Going Home (Cedar Valley Hauntings Book 1)

by Renee Bradshaw

  I drove into town, looking for a neon sign welcoming deranged women with no money. Somewhere giving out promises of band-aides and a beer. Streets became familiar, houses morphed into memories, and sidewalks grew over with long forgotten stories.

  My hands went into autopilot, taking the car somewhere I never thought I’d see again.

  Jordan kept popping up in my mind ever since he tried to open my door the day before. And not just the good memories, but also the memories from the day I stopped talking to him.

  I drove past his driveway three times before pulling over on the wide shoulder. His house was hidden, eaten by the trees. The same three-tiered tire planter sat at the edge of their yard with the words Country Living’s the Life for Me stenciled in cursive. A safe place when I still lived here; would it be now? I couldn’t make myself drive any closer. I sat in the car, chewing at a cuticle.

  Once I got Jordan’s face out of my mind, Aunt Dee’s returned with every blink. Luckily, this far from Dad’s house, sanity snapped back into place, reminding me it had all been a dream. My heart rate slowed and the sane adult part of my brain turned on. At least, the part that told me danger had passed took over. No matter how imaginary she had been, I still didn’t want to see her face when I closed my eyes.

  Instead, I looked at the tires. Colorful flowers stared over the top of the tires, sturdy against the rainfall and wind. I remembered a day playing at Jordan’s house when his dad came home in a particularly bad mood. Nathan piled both of us in his truck, and sped out of the driveway, not paying attention and knocking the top tier of the tire planter over.

  Their mother built the planter while pregnant with the boys’ little sister; one of the final physical and lasting impressions she made around the house. Jordan cried as Nathan got out and did his best to fix it, but he had bent the rod that sat in the center, giving it support.

  I didn’t know what to do. Jordan didn’t cry often, and even when Nathan unexpectedly dropped him off at our house with fresh bruises, his eyes were always dry. I could count on one hand all the times Jordan had cried in front of me. The one that settled on my mind, was the worst one of all.

  October has always been my favorite month of the year. The smell of decaying leaves in the fall, cold rain, and Halloween decorations energized me in the same way spring and summer energized other kids. Even going into my first year of high school, October held promise. Hot cider, pumpkin bread Aunt Dee cooked almost daily, and my final year of trick-or-treating.

  Jordan and I squeezed through junior high unnoticed. We rode the coattails of Angela’s popularity, not making us popular by association, but ignored out of consideration. When we entered high school, Angela had already secured her place in the hierarchy as a cheerleader, debate team darling, and a French tutor. We would hide in her shadow again. At least, that was the plan. Turned out, high school was four times the size, swallowing four different junior highs into its halls. Older sibling popularity was not a currency used. Instead of being a simple freshmen year, high school turned out to be hell.

  Thunder crashed nearby, making me jump and open my eyes. The shadows cast by a streak of lightning forced me lower in my seat, and I checked the lock on my door again before falling back into my daydream.

  Angela was born with olive skin, jet-black hair, and dark almond shaped eyes. The boys teased that she looked more than Aunt Dee than Mama, swearing she was our half-sister, half-cousin. I might have believed them if I hadn’t seen the pictures of Mama pregnant with her.

  She filled out her cheerleading uniform with a retro hourglass shape. And though she said she’d kill to be thin as me, she’d never give up her chest. Even when my friends wanted to be thin, eat a pile of french fries and never gain a pound, I knew my weight became a grotesque and unacceptable thing to them once they saw me change at a sleepover or in a dressing room at the mall.

  It wasn’t just my skeletal appearance that kept boys from asking me out. My teeth were too big for my face, gaining the nicknames horse, rabbit, and bucky. Even though my proportions evened out as I aged, my front two teeth were still all I noticed if I saw myself smiling in a picture.

  I fell into a strong case of acne in seventh grade. Scars still lined my face all these years later, though not as red as they had been in ninth grade. Boys did not line up anywhere for me, but were on my mind constantly, thanks to Angela’s endless parade of boyfriends.

