Come Home

Preston Family (Ch3)

Chapter Three


Preston family


         By the age of ten, I was still sleeping with my Bible and cross by my bed. I was not going to be unprotected, and I would not allow myself to be in the house or any part of it alone. If my parents were sleeping and my sisters were outside playing, I would be with them.


         Sis was still taking time to play alone with someone that I pretended that was her invisible friend. She always knew when the lady would make her appearance. Sis would put her little arms around me, and remind me that she was a mother that was trying to care for her baby.


         Through it all (doors opening and closing, visits of smokey figures, and unexplained noises), Sis was never afraid. She is six now, and she spends most of her time with her pet kitten. She named the kitten Ada. Ada was to ease the ghostly woman of the loss of her daughter so many years ago named Ada.


                   One night while we slept well, our dad did not. Laying beside our mother who usually wakes up to a burp in the wind, Dad is struggling as if he is in a fight. He yells out, but we none process the sound. The bed gets heavier with an unknown weight. Something is gripping around his chest. He fights, but the grip gets tighter. Mom stretches, but does not wake. His breathing gets labored. His movement against the unseen force gets weaker. Then he stops breathing, and the night gets quite.


         Mom wakes to looking into a somehow different set of eyes that occupied her husband's face. He looked pale and tired as if he had not slept all night. His face seemed to hold a look of fear.


         "Are you all right?" Mom asks with concern in her voice.


         "Yea," he answers with a shaky voice. "I must have had a bad dream."


         He continues to tell her about the struggle of someone he did not know. "It felt like it wanted to enter my body. After I thought I fought it off, I could no longer breathe."


         Dad gets up, puts his socks on, and the old worn out shoes to keep his feet warm. He still doesn't look quite the way he did before he went to sleep. He looks older for some reason. His eyes are dark and stern. His lips quivered as he kissed my mom.


         "Where are you going?"


         "I know about a cave about a mile up the mountain, and I am going to dig some coal blocks from the walls to use for heat." He says. He was trying to distance himself from the strange dream that he thought he had the night before.


         "Daddy, can I go?" we three ask in together.


         Mom was quick to say no. She had never declined us to go with dad on any field trip that he chose to go on. He would always have one of us tag along. What was there different about today?


         This day was not a typical day at all. This day was one that entertained our fears of the night. While Mom worked in the house, my sisters and I ventured up the road a mile. We knew that we had seen a grave yard somewhere close. Finally, I find two trees with brush grown up around them. You could only see the cemetery from the road while riding in a car, but as I move the limbs, I saw it. The place was hundreds of years old. Some of the stones were from the late 1700's. It looked well kept. There were no flowers on the graves. No weeds. and the grass looked as if it had refused to grow any longer than two inches.


         We walked until we could barely see where we had entered. Sis looks up and points at a very tall angel statue. She points past it. "There is where Sara and her babies are."


         Rose gives her a slap. "You are stupid. You need to come up with a new story." She growls as we walk to where Sis pointed us to.


         There is a group of graves separated from the rest with an old picked fence. The first grave was alone at the head of all the smaller ones. It read "Sara Preston".


         "See, I told you so." Sis exclaims.


         "-born July 3, 1779 died January 6, 1803" I looked at the stone with chills running down as I scan the other graves beneath her. They were all tiny in comparison. "Tina Preston, born December 5, 1793 - died December 15, 1893" Then "George Preston, October 15, 1794 - died November 2, 1794" Tears were beginning to flow down my young cheeks as I hold Sis by the hand and read on. "Missy  and Christopher Preston, Twins born Jan 19, 1796 - died May 1, 1796" "Victor Glen Preston, Born June 8, 1798 - Died June 8, 1798" "Clare Grace Preston, Born May 9, 1799 - died June 16, 1799"


         Then there was the last tiny grave. "Ada Marie Preston, born December 25, 1800 - died January 6, 1803." She lived the longest. It was strange that Ada lived to be over two years old when the others died much older, and the strangest part is that Sara Preston died the same day.


         Sis tugs at my hand, "Ada was sick when Sara was watching for her doctor to bring medicine to her."


         Knowing that Sis could not answer me on her own, I asked her what happened to Ada and her Mom. But she did have a answer. "While Sara waited in the window watching the river for the boat, she rocked her sick daughter. She had a fever and was really hot. Sara had been up for a week straight, and was very weak herself from trying to save her only child." Sis looked up at me. "The old man (she now excepts that the old man spirit was no relation to us) said that in the living room the winds blew the curtain into the flames. When she woke up, the flames had every exit covered. They found Sara in the far closet holding Ada to her chest."


         Rose startles, "I'm telling Mom that you are making up stories again." With that we follow Rose from the grave yard.


         While we were exploring our surrounds, Mom was having her own experience. Not long after we all had left, she heard "You must go." She looks around, and there was nothing to see. The air is extremely cold for the 12th of August. The doors all open in unison. There are three doors in the living. One door goes to the bedroom. One goes to the kitchen, and the other goes to the stairs. Standing in the stairs was a woman. She wasn't very old, and she was holding out her hands.


         Mom thinking that this is some kind of warning of bad things to come. She is frozen until the woman disappears. She wastes no time. When we return with our story, she is already putting clothes into bags. Rose runs in and declares, "We found Ada and her mom."


         "What?" Mom asks.


         We proceed to tell her our story, about the old hidden grave yard, the babies, and the story the ghost had told Sis. S incing our fear, Mom tells us. " In the old days, many babies were taken by decease. Families were buried together." She asks me to pack our clothes and gives me a few plastic bags.


         When Dad gets home, things are weird. "What are you doing?"


         She tells him the events of the day, and for the first time she gives him the orders. "We are not staying another day in this house. I will not endanger our children another night."


