Detached: Book 1 of the Fleischer Series
Page 16
The next day I woke to hear a hustle and bustle from downstairs that I was not used to. I hurried to shake Caroline from her sleep. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Tired and my throat still hurts.” She leaned up on her left elbow and looked at me.
“Mom or Dad will be up here any minute to check on us. Try to make yourself puke over the side of your bed or something. I’ll clean it.” I was sitting up on the edge of my bed.
“How am I s’posed to do that?” She looked disgusted at what I had suggested.
“Stick your fingers down your throat. Try to touch that punching bag thingy in the back.” I did it myself to show her what I meant, immediately making myself get sick all over my own lap and the floor.
“Eew Emily!”
“Just do it,”
I whispered as loudly and angrily as I could at her while I shook the slimy vomit from my fingers onto the floor. She did as I ordered and successfully vomited all over the side of her bed. Perfect, I was positive we would have no problems at all being allowed to stay home today.
“Stay in bed. I’ll start cleaning this mess up.” I stood up and carefully dodged the vomit that was covering the floor between our two beds.
Mom greeted me in the kitchen, “How are you two feeling today? Is Caroline awake yet?” She was packing up what looked like lunches to take to The Fair.
“She’s awake but we’re both still puking. I have a mess to clean on our floor.” I bent down to look for something from under the sink to help clean the mess. A bucket with soapy water would have to do.
“Ugh Emily, there’s some on the front of your nightgown too. Well, I guess you two will have to stay home today. Do you think you can take care of the both of you if we leave you here alone?”
Yes! That’s what I had been hoping to hear. I didn’t dare ask if Johnny could stay to help take care of us because that might make her think that she should stay home instead. I wanted to look through that box again so badly that it made my mouth water, which was weird.
Trying to sound unhappy about not being able to join them at The Fair I replied, “I think so. We’ll probably just stay in bed all day anyways. I don’t feel very well.” I ran the water in the sink until it became hot, added some dish soap to the bottom of the bucket, and then filled the bucket with the hot water. I made sure to grab a couple of rags as well. Then I headed upstairs to start cleaning the mess that I had created.
Dad ended up coming up to our room, I guess to make sure that we really were sick like I had said. He opened the door as I was scraping up a pile of puke from the floor with one of the rags. He brought his shirt up over his nose when he realized what I was doing and then asked, “Are you sure you girls will be alright here on your own today? I can have your mother stay with you if you think you might need her.” How thoughtful of him.
“We’ll be fine Dad,” I replied while rinsing my rag in the hot, soapy water. Then to make him feel better about it I added, “We’ll probably both stay in bed all day anyways with the way we’re both feeling.” I wondered what he had planned for today. Maybe Johnny would tell me some other time.
With his shirt still over his nose our father said, “Okay. Well, we’re gonna hit the road here in a few minutes I think. Don’t answer the door to nobody. I hope you two get to feeling better quick.” He left, shutting our door behind him.
Yes, yes, yes! I was so excited for Caroline and me to have the house all to ourselves for probably the entire day. I would have plenty of time to look through Mom’s entire box of pictures and figure out who was who. Maybe I would even write in my journal when I went down to the cellar to throw Caroline’s bedding in the washer. Other than worrying about Johnny, I thought that today would be a pretty great day.
Mom came to our room to check on Caroline and I one last time before leaving for the day. Caroline was lying down in her bed and doing a great job of being sick. I had just finished cleaning the puke from the floor and was about to tell my sister to get up so I could strip her bed when our mother came in. Mom kissed each of us on the forehead and said that they would be leaving as soon as she got back downstairs. All of this concern over us girls being sick was almost too much to handle.
I had a feeling that Emily was going to screw everything up by trying to look through that stupid box of old pictures. I was sure that she would get caught. Or if she didn’t get caught, she would find out something that would make her feel even worse about everything and make her worry more than she already did.
I also hoped that whatever Emily’s father had planned for the Fair somehow didn’t happen. Emily didn’t need to hear about any other bad stuff that her father did and she didn’t need something happening to her older brother either. She didn’t need to have to deal with any more kidnapped people either if that’s what he was going to try to do. Hopefully nothing would happen or at least hopefully Emily would never find out what it was that happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I listened as hard as I could for the engine of the truck to start and then to leave the driveway. I couldn’t wait to get started with the rest of my day. I promised Caroline I would tell her a lot of stories throughout the day and baby her like crazy when I wasn’t busy. This made her slightly happier about having to stay home instead of going with the rest of our family to The Great New York State Fair.
I stripped Caroline’s bed and told her I would make it up with clean bedding when I came back up from downstairs. I told her to go get a bowl of cereal to eat or some toast or something if she was hungry. She could do either of those things on her own without any help from me.
