by Jack Phoenix
* * * *
“We should have tried the wine.”
Chapter Nineteen
An incessant rap at the door woke Diana Rivera from her peaceful slumber. She didn’t intend on complaining; lately her evenings were far more peaceful. Since the master of the house had passed, she no longer found herself awakened by the terrors that had plagued him during his final nights. She glanced at her luminescent-green alarm clock which told her that it was three o’clock in the morning. She preferred another three hours of sleep, but the pounding was urgent. She slid into her slippers and headed down the stairs.
She wondered how many times she had swept these steps over the years. She was amused to see the thin layer of dust that was beginning to develop on them, something that she would never have allowed in the past. She kept dust away from nearly every inch of this house, quite a feat considering the size. The income from cleaning went towards her college tuition. She never did mention to Mr. Whithers that she attended classes between lunch and dinner twice a week. Her family criticized that her plan was taking too long, that it was ridiculous for her to work nearly a decade as a live-in servant.
When her parents came to the United States from Puerto Rico and she was just a girl, they said they had wanted a better lifestyle for their children. Why would she waste all of this time? Her family demanded to know.
The answer was simple for Diana: She wanted to practice nursing on her own terms. She didn’t feel the need to rush through her life, or start a family. In her opinion, her family was large enough. Diana Rivera was determined to become a nurse and she wanted to do it as debt-free as possible, so that she could enjoy her years of nursing in comfort.
The pounding at the door became ferocious, and Diana hustled down the stairs. She answered the door and was startled to see her deceased employer’s son, disheveled and ragged in what would have been one of his finest suits. Without waiting for her greeting or invitation, he brushed by her with his shoulder and entered and began pacing the hallway.
“Mister Whithers,” Diana greeted as he passed, “are you okay?”
He didn’t respond, and gripped his hair as if to yank it out. Drunk, that was the explanation; he had gotten out of control during the night and needed a place to sleep.
“Are you here to finally go through your father’s things?” she asked rhetorically, as she attempted to elicit a response from him.
Roderick Whithers made Diana uncomfortable. Long ago she learned to cope with and deflect the sexual advances from him and his father, the latter gave up after a year’s worth of disappointment. Diana obtained her position in the household not long after the sudden departure of the lady of the house, and Roderick was still a young man in high school. He came onto her from the first day, and she decided his flirtations were simply the actions of an over-hormonal teenager. However, it continued long after he married Elizabeth. His Father always insisted on speaking to her very slow and loud, even though she was fluent in English. She never did decide which was more insulting.
“No,” Roderick answered her question as he gulped air. “Why are you still here?”
She explained, “My contract with your father states that I can remain on the grounds for six months or until the place is sold should anything ever happen to him. It gives me enough time to find another job and somewhere else to live. Besides, someone had to stay here to box everything up. This is all your stuff now, you do realize this?”
“I’m not worried about that right now,” he exhaled.
“Well, do you plan on selling the place?”
He stated, “I just need to talk to you.”
“About what?” she asked.
“I want you to tell me what happened to my father.”
“Mister Whithers, you know what happened to your father.”
“No, I need to know everything.”
“You’ve already talked to the police?” she questioned.
“Yes, yes, I have, but I wanna hear it from you. What happened to him? What you saw. Start at the beginning.”
She sighed, letting her shoulders drop down and plopped on the couch, she tightened her robe. He sat across from her in his father’s favorite chair, his hands shook, and his eyes were bloodshot.
She took a deep breath, “Well, I guess the beginning would be the night when he came home frantic, I guess it started then. I was asleep in my room when I heard a loud noise that woke me up. I came down here to see your father running around like a madman with a gun in his hand. He shouted at me to call the police or animal control or someone. ‘There’s something out there!’ I asked him what happened and he just shouted at me again to call the police, so I did. When I got closer to him, I noticed how dirty he was, like he’d been dragged through the mud, and I noticed blood. He had rips in his shirt, like claw marks all over his chest. I asked him again what happened, and he just started cussing and raving that something was out in the yard. The police looked around all over the place, but couldn’t find anything.”
“He didn’t say what kind of animal had attacked him?” Roderick inquired, his lip quivered.
“Animals, actually. He said, ‘they’. But no, he never did say what they were and, like I said, the police didn’t see anything. The scratches on his chest were weird, and they said that they could’ve come from a wild dog or coyote or something, but they were sure high up for a dog. He had to get rabies shots after that, and we kept getting phone calls around here for about two weeks straight from people wanting to know what’d happened.”
“I didn’t realize Dad had that many friends.”
“They were clients, mostly, I’m sorry to say. I’m sure you’re not surprised.”
“No, no, not really,” he agreed.
She wore a concerned look, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just keep going. Tell me everything.”
Diana’s eyeballs drifted conspicuously to the sides as she shifted on the couch, “It’s past three in the morning, you should at least have the courtesy of telling me why this can’t wait until later. You look like a mess.”
