Wicked Winters

by Melanie Karsak et al.

  She couldn’t control her breathing at all anymore. Blood rushed to her face and the room started to spin.

  “Marianne,” Dr. Robbins said, “I want you to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Slowly. There you go. Now, tell me five things you see.”

  Marianne did her best to comply. “A stereo. Lamp. Albums. Blue curtains. My purse.” She pointed to the floor when she said the last item.

  Detective Bishop snapped a blue latex glove on and scooped it up.

  “Do you need to keep it for evidence?” Marianne asked.

  “No, you can have it back,” Detective Bishop said, holding the purse with her gloved hand while brushing it off with a tissue from her black bag. “I just wanted to clean it off for you first.”

  Marianne shot her a puzzled look. The purse looked fine.

  “Do you notice anything strange or different than when you were last here?” Dr. Robbins asked.

  Marianne surveyed the room again. “No, nothing.”

  “What about when you first came into the house earlier this evening with David, did anything about the house seem odd then?” Dr. Robbins persisted.

  “No, his mom was really nice.”

  “Not about his mother. About the house. Was there something odd about it?”

  “I mean, they obviously like a vintage look. It’s like stepping back in time.” Marianne reached out and touched a knob on David’s old stereo.

  Dr. Robbins said to Detective Bishop, “I don’t know if this is going to work. She may need more time.”

  “It has to work. She needs to know the truth now.” Detective Bishop opened her big black bag again and pulled out a book. She skimmed through it until she found what she was looking for. “Is this David?” she asked, showing Marianne a photograph on the page.

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “This is David Parker’s senior photo. He took this photo in the fall of 1979.” She handed Marianne the book and pointed to the front cover. “This is the Kingston High School yearbook from that school year. David never got his copy. And do you know why? Because his father came home on December 24, 1979 and bludgeoned his family to death before lying down on his bed and shooting himself in the head.”

  Marianne felt dizzy. “That can’t be right. It’s not true. I was with David only hours ago. I saw what his father did to him. I was here. I was right here.”

  “You couldn’t have seen what happened, my dear, because it happened before you were born. And you couldn’t have been seeing him or spending romantic afternoons with him, because he’s been dead for forty years.”

  Marianne squeezed her eyes shut and tried to shake away the screaming from inside her head.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt with you. But it is the truth. No one has lived in this house since 1979. Not a single soul.”

  Dr. Robbins chimed in softly, “Open your eyes and look around you. Not at what you expect to see, but what’s really in front of you.”

  Marianne’s heart thumped heavily in her chest and her head pounded. She opened her eyes slowly. Everywhere she turned, the radiant home she remembered faded into dirt and rot. Blues and golds dulled and tarnished, the gray paneled wall buckled, and the light covered bookshelf and stereo were buried in dust and grime. Whatever bloodstains had been there at one time were no longer visible.

  Detective Bishop and Dr. Robbins quietly escorted her back through the house, and it felt as though her knees would give out from under her. Cobwebs clung to the walls and hung from the light fixtures. The carpets were filthy. The dolls in Jennifer’s room were entombed in dust and bits of debris from the damaged ceiling. The Christmas Tree in the living room still stood, but its dried, dead branches had long given way to the heaviness of lights and ornaments. It showed no sign of its previous glory. Beneath it, unopened gifts were covered in brown pine needles and faded strands of tangled tinsel.

  On the green couch in front of a large stone fireplace, rolls of holiday paper and ribbon lay where they had fallen all those years ago. Their bright colors and designs muted forever.

  Detective Bishop turned to Dr. Robbins, “I was hoping we were done with all of this.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Dr. Robbins said, “but I guess he’s still not found peace.”

  Marianne suddenly felt as though they were all in on a secret that had caused her to have a nervous breakdown.

  The young detective from the station entered the house and handed Marianne’s phone over to Detective Bishop. He said, “We found this near her car. Also, Mr. Donahue is outside.”

  “No surprise there,” Detective Bishop said, letting out a frustrated sigh.

  “Should I try to speak with him tonight?” Dr. Robbins said.

  Detective Bishop shook her head and said, “No, it’s already been a long night. Let’s go home and make the most of what’s left of Christmas.”

  As they were walking out the door, Marianne heard someone say her name. She looked back, and David was standing in the dark living room, illuminated only by the headlights shining through the window. He mouthed something to her, but she couldn’t make it out.

  “What are you looking at, Marianne?” Dr. Robbins said, stepping back inside and scanning the empty room. “Do you see something?”

  “No, I don’t see anything. It’s just strange, that’s all.” She stepped out into the cold night; harsh winds blew ice and snow against her face. She was going to do her best to forget everything about this place – even David.

  Mr. Donahue wasn’t of the same mind. He had been frustrated with her inability to speak about what she had seen when he had picked her up on the road. He had been waiting outside since they had arrived at the house, determined to speak with her.

  “Do you remember now?” he asked Marianne as soon as he saw her. He had a wild, excited look in his eyes. “You saw her, didn’t you? You saw Elaine Parker. What I wouldn’t give to see her again, to have her come for me the way David came for you – the way he has come for others before you.”

