The Homestead

I never intended to return here. As I drove down the bumpy lane I realized I’d been holding my breath, my knuckles white as I clung to the steering wheel with a death grip. I put the radio on, hoping to calm myself with the latest summer hits, but somehow the channels were scrambled and an angry male voice spat fire and brimstone through the crackling speakers. I turned it off. I didn’t need any more reminders of my destination.

The tarmac petered out, packed white gravel marking the edge of the homestead like a salt barrier. I never did know if it was to banish the demons or contain them. There were new potholes to contend with – they rattled my poor Camry as we juddered along the final stretch. Here the driveway curved, disappearing behind a row of tall pines. The homestead was secluded, hidden away from prying eyes, just the way He had always liked it.

Suddenly, like a bad dream, the house loomed before me. The gray paint peeling from the wooden siding, porch chair violently slanted from it’s one rusted chain. It groaned as the wind stirred it, the clanking of metal links scraped over rotting wood. Home sweet home.

I parked the car, fighting the urge to leave the engine running. I kept the mantra running through my head:

You’re not a child anymore. He can’t hurt you.

It did little to help the rising bile that burned in my throat like a lump of molten steel. I closed the car door and jumped as it clicked shut. I made my way up the creaking porch steps, took the latch key from its hiding spot on the lintel. The door protested as I opened it, dust motes escaping from the darkness within.

“Daddy?” I heard my voice, higher pitched than normal, the voice of a frightened child.

No response. I shouldn’t have expected one. Only He could initiate contact, hadn’t He trained me better than to speak without being spoken to? I passed through the hallway, the photo of Momma hanging beside the hat stand, the glass still cracked where my head had struck it the night I left home. A golden hair still trapped in the shards, the last gossamer strand of my innocence. “I’m sorry Momma,” I whispered as I walked past.

The kitchen was to the left, and I walked through the open door. I half expecting to see a broken milk glass on the floor and Cassie at the table, her eyes red and puffy as she waited for Him to return with a fresh switch.

So many ghosts of the past hiding beneath the cobwebs and dirt. My mouth felt dry, I needed a drink. The pipes clanged as water forced its way through them, protesting loudly as it burst from the faucet in an angry gush. It tasted all wrong – like chemicals and salt, not the cool, sweet well water I remembered. Of course. The well had been shut up more than a decade ago. The county must have run a line in. I wondered how Daddy had handled that invasion of his property, without anyone to take it out on. There was no one left by then.

Edgar was first. He was 15, and when he snuck into our bedroom that night his lip was bleeding and his eye already swollen shut. “I can’t wait any longer,” he told me as I clung to him desperately. “If I stay He’ll kill me. You know He will.” In the morning he was gone, and we never spoke about him again. It was as if he had never existed, Daddy at the head of the table spooning oatmeal into his mouth while Cassie and I cowered, waiting for the fallout. It never came – at least, not over Edgar. After school that day his room was emptied, his face scratched out of every photograph, his clothes burning in the trash can out back. That night we ate rabbit stew for dinner, salty from our tears as we forced it down. Our last memory of Parsley and Sage, Edgar’s prize-winning lop-eared bunnies.

I left the kitchen, climbing the stairs, my stomach heavier with every creaking tread. Past Edgar’s room, the jagged hole still punched through the dry wall from the time he barricaded himself inside.

I paused at the bathroom, it’s blue tub streaked with rust stains. Cassie’s cries echoed in my head.

“Please Daddy, no! I’m sorry, Daddy!”

It hadn’t mattered. Sorry never stopped the punishments, only made things worse. The shower seemed less threatening to me now, smaller. How could something so ordinary have caused so much anguish? If I closed my eyes I would find myself bent over the tub, my head forced under the scalding torrent. Or stood beneath the freezing spray in my pajamas, shivering, too afraid to move even when He left the room.

Our bedroom was on the left. Unlike Edgar’s, everything was just how it had been when I moved out. Cassie's music box on the dresser, the ballerina dusty but still standing en pointe. The rose-pink chenille bedspreads smoothed flat. I knew if I opened the drawers all our old clothes would still be folded neatly inside. Time moved differently here at the homestead.

At the end of the landing was His room. I pushed the door softly, flinching as it swung inwards.

“Oh, you came!” The nurse was older than me, her dark hair streaked with gray. She had warm, brown eyes that crinkled at the corners, and a genuine smile that ended in dimples. “Did you hear that, Mr. Roberts? Your daughter came home to see you! Isn’t that nice?”

I stood in the doorway, unable to force myself over the threshold. Even though the landing was empty and the front door open, I felt cornered.

“Are you okay, sweetie? I’m sure it’s hard seeing him like this. The end is always difficult.”