  Jordan and I started playing the happy couple in seventh grade after he came out to me. As far as teachers and other authority figures were concerned back then, homophobia was still an acceptable reason to beat another person up. From what I hear, that opinion still thrives in some places.

  Since he didn’t want the same treatment he received at home, and I was tired of being one of the few girls without a boyfriend; we eased into a fake relationship. We’d been best friends for almost eight years, so the slide into the lie felt simple.

  By freshmen year, our relationship might as well have been a second skin. Our friends, Dads, Aunt Dee, brothers and one very perfect sister...some of them fell fool more than others.

  The kids at school were quick to believe in our textbook relationship. Meant to be, inseparable since kindergarten, in love since lifetimes ago. It was a confusing time, propelled by me actually spending the better part of elementary school in love with Jordan. Years of confusion and rejection fueled by Angela’s reassurance that boys took longer to understand love than girls did. I held onto hope until the day I noticed Jordan’s expression matched mine when we watched Benny and Joon. And it wasn’t for Mary Stuart Masterson. Then the pain turned from dull to piercing.

  It stayed piercing too, until Aunt Dee talked to me and healed the hurt with one of her little tea parties. Everything took place outside of me. Jordan couldn’t love me back. Not like I loved him. He hadn’t rejected me. I wasn’t an option. To this day when I go through a breakup, I wish Aunt Dee and her tea parties to make me feel better. To feel as grown up as I did in eighth grade when I was mature about the breakup of a relationship that never existed.

  When rumors reached our school about Jordan kissing another boy at the roller rink a few towns over, it did not take the whole of ninth grade long to hate us. They drew on our lockers and flipped us off when they saw us coming. They even went as far as to bar Jordan from the locker room.

  Somehow, we mustered up the strength to ignore them. Had we finally found the positive side to having abusive fathers? Nothing strangers could say or do to us could be harder than what we went through with our own fathers in our own homes — homes where we were supposed to be safe and loved. We had given up on that childhood years before and were just at high school to finish and get out of town. We were moving to France after all.

  Jordan and I had just sat down at our favorite picnic bench at the edge of the courtyard with lunch when the kids came over. I counted fifteen, but later found out the number grew to thirty. Thirty who admitted to taking part.

  Fag. Butt fuckers. Dyke. Sluts.

  A boy yanked me off the bench. I never learned his name. He was pimply and round, with breath like onions and fish food. The taste was worse than the smell when he forced a kiss on me.

  The kids around us laughed. Their heads seemed to grow larger with each chuckle, smaller with each shove. They separated Jordan and I. At least, that was what I thought happened. They pushed me into a tree and screamed at me.

  “Skank!”

  “Fag lover!”

  “Scrawny bitch!”

  After what felt like ages, they wore me down, and I grew as scared with them as I was at home with Dad. No. More scared. Dad’s hate came with punches, bruises, pushes down the stairs, and tosses into the wall. Here I didn’t know what was coming. When another boy said he wanted to find out if I was really a girl and ripped my shirt over my head, I expected the worst.

  I’ve been thankful the rest of my life it was no worse than a beating from Dad. Though he only hit the boys in the face, Angela and I got our beati
ngs on our backs and stomachs. Boys could pretend like their bruises were from quick tempers, while a black eye would have caused suspicion on a daughter’s face.

  That afternoon at school brought more fists pounding into my side at once than I was used to. More times my head hit the concrete. More times I was shoved into the wall of the maintenance shed. More hands and faces than I ever had focused on me at once. Lucky for me, I knew after fourteen years of living in Dad’s house how much I could handle. More importantly, I knew what Jordan couldn’t. My brothers had left home to get away from Dad. Nathan stayed behind to protect Jordan.

  Blood pooled under my tongue, and I found a hole split in my cheek.

  “Jordan!” I screamed. Saliva mixed with blood sprayed from my mouth and landed on a boy’s face while he screamed at me.