  Detective Bishop motioned for one of the officers to escort Mr. Donahue away from them and asked the young detective to help Marianne into her car, and then she said to Dr. Robbins, “Thank you for coming out on such short notice. I’ll ask her parents to make an appointment with you after the holidays. Same recommendation as before.”

  “It’s my pleasure, as always. I can’t believe it took David twenty years to come back this time. Before that, he only waited seven years.”

  “I know, and the time before that was only five years. I was hoping he had given up. These poor girls. This might be my last time dealing with it though. I’m set to retire next year.”

  “I’m not far behind you,” Dr. Robbins said. “But I can’t imagine who can be trusted to take over if and when this happens again. Who is going to believe it?

  “I don’t know, but we can’t keep this up forever.” Detective Bishop said.

  Dr. Robbins took off her glasses and wiped them down. “I wish he’d give up. Every time it happens, I’m forced to commit Mr. Donahue to the ward. He can’t accept that she is gone, after all these years. Did you know he was still keeping the utilities running?”

  “No, I had hoped that he was doing better since the last time, but I had my suspicions when they said he was the one who had picked up Marianne. He must come down here every Christmas Eve hoping to see her.”

  “I wonder sometimes if Mrs. Parker knew just how much he loved her. From what I remember, he was their gardener, but there was no proof of a relationship.”

  “I don’t know if there was or there wasn’t something going on between them, but I was told they weren’t able to confirm that as a motive. It was just like the papers reported at the time; there were debts, and Mr. Parker couldn’t handle the stress. Money. It was all about money. Such a shame.”

  “It is a shame,” Dr. Robbins said, shaking her head. “Well, have the parents make an appointment with my secretary. Meanwhile, I’ll check with her physic
ian and call in something to calm her nerves and help her sleep.” Then she walked up to the car where Marianne sat waiting to be taken home and spoke to her through the partially open window. “You are going to be alright. I am going to help you through this.”

  Marianne knew she meant it, but she couldn’t stop shaking and looking down at her hands - with no visible trace of blood on them.

  Detective Bishop settled into the driver’s seat beside her and tucked her plaid scarf into her red coat before buckling her seatbelt. “You have a Merry Christmas,” she said to Dr. Bishop, leaning slightly forward to see her at the passenger window. “And thank you again.”

  “Merry Christmas to you both,” Dr. Robbins said, and then called out as they drove off, “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!”

  Marianne tried not to cry but wasn’t successful. She searched her pockets for the package of tissues and wiped her eyes. How could anyone have a good Christmas after what she had been through?

  Detective Bishop knew she was suffering and felt sorry for her. As she steered her car down old Ingram Road in the dark early hours of Christmas morning, she offered her some wisdom. “It may seem too much to bear right now, but the horror will diminish over time, and the waves of grief will rush over you less often - because regardless of the enormity of any tragedy, life goes on for the rest of us. Sometimes, we just have to let go so that we can keep going.”

  About J. M. Taylor

  J. M. Taylor is a member of Historical Writers of America and has an M.A. in English Literature from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. She prefers writing Historical Fiction with Gothic elements. Having grown up in the South, there was rarely a story told in her family that didn't involve the paranormal or supernatural, and this is reflected in her work. She currently lives in Southeastern Virginia where she teaches Humanities at a local college.

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  The Weeping Woman by Brian Hocevar

  A Christmas Story of the Graveyard Shift

  The Weeping Woman Description

  A Christmas Story of the Graveyard Shift

  A mysterious death in Briarwood County puts Deputy Maggie Dell on course for a close encounter of the gravest sort.

  The Weeping Woman

  The two Henderson boys spotted Maggie Dell’s cruiser the moment she pulled into Oakmont Gardens and parked in front of the Garmin house. They were across the street a few doors down in their own backyard working on a pair of snowmen in the fresh layer of snow that had come down overnight, but they ran over to greet her even before she stepped from the car. Maggie knew the Hendersons from church, but only vaguely, and though she always remembered that Hank and Stevie were a year apart, she blanked on their precise ages. Was it twelve and thirteen? The last time she’d seen them had been on her doorstep at Halloween. Hank had been wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume, while Stevie had worn Hank’s year-old Batman hand-me-down. Now just a month and a half later, Maggie could swear Hank had grown at least an inch. She didn’t bother to tell him so, and instead let the two pelt her for a few minutes with questions about her cruiser, her gun, and what she was doing in their neighborhood. She kept her answers cheerful but evasive, deflecting their attention to their snowmen and to what they thought Santa was going to bring them on Saturday, and they only had patience for a few rounds of questions before they ran back to their snowmen. Maggie checked her equipment, double checking to make sure she had her notebook ready. She was going to need it. Then, she headed up the front walk and rang the bell.

