Free First Two Chapters of 'She Rises at Night'
Greetings, Horror Fans!
Please find below the Prologue and Chapter 1 of my brand new horror release 'She Rises at Night!' The reviews for this book have been outstanding, and I hope you like what you read here as much as the reviewers did the entire book! At the end of the post, I've included links on where you can find 'She Rises at Night,' along with links to reviews. Enjoy!
~ Jae El
She Rises at Night
Copyright 2021, Jae El Foster
Published by DCL Publications
Blurb
Bob and Karen are, by all regards, an unhappily married couple who has tried desperately to rekindle an extinguished flame. Their last hope for reconciliation is a move across the pond to an old farmhouse by the sea. This farmhouse has problems that are much worse than the constant flooding and the shape of disrepair that shadow over it. It harbors dark secrets, hidden dangers, and a legacy of horrific murders that have followed the structure and those who have inhabited it for well over a hundred years. Bob and Karen have barely survived one another throughout their marriage; can they survive the terrors that dominate their land when the sun goes down? An epic tale of love and marriage blended with the fearful whispers of the Book of Lucifer, the zombie genre finds new life and a new definition in ‘She Rises at Night.’
Prologue
2009 – The Old Owners
Lightning struck the hill
outside and Marybeth cringed in her seat near the fireplace.
“Every time it storms here,
something bad happens,” she noted in a quivering voice as her husband Henry
stoked the fire. “We’ve been here four months. I don’t know how much longer I
can last here.”
“I wish you would calm
down,” Henry told her as he stood from his crouched position. “You’re going to
stress yourself out and induce labor before the baby’s ready.”
“That’s a good part of my
point!” she added in a raised voice, standing from the Victorian period sofa.
“I don’t want to have our baby here,
Henry! This house… it’s cursed!”
“Cursed?” he scoffed,
chuckling under his breath. “Have your pregnancy hormones driven you insane?”
She didn’t want to respond –
not while she was scared and angry all at once. She had to calm down, and she
couldn’t do it with Henry pacing the room. Finally, he walked to the door of
the library and opened it, stepping inside.
“I’m going to do some
reading,” he told her and shut the door behind him.
She wished she didn’t feel
like she did, but as the rain began and she could hear the waves from the sea
crash against her land, it was hard to forget why she wanted to leave.
Walking to the large
staircase, she began up the stairs, considering how much she and Henry had lost
since purchasing the house. It had been a joint purchase, she recalled – a
four-person deal with herself and Henry and their best friends, Charlie and
Rachel. As Marybeth stepped into the nursery and shut the door, she thought of
her dear friends, of how Charlie was now buried in a cemetery ten miles away
and what had been found of Rachel was now in an urn, shipped back to the States
to her parents’ house.
The purchase of the
house…the move across the ocean…it had all been intended as a change – an
escape from the tragedies and struggles they’d all faced back home. The house
had been cheap and purchased online, and when they’d all arrived, it had seemed
less like the fixer-upper that the listing had called it and more like a dump
that needed to be leveled. It was still a dump – one they were stuck with.
Marybeth sat in the rocking
chair near the crib and held her swollen belly with both hands, stroking it.
There was a little girl inside of her, just waiting to be born, and Marybeth
couldn’t imagine letting her come into the world here – in this house of tragic
despair.
The nursery was the only
part of the house that she and Henry had furnished new. It was her safe-space –
a place where the demons of the past were removed with hopes of a better future.
Yet, the reflections of a
grim future tainted her mind instead. She couldn’t understand why Henry
wouldn’t take her away from here – why he just wouldn’t let her leave and have
the baby safely in the city, with doctors and a hospital. He said when the time
was near that they would rent a room in the city until she needed to go into
the hospital, but Marybeth was aware that babies were rarely right on time.
What if this little girl decided to break out early? Marybeth simply would not
allow her child to be born here… she couldn’t.
She wasn’t sure exactly what
had killed Charlie or Rachel. Much of Charlie’s head had been eaten – savagely
– and had it not been for his tattoos, he would have been unidentifiable. He
was found on the road, just a half mile or so from the house. He had gone out
for a nighttime walk in the rain, and never returned.