“I don’t want your opinion. I want information. Now.”
Diana snapped. “Fine. Then will you leave and let me sleep?”
Roderick nodded.
“Okay, well, where was I? Oh yeah, so people were calling, blah, blah, blah and Mister Whithers was really shaken up by the whole thing. I never really saw him the same after that. He started having nightmares. I’d hear him screaming at night. A couple of times I rushed in, and he’d be in the corner like a scared little kid, crying. He would swear up and down that someone was in his room, his nightmares seemed so real to him. He kept getting worse and worse. He lost sleep, and he stopped eating. He always had this scared look on his face like any minute someone was going to jump out at him. He was afraid of the dark, afraid to be in the house alone. At least three times he called the police when I had stepped out for groceries or personal time claiming that someone was in the house, but they never found any signs of anyone being here other than him.
“By the end he had locked himself in his room, swearing that someone was out to get him. I’d try to bring him meals but they’d just sit by the front of his door. I called the doctor and when we finally managed to convince him to let him in the room, he said Mister Whithers was just rambling about seeing things and hearing voices and screaming in his head. The doctor said it sounded like he’d suffered some kind of psychotic break and that he needed to be taken to the mental hospital. Your father refused to go. For his own safety, the doctor helped me take his gun away at least.”
She shifted and yawned before continuing.
“Then one night I came home from the grocery store to find him standing in the hallway, naked, with a knife. He ran at me, and I threw the groceries at him and ran upstairs. I locked myself in my room
and called the police, but I had forgotten about the master key and he tried to get into my room to come after me. I held the door closed as long as I could and he started stabbing through it and kicking it. He kicked so hard that I fell over, and he burst in. He tried to stab me, but hit the wall instead, and I ran. I guess he knew the cops were coming, so he managed to find the gun and ran too. Do I have to tell you what happens after that?”
Roderick’s face was in his hands. He brought his hands up to his forehead and asked, “So, he never said who it was that he thought was after him?”
“No. Well, not anything that made any sense.”
“Just tell me what he said.”
“He said there were demons after him.”
The blood drained from Roderick’s face. He stood and began pacing the floor again, his fist to his mouth as it shaped rapid inaudible words. Diana decided that she was being insensitive and that perhaps Roderick’s strange behavior this early morning was just due to the emotional stress of losing his father. She was quite sure that a man as repressed as Roderick wouldn’t deal with such an emotional trauma appropriately. She rose, approaching him, and reached for his shoulder, which he swung away with a flailing arm.
She exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I’m just trying to help!”
“I want you out of this house,” he demanded.
Taken aback, Diana’s face flushed, “Wh…what? But Mister Whithers…”
“I want you out!” spittle sprayed from his reddened face.
“But I have six…”
“Just get out!” the words blared from his lips as he ran out the door.
* * * *
“Loathsome.”
* * * *
The lack of artificial light in her room did not prevent Rebecca from drawing and writing vigorously under the moonlight. Despite the improvements in motion that she made, the nurses had become so accustomed to her silent existence that they rarely bothered to peek in on her to make sure that she was sleeping, so her artistic activities were never interrupted. On this night, her hands were crafting beautiful winged figures in white robes floating through the wind.
The door creaked. Rebecca reacted, her eyes left the paper and found their way to the door where her fellow patient Helena stood, the light from the hallway behind her cast a shadow that reached Rebecca’s face. Helena put a finger to her lips with a grin and slowly closed the door behind her. She pounced next to Rebecca’s desk and twirled a finger in her golden hair.
“Whatcha’ doin’?” She smiled.
Rebecca smiled back and pointed to the picture.
“Wow, was that a smile? I do believe that was a smile! And you looked at me when I came in, wow, you are getting so much better, Becky!”
Helena gently lifted the fresh drawing of the winged figures from the desk, examining it.
“Your drawing’s gotten better, this is much more detailed than a few days ago. Look at you, just getting better and better every day.”
The sides of Rebecca’s mouth curved again into a smile as though the act took much effort.
“It won’t be long now, Becky. You’ll be all better in no time, you’ll see, it won’t be long.”
Chapter Twenty
Samantha was stitching together another piecemeal doll with her oversized, dull, plastic needles when the cat appeared and began playing with the yarn. It was a thin, dainty little thing, a tabby of some kind, golden in color. It flopped on its back and tangled its paws gleefully in the red string, batting it around. Samantha thought it must’ve come in through her open window, probably from the tree outside. She giggled at the playful feline, covering her mouth because it was the loudest sound she had made in weeks. It was so loud her mother heard it from the master bedroom and raced towards the laughter.
“Sam?” she asked, bewildered, seeing her daughter’s bright blue eyes sparkling once more and her cheeks rosy like a child’s should be.
Samantha pointed at the golden cat, smiling, “Kitty!”