  Waiting at the door, Maggie checked her surroundings. Burgettsville, Kentucky was almost too small a town to have proper suburbs, but if such a thing existed, it would be right here in the Oakmont Gardens neighborhood. The tracts of houses that had been laid out here at the edge of the Little Horn River in the housing boom of the early-fifties had been built for comfort and quiet by a generation of ex-soldiers who had gotten all of the action they’d need for a lifetime in one big gulp, and for the most part, Oakmont remained comfortable and quiet thirty years later. Ranches and little two-stories rambled along the river road for a few square miles, with Oakmont Elementary sitting just outside the subdivision. Maggie could see the swings of the playground beyond the yard across the street few kids swung on the monkey bars beyond that. If suburban bliss could be ordered from a Sears catalog, this was how it would be pictured.

  But even Oakmont had its moments. Two mornings prior, a twenty-eight-year-old woman by the name of Lucinda Kindler had been found dead in her bed by her father. Now, three blocks down, Maggie’s boss, Sheriff Neal Graham, was conducting yet another interview with the father while his other two deputies, Henry Cale and Ronald Talbot, searched the area surrounding Ms. Kindler’s home. It was the third such search of the last two days, and given the lack of any evidence, it would probably be the last. Lucinda Kindler was one step from an unknown cause of death, and nobody in the Briarwood County Sheriff’s Department thought that was all right.

  Maggie, however, was working a different case. The past two nights, children in the area had reported seeing a stranger wandering the woods along the riverside. Maggie had spoken to two of the children already, and now she was meeting with one Sarah Garmin and her seven-year-old daughter, Holly. The first two children had told a story that was as outrageous as it was uniform, and it almost made Maggie wonder if they’d sat up to watch the same horror movie on the late show that weekend. By any rational measuring stick, their claims were almost unbelievable, but in her decade with the Sheriff’s Department, Maggie had found that the unbelievable hadn’t always proven itself impossible. Briarwood County had more than its fair share of strange cases, and when those cases came up, Neal had learned to leave Henry and Ronald out of the loop and go directly to Maggie. Between Neal and Maggie, they had an expression they used for these cases.

  They called it “working the graveyard shift.”

  After some shuffling from inside, the front door opened. Inside stood Sarah Garmin. She was a thirtyish woman with a streak of premature white in her hair so perfect it could be dyed, though Maggie doubted it was. Sarah greeted her with a formal handshake. “Deputy Dell,” she said.

  “Just Maggie, Sarah,” Maggie assured her. “Maggie’s just fine.”

  “It’s so good to see you,” Sarah said. Her tone was strangely consoling. For a moment, Maggie was perplexed. Then she remembered that Sarah had gone to school with Maggie’s husband Jerry. Though it had been seven years since Jerry had been killed by a drunk driver, even after all that time, Maggie still picked up a note of sympathy from some people in town. Maggie understood it, for the most part. She had grown up in Ohio and had moved to Jerry’s hometown when they were married. In small towns like Burgettsville, there was often at least a little suspicion that lurked under the hospitality, and to some folks, non-natives could really never become locals. Now here was Maggie, a thirty-three-year-old widow and a single mother raising her ten-year-old son alone. To top it off, she was a cop. Folks didn’t always know what to make of Maggie Dell, but they missed Jerry, they knew that, so even seven years later, politeness moved them to sympathy.

  Sarah led Maggie into the kitchen. She was in the middle of holiday baking, and even though the counters were a little cluttered, the place was otherwise neat, and a sense of order prevailed. Maggie noticed that under the current 1990 calendar a fresh 1991 version waited on the counter, ready to jump into service in just over a week. Sarah clearly ran a tight ship, which was part of the reason that Neal had been so adamant that Maggie check out Sarah’s claim.

  Though she’d been forthcoming on the phone with Neal, Sarah seemed hesitant to talk abou
t the details of what had happened to her daughter. She started to explain the incident, but with each word, Sarah looked less and less sure of herself as the story became more and more unbelievable. Maggie listened politely for a moment, but once it was clear Sarah wasn’t going to be of much use, Maggie suggested that maybe she should just talk to Holly. Sarah acquiesced and led her down the hall to Holly’s bedroom.

  They found Holly sitting on the carpet next to her bed. She had a doll in each hand which she appeared to be at least trying to play with, but Maggie could tell from the furrow in the little girl’s brow that she wasn’t in much of a mood to play.

  “Hey, honey,” Sarah said, “this is Deputy Dell from the police department. She… uh, she came by to talk with you….” Sarah’s voice trailed off. She clearly didn’t know what to say.

  Maggie took over. “Hi, Holly,” she said, approaching the little girl slowly. She knelt down on one knee to get closer to Holly’s level, then offered her hand to see if Holly would take it in greeting. Some children liked a handshake. It put them on a more equal footing with an adult.

  Holly wasn’t one of those kids. For a moment, she withdrew slightly from the extended hand, but then, a look of recognition came over her, and her face brightened a little. “Hey, I know you,” she said. “You’re Andy’s mom.”

  Maggie hadn’t anticipated the connection. Her son, Andy, was ten, three years older than Holly, which might as well be a century at their age. Nevertheless, a connection served her well, so Maggie took it. “I certainly am.”

  “He rides my bus!” Holly enthused. “Andy’s funny.”

  “Oh, he’s a riot,” Maggie agreed.

  “He made up the song that the kids sing when we play kickball.”