Rachel’s death had been
similar. She’d walked down the hill to retrieve something from the shed. It had
been nighttime and storming then also, and the moment Henry and Marybeth heard
her scream, they rushed out to her. They found only the shoes she’d walked out
in, until the next day when bits and pieces of her were found scattered within
a mile radius.
The storm grew worse outside
and Marybeth shivered. She knew that it was silly of her to relate the storms,
the house, and the deaths of her friends all together. Neither of her friends
had been killed inside of the house; both had been outside, at night, in the
rain. Perhaps the house was a safe place, but the reality was that whatever was
outside could get inside if it really wanted to. Not that anything would really
want to…
If the house had not been in
such cruddy shape, it would have been rather charming. It was large, with three
bedroom spaces and a bathroom upstairs, plus a bathroom, a library, a great
room, a kitchen and dining room downstairs. There was also a bonus room near
the basement door. The basement, itself, was spacious but dark, and it had
another door that led into a cellar. Marybeth had not yet stepped foot into the
cellar. It just sounded downright scary to her.
Henry spent most of his time
in the library. He said he found the research within it intriguing, but
Marybeth was not one for reading or research. She left Henry to his library,
and he told her nothing of what he learned or read – just as she preferred it.
She heard a boom and thought
it was thunder but quickly recognized it as the front door slamming shut. She
couldn’t imagine company at this hour. Not even the property’s caretaker came
by after dark.
Leaving the safety of her
rocking chair, she stepped from the nursery and into the hallway. Walking to
the railing, she looked over, down to the great room and front door below.
“Henry?” she called,
wondering if he had gone outside or if someone else had come in.
When her husband didn’t
respond, she walked down the stairs and stood at the foot, taking in her
surroundings. Aside from the storm, it was quiet and it appeared that Marybeth
was alone. She walked to the library door and knocked on it… opened it. Henry
was not inside.
She shut the door and walked
to the front entrance, peering through its window. She couldn’t see a thing for
the storm, and so she opened the door and braced herself as she stepped out
onto the porch. The wind was cold and the rain was heavy, but the porch roof
managed to keep her mostly dry as she looked around the hill, searching for her
husband.
“Henry!” she shouted, hoping
that her voice would travel over the roar of the storm. She called him two more
times, but all of her calls went unanswered. Finally, feeling the rain sting her
cheeks as the wind changed its course, she stepped back inside.
Henry stood in the great
room, looking at her with a beer in his hand. Marybeth screamed from the
surprise.
“What is wrong with you
tonight?” he asked her and took a swig of beer. “You’re awfully jumpy.”
“Where were you? Just a
moment ago.”
“In the kitchen,” he noted,
raising his bottle of beer as proof.
“Didn’t you hear me call for
you?”
“Are you kidding?” he
laughed, shaking his head. “You can’t hear anything in that room because of the
storm. With the windows and the door… it’s a little booming.”
Marybeth looked around the
room. The lights began to flicker from the storm.
“If you didn’t slam the
front door,” she asked, “then who did?”
“I didn’t hear any door
slam,” he told her as he drank. “I’m going back to my book. Why don’t you come
pick out something to read? It will take your mind off of the storm.”
“Go read,” she replied,
shaking her head. “I’m going to make some coffee.”
“At this hour? This… pregnant?”
“One cup isn’t going to push
the baby out of me.”
“One cup,” Henry repeated,
holding up one finger for emphasis. “Our little girl’s going to grow up to be a
rocket scientist, and we don’t want her overexerting herself in the womb.”
“Whatever you say, Dr.
Kevorkian,” Marybeth replied.
“Hey… he wasn’t a –!”
“Enjoy your book!”
Before he could respond
again, Marybeth – along with the new smirk on her face – stepped through the
dining room and into the kitchen, where she began the prep for coffee.
Henry had been right. The
storm was booming. She could barely
hear herself think as she filled the maker with water, a filter, and fresh
grounds.
The longer the storm lasted,
the more nervous she became, and as she poured a cup of the fresh brew’s first
strong drops, she sipped and wished the storm would stop. The longer it rained,
the worse her chances were of leaving this house any time soon. Heavy rain
brought about higher sea-levels, flooding, and the fine art of being stranded.
Considering once more how
she did not want to give birth inside of this house, she picked up her cup,
took one step away from the counter, and felt her water break.