  I saw the same boy at the clinic later that afternoon. The nurse tested my blood for communicable diseases to ensure his safety. I walked past the boy in the waiting room, and his mother glared at me from the other side of her wire glasses. My fault that her son had blood in his eyes, and might pick up whatever filthy disease I had. I was to blame.

  I screamed for Jordan again as the crowd thinned and the bell rang. Adult voices grew closer. Shouting. Searching for the center of the chaos. One eye swollen shut, I looked for Jordan everywhere in the courtyard. The kids released me. Running. Herd thinning.

  Nearby, the woods sat angry and overgrown.

  Had they taken Jordan to the woods? Hidden him from sight? I could only imagine the things they had done to him there. I didn’t want to imagine. Where was he?

  “Jordan!” I yelled, but my mouth felt liquidy, everything hurt so badly. I was tired, and I wanted to lie down. Teachers shouted in the courtyard, looking for whoever had been the center of attention. Whoever all the blood had come from. Whoever the jeers and shouts and fighting had been about. I limped away from the chaos and into the woods.

  I quickly found Jordan around the side of a fat cluster of trees. Shivering. Crying. Hiding. Alone and unharmed.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, pulling himself from the ground. He looked at me with pity. We’d seen each other at our worst, and we’d never given each other pity.

  “You ran away?” I mumbled through my swollen lips.

  “Is it over?” he asked. I nodded, just as running feet came down the path. Jordan stepped behind the tree again, clinging to it like a shield. Two teachers I didn’t recognize appeared.

  “Oh my god,” the younger one, a female said, putting her hand over her mouth. “Are you... What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  I tried to choke out my name, but nothing came out. All I could think was, Jordan ran.

  Jordan answered for me. “Megan.”

  “I hate you.” And then I never spoke to him again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I dreamt heavy dark dreams that night. Instead of a high school made from an earthly hell of other students, the kids had furry and elongated heads like moles and rats. Hell exploded from underneath the vegetable patch with fire and blood instead of nasty names and loogies shot my way as I walked through a hallway. The earth crawled, thick with insects, and dark fabrics draped from every tree. One tree dripped dense liquid onto the ground that slid and puddled together, bursting into flames like gasoline.

  A pounding sound brought me out of my dream. Light wrapped around me, and the temperature rose. In my disorientation, I thought the hellfire had found me. My eyes shot open.

  I slumped over in the front seat of the car, at the edge of Jordan’s driveway. A blond cop stood outside the door looking in at me, my sleep-creased face shining back at me from both of his reflective lenses. I smiled, and waved; a defensive reaction when encountering the police. Always appear small and nonthreatening. Easy since I’m 97 pounds wet, but it was still something Aunt Dee drilled into my head as a kid based on her own experiences with police.

  I cranked the window. “Good morning, Officer.”

  “License and registration, please,” he said, and I went ashen. My license sat useless in the kitchen, and I had no clue if the car was insured. Surely, the lawyer would have checked.

  “It’s actually my father’s car. I’ll check the glove box.” I leaned over and opened the compartment. For the first time since returning home, I’d found something that wasn’t crammed full of useless junk. The registration and insurance card sat in the otherwise empty box and I handed them over.

  “Your license,” he said without even looking at the papers. It was time to play the girl card.

  “I’m here clearing out my dad’s house, he just died and—” pause, lip quiver, “—that storm last night. I lost power. I got so scared, I flew out of there, and forgot my purse at the house. With my license. And...and...” I stopped because he sighed, a single eyebrow raised.

  “Have you been drinking, ma’am?”

  “No, I swear.” Not in the past six or so hours anyway.

  He wasn’t buying it. I was telling the truth for once too. And dammit if the girl card was all I brought with me that day. He looked down at the paperwork, his head tilted and he squinted back at me. “Megan?”

  I dropped the lip quiver and pursed my mouth instead. “Do I know you?”