Then I rethought my plans. “Never mind. I’ll make us both a little something to eat and bring it right up here for you.” I didn’t want to write in my diary until after I took a look through Mom’s box again. I would throw Caroline’s blankets in the wash, make us both a light breakfast, put the clean bedding on her bed, and then I would go downstairs into my parents’ bedroom to look through that box of pictures. Then I would check on Caroline again before going down to write in my journal. After all that, Caroline’s blankets should be done in the wash and I could hang them out to dry. Then I would spend the rest of the day taking care of my little sister as I had promised that I would.
I carried my sister’s puked bedding down to the washer. It was hard to believe when I went down in that gloomy, musty place that I had actually slept down here every night for a while until last night. I threw the blankets in the washer, added some soap, and then headed back upstairs to make me and my sister a little something to eat.
I decided some whole wheat toast and orange juice would be the best thing on our stomachs after my stunt with the “tea”. We needed to eat something to help get that nasty stuff out of our bodies. I could still feel several of its effects on my own body, so I knew that Caroline must still have some too. I made our food and brought it right up to our room for us to enjoy.
The orange juice stung my sore mouth and throat. Maybe orange juice wasn’t the best choice after all. I knew that it was healthy and should help clean that poison out of our bodies though. We both finished all of our toast and juice. Caroline looked worn out to me.
“I’ll put that clean bedding on your bed for you now. Then you should lie down for a while. You look beat. I’ll read you a quick story before I take our plates downstairs.” I began to head towards our door to go to the hall closet for the bedding.
“Thank you Emily.” She was sitting on my bed, barely able to keep herself upright.
“You can go ahead and lie down on my bed for a minute until I’m done if you want.”
I was so eager to get to that box and see what else I might find in there that it was hard to think about anything else. I managed to focus long enough to grab a clean pillowcase, clean bottom sheet and top sheet, and the only clean bedspread as quickly as I could. Then I went back into our room and made Caroline’s bed faster than I think I had ever made a bed up before in my whole life. She was al
ready asleep on my bed. I decided to let her be and happily almost ran down the stairs to get my hands on Mom’s secret box of pictures.
Julie tried talking to me again. I tried to ignore her voice and act like I couldn’t hear her, but I did. She was telling me that she thought looking through the pictures was a bad idea. I didn’t care. I was going to do it anyways whether she liked it or not.
Grrr! That stubborn little girl won’t listen to me. I know she hears me so for her to pretend that she doesn’t is just stupid. I just hope she doesn’t get caught. If she finds more stuff to worry about because of something she might find in the box, I’ll just have to deal with that later. She could really use a nap instead, but again, she won’t listen to me. She might need her rest, she had no idea what her father might be up to at The Fair or whether she would be able to sleep after they got home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
As I was digging the box back out of my parents’ closet, I wondered whether I should bring the box up to my room or just look through it right where I was. I wasn’t sure whether I would be able to hear the truck from either bedroom if it pulled into the driveway and that would be extremely important. I decided to bring the box into the living room with me. I would be able to hear any vehicle that might pull in from there and could put the box back where I had gotten it from with time enough not to get caught.
For some reason I was really nervous about looking through the box again. Actually, it was probably for several different reasons: 1) I was scared to death of being caught with my mother’s box; 2) I was terrified of what more I might find out about my family that I was better off not knowing; and 3) I wasn’t sure what I should actually do with any information that I did happen to find.
I walked through the hall and into the living room. I sat myself on the edge of the couch and set the box on the coffee table. I opened the curtains behind the couch so that I would be able to see better. If they happened to come home and found the curtains open, I could just say that I saw that they were closed and opened them like we did every other day so that no one would think that we were all gone or something.
“Well, we deserve to know and I’m going to find out all I can,” I heard myself say out loud (and it was actually me speaking, not Julie) as I lifted the lid off the old shoe box. I rummaged through a bunch of photos that seemed pretty boring. I could look through those more carefully some other time, if another chance ever came up. If not, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I needed to look for pictures of the two couples and the little girl that I had seen in my nightmare. Hopefully there would be writing on the backs to tell me who the people were. Maybe there would be more newspaper clippings to read as well.
Then I saw it. The picture of the couple that I thought must be my grandparents fell out of the small stack that I was holding and landed right on my lap. Chills came over me when I realized that the man and woman in the photograph looked just like one of the couples in my nightmare.
I hurried to turn the photograph over and sure enough there was writing there:
Mom and Dad (Henry and Emma Fleischer) - May 1961
My grandfather looked so much older than my grandmother and according to that newspaper article I had read, he was. I wondered what their story was: how they met, if they were in love, what each of them was like, and all of that. Neither one of my grandparents looked very happy at all in this picture. I saw features in both of my grandparents that my mother and father each had. My father looked mostly like my grandfather, but he did have my grandmother’s eyes. My mother looked mostly like my grandmother, but she had my grandfather’s eyes and it looked like she probably had my grandfather’s chunkiness as well.