“No…” she whispered, almost
in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. Surely, her baby knew there were more
appropriate places to be born than here, in this drafty, damp house in the
middle of nowhere. “Stay where you’re at.” She clenched everything she could as
tightly as she could. “Just hang on another day or two.”
The arrival of labor pains
came as a response to her suggestion. Nearly floored by the sudden and sharp
pain, she steadied herself and felt it subside.
“This can’t be happening,”
she said, setting her coffee cup down and slowly crossing to the doorway of the
dining room. There, once inside, another contraction came. They were close
together. Her baby did not want to wait another day or two – or another hour or
two.
She had to make it to Henry.
Storm or no storm, she knew he’d help her to the car, load her up, and drive
her to the hospital. He’d save her, despite his blatant, irrepressible
stupidity.
“I love him,” she said
through a heavy breath, “but sometimes I hate him so much…”
Just as one pain left her,
another took its place. This time, she fought through it, leaving the dining
room and stepping into the great room. There, she saw the library door open and
the light on.
“Henry!” she called,
fighting against the pain as she neared the room. “Henry, please! She’s coming!
Our little girl is coming!”
Something felt off to
Marybeth as she approached the open doorway. She paused just before she reached
it, listening for Henry’s response. Nothing but silence projected toward her.
Stepping into the threshold, she looked at the desk. Henry was not seated at it.
Instead, he was on the floor beside it. His stomach… his neck… his face…
something – something horrible had
eaten him. Just like with Charlie and Rachel.
First, she screamed. Then,
she quieted herself. Marybeth felt sick. She felt weak. The labor pains were
worsening and her husband was dead on the floor in front of her, missing half
his face. She wanted to scream again, but she knew that was the worst thing to
do. She wished she hadn’t screamed the first time. Whatever had done this had
slammed the door earlier – she’d heard it – and she was certain it was still in
the house. Any sound she made would alert it to where she was.
Barely able to move and
fighting against the pushing and pains of the child within her, she knelt down
beside Henry and fished his keys from his pocket. She had to escape, even if
she had to do it without him.
As quietly as she had
entered, she left the library and hurried to the front door. She opened it
wide, stepped out onto the porch, and shut the door behind her. It was raining
harder than before, but she could still see the car, parked in the driveway.
She swallowed, felt another contraction, and then sped down the porch steps
like her life depended on it – which she was certain it did.
She was barefoot and she
slid the moment her feet touched the muddy ground. Like a boulder from a mountainside,
she fell hard, landing with a thump and a roll. She felt the pain from the fall
collide with that from the latest contraction, and it seemed crippling to her.
Tears welled in her eyes as she tried to stand – one hand holding her heavy
belly while the other pushed off the ground.
Sliding a bit down the hill
set her off her course to the car, and it was a fight to push her way back
through the heavy wind and torrential rain. Determined, she edged closer to the
car – closer to her escape from whatever was inside that house… and from the
house itself.
Looking to the house,
Marybeth saw the door was wide open, when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt
that she had closed it behind her.
“No…” she whispered with the
realization that whatever had killed Henry was now outside with her, hidden by
the shadows of the night and the violent storm.
With the car not too far
away, she began to run as fast as her weak legs could carry her. She held the
ignition key in her hand, ready to cram it in and start the car the second she
reached it. She had to escape; she had to save her baby. Twice, her feet
threatened to lose their footing again, but Marybeth pushed through, refusing
to fall again.
She reached the car, only to
find it locked. Fumbling, she hunted for the smaller car key and worked it into
the lock. Once the lock released, she opened the door and climbed inside. With
a bit of urgent force, she shoved the ignition key into its slot and turned it.
Nothing happened. Not even
an attempt at cranking. She tried again. Fooled with the lights… the radio… The
battery was dead.
“No…” she whimpered and
refused to believe her luck. “Please start… Please!” She tried to crank the car
one more time before conceding defeat, and through the rainy windshield, she
looked at the open front door of the house. It seemed more looming – more impending
– than before, but she knew she had no other choice than to return to it.
Another contraction came as
she left the car. Panicked, she rushed back toward the house. The wind and rain
beat her with every move, stinging her skin and fighting to once again set her
off her course. Still, she persevered, seeing the porch just mere steps away.
