by B. Groves
At that moment, the Earth stopped rotating on its axis when she realized what Rose held in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” Rose whispered.
Rose walked over to the wall where the bricks were laid out on the floor.
“They aren’t investigating us anymore, so I can finally lay you to rest. I promise that one day you’ll be found and can be interred with your mother and father,” Rose said.
Claire stood from the stairs and walked over to the open wall. She placed a hand over her mouth as she watched her grandmother set David’s body inside a simple pine box and placed a lid over it.
“Your sister will one day want to know why I did this,” Rose said, placing a hand on the lid. “The answer is simple, I’m a coward. I didn’t try to stop Sue from hurting both of you, but it’s my fault Sue is evil.”
Rose turned and grabbed her tools, and one by one laid the bricks over David’s body.
The vision faded before Claire, but these truths were far from over.
Claire watched as Rose would descend the staircase and sit with David’s body time and time again.
Claire’s mouth dropped when she saw Mary and Clay come down with Rose to see where their only grandson was buried.
The basement was full of junk and Rose pushed an old chair out of the way for Mary and Clay to view where Rose had placed David.
Her grandfather picked up another chair nearby and threw it against the wall with shards of wood smashing everywhere. Rose melted into a corner, as he pointed an accusing finger at her.
Claire couldn’t make out every word he shouted at Rose. He paced back and forth and ran his fingers through his hair. He kept looking up at the ceiling with tears streaming down his face. He turned back to Rose and from what Claire could make out he threatened Rose by telling her she’d never see Claire again.
Rose melted further into the corner of the basement while Clay shouted at her. She put up an arm in defense when Clay came close one time and raised his hand, but he turned away when Mary grabbed his arm to stop him.
“If she stays safe, I’m fine with that,” Rose said.
Mary held Clay’s shoulder to calm him, but her eyes were set on Rose in a vicious glare.
“You may have gotten away with this Rose, but God will judge you,” Mary said.
Rose lifted her chin and said, “God will also judge you. Are you going to walk back upstairs and call the police on me? That would be the right thing to do. “She walked out of the corner. “You’ve known the truth for months and haven’t done a damn thing about it.”
Claire flinched from the wild look in her grandfather’s eyes as Rose talked back to the couple. She only ever knew him as a soft-spoken man. He never raised his voice to her in the years she lived with them.
Claire remembered when she was sneaking out with her friends to smoke weed. Clay was waiting for her to come home one night. He never yelled at her, he never screamed, he didn’t even ground her. He looked her straight in the eye and told her how disappointed he was by her decisions. He thought they raised a smart and mature girl who wouldn’t make these kinds of mistakes.
Her grandmother never said a word to her after that and although Claire snuck out to meet her friends after that, she stopped smoking weed.
“You’re not saying a word because you’re going to need help raising her and you know it. You’ll need my money. Won’t you?” Rose responded.
Clay moved away from Mary and approached Rose again. Claire thought this time he really would hit her.
“That’s all you’ve ever known, isn’t it? Buying people off? Is that why your daughter is safely hiding when she should be in jail. If I ever find her…” Clay clenched his fists. Even in this vision, Claire saw Clay’s face turn scarlet. “I will kill her. I promise I will kill her.”
Mary grabbed Clay by the shoulders. She convinced him to let Rose pay for Claire’s college tuition and other needs since they wouldn’t be able to.
Claire closed her eyes realizing that her financial help throughout the time she attended the university was blood money.
She clenched her fists as betrayal coursed through her veins.
She was shaking so hard she had to sit back down on the steps. She prayed for this vision to end, but it continued.
Mary and Clay disappeared, and Rose kept walking down the steps and past Claire what must have been a hundred times.
Claire would watch as she would sometimes cry, and other times she would sit quietly on the concrete floor and pray for forgiveness.
Years passed and each time Rose became slower and weaker as she descended the stairs.
She heard Rose’s voice behind her telling May not to enter the basement because the steps were broken. She could hear Rose telling May she didn’t want her to hurt herself.
The last time Rose ever entered the basement she looked pale and weak. She leaned on her cane, gripping the wooden handle like it was the last thing she’d ever do.
She stood in front of the wall and held the butterfly brooch in her hand and her cane in another.
“I’m ill, David,” she said standing there like a dignified lady. “This means your sister will be returning soon. I couldn’t bring you justice, but I know she can. Don’t frighten her away. Guide her to where you are and where she can find Susan.”
Claire gasped. It was now obvious that Rose had been seeing David’s ghost all along too.
“She always talked to me,” a voice said beside Claire.
Claire tried to smile for her brother, but she failed miserably.
A cold hand reached out and touched hers in comfort. Claire couldn’t stop the icy cold tears from falling. She wiped her eyes on her shirt and when she looked up her world returned to normal and David disappeared.
She stared at the exposed brick wall for several minutes while the vision faded around her.
Her face flushed as the rage boiled inside of her. She had a temper and tried to keep it in check, but this time she would forgive herself later for letting that rage pulsate through her veins.
