Drainage Problems

Jane Lowell first fell in love with the wraparound porch that could have been teleported out of a magazine for house hunters. Her husband George was less impressed, but he squeezed her shoulder encouragingly, quiet in all things—except for the eventual price tag. But Jane fought for her four-bedroom dream with its idyllic suburban glow and the promising school district that mothers everywhere would have said was a must.

“We can build a family here,” she said. George’s eyes crinkled, and within a few hours of visiting the sky-blue home they made an offer.

Within the week they had a closing date, the inspector finding little of note to complain about in regard to what he could see in the scheme of the home. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, as if destined to be.

By moving day, Jane was already imagining what pastel colors she would choose for the baby’s room. She may have been getting a little ahead of herself, given that she had no “bun in the oven” (as her mother would have said), but it was easy to imagine a little redheaded girl or a hazel-eyed boy joining the Lowell twosome in the days to come. It wasn’t a matter of time so much as yet another marker of the life Jane and her husband were trying to build.

Jane settled in by arranging pots and pans in their respective cabinets while George set up the new flat-screen television in the living room. Dinner that night was Chinese take-out from a little place their new neighbor had recommended. When they were exhausted from unpacking what boxes they could, they settled back on the still-bare mattress because neither one of them had thought to look for the bedding in the hours that had passed. The first night, it felt easy and right to fall asleep in each other’s arms.

By morning, Jane had found her toiletry bag and turned on the sink as she prepared to brush her teeth. She frowned when the faucet made a squelching sound. Then what burbled out of the head was not clear water but yellow liquid that left soot-like flakes in the sink. But when she opened her mouth to call for George, the faucet began to spit out water that washed away the black flecks. When she mentioned it to her husband later, his response was to run the faucet and drink a mouthful of what looked like normal water.

“It tastes fine, Jane. Maybe it was your imagination?”

“I know what I saw,” she said.

But even the plumber they called later that day said the lines looked clear.

“Buyer’s remorse, maybe?” the man said with a laugh to George even while Jane stood only feet away.

What followed was the necessary rhythm of getting accustomed to a new home. George began his new commute—and edged in little hints that maybe it was too soon for a baby to come into their lives.

“I just think we should take our time,” he assured Jane. “Why rush things when everything’s so perfect now? I’m still trying to find my footing at this job, and having a baby—well, Jane, it’s a big commitment.”

Her response was to slam the bathroom door and sob into her hands. George didn’t even try to disturb her, so she decided to take a shower to calm her nerves. As she stepped into the walk-in, she noticed that the water was not swirling down the drain like it should have. The water even seemed to have a pinkish tint to it.

Shutting off the shower head, Jane grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. When she bent down to put her fingers to the drain and see if there was something caught there, what came away looked like...blood.

She gasped, wiping her hand furiously against the towel draped around her. She ran out into the bedroom. “George! George, the shower—”

Jane had succeeded in waking him, but by the time he got to the shower—it was the same as the problem with the bathroom sink. There was no evidence that anything had been there.

“It’s clear, Jane,” George said, shaking his head. He looked up at her, worry in his eyes. “Honey, you don’t need to make up stories like this just to get my attention.”

“I’m not—I didn’t—” But she faltered and gestured to the towel she wore. “There’s blood right here, see?”

George sighed, seemingly unconvinced. “Look. You know I love you, right?”

Jane opened her mouth to defend herself—but then the words simply died on her lips. “Yes, dear. I know.”

The next few weeks were strained at best. George continued to go to work while Jane tended the house. At her husband’s careful prodding, she even began to look for work, even just a part-time retail position, to get out of the house for things other than errands.

Because it was getting warmer, she spent a lot of time sitting on the porch. The neighborhood teemed with senior-age women doing their daily walks, dog walkers handling two to five dogs at a time, and even the rare stray cat who wandered around looking to be fed.

Jane could barely sleep because she kept having nightmares of a sink drain eating her up, starting from her fingers held under the faucet until she was sucked down, down, down as if she were the last dregs to be fed into a sewer.

And when she lay awake in bed, George asleep beside her, she could swear she heard the house moaning and creaking like a person who had grown too old to censor all the talk of aches and pains.

George woke her up the next morning with a kiss on her cheek. “Have a good day, Janie,” he said before he left for work.

When she next awoke—near to noon, by the time on her bedside clock—she walked down the stairs and saw last night’s dishes as well as a mess from George’s breakfast. Swallowing a sigh, she drew her robe more tightly around her as she set about being the dutiful housewife her husband expected her to be because she was neither employed nor tasked with motherly duties.

Jane was about ready to cry over a cereal bowl when she heard a cranking sound that startled her out of self-pity mode. The noise repeated itself, like a hungry and insistent child, and she could swear it had come from the garbage disposal…

She peered down into the blackness of the disposal—only for a belching sound to rumble from it. Splatters and chunks of red, viscous liquid erupted—and Jane’s face got the brunt of it. A tang of iron touched her tongue.

Any other woman might have gone screaming from the house right there, but Jane Lowell? She began to laugh.

Her laughter rattled down the very bones of the house.

When George came home that night, he found her, blood-covered, still laughing as she sat on the kitchen floor.

The trouble? George Lowell believed her too late, and Jane—she paid the price for it.

And the house still kept its secrets.