Marybeth took hold of the
railing and pulled herself up the first step. Then, looking at the front door,
she paused. She wasn’t certain that whatever had killed Henry had actually
followed her outside. Perhaps it had opened the door to confuse her – to throw
her off so she’d return and it could eat her too.
She didn’t know what to do
or which way to go. Either way tasted of death. The pain in her gut reminded
her that her baby was coming, and so she had no choice now. She had to go
inside, as she couldn’t give birth to a child in the storm.
As swiftly as she could, she
climbed the steps and hurried to the open door, slamming it shut behind her and
locking it instantly. With soft steps, she backed away from it.
The howling of the wind was
the first sound that greeted Marybeth in the great room. It roared with
ferociousness – threatening… intimidating. She could hear it all through the
house, as if the storm was somehow hitting it from all four directions.
The sounds of the storm grew
louder by the moment, and as she held her ears, Marybeth turned in circles,
trying to block it out.
She had to ignore it – the
storm and its sounds. She had to block everything out – her dead husband on the
library floor, the contractions that grew worse with each passing moment… the
car that wouldn’t crank and the flood waters that were quickly rising… She had
to focus on finding a place to hide. Somewhere that she could safely have her
baby.
Bam! She heard the slamming of a door come from the kitchen.
She’d forgotten about the side entrance, and she’d likely left it unlocked
earlier. It could have been the storm that opened and slammed the door, she
considered as she walked toward the stairs, but when she heard the door between
the kitchen and the dining room open and shut, she no longer questioned it.
Someone – or something – was in the house with her.
Marybeth had to hurry, as
she could hear the doorknob from the door joining the dining room and the great
room begin to turn. Unsure of where else to go, she opened the basement door
and stepped down onto the top step, shutting the door behind her. Deciding it
best to leave the light off, she blindly took each wooden step with caution,
letting her hand graze along the wall as she ventured down.
The labor pains were so
intense that she wanted to collapse when she reached the bottom, but she held steady,
knowing that she had to continue on. It was too dangerous here. She had to go
somewhere deeper – somewhere that she’d never bothered going before. She had to
go down to the cellar, a place so deep in the house that nothing would be able
to find her or her baby.
By the time she found the
cellar door in the dark, she was crowning. She could feel it. She had to be
careful going down the stairs. She had to take easy steps, or else she was
afraid the baby would just fall out as she walked.
With the cellar door shut
behind her, she felt safe enough to turn on the dim light. Its glow from the
cellar below made her feel somewhat more secure, and as she hurried down to it,
she thought of how she would have to deliver her baby with swiftness and then
immediately return to finding a way off of this hill and away from this house.
At the bottom of the cellar,
she felt a knot grow in her throat and her skin became clammy. There, standing
and facing her, were four… people… or things that looked like people. They
stood in the middle of the room atop of what appeared to be a chalked-out
pentagram on the floor. They each had eyes so pale that they were nearly white
– a compliment to their skin tones. One had a slit throat; another had a stab
wound to the gut. The third had a gunshot wound to the heart, and the fourth
just looked plain dead.
Marybeth screamed in terror.
As the four creatures began to approach her, she turned to flee back up the
stairs, only to find a fifth creature awaiting her – a little girl with wide
white eyes and a mischievous grin.
“No…” Marybeth whispered,
but the little girl did not oblige. Instead, she leapt onto her, tearing into
Marybeth’s flesh with her claws and digging into her cheek with her teeth.
Marybeth screamed again and felt the other four creatures grab hold of her from
behind. They forced her onto the ground, pinning her down despite her
struggling efforts to fend them off. Then, as the little girl began to tear
into her gut and eat her child from within her, the others began to devour
Marybeth, silencing her screams.
Part I
“I don’t know how I let you
talk me into this,” Karen told her husband as she looked out the window of
their “new” car. The car was a 90’s model, and it had been a required purchase
for their transition.
“How many times do we have
to go over this?” Bob asked her. “I lost my job. You haven’t had one in years, and we were going to lose the
house. You said you always wanted to live in England. You said it was on your
bucket list. You said…”
“I know what I said!” she
shouted. Then there was silence.
Bob and Karen had been
boiling through this fight ever since their plane landed. They fought over what
car to buy. They fought over who would drive. They fought over every little
bitty thing that they could find, and this ferocious bickering was caused by
their unhappiness. They had not been happy in Connecticut. They had only moved
there because – A – Bob could afford it at the time and – B – they had planned
to raise a family and had wanted to do it in a calm, serene, neighborhood
environment.