  “No. I should have noticed earlier. You look just like Cecelia.” He laughed like he just got an inside joke in a movie no one else understood. Oh great, one of her people. “Or you know, like you’re related.” He leaned on the open window, passing me the registration card. “It took me a minute to see it, but your dad’s name on the card here.” He looked around the car again and sniffed. Not remotely with discretion. What ya sniffing for, officer? “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, just scared of the dark.” I snorted, feeling uncomfortable with his closeness, and sure I sounded like an idiot.

  He straightened up and removed his sunglasses. Where my washed-out reflection had been looking back at me, now a set of deep blue eyes stared back at me. Broad shoulders. He was kinda cute once I could take in more of the picture. Too bad I was only in town a few weeks. Oh, and I don’t sleep with cops.

  He turned around, and looked towards the woods, the back of him as muscular as the front. Could bounce a quarter off of him. Maybe a few other things. Myself included.

  “Why didn’t you go inside?” He jarred me out of my fun daydream.

  “Go inside where?” I looked around. Was there a halfway house right outside my window I hadn’t noticed earlier? Nope. Just the trees and hidden driveways.

  He squatted, his head back in the window again, and I became self-conscious of my breath. “If he knew you were out here, he’d drag you in himself.” I give him my best dumbfounded expression. “Jordan.”

  “Jordan?” I asked. How did this guy know about Jordan?

  “Yeah, he said he saw you the other day, but you tore off. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over the way you left town without telling anyone. Don’t tell him I told you that.”

  “I’m sorry.” I put my hand up to stop him. “Who are you?”

  He offered his hand. “Ken. Jordan and I are engaged.” Of fucking course. “I was heading into work when I saw you sleeping out here.”

  He dropped his hand after it became obvious I would not be shaking it. “Ken, I would really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone you saw me. Also, if there’s a ticket or something you need to write, can you just give that to me before someone else notices I slept out here?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said, patting my door. He backed up into the road. “Go home and get some rest, Megan.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said. I put the car into drive, crossing my fingers that Jordan hadn’t already left for work this morning, spotting me sleeping at the edge of his driveway. I doubt he would have dragged me inside.

  I kicked my bedroom door open before I lost my nerve and looked around. Alone, except for Wolfy. I walked to my mattress, sheet and blankets thrown, half on the floor. I tossed them back onto the bed.

  The bedroom lamp
was on, casting an eerie daylight glow over everything. The sun had forced its presence through the leftover storm clouds, but it was not strong enough to penetrate the threadbare curtains.

  I clapped the lamp off and walked back out of the room, stepping into something wet by the end of the mattress. A close, yet shaky inspection, revealed the carpet had been slushed with a thick gray liquid the consistency of mushroom soup. The odor reminded me of Tracy’s flowers that had been left in the vase too long.

  Tracy. When she had gotten home from work that night, I showed her the flowers. Surely, that would be proof. Something I had attempted to convince her of since I moved in. Weird things happened when I was around.

  “They look the same, Meg,” Tracy said. “Sure this thing with your dad isn’t getting to you?”

  No one ever believed.

  No one but me. I had no choice but to when the air was weird around me. I would find her now. She was here. I cleared my throat.

  “Aunt Dee?” My voice took on its own physical form in the silence of the house, attaching to empty sound waves and shooting through the house. I waited for my voice to search the house and come back.

  “Megan?” I heard it come back with Aunt Dee’s southern accent. “You in here, sweetie?”

  I ran towards the kitchen where her voice came from, just as someone stepped through the swinging door into the living room.

  “Megan!” Cecelia called out, not having spotted me yet as she picked up a small wooden seal figurine from the knickknack shelf by the door. And just like that, the difference in the air, waiting for Aunt Dee, all of it snapped away. Reality, chore filled and boring, came crashing back down.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Cecelia brought lunch, then helped me clean the trash from the deck. After we had a second helping of lunch (she loved this, “Just needed some good old-fashioned family love to work that appetite back up.”), she convinced me to go out to the bar with her and some friends later that evening. Friends who she swore were not as chipper as her.