Claire hoisted herself from the steps, grabbed the pickax, and hit each brick with a strength she never knew she had inside of her.
28.
A young Claire woke up to some kind of thumping noise outside of her room. She wiped the sleep from her eyes as her mind tried to comprehend what she heard.
Claire cringed into the bed when she heard Aunt Sue’s voice outside of her door. She hoped she wasn’t coming into her room again to threaten her.
She hated Aunt Sue. She hated the way she always threatened Claire and her brother. She wished Mom-mom would make her go away and never come back to the house. Aunt Sue was a bad person and Claire couldn’t figure out why Mom-mom let her stay with them. Yes, she made Aunt Sue live in the attic, but there were times Mom-mom wasn’t home and they were left alone with Aunt Sue.
The young Claire had David sleeping in her room, lying to Mom-mom saying that David had been afraid of a monster in his room, but it wasn’t that. She tried to protect her brother from Sue’s wrath. The real monster in the house.
Aunt Sue had a particular hatred for her brother and always picked on him whenever she had a chance.
There were many nights that David run into Claire’s room to hide.
Aunt Sue had threatened them on numerous occasions, saying if they told anyone what she did, she would drown them both in the river. To protect her brother, Claire kept quiet, and she did her best to convince David not to say a word although he would slip here and there.
Aunt Sue called her mother strange words in front of Claire one time. She called her a slut and a whore. Claire didn’t even know what that meant, but it couldn’t have been a compliment from Mom-mom’s reaction.
She said Claire’s daddy was a piece of shit and her mommy nothing more than a wannabe hippie.
Mom-mom promised Aunt Sue would leave soon and Claire suspected that Mom-mom knew what secrets they were keeping from her, but did nothing to stop it.
Why didn’t she stop it? Why did she claim to love them but simultaneously let Aunt Sue hurt them?
Claire flinched when she heard yelling. “You stole it you little bastard! I told you not to eat my food!”
Another thump and screaming started outside of Claire’s door. Claire looked at the empty bed beside her and realized David was missing.
Realizing her brother was in trouble, Claire hopped out of the bed and ran to the door.
She opened to hear another voice yelling, “What’s going on here… Oh my God!”
A loud wail echoed down the hallway. That was her grandmother’s voice.
Claire opened her door a crack so she could see what was going on.
“What have you done?” Mom-mom screamed. “Oh my God. David. David! Wake up!”
Claire stepped into the hallway and found a frightening sight before her.
Sue was off the side breathing heavily, and Claire saw her favoring her right hand.
Mom-mom held David in her arms, screaming for him to wake up. She placed his limp body on the floor and was doing something to his chest. Pumping it.
“Call an ambulance!” Rose screamed.
Sue stood by gazing at the scene with no emotion on her face.
“He’s dead, Mom.”
Those words would echo in Claire’s ears the rest of her life. Claire felt the blood leave her face and her eyes welling with tears. She swayed as the shock hit her square in the chest.
“He’s dead?”
Was her brother dead?
The terrified little girl looked from her brother’s body back to her grandmother.
She turned her gaze back to her brother to see the slight trickle of blood coming from his mouth and nose. His eyes were only partially closed with his face turned towards her. He didn’t move, didn’t even flinch as Rose kept shaking him.
That’s when Claire wailed with anguish. She couldn’t stop herself. She couldn’t control the emotions exploding inside of her knowing that her baby brother had been taken from her by Aunt Sue. She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe that David was dead.
“Fuck! Make her stop!” Sue said covering her ears in disgust.
Claire’s young mind couldn’t accept what happened to her brother. She cried so hard and so deep that she couldn’t catch her breath. Tears were strangling her throat. She was getting dizzy from seeing her brother’s face so still in death. She tried to reach out to him. Maybe she could make him wake up. He always listened to her. He always came to her when he needed help. She was his big sister. She could bring him back. Couldn’t she?
Her body wouldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe, all she could do was scream. With each scream, her breathing became shallow, and the room spun around her.
Her grandmother tried to talk to her, but it was no use.
The young Claire didn’t remember hitting the floor.
Claire sat back when all the bricks were cleared and stared at the box sitting inside the wall.
The smell. Oh, God… the smell. When the scent hit her, she had to open the doors so she wouldn’t vomit.
Claire thought about the day her Aunt Sue murdered her brother. She would wake up in bed and she remembered Rose standing over her with her eyes red from tears.
She asked Claire what she remembered, and Claire knew now she blocked the terrifying memory from her mind. The traumatic event might have been lost forever had Claire not moved back to Lingate.
“Where is David?” She asked.
“He’s sleeping,” Rose lied. “Go get ready for school.”
She remembered Rose waiting for Claire to protest, she could see it on her face, but Claire got out of bed like she usually did and Rose helped get her ready for school.
Claire remembered an awful headache she had and complained to Rose about it.
“It will go away soon,” Rose answered. “Once you get to school, you’ll forget all about it.”