Truth be told, they had not
been happy since marrying and leaving Chariot, Tennessee, for Bob’s job
transfer and their fresh start. They
had only known each other for five weeks before Bob popped the question, and
Karen had been all-too swift with her acceptance of it. She had also been
pregnant too, and that had a lot to do with it.
“I said I wanted to live in England,” she whispered, breaking the silence, even if barely.
“This farmhouse is not in England. It is way out in the middle of nowhere, and
it’s on a marsh. A marsh for crying
out loud!” She no longer whispered.
“I thought you liked being
near water,” Bob countered, keeping his eyes on the narrow road.
“Every time it rains… every
time the tide comes in… every time it fucking
rains and that marsh rises, you realize we’ll be trapped in that house,
right? The road will be impassible.” She still stared out the window.
Everything was brown and wet. There was some green in the trees and there were
some greenish weeds, but the land was poorly taken care of.
“Maybe this is what we
need,” Bob replied. “Everything was so stressful in Connecticut. Things will be
a lot simpler here. I’ll find a new job much easier here. That reputation… it
didn’t move here with us. We can get back on our feet, and after a few months –
if you still want to – we can sell the house and get a better one if you’re not
happy.”
She didn’t know how to
respond. She wanted to yell at him again, but she was so tired of yelling.
Purely put, she was tired of Bob. The last couple of years, he had proven to be
all talk and no action. No… she took that back. It was his actions back in the
States that had gotten them into this situation to begin with.
“Anyway, we’re almost
there,” Bob continued. “Honestly, if you give it a chance, I think it will
really grow on you.”
“Like mold from the eternal
dampness of it all?” she chided, albeit without humor in her tone.
“We’ll get a second car in a
couple of weeks. That way, even when I’m gone, you’ll be free to drive to
town.”
“We can’t afford a second car, Bob, and besides that, what
happens when I do go to town? Must I leave at the crack of dawn every day, just
to get the shopping done and make it home before the water rises and floods the
marsh? We can’t afford for me to stay in town on occasions when I can’t get
back home – just because we live in Bumblefuck, Nowhere.”
“What part of give it a chance did you not
understand?”
Back and forth. Jab after
jab. This was how they carried on until Bob turned off onto an even narrower
road that seemed lower than the prior one. From here, there was silence. Karen
could smell the stench of the water and see the air filled with gray from a
rising fog.
“They say the marshland is
the most beautiful place in the world during the morning,” Bob said, but he
failed to break through the wall of ice that surrounded Karen’s silence.
I could fucking kill him right now, was the thought that
itched Karen’s brain. It was not a passing thought. It was not fleeting. It was
a thought – a cognitive aspiration – that stuck in her mind all the time. On a
daily basis (sometimes many times a day) it appeared, and she was forced to
recognize its existence. Then, she would tuck the thought away – let it subside
– and that would be that.
They passed the drives for
two other farmhouses, but Karen wondered if they were inhabited. The roof was
half-off on one and the other appeared to be leaning and sinking.
It was another mile or so
before Bob began to slow the car down. Through the thick of the fog and the
gray of the late afternoon, through the stench of the water and the sourness of
feared anticipation, Karen could see it – the farmhouse… their new home.
It was gray and dismal,
almost black, and it was in dire need of repair. It sat up high on a small
hilltop, which served to keep it safe from the marsh water and the cresting sea
and its tides. There was a large stone foundation that raised the house off of
the ground, and a heavy flight of thick stone steps led the way up to the
porch. There were shutters falling off the hinges, and the roof lacked several
shingles, which Karen supposed meant that the roof leaked when it rained.
There were two trees in the
front lawn – if it could be
called a lawn – and both trees looked dead. The yard was mud primarily…
or muddy grass. She couldn’t really tell, and she wasn’t sure she cared.
Looking down toward the water, she saw two small sheds – one a boat shed with a
rowboat inside, and another with a closed door.
Perhaps, Karen thought,
perhaps maybe I should just kill him. Knock him out and throw him in the sea
and say fuck this place.
