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For 16 years, their marriage had been filled with a series of pummeling blows. Blows that sometimes left them breathless, gasping for air, blows that left them blinded—sucker-punches, undercuts, hooks, and below-the-belt—yet all these beatings that would seemingly shatter their world, brought them closer together and welded their hearts as one, leaving only one beating, the beating of their heart. “Danny! If you don’t get Jake out of those pajamas, we’re both going to be late for work!” Amy yelled up the stairs. “Mom! Where are my red galoshes? I need them for school!” answered a voice from the second floor. “Andy, what in the world do you need those boots for? It hasn’t rained since last week!” “I know, but the other kids are wearing theirs for recess and I want to wear mine, too. Why can’t I, Mom?” Amy finished packing the lunches in the kitchen. “Andy, we’re not even going to talk about it now. Grab your lunch and go get in the car. Danny? Is Jake ready, yet? Danny? Danny!” “Amy? Have you seen my green tie? I can’t find it anywhere,” Danny came thundering down the stairs, bringing with him the heavy smell of after-shave. “You know Jake spilt juice on it last week. I haven’t had time to take it to the cleaner’s yet. For heaven’s sake, why don’t you just wear the yellow one? It’ll go fine.” As the family raced through their regular morning motions and both cars zipped out the drive, the sunlight danced around their green-shuttered white house, skipping through the garden, laughing as it sprang from flower to flower gleefully in the backyard but screeched to a halt right before shining on the elm tree, leaving it in a cold shadow, as beneath the limbs of the massive shadowy tree, a cigarette fell to the cold black ground and was crushed beneath the heel of a worn, battered, brown boot. * * * Twenty-seven years ago, an eleven-year old girl skipped along a sidewalk leading to a similar home on a similar September day. The blonde hair dashingly escaped from the ponytail as she leaped over each deadly river flowing to the gutter and deftly averted the gnashing cracks in her path as she journeyed the six blocks from Franklin Elementary School to her home on Walnut Street. As she turned the last corner, narrowly escaping the claws of death of a vicious squirrel, she sedately walked past the first house on the block, and slowed down even more for the second, the gray, peeling house which neighbored her own. As always, the garage door gaped open, and as always, leaning on the side of an old red Chevy, with hands greased to the elbows, Roy Uriah’s mouth cracked into a smile as the blonde hair and backpack reflected off his thick-rimmed glasses. “Well, hello, there,” rasped the dense, syrupy voice. * * * With aching feet and an aching head, Amy sighed with weariness and found comfort and gratitude in doing so, as she eased into the huge, blue Lazy-Boy recliner in the living room of her home. Danny had taken Angie to her first basketball game of the sixth-grade season, and Andy had tagged along to watch. Jake had been in bed for going on two hours, exhaustedly snoring away. And Amy was done in. The T.V. softly murmuring the news, the heater kicking on and blowing away the chill of the night, and the grandfather clock lazily strumming and marking the time, were all sounds that whispered Amy to sleep. She dreamed of youth and freedom and simple pleasures. The dreams tumbled over each other happily until they crashed in front of a gaping cave. Her heart beat faster and faster; she could hear the blood being pumped, seemingly directly into her ears where it thrummed and pounded with each heartbeat, doubling, now tripling, in speed against the beats marked by the grandfather clock. From deep in the bay of the darkness, a red-eyed demon with enormously powerful claws was already choking her, luringly ensnaring her; “Well, hello, there.” And she was sitting up wide-eyed awake. Gasping. Always gasping when she woke from this same dream each and every night of her life. “Inhaler! Dammit, where’s my inhaler?” Amy gasped between wheezes until upon finding it, sucking in the medicated cloud, and wiping the beads of sweat from her brow, she finally began breathing relatively normally. Her heart was still in her ears, still pounding on her eardrums, so at first she thought that was where the pounding was coming from. Until from the back door, the three patient knocks rapped slowly once again. “What could Marian possibly want at this time of night? She could have at least called, first,” Amy muttered, imagining the aging, nosy neighbor lady living in the yellow house across the yard, as she caught her reflection in the hallway mirror and quickly wiped the mascara rings from under her eyes. “I’m coming, Marian!” She could hear the rain begin, even as she walked down the darkened hallway. The way it pattered and then beat powerfully against the walls of her home, the way the wind picked up and beat the thin, clawing branches of the weeping willow against the panes of windows, almost made her stop and return to the warmth of her living room; but she had practiced hard her whole life to turn away these childish apprehensions and fears, and so she grasped the cold, copper doorknob and opened the door. The cold air that blasted against her face blowing the blonde hair wildly behind her, silhouetted the dark shoulders of the dark figure, and even though she could not see his face, and even though it had been twenty-seven years, Amy knew. She knew by the terror that pitted her stomach, by the breathlessness that plagued her the second time that night, but more by the fear. Never, ever had she or would she feel horror like she felt whenever this shadow of this silhouette darkened her life, either in her nightmares or reality. And she was flying, flying through time, and flying through memories, until she landed with an aching, breath-stealing slam, splat on the sidewalk in front of the gray peeling garage. * * * Danny cursed as he swerved to avoid sideswiping the car in the right lane. Traffic had been worse than usual on this