The House

I

“Is your person wearing a hat?” asked Johnny.
“Nope” said his father with a warm, comforting smile. The type of smile that gives you the comfort that you know this man, Johnny’s father, would be there for him in any situation. The understanding that he would be there for him through good times and the bad. That he would be there for him when he needed him the most.
“Your turn, Dad!” Johnny urged his father impatiently.
“Okay. Does your person have white hair?”
“No!” Johnny said excitedly. Johnny is four years old now and an expert at the game of “Guess Who”. His father would frequently call him a genius when he truly didn’t quite understand the meaning of the word. Johnny knew it was a complement because he would always win. He caught on to the game very quickly. He knew how to narrow down the persons easily by asking the best question at the beginning of the game “Is your person a boy?” That question will eliminate many heads off the board rather quickly. 

Johnny and his father were sitting on his baseball rug (about the size of a round dinner table) lying in the middle of the hardwood floor. Playing “Guess Who” and a number of other board games was a daily routine for Johnny and his father. His father worked second shift and generally left for work around lunch time. Before lunch, they would spend time with each other playing games together. Johnny’s dad has set aside special time for him and his son due to the new addition to the family; his two week old baby sister.

“Is your person Eric?” asked Johnny with that eager look knowing he was right and couldn’t wait to hear that he was. Another reason his father called him a genius, Johnny only needed to hear the names of the characters in game once and memorized their faces.
“Wow! You beat me again, son!” his father proclaimed.

Just as he was finishing his sentence and praising their son, his wife Julie stepped into the doorway. She had an interesting look on her face. One that was a bit frightened by something she had just seen or heard and one that she looked like she some serious gas in her bowels. He was very concerned by this look but Julie didn’t give him time to question it. She had turned on her heels as quickly as she appeared.

“You know, son, you have a sponge for a brain. You pick things up so quickly. Your imagination is outrageous. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that having a good imagination is a bad thing. Many of our great leaders and inventors all had wonderful imaginations!” 

“Where is your wife, Jack?” This was Julie’s mother, Michelle. “I can’t seem to find her anywhere in this huge house. How, again, can you afford a house such as this on a salary such as yours?” Jack, father of Johnny and husband of Julie, could taste blood on the roof of his tongue. His lip began to quiver a bit by the rude comment and biting it was the only way to keep it from running off.
He began to squeeze words out that were not mean and hurtful. She is only here to help with the baby, he thought. Just a few more days of help, that’s all. “She just stepped in a second ago, and then was gone as quickly as she came. She is probably in the nursery emptying the boxes of the baby’s clothes, or in the kitchen putting away dishes. We just moved in, Michelle, she could be anywhere keeping herself busy.”
“That concerns me. Her blood pressure hasn’t been the same since she had Lilly and she has been telling me about how she has been hearing voices…”
“I know” Jack interrupted, “but it is good that she is keeping herself busy because it will settle her nerves and get her blood pressure back in check.”
“But, the voices” Michelle explain, “are scaring me.”
Jack, feeling the uneasiness of the situation, interrupted her mother-in-law once more. “Everything is fine, ‘Chelle. Just one of those things mothers get when their hormones are jumping around like jackrabbits in a forest. She’ll be fi…”
Jack couldn’t even finish his sentence when heard the sound that will haunt him for the rest of his life. The sound; the cold, hard sound of knowing that something was not right.

The sound was a clunk and thud. A loud thud that only would agree with a limp body fighting with a wooden contender. The wood of the wooden stairs that led up to the second floor bedrooms.

“Jesus” Jack muttered.
“The baby…”
“Julie…”

Jack jumped out of the Indian style sitting position on the floor of his son’s room. Shocked, frightened, there were no words to explain. “Stay right here” he demanded his son. But, like any child, he did not take heed and followed his fathers stomping footsteps through the hallway and to the stairs.

This was a sight; a sight of agony. “Dear God” Jack muttered once again. His wife had fallen down the stairway about sixteen steps, he wasn’t sure. They had just moved in, but he knew it was too many steps to hike three bedroom suits up in the heat of the summer. The wooden stairway was dampened with fresh, warm blood. Little trickles of flesh lay side by side, step by step. He rushed down the steps nearly slipping on his own wife’s blood. Dear God, his wife’s blood lay here mockingly on the freshly waxed wooden steps. Curse you Maple Street. Curse you for trying to sell a house with the waxed wooden floors!

Looking down at his wife from the middle of the stairwell, he could not understand. “Mommy!” shrieked Johnny. Jack could not understand how this could happen! No time for understanding, it was time for helping. Julie lay at the foot of the stairs on her face. Blood had been rushing steadily from her face now and filling a pool threatening to suffocate the air she breathed. If she was breathing at all! Her right arm was laid twisted behind her back with her palm facing skyward. It had reached around to the left side of her waist with a surety of a dislocated shoulder. Her left leg mocked her right arm by protruding to her left side, twisted at the knee. Blood began to fill her entire body where she lay. Jesus! Help!

Jack skipped the last few steps in aid of his beaten wife. He was too afraid to touch her. He checked her for signs of life. Any life at all. She is dead. Dear Jesus, she is dead.
“Call 911!!” Jack had screamed as he sat there next to his wife; dead or alive. “For the love of God, call 911!!”


***More to come!***