Bob had given Karen
practically no say in this purchase. Their house in Connecticut had been under
his name, and when they were moments away from losing it, he put it on the
market. It sold in under a week, and they made enough off the sale to pay their
debts, with enough left over to buy a shithole somewhere else. Bob found this
particular shithole online and bought it without consulting Karen on the
decision. For this and so much more, Karen hated him.
“Here we are, honey,” Bob said with such thick sarcasm
that Karen refused to acknowledge it. “Home sweet home.”
She hoped that the stare she
gave him let him know how much she wanted him to die.
“Let’s give it three
months,” he told her as he drove up the hill and parked beside the massive
house. “Like I said, if you’re not happy here in three months, then we’ll sell
it and find somewhere better.”
Three months, she thought. He’ll be
lucky if I make it three days here.
Stepping out of the car, she
looked at her surroundings. The land was growing wetter from the cresting sea as
it began to fill the marsh. Soon, in just an hour or so, it would be completely
covered.
She heard the popping of the
trunk and walked around the car to grab her suitcase and duffel bag. She was
assured that the rest of her things would arrive within the week, but she was
just as uncertain of that happening as she was of anything at this point.
When the trunk lid closed,
she looked up at the house. Massive
had been an understatement. It appeared to be more overwhelming or terrifying.
“I wonder how many people
have died here,” she mumbled as they approached the impending steps up to the
porch.
“The house was built in the
eighteen-fifties,” Bob told her in a matter-of-fact way. “There’s no telling.”
That’s not comforting at all, she thought, and she
walked behind Bob as he climbed the steps to the porch. The porch was
constructed of wood, but the thin remnants of paint that remained showed it had
been quite some time since it was last maintained. The boards creaked beneath
her feet as she stepped upon them, and several areas seemed to sag from
moisture damage. She wondered if she would fall through while Bob unlocked the
entrance.
Bob opened the front door
and stepped inside. Karen watched him feel the wall for a light switch. She was
marveled by the fact that, in a brief moment, a light did turn on.
“The place was wired with
electricity over three quarters of a century ago,” he said. “It’s outdated, but
at least we have power.”
“Is there running water?”
she asked him.
“Of course, but I spoke with
the former caretaker after our purchase went through and he said we need to let
the water run for a while to let the pipes clear.”
“Former caretaker?” Karen questioned. “The last owner should have
kept him on staff. It doesn’t look like anyone has taken care of this place for
quite some time.”
“The old man retired when
the last owner passed away. The house was on the market for several years
before we got it.”
“And they kept the power and
water on all this time?”
“The realtor may have kept
it on for showing the house, but I don’t know how many showings it’s actually
had.”
The house was completely
furnished, but not with her things. Her things, she prayed, would be arriving
at the end of the week. The house also needed a good dusting… or just a plain
old hosing down.
“I could open an antique
shop with this shit,” she said, looking at the dated furniture and the layers
of dust and cobwebs that covered it. Aside from being dirty, the furnishings
appeared to be in good shape – Victorian period, but gently used.
“I’m sorry about the dust,”
Bob said. “I was told everything was covered up.”
She didn’t respond. What
could she say? The place was disgusting. Dirty… no, filthy. She sneezed. Twice. A third time. After the third, Bob
offered her a bless you, but it did
nothing but aid in the irritation of her fourth sneeze.
“I’ll help you clean
tomorrow,” he said, running his finger along the wall and looking at the dirt
that had gathered.
“We’ll need to go into town
for supplies.”
“The water will be down by
morning. We’ll get an early start.” Bob smiled at her as he said this, like he
thought it would be a fun project they could do together or something, but
Karen did not see the fun in any of this. She was distressed, angry and bitter.
“This place will be
impossible to clean,” she told him. “How many rooms are here?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” he
said, “but it has a full attic, and a full basement and cellar as well. The
house is pretty fucking huge.”
Karen’s eyes began to
wander. She took note of the cryptic staircase. Without a second-floor light
turned on, the stairs seemed to go up into nothing. The stairs were directly in
front of the entrance and beside a large room, which served as the house’s main
living room. It was too large for the type of living room that she was
accustomed to.
To the right of the stairs
was an open doorway leading into a dining room. Across that room was a closed
door. She suspected it entered into the kitchen. Walking into the great room, she
noticed a closed door on the side wall. Along the far wall were two more doors,
and another door was on the wall under the stairs.