Tuesday night. The car bleated its disapproval, scurrying by. After checking, and re-checking, he again attempted to switch lanes. He sighed, as the wipers wiped and wiped, furiously trying to rid the car of the rain that was now bucketing down. He reduced his speed and realized that his knuckles were white and he was so tense he could feel the knots tightening in his back. “What in the world is the matter with me?” he murmured, glancing at the sleeping children tightly strapped in the back seat. Lately, Danny could feel his stomach clinching, his neck prickling, and he felt the urgent need to hurry home to his wife. Things had been going so well before now, too. He was almost sure that she hadn’t had any dreams for quite some time. They might finally be able to put the nightmare behind them. He would never forget their first few years of marriage, how dreadfully wearing they had been. He felt that in those first years of his new life, that he had aged more than he ever had in the first twenty years of his life. Plaguing him still were memories of that night he had screamed at Amy, asking her, for God’s sake, to tell him what made him so horrible that she couldn’t look him in the eye, that she felt like stone when he tried to hold her. She hadn’t answered and he screamed again, “If you can’t even tell me why you hate me, this marriage is dead. It’s time for me to leave.” And even still she sat on the edge of the bed unmoving with her shoulders slumped and her hair hanging and covering her face, her hands folded between her knees, and all he wanted to do was protect her and cover her with his love, but it wasn’t until he turned his back that she spoke. The whisper caught him like a breath of cold air on his neck, spiking his hair on end and stopping his heart. It sent sickening chills racing up and down his spine and between his heart and the pit of his stomach. He still can’t escape that cold of that chill. And she told him. She told him just what that monster had done to her. Never in Danny’s entire life had he felt such fury; such hopeless rage in every marrow of every bone of his body. And if life was in any way fair at all, that vomitous beast would have been placed right there in his bedroom for Danny to slash apart, appendage by appendage. And even with this amount of hate and abhorrence, as the years passed, Danny hated him more and more with each and every day. Hell. Hell is the only word that will even come close to defining what Danny and Amy lived through during their first years of marriage. Every single night Amy woke gasping and gasping. Not just for breath it seemed, but for a chance at the childhood and innocence that was stolen from her.
“Daddy?” the soft voice questioned.
“What’s wrong?” The giggling from the backseat soothed the recesses of his heart and he knew what the hell in his life was worth. * * * Danny, Angie, and Andy walked in laughing and stomping through the garage door. “Better get to bed, guys. It’s already long past quittin’ time. Your mom and I will be up in a few minutes.” “’Kay, Daddy.” Danny thought it was weird how Amy was not there to greet them at the door. He wanted to think she fell asleep, but the prickling on his neck and the tightening of his back had started up again. He called to Amy as he walked through the living room, but his voice jaggedly ripped off as he turned the corner to the hallway and saw her lying in a heap on the linoleum floor. He ran to her and turned her shoulders over in his lap praying and praying, “Oh, God, Oh, Dear God, Amy, Amy!” Her eyes were dead. And with a voice just as dead, she whispered, “He’s back.” * * * * Long after the police had come and gone, neither Amy nor Danny could sleep. They had done everything they could do within their jurisdictions. Since Roy Uriah had moved away, and the case had taken place over 25 years ago, there was nothing the courts could do at this point. He had not harmed her in any way. He had not broken any laws. He had only said hello. And so the balding, and fattening policemen had climbed back into their car, almost offended that they should be called on such a night as this. * * * * For two more weeks, Roy watched the house, left little signs of his presence, and made his company known. For two more weeks, Amy and Danny neither slept nor felt. Food had no taste and their children brought them no pleasure. Amy did not feel because she was numb. Danny did not feel because of the fury. While the police could do nothing until the court hearing was set, Danny could do nothing but hate. And as he saw his wife slip further and deeper into oblivion, Danny made up his mind.
* * * * After getting up the next morning, Danny and Amy—the children were staying with Danny’s mother in the neighboring town—prepared for work silently. After giving Amy’s cold cheek a kiss good-bye, and waving her out the drive, Danny climbed into his car and backed slowly out of the garage. Instead of driving to work, he backtracked and headed back to his house, parking a block away. He stayed seated hunched over the steering wheel, until he saw a beat-up orange Chevy putt up to his home. It parked briefly. Then started up after several minutes and rounded the corner. Danny followed. It pulled into the nearest gas station. As the greasy man with shell-like glasses sauntered into the station, returning in a few minutes out of the doors of the 7-11 with coffee and a donut, Danny opened his door. The man, now situating his breakfast in his pick-up, was oblivious to the man in the suit until the shadow, now directly covered the driver’s window and passenger inside. He looked up questioningly, but only until his eyes focused down the dark hollow shaft staring at the bridge directly between his eyes. Lost upon his consciousness were the words, “Well, hello, there,” as the flesh from his face splattered and the back of his head sprayed, turning the orange pick-up into a red Chevy. The nightmare was over. Danny reached into his suit pocket, pulled out his phone, dialed 911. “Yes, hello. There has been a murder on Dakota Avenue South, at the 7-11. You might want to send a police car out.” |