I set their picture aside and shuffled some more through the pictures until I came to one with three children in it. Two of the children were my mother and father, I could tell. The other must have been my murdered aunt that I had seen in my nightmare, just younger in this picture. I looked at the back of that photo and found this:
Johnny- 8 years old
Ruth- 6 years old
Ann- 10 months old
Ann was the only one smiling in the picture. However, in this picture you could at least tell that they were all definitely brother and sisters more than you could by looking at them now.
I moved on. I wanted to hurry and get through the entire box long before anyone came back home. I still didn’t see a photo of the other angry couple that had showed up in my nightmare. Maybe they hadn’t been our relatives. Then I found another piece of paper at the very bottom of the box, another newspaper article. The headline was: Horrific Scene Discovered at Fair. It read:
“Authorities discovered the bodies of a man and woman at the New York State Fair Friday night. The man appeared to have been beaten to death with some sort of blunt instrument. The coroner believed the woman to be heavily pregnant at the time of the attack. He also believes the infant was removed from the woman’s abdomen and the woman subsequently bled out, leading to her death. The infant was not found at the scene and police believe the couple’s attacker may still have the baby and that the baby may have been the entire reason behind the attack. Police are seeking any…”
“Oh my God!” I looked for the date of the article and found it: September 3rd, 1922. I quickly did the math in my head. I was good with numbers, just like I seemed to be smart in almost every area. I must have gotten that from my mother because my father didn’t seem that smart to me at all. Of course, if they were brother and sister, I actually would have gotten that from both of them, whether my dad was smart or not. I was starting to confuse even myself.
My grandmother would have been born around that time. That infant was probably her. My grandfather was a good twenty years older than my grandmother. He could have easily been the one who killed her parents and took her. What the hell kind of a family did I have?
Part of the paper crumbled in my hand. “Shit,” I swore out loud for the first time in my life. I quickly put the paper back in the box, being more careful with it than I had already been so it wouldn’t fall apart any more than it already had. I replaced everything else back in the box and then put the lid back on. Good, there were no pieces of paper left anywhere on the couch that I could tell. I took the box back to where it belonged, hidden in my parents’ dark closet filled with family secrets.
Thank goodness she at least got that dreadful box put back where it belonged. I had been so afraid that she would get caught with it and then who knew what would happen to her.
I wasn’t sure what to think about her newest discovery with the newspaper clipping. I wasn’t sure if she was right about the baby in the article being her grandmother or her grandfather being the one to murder her parents and take the baby. I supposed the dates fit, plus why else would her parents or her grandfather keep something like that if it had nothing to do with them? Maybe the murdered couple were relatives of the family somehow and that was why they had kept the article all these years. I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter, Emily had made up her mind about the whole thing and now she would think about it nonstop.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Caroline was still sleeping in my bed where I had left her. I wondered how long ago that had been. Then I saw our plates and cups from breakfast still sitting on my night stand. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten to take care of them in my hurry to look through that God awful box. I decided to do that and also check the time.
It was three thirty in the afternoon. The rest of my family could be gone for quite a while yet. I really wondered now what my father’s plan was for The Fair. His own father had killed a man and cut a pregnant woman’s stomach open to steal her baby during his trip to The Fair.
Well, that was the most likely possibility that I could think of. Why else would that article be hidden in with a box of old photographs of our family? That’s probably who the other couple in my nightmare was- my grandmother’s parents. I wondered if my grandmother ever saw that article and what she had thought if sh
e did.
So my grandfather was some kind of sick freak too. He was a murderer, a kidnapper, and most likely a guy who liked to do those nasty things to kids just like my own father was. My mother and father were brother and sister. My grandparents were murdered around the time that my mother should have been pregnant for Johnny… I wondered if Johnny was my grandfather’s son or my father’s. Did my father kill his parents because of what his own father did to them? Or did someone else really come in and kill them like the paper said? It still didn’t make sense to me that my father would kill his little sister. Of course, none of this should make sense to any normal person.
The bedding should definitely be done in the washer by now. I decided to get that hung out while there was still plenty of daylight for it to dry by. I grabbed the washed bedding from the washer, threw it in the basket, and carried it out through the door in the kitchen. It was so quiet and peaceful out. If I didn’t have so much other crazy stuff on my mind I might actually be able to enjoy the day with some reading or writing. I didn’t even feel like writing in my journal anymore. It was all just a little too much. I needed time to think about it all before I wrote any of it down on paper.