Even with the light on, the great
room was dim. There were a couple of windows, and even though the curtains were
open, they did nothing to help light the room. The windows were filthy to the
point that she could not see out of them.
“The bedrooms are upstairs,”
Bob said from the doorway to her right as he stepped from it. She hadn’t even
realized he’d gone in there. “There are three of them, I know that much.
Kitchen’s through there,” he added, gesturing over his shoulder to the door
behind him. “The dining room’s quaint.”
She had been right– it led
to the kitchen. Being silently right on a thought she had never voiced made her
feel a little bit better. There was nothing better than being right on anything that involved Bob.
Karen walked to the door nearest
the fireplace and opened it. It was a bathroom. Not huge, but adequate. She was
thankful to see it. Part of her had worried that they would be using an
outhouse to shit in and a metal tub to bathe in. The next door over was a small
guest room – or if she got her way, a crafting room. She then moved to the door
under the stairs, which opened up to the basement.
She shut the door and walked
across the great room to the single door on that wall. There, she found a
study-slash-library. It was half the size of the great room, but it was still
large – double the size of her bedroom in Connecticut. It was also fully
stocked with shelves of old dusty books – that, she
assumed, could be worth a fortune – and a nice oak desk and a dusty leather
chair in front of a large picture window. There was a map of the world on a
wall and a globe on the desk. She wondered how outdated they were, as they
looked ancient. A part of her was surprised that the globe wasn’t as flat as
the map.
“If we sold some of this
shit,” she yelled so that Bob could hear her, “we’d make more than enough money
to buy a decent place in the city!”
“That can be your job,” Bob
answered. “I’m attached to nothing here.”
This somewhat pleased Karen.
She had prepared herself for another fight, but the fact that Bob was as turned
off by the antique décor as she was made her feel better. If she was stuck
here, at least she could make the place feel like home – like her home.
No, she thought as she stepped from the library and shut the
door behind her. This is not my home.
This is my worst fucking nightmare.
She needed that mental check
– that reminder of her distaste for the situation. At twenty-eight years old,
this was the last thing that Karen had ever expected to happen to her. She
could see being broke; she could see having to move to a shitty apartment. But this? This was much worse than any
shitty apartment. This was being stranded on a deserted island, surrounded by
nothing but water and marshland. No neighbors. No pets.
A farmhouse without land
suitable for planting…
Everything was wrong with
this house.
“Absolutely everything.”
“What?” Bob asked her, and
she wasn’t aware until then that she’d spoken.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking
her head. She walked past him and through the doorway on the right. The dining
room was big enough to hold the table and four chairs that occupied it, but
there was little room otherwise. The kitchen was through the shotgun door straight
across from the other one. It was a slightly larger room, more open, and had
plenty of windows. They, too, were dirty though, so they would need to be
cleaned before sunlight would ever see this kitchen. Obviously an add on, she
was thankful she wouldn’t be cooking in an outbuilding somewhere on the
property or some weird prehistoric shit like that. There was a door on the same
long wall as the appliances. It was another entrance – or exit, if she
preferred – to the house.
The stove was an old gas
model from the fifties. The refrigerator looked like it was from the seventies.
Karen walked to the sink and turned on the faucet. It made a sound, and the
counter vibrated, but no water came out. Then, in a gurgling splatter, a
greenish-brown blob of gunk shot out into the sink. Karen nearly puked – not
only from its appearance, but from the foul stench that accompanied it. She
watched as it continued to pour out a thick sludge. She didn’t move – she
didn’t blink; she just watched it. The sludge eventually began to thin, turning
to fluid, and it soon ran like water
– albeit brown and stinky.
“Let it run for a bit,” Bob
told her, coming up behind her and scaring the shit out of her.
She jumped and turned around
at the sound of his voice.
“I didn’t mean to scare
you,” he said and he tried to hide the fact that he was smiling.
Karen said nothing. She let
the disgusting faucet continue to run – as requested – and breezed by Bob, into
the dining room. From there, she stepped back into the entrance way and looked
at the staircase. The darkness intimidated her, but she wanted to know what the
bedrooms were like, so that she could decide which one would be hers. She and
Bob had not shared a bed in quite a while, and she had no intention of changing
that any time soon.