“I’m fine,” I snapped, a little too sharply. “It’s just… a lot to take in.”

She waked over, patting my shoulder comfortingly. “That’s alright, dear. I’m on shift for another hour, and the night nurse will be coming to take over. You go make yourself a cup of tea, gather your thoughts. Come back when you’re ready. He’s not going anywhere.”

I glanced at the hospital bed, the drips hanging from the stand. The occasional blipping from the heart monitor. I wasn’t ready. “Okay,” I told her. “I’ll be back later. Thank you.”

I almost ran in my eagerness to leave the house, barely thinking, desperate for fresh air. Without realizing it I found myself in front of the old barn. The red paint was in worse condition than the house, years of neglect and heavy storms had taken their toll. The evil inside was palpable, it throbbed like a living heartbeat, darkness spilling from its veins into the soil below. I hesitated then stepped inside, swallowed whole by the gloom. I walked past the wooden stall where Daddy had shot Bella when she went lame. Past the old wooden barrel where He forced us to watch as He drowned the beautiful, silky-furred barn kittens while their mother hissed and spat in the corner. Past the ladder that lead to the hayloft, where we used to hide when Daddy was drinking. Where Cassie had fallen.

In the middle of the floor stood the root cellar. Padlocked, as it had been ever since the day Cassie had her accident. How we had hated that cellar. Cold and musty even at the height of summer, the spiders were big as mice, giant roaches scuttling in the corners. Mason jars full of pickled vegetables gleaming orange and green on the filthy shelves. How many hours had we spent down there, always alone, forced down the rickety steps and plunged into the darkness? I remembered clawing at the trapdoor till my fingers bled. Splinters buried deep under my nails, throbbing hotly as I huddled in the corner. How many nights? How many?

I looked at the ground where Cassie had fallen, no trace left now. Her blood had spilled here. So bright it seemed almost orange, not at all like blood on the television shows. A white, jagged bone protruding from her shin, wickedly sharp. Her bare arms and legs mottled with bruises and covered in welts from a beating the day before. She screamed and screamed, so piercing it startled the horses, who pounded and whinnied in their stalls. And Daddy’s shadow loomed in the barn doorway, His face a mask of fury as He tossed His beer bottle against the wall, yelling for silence.

That was the last time I had seen my baby sister. I was sent to my room, the lock bolted, though that was nothing unusual. I watched from my window as Daddy carried Cassie to his station wagon, laying her in the back, slamming the trunk closed. It looked like a hearse as he drove away out of sight.

I don’t know when He returned. I’d cried myself to sleep at some point, only waking with the first watery light of dawn. The car was back in the driveway, the horses braying in the barn. Daddy came up the stairs, His boots thudding on each stair. Thump! Thump! Thump! He unlocked my door and told me to go make breakfast.

I opened my mouth, wanting to ask where Cassie was, how she was feeling. Then I shut it again. There was no use asking questions, all it ever got me was a backhander.

For the next three days I was on house arrest, not even allowed out to do chores. I crept about the house, silent as a wraith, keeping everything spick and span. I knew, I think, even then. Or at least guessed. Cassie was never coming home.

After a week life resumed, Daddy telling my teachers that Cassie had gone to live with her mother in California. It was a pleasant dream, one I always wanted to believe. I wonder if Edgar ever made it to California like he planned. I wonder if he ever found our mother.

My eyes kept returning to the root cellar. The padlock was old now, covered in rust. I took a sledge hammer off the tool bench and gave it a whack. Then another. Harder. On the third hit it broke loose, the metal bent and twisted. I didn’t want to look inside. I already knew what I would find. I had always known.

It was dusk when I left the barn, staggering outside and retching beside my car. I purged myself of my last meal, that breakfast sandwich at the gas station seemed a lifetime ago. As I wiped the slimy tendrils from the corner of my mouth the nurse left the house.

“I’m off now, dear. Can you hold the fort till Miriam arrives for the night shift? She shouldn’t be but a few minutes.”

I nodded, and a look of concern passed over her face, but she turned away, climbing into her Land Rover. She waved as she pulled off down the driveway.

I returned to the house, my own footsteps thudding up the stairs, pounding like my heartbeat in my chest. I pushed open the door to Daddy’s bedroom, looked at the frail creature in the bed. It didn’t look like Daddy, this decrepit, wasted old man, barely skin and bones. Only the eyes were familiar, that ice cold blue gaze that used to make me wake in a cold sweat long after I left home.

“I’m back, Daddy” I whispered in his ear as I held up the pillow, watching the fear in his eyes as he realized what was about to happen. “I’m back, and I'm not scared anymore.”