Claire wondered if those words had double meaning now that she remembered all that happened.
The young Claire walked by David’s room. She noticed the door was closed, and David didn’t like his bedroom door closed. She hated leaving him alone with Aunt Sue. Aunt Sue was evil and would hurt David if she wasn’t there.
“Can he come with us?” Claire asked.
“No, honey. He didn’t have a good night. Let him sleep,” Rose said.
Claire wanted to ask her grandmother why she couldn’t say goodbye to David before she left for school, but she never did.
Claire went to school that day in blissful ignorance of what happened to her brother. All the signs were there. Rose was sobbing when she dropped Claire off at school.
Aunt Sue had disappeared, and Claire never saw her again and she never asked where Aunt Sue went.
It would be the time when she came home that her whole world turned upside down when she came home from school that day.
There was one of them that stood out from the uniformed officers. He was wearing a nice shirt and tie. He had a dark mustache and thick glasses.
He asked Claire about the time she last saw her brother.
Rose helped her along making the policeman in the shirt and tie frustrated. He kept telling Rose to let the girl answer the questions on her own but Claire kept looking to Rose for approval.
Rose argued this was too much for a small child, and the cop stopped questioning her.
Claire’s young mind couldn’t say the words. She knew something was deeply wrong and her brother running away to the river was not right.
But, she couldn’t remember why she knew that.
Claire was later told David opened the back door and ran off. He disappeared, and Rose tried to find him.
They found his shoe three weeks later at the riverbank, and all young Claire could do was mourn the brother she lost.
It was a whirlwind of family, friends, and memorials.
All the while, Aunt Sue never showed her face there again and Claire’s memories of her aunt were lost.
Claire leaned over and pulled the box from the wall. It wasn’t heavy.
She noticed a sealed letter sitting on top of the box.
Claire furrowed her brow in confusion. Her name was written in elegant handwriting and Claire recognized Rose’s penmanship.
Claire angrily threw the yellowing letter aside and took the lid off the box.
She gagged and had to turn her head away from the smell.
Thankfully, she left the basement doors open, although it was freezing inside.
Claire walked up the stairs and into the kitchen. She glanced at the clock and found the hands inching closer to midnight. She hadn’t eaten since that morning with Mac, but she didn’t care.
She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed back down to the basement.
She debated whether or not to call Mac and the police to come out, but she wasn’t ready yet.
She needed time to process what she saw and what she would do next.
Claire didn’t close the basement doors. She needed the fresh air pouring into the dark, damp room. She stood there and gazed into the starry sky as fresh tears flowed down her cheeks.
She turned and sat down on the cold concrete floor with pieces of bricks and broken mortar around her.
The body of her brother was exactly how she envisioned him earlier. He was still wrapped in a blue sheet, but underneath was more blankets to surround him.
Rose went to great lengths to make a small coffin for him.
Claire raised her hand to pull back the sheet from his face. She hesitated, knowing it wouldn’t be pretty.
She had to make sure this was her brother. She needed solid confirmation, and this was the only way to do it.
The only comfort she could take away from this whole mess is that Rose buried him with some dignity. He wasn’t thrown into the ground and forgotten after so many years.
Claire held her breath and pulled the sheet back.
The curl
y blonde hair still attached to the skull was unmistakable. She even remembered the pajamas with the little baseballs scattered around the shirt and the bottoms.
Claire let go of the sheet and placed a hand over her mouth, all the while her delicate stomach heaved from the decomposed body of her brother.
She turned away from the box, hurriedly stood up, and ran over to sink releasing the acid within in her stomach.
She hovered over the sink for a few more minutes knowing that vision would be embedded in her mind forever.
She didn’t regret it, though. She had to know if her brother was in there and the hair gave it away.
Claire took a swig of her water and walked back over to the little pine box.
She sat down and leaned over it trying to comprehend why and how this happened to her family.
She had plenty of rage left, but for now, she was too weary to go on a rampage. But she would find her Aunt Sue and make her pay.
All she wanted was to sit with David’s little body and reassure him that he was not alone anymore in this cold and damp basement.
Claire lifted her head when she felt the familiar presence behind her.
David didn’t appear to her, but she could feel him within her soul.
And, it didn’t get past her that it seemed his presence was lighter, almost relieved.
“Very soon, I’ll set you free,” she said.
29.
W hile Claire was discovering her brother, Mac searched for something… no… anything on Shirley Dempsey that he could show to Claire that they were related.
He knew he shouldn’t be doing police work on his days off, but his suspicions clawed at his mind all night.
He wanted to call Claire and confess his suspicions, but he wasn’t absolutely sure about them and needed concrete evidence.
His internet searches came up with the same answers as they did earlier.
Mac never thought he’d want to hang around a coffee shop so much. He thought he’d call Claire and have her meet up with him and see if she recognized her as some kind of family member.
It sounded weird to him as well, but if any of her memories were triggered they’d have a case to build on to bring little David Westcott the justice he deserved. That’s if he had been murdered.