As she climbed the stairs,
she thought about divorcing him – a thought that appeared in her mind almost as
much as the one about killing him. She had threatened a time or two, but each
time Bob would make a temporary grand
effort to improve and she’d forget about it, giving him another chance. But
this – this was becoming nothing more
than staying together in a marriage filled with hate and spite. Wouldn’t it
have been a blessing to simply part ways and build new lives? That’s what she
really wanted – a new life, and this moldy house on a hill overlooking the sea
was not the new life she had hoped for.
Blinded by the darkness of
the upstairs, she trailed her hand along the wall until she felt the switch.
The light was dim and dull and it offered very little to help guide her way.
She could see though, and that was what mattered. She put a hand on the
banister and took in her surroundings. To her immediate right was a door smaller
than the rest she’d seen in the house. It was just about her height and thin.
To her left were three doors along the wall and then a door at the very end,
facing the hallway. She peeked inside the door to her right. It was an upstairs
closet for extra sheets, blankets, towels and the like. It was stocked with old
linens and everything smelled musty. Just more junk to clear out, she thought as she shut
the door.
Turning to her left, she
opened the first door along the long hallway. It was the first of three bedrooms,
and it was small and drab. Darkly colored – perfect for a man, she thought.
That would be Bob’s room. The second door opened to a room that was a similar
size but brightened up with yellow – albeit faded – wallpaper. It was a nursery
– or had been – and a dusty old crib was centered beneath the window.
Karen stood in the doorway
for a moment and took it all in. A furnished nursery. She had hoped so hard for
a baby back in her old life, but twice, that hope – that dream – was shattered.
The first miscarriage had been hard, but she’d survived. The second one had
been devastating.
After that, she and Bob gave
up. They eventually stopped having sex, and over time, they stopped sleeping
together. She always felt that having a child would have made their
relationship work, and that was a thought that often saddened her.
Another part of her knew,
however, that a baby would have only made life harder. Bob still would have
lost his job. They still would have had to sell the house. Who knew what amount
of misery having a child would have brought to them?
Or… would it have been worth
it?
She shut the door to the
nursery and poked her head through the third door. It was the upstairs
bathroom. It was an okay size, and she imagined soon that the floor would be
littered with Bob’s clothes and towels. Shutting that door, she opened the door
on the sidewall and turned on the light.
This was the master bedroom
– large and eloquent. Despite the old-fashioned style, Karen found herself
forced to admit that it was beautiful.
It had such a grand feel to
it that Karen immediately walked over to the oversized bed and plopped down
atop it. A thick layer of dust rose into the air and she coughed as she waved
it away. Abruptly standing, she turned toward the adjoining bathroom, partially
visible through its open door. Walking to it, she turned on the light and took
a gander. It, like the rest of the house, needed a good bath, but it was so old
fashioned and pretty that she didn’t even care. The ornate claw-footed tub… the
Victorian style mirror and mosaic-tiled sink… This, plus the size of the grand
bedroom, almost made this house worth it.
Karen stepped from the
bathroom and gazed at a door she hoped was the closet. Opening up, she
discovered she was right. It was a spacious and roomy walk-in closet that had
another door within. Curiously, she opened this peculiar door and discovered a
set of ascending stairs that likely led to the attic.
“No question about it; this
is my room,” she said as she left the closet and walked to the bedroom door.
Careful to not make a sound, she shut it, remaining in the room. This was where
she stayed for the remainder of the night. She pulled off the top cover from
the bed and threw it to the floor, lay down, and shut her eyes. Although she
would have sworn it impossible, she managed to fall asleep in a matter of
minutes.
* * * *
Because of her slumber, she
did not hear the door open as Bob came in to check on her. She did not see him
approach and look down at her sleeping face… her sleeping body and the soft
rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. Her shirt was on, but the top
three buttons were undone, exposing her cleavage and her white bra. Because she
slept, she did not know that Bob masturbated over her as he watched her, and
she did not feel it as he reached orgasm, sputtering into her disheveled blond
hair.
She did not hear him say,
“Fuck you, bitch,” as he came on her, and she did not see him rub it into her
hair, spitefully – angrily.
She did not watch as he
zipped himself away, back into the concealed safety of his jeans, and she did
not notice as he turned her bedroom light off, stepped into the hallway, and
shut the door behind him – sealing her in the darkness of the night.
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A Single Girl's Guide to Happiness