Elizabeth paused for a moment in the doorway and just watched her daughter interact with the rambunctious cat. She knew Samantha liked animals, but this was twice now that she had seen her daughter come alive in their presence. Unfortunately, her husband hated pets and wouldn’t hear of having one in the house. Perhaps she would defy him. If it would make their daughter happy, she would defy him.
Elizabeth leaned down to the cat, cooing, “Well, hi there, where’d you come from?”
“He came through the window,” Samantha answered for the cat, which rose to its feet and was now brushing up against Samantha. Samantha’s little hand trailed along the golden hair on its back.
“Did he now?” said Elizabeth as the cat purred. “You know, I think this is actually a girl cat.”
Samantha rubbed her face against the cat’s, whose eyes were blissfully closed with comfort, and commented, “She’s nice.”
“She sure is.”
“Can we keep her?”
“She might belong to someone,” Elizabeth told her daughter, not wanting to give the real reason why such an act could create controversy within the house.
Samantha held the cat tightly as she proposed, “But we can put up signs, and if no one calls then she can be ours.”
“Tell you what, we’ll talk about getting a kitty for you later, okay? But this is a wild kitty, she’d rather be outside, you know? She’d get bored here.”
“No…” Samantha began to whimper.
Her mother reached out to rub her little back, but Samantha jerked away as if by reflex, startling the cat.
“Sam, are you okay, Sweetie?”
Samantha’s eyes locked onto her mother’s, and Elizabeth realized that it had been weeks since her daughter had looked her in the eye. Suddenly, the cat arched its back with a throaty growl. Its golden hairs stood on end, as its yellow eyes peered towards the bedroom door. There stood Roderick, a pure mess, dirty and pasty, with dark circles under his eyes.
“Rod!” Elizabeth exclaimed in both alarm and relief.
“What the fuck is that thing?” he murmured, pointing to the cat, as it let out a ferocious hiss.
“Oh, my God. Where have you been? We’ve been so worried! Have you been up all night?”
“What. Is. That. Thing?”
“It’s a cat, Rod. What the hell has gotten into you, we need to talk about what happened,” Elizabeth insisted, rising to her feet and approaching her husband.
“What the fuck is it doing in my house!” he bellowed as the cat hissed again and Samantha turned her eyes to the ground.
“For chrissakes, calm down, it just…”
But Elizabeth couldn’t finish her sentence as Roderick lunged forward, his hands outstretched like a Universal movie monster towards the cat, whose feet moved instantly, launching it back out the window in a golden streak.
Roderick Whithers detested cats, though he had never had any profound negative encounters with them. He just detested cats.
Elizabeth glanced at her daughter who was still hanging her head and glared at her husband, “Oh, that was real nice.”
“I hate cats,” was his only explanation as he marched towards the master bedroom.
Elizabeth told her daughter that she’d be back in a minute, closed the bedroom door behind her and followed him. “You need to come clean with me, and tell me what the hell is going on with you, right now.”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” he told her as he began to unbutton his suit and tie from the previous night.
“Rod, I am so worried and scared right now…”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” he said. He had trouble with a single button, decided it wasn’t worth it, and sat down.
“I’m serious, what happened to you at the party? It was like you saw a ghost.”
He
replied to her query as he collapsed onto the bed, his suit still on, “I don’t know, maybe I did.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, standing over him.
“I don’t know what the fuck happened, okay?”
“Have you been up all night? Where did you go?”
“Nowhere.”
Her voice turned accusatory, “You didn’t go by your father’s house?”
“It was my father’s house.”
“You flip out at the party, scare me and everyone else half to death and then you take off and kick poor Diana out of her home?”
Roderick sat up, his hands rubbing his eyes where the sunlight was pouring in through the window. “What time did she call you? Hey, close those fucking curtains.”
“About nine this morning,” Elizabeth answered, ignoring his command.
“Which means she’s still not out of the house. That bitch,” his sunken eyes drifted off into a distant gaze.
“Rod,” his wife snapped, “we have to get you help. You are seeing things, you look like shit, and you are not well!”
“No, I’m not seeing things.”
“Then what, then? Huh? Are you strung out? You tell me what’s wrong!”
“I can figure this out. They’re not gonna get me.”
“Who?”
“The demons.”
Her eyes widened and she stared at her husband in disbelief. “Demons? What do you mean, ‘demons’? What are you saying?”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I just want to get some sleep.”
“I’m calling someone. I am calling someone, I am making an appointment, and we are going to get you help.”
With that Roderick shot to his feet, shouting in her face, “Don’t you fucking dare! I am not crazy, do you understand? I don’t understand what’s going on yet, but I am not fucking crazy! I am not winding up like my father, and you better just keep your fucking mouth shut and stay out of my way, so I can deal with this shit!”
Elizabeth didn’t say a word as Roderick, without sleep or a change of clothes, stormed back out the front door.