something. I never mentioned my brother’s name to Kade. “How do you know his name?” I ask, trying to sound casual although something about this just feels wrong.
Kade seems to stiffen and his eyes widen slightly. “Small town. Word gets around.”
Isn’t that the truth?
We approach our vehicles, and I stop dead in my tracks when I see that there’s no vehicle in the driveway besides mine. I search the yard again but come up empty.
“How did you get here?” I ask him in confusion.
“I ran. I run every morning, and I had to come by your place anyhow so instead of my regular route, I ran here.” He says this offhandedly like it’s completely normal.
“You must live fairly close then,” I mutter. I don’t run. I have never understood how people enjoy that activity.
Kade chuckles. “You look like you just bit into a lemon.” He points down the road and then to the left. “That way about three miles or so.”
“You ran three miles this morning? And now you’re about to run three more back?” I gape. “Do you want a ride back? I don’t mind.” And he thought I was the one training to be a navy seal.
He chuckles again and shakes his head, his hair bouncing. “No thanks. I don’t keep in such good shape by skipping my morning workouts,” he quips.
I can’t help but laugh with him. “Well, alright I guess. Have a fun run then. If you have any questions about the property, feel free to call me.”
I open my car door and jump in, feeling as though a large weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
“Drive safe,” he says with a grin and then turns and begins running in the opposite direction.
I check the back seat to make sure that all my boxes and things are in a good position where I can see through the back window. Then I start the car, shut the door, and pull out of the driveway slowly, heading down the gravel road towards the nearest highway.
I’m so tired that I’m not sure how I’ll make it home in one shift. I figure I’ll probably have to get a hotel room for the night somewhere along the way. I turn up the radio but find that I’m too far from any prominent civilization for FM radio, and I have to instead switch to AM where an old country song blasts through my speakers, but it’s all I have so I turn it up to keep me awake.
As I look up from the radio, I see too late that a deer is making a mad dash across the road. I instinctively slam on my brakes and swerve left in the opposite direction of the deer, but my car clips it’s rear end and the deer somehow flips up into the air, landing on top of the roof with a bang. I hear one of my windows shattering and the jerk from the impact sends my head into the driver’s window, which also bursts apart. Still managing to be alert, I pull my wheel back to the right to keep on the road, but the sharp action sends my vehicle violently fishtailing on the gravel and then rolling into the ditch when I attempt to correct my situation. The roof of my car hits the ground harshly with a screeching crunch and my head snaps in a very wrong direction. Before the car comes to a stop, my vision goes black and I lose consciousness.
I wake up, my head resting on wet grass instead of the window that used to be there, my pulse racing. The sun is setting so I know I’ve been here a long time. I muster up my strength and reach to unbuckle my seatbelt before searching rapidly for my cellphone which is nowhere in sight. By the time I see it in the back seat, I am starting to really feel just how injured I am. My head pounds furiously and my left shoulder, ribs, and neck ache ferociously. I snatch up my phone to find the screen absolutely smashed, the glass not even fully intact, it’s fallen out somewhere. I push the on button and as I assumed, nothing happens. Great.
If this road wasn’t in the middle of nowhere then maybe someone would have driven by now that could help.
I curse and debate just how I’m going to get out of the passenger side of the car through the window. I place my feet on the side of the center console and then peek my head out the window before resting my hands on the outside of the car and attempting to push myself up. I fail, not having the strength and instead have to bring my feet up to the right side of the passenger seat which takes more effort than I have to give, and I barely manage to lift myself out of the car and on top of it. Maybe it’s the adrenalin. I sit on t
he passenger side door for a few minutes, gathering myself and taking in the scene around me in disbelief. About a hundred feet away is what remains of a white-tailed deer, it’s back half destroyed and the rest of it scratched up. I have no doubt that it died at impact by its appearance. Then, ahead of the deer, I can see the sparkle of glass hitting what’s left of the sun above the horizon, then there’s my erratic tire tracks to the point where my car took to rolling and then finally I see a trail of glass and blood into the ditch. I lift my hand up to my head where my scalp burns from being cut by the driver’s window. My hair is soaked, and I’m not at all surprised to see blood when I pull away my hand. Why did I have to speed? Why did I have to fiddle with the radio?
Down the road I can still see the driveway to the property I just sold to Kade. If I can make it there, I can try the house phone, that is, if it’s still connected. The power and water were one thing that my mother never stopped paying, but the phone? I’m just not sure if that’s something she would’ve thought of in her state. The only reason that the power and water were on was because they were on automatic withdrawal that no one ever told her to shut off. The phone though, I remember recovering monthly bills for, but that doesn’t mean she stopped paying it or that it wasn’t also automatically withdrawn.
I slide to the front of the car which is closest to the ground and then I leap down, stumbling a bit but not falling. Then I take a deep breath and begin heading towards the house, debating how I’m going to get in. Perhaps one of the windows isn’t locked. The people who vandalized my mom’s room had to have gotten in somehow, so I should be able to, too.
I try not to give attention to my aching body or the blood running down my face as I walk, but that’s next to impossible, and I know my heart is racing erratically.
When I reach the house, I feel light headed and dizzy. I first try the door, hoping Kade didn’t lock it; although, I know he did. Next, I try the large window on the porch and all the basement windows. By this time, I’m not even sure how I’m still on my feet. It begins to rain large droplets of water, not helping my situation.