         "Clam down," Dad tries to figure out the whole day's events since he had left this morning. "We have to stay the night. In the morning, I will walk up to Patrick's and call your brother. He can bring his truck to move us." He looks at her. "After all, don't we have to figure out where it is that we are moving to first?"


         Mom reluctantly agrees. This night was different. The only way mom would stay there another night is if we all slept in the same room. Sis slept between Mom and Dad. The darkness hit harder now, and the night seemed to last forever. Sleep seemed to be just out of reach of me. I stare up at the bed where my parents slept. Rose and I were sleeping on a pilot of quilts on the hard wood floor. Dad then gets up and stands in the window that we had seen Sara so many times. He did not move or even seem to be awake.


         "You belong here. This is your home." A voice came from somewhere around him. I pretended to still be a sleep looking. I peek from a crack in the cover that I have over my head, and I still don't see who was speaking to my Dad. "Your family belongs here. This is there home, too. They will not be healthy anywhere else."


         Dad turns and looks toward me as if he knows that I am witnessing something that I should not have. I cover my head entirely hoping that my dad would not come over. I had no idea what he would do in this condition. He walks right past our blankets, pulls back his covers, climbs into his bed. He starts snoring as if he had not made the trip to the window.


         Mom wakes up early. We wake up soon after by the odor of sweet fried apples with flat cakes of bread. She sits paper plates in front of each of us. She had spent the morning packing up all that was in the kitchen. There were boxes covering the table so we were aloud to take our plates into the yard. There we ate watching nature around us until the yelling came from behind the doors of the house. Mom, who never disagrees with the laws that Dad set down, protesting the fact that he wanted to stay at the house.


         "John," She says firmly. "You have to make a choice. You can stay here if you want, but I am getting our children out of this dangerous place."


         "Where are you going to move? You have no place to go." Dad stated sure that he knew the situation was in his favor.


         "The landlord said that we could rent the house by the road in Thelma.  He said that we could when we moved here if it did not work out, and that is exactly what I am going to do."


         "You expect to leave here and go right into that house. Why not stay here and wait for the house to be ready for us to move in." He was sure that he had her stuck.


         "No! I am taking the children to Mother's until the house is ready if I am unable to move in tonight."


         This infuriate my Dad. I hear something that I think is a slap. "You are taking the children out of their home." The voice didn't sound much like our dad.


         "Yes, and if you want to be part of this family, you will join us." Her next words reminds me of a good day in our family.  "Remember telling Matilda that a rose is not as beautiful if one peddle is missing. That a family is not a family without one member." You could hear the trimmer in her voice.


         Sis looks up at me. "Are we leaving Dad?"


         I look at her. She is about the size of a two year old, but her age is six. Though sickly and cute, Sis never allowed anything to take her smile away. Now she looks a little worried. It has to bad for the little warrior to begin to cry.


         "No," I say looking at the two sisters as I lead them toward the river bank to play. I knew that we were not to play near the water, but this is the only place to be away from the fighting. "Dad loves us, and we have never spent one night without him. He will not stay here."


         I needed to convince myself as well as my siblings. No we had not had a night without him, but he has never had to go any other direction other than his own. Mom had always given in, but this time I don't think that she will. What will he do if she stands up to him. I can not think about this right now. I sit on the sand and build sand towns.


         "Girls!" I hear my mother yelling for us. We go running up the bank through the brushy path to the house. The sun is beginning set now. We have not eaten since breakfast. Mom has sandwiches waiting for us, and a truck was in front of the house. "I thought you may be hungry."


         Dad looks angry, but he is packing things into the truck. My uncle Clem playfully flicked a dead cigar at me. "Eat, Matilda, we can use a strong set arms to help carry all these heavy bags." He continued to grab a box from my cousin Chris.


         The rest of the evening we packed the truck. We left a lot of things behind. Beds, toys, and things that we thought that we could not do with out were left behind.


         The rest of the evening we packed the truck. We left a lot of things behind. Beds, toys, and things that we thought that we could not do with out were left behind. I guess that we were going to get it the next day.


         Mom tried to give Dad a kiss because she was riding with Chris and us. Dad was riding with Uncle Clem. He turned his head a way. He was not happy with having to leave. They had always kissed when separating. This was something that had never happened in my young life time.


         I feel the car coming to a stop, and I open my eyes. We are not at Grandma's. We are in front of a nice little white house. It has a porch and nice yard. There were actual electric lights shinning through the windows and from the open door. When the car doors open, I grab the bags that had been riding in my lap. Sis takes Blunder by a home-made leash, and we walk toward the nice house.


         The living room leads straight to the kitchen. If you turn right just as you enter the living room, you see a door that lead into what was going to be our Parents room. This room is big with an actual closet. (We had strung clothes on string at the old house, and they still were wrinkled the next for school.) This room has a fire place.


         You can look to the right and see the door that leads to our room. This room is bigger with more windows that would soon have rose curtains on them. We had an air conditioner. That was a big deal.


         Straight through our room was the bathroom. It had flowers on the wall paper. Yellow sink, commode, tub, and background on the walls. There is even  a separate shower. This was very cool. One can shower while another soaks in the bath.











My words are ways to leave peices of myself behind for my children.

MY KIDS BE THE JUDGE  (ASR) First contest I have ever done #1554932 by Ida_Matilda_Wright Help

** Image ID #1373893 Unavailable ** ** Image ID #1537314 Unavailable ** ** Image ID #1358605 Unavailable **

SURVEY

Open Door To Grace Prayer Hot Line  (E) Do you want prayer? Ask for it here! All requests are confidential. #1372909 by Marvelous Friend

** Image ID #1373983 Unavailable ** ** Image ID #1373893 Unavailable ** ** Image ID #1333076 Unavailable ** ** Image ID #597847 Unavailable **