Chapter 7

VII

Amy's mind crawled like the shadows down the naked hallway. She sat on the couch with the blanket draped over her shoulders, like a turn of the century magician, hoping it would make her invisible from whatever or whoever is in her house. She reached for her phone that was laying on the coffee table, careful not to expose her arms from the safety of her blanket. “I feel like I'm five,” she thought to herself as grabbed the phone. She automatically began to dial Calvin's cell phone, almost without thought. As the phone rang she could her the words fall from her moving lips, “come on, come on, come on,” but to no avail.

She stared at the phone again and thought to herself, “Amy stop acting crazy he is probably in a meeting, but her fingers would not listen as they involuntarily dialed the numbers. “Hi this is Calvin, I'm not here, but if you leave your name and number I'll get back to you, if you're lucky” beep. She sat on the couch, cross-legged, with her hands covering her eyes. The blanket draped over her head. If I can't see them they can't hurt me. Of course real horror does not depend on the melodrama of shadows in the darkness of night. Nor does it hide in the walls of old turn of the century homes. It lies in the hearts and minds of man, lurking in the deep recesses. Amy felt safe in the darkness her blanket provided, but not in the mid-day sun of her own home.

On the floor of her living room, Amy could see a hole, small but noticeable, near the far leg of her coffee table. It caught her attention at first because she thought it was an insect, or God-forbid a spider of some sort. However as she stared at this mark it moved, not side to side but inward as though it was collapsing in on itself. She watched as it the edges slowly fell into the black. Amy thought she was just seeing things, but the hole was now the size of a quarter and expanding at a much more rapid pace.

Amy threw the blanket off from around her neck in a way a magician would as they were about to revile some great illusion. She ran for the stairs. The hole now the size of a basketball, almost chasing her. As she got near the top her entire living room was engulfed in an inky-black abyss. The stairs now sinking into darkness. Wood splintering, breaking and falling, into what was once the living room.

She runs into the bathroom and slams the door behind her. She can hear the breaking and splintering of wood and glass, as though the house itself was coming apart at the seams. She falls onto the toilet and tucks her head down as far as she can. Cupping her ears with her hands she tries to silence the noise. She feels a hand on her arm; small, almost comforting. Relived she turns her head because she knows her husband has finally made it home, but it is not his hand. She jerks away and as she falls back into the corner beside the sink, she can see a hand slowly rise from the water; a dirty-yellow hand, small and delicate like a child.

Amy watched as this corpse, ghost or whatever it was, slowly rose from the murky stagnant waters. Its skin was gray and wrinkled. As soon as it turned its face toward her she immediately recognized him. “Jeremy,” her lips said before she was aware she was speaking out loud. It tried to talk, but it could only produce a dark soiled water that fell onto the tiled floor. She stared at this thing that was Jeremy unable to produce a squeal let alone a coherent word. Jeremy's eyes were a dark gray, faded toward the edges and they never wavered from Amy's own eyes. It finally breathed a word, almost a whisper, to Amy. “Why?” It kept repeating, “Why, Why mommy.”

Calvin pulled into the driveway as the sun began to creep behind the hillside. He drove up the winding driveway and noticed that the house was completely dark. He thought nothing of it at first. He figured Amy probably went to bed early. He looked over at the bouquet of flowers that he bought on his way home and smiled as he imagined the brownie points he was earning. He knew how little she has been sleeping lately and thought the flowers along with finally getting through those boxes this weekend might take a lot off her mind.

Calvin opened the front door and nearly fell as he slipped through the doorway. As he searched for the light switch, what he first thought was water was something else, much too sticky and dark. His mind would not allow him into that logical portion of his brain, the part that knew exactly what the dark sticky stuff was. He turned toward the wall, the light switch was in some weird location on the wall and he could never remember exactly where that was. He flipped the switch up and turned to see what a small silent portion of his brain already knew would be there. Blood, and lots of it. Calvin immediately began screaming Amy's name, running from the foyer into the living room. The room looked like a disaster area. Boxes overturned and Styrofoam pieces scattered all over the place. Broken pieces of figurines and nicknacks were strewn about.

Calvin turned toward the stairs and saw that the blood lead up to the top floor. Little droplets and larger puddles on each stair. He screamed her name again and felt his stomach sink as all the possibilities raced into his head. He felt as though his heart was slowly making its way up through his throat. Did someone break in and kill his wife and unborn son? Did she have a miscarriage and is slowly bleeding to death somewhere in the house? “God help me,” he thought. “Let her be okay, just let her be okay.” His hands were shaking and he felt the tears develop, but he did not allow them to flow. “She is here somewhere.”

Calvin ran toward the bathroom and as he approached he could hear the water running in the tub. He could see the hallway carpet in front of the bathroom dark with water. It was at least an inch across the tiled floor as he reached to turn the faucet off. “It must have been running for hours”, he thought. He walked out of the bathroom and turned toward the bedroom door. He looked in, but saw nothing. No blood, nothing over turned or broken. Suddenly a feeling came over Calvin, as though he should have known all along. He turned and walked back toward the hall. Across the hallway he saw the plastic tarp that covered the doorway to the nursery. Tiny droplets of blood leading from the stairs to the dull opaque tarp.

Before Calvin made his way through the doorway he saw the soft silhouette of a figure in the center of the room. He pushed the tarp to one side and his eyes could no longer contain the tears as he saw his wife hanging from the unfinished rafter; a rope leading to her neck, her head cocked to the side. Blood dripping on the floor and pooling in the area below her feet. He stepped onto the carpet, like squeezing a sponge full of water, the blood seeped from between the carpet and his shoes. Calvin walked over to the crib and picked up his son. He was not breathing or moving. He pressed the silent child to his chest. His mind finding no way to comprehend what was occurring. He saw on the stand near the crib a note folded between two teddy bear figurines. The words of the note hit Calvin like a shotgun to the gut. They were foreign and blurry through his tears. The note read:

My Dearest Calvin,

My white knight. You mean more to me than I could ever put into words. You have never wavered from my side, but this is just not something I can live with any longer. I thought the stay at Western Psych would have helped me, but it has only made the nightmare that much more real. Please forgive me. Please.

I love you,

Amy