Blood and Bone: A Smattering of Unease (11 page)

“Go get a cold, wet towel!”

When Nathan stayed rooted to the spot, transfixed, Maryann shouted, “Nathan,
go!
”

He started, then ran upstairs to the bathroom and grabbed the towel off the rack and turned on the “Cold” tap in the sink. As he ran water over the towel he heard his mother screaming.

“You ate Harry P! That’s my child’s pet, you little
bipedal rat thing!
”

Leaving the water running in the sink, Nate raced down the stairs.

“Put the towel over it! Quick!”

Nate threw the cold, dripping towel over the thing’s head. Even as Maryann screamed at him to wrap the creature up, he was swaddling the writhing creature, rendering it immobile.

Maryann gasped, sweat running in rivulets down her face. Her hands dripped blood.

“Mom, are you okay?” Nate looked as though he was going to cry.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, see? All I need to do is wash my hands and wrap them up, and I’ll be fine. Could you help me?”

The two of them headed up to the bathroom, Nate still hanging on to the struggling thing in the towel.

Maryann rinsed her trembling hands in the cold water Nate had left running. There were several nasty puncture marks in the webbing between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, the other had one single slash across the palm. There were teeth marks in several places where the creature had bitten her.

Nate held the bottle of peroxide firmly in one hand while Maryann turned the cap. She held her hands over the sink and he dumped the peroxide liberally on them. She inhaled through her teeth at the stinging.

“What is this thing, Mom?” Nate asked.

“I don’t know. It came out of Gordie’s toy box.”

“What are we going to do with it?”

“I’d love to kill the thing, but we’re going to call Animal Control and let them deal with it, because I have no other ideas.”

Nate found some gauze and a couple of rolled bandages; they worked together to get her hands wrapped.

When the Animal Control officers arrived, they managed to get the screeching creature into a cage.

“You’d better make sure that cage door is chained up so that it can’t get out. Because I can almost promise you that it will figure out that simple slide latch. And it’s mean!”

“Where did you find it?” Asked Officer Patel, the younger of the two responders. He didn’t look much older than Nate.

“It came out of my younger son’s toy box,” Maryann told them. She led them to Gordie’s room and showed them the spit, the ashes, the pile of bones, and the tunic under Gordie’s bed.

“That thing roasted my little boy’s hamster on that spit and ate it while he was sleeping in his bed last night,” she said “Then it attacked me when it came sneaking out looking for more. Have you guys ever seen something like this before?”

The two men looked at each other. Officer Dillard, the elder and stouter of the two, said, “No ma’am. I can’t recall ever seeing anything like this. The thing is intelligent enough to use tools, cook,
and
make clothing?” He shook his head and looked at Maryann’s bandaged hands. “I think you’d better go to the hospital and get those looked at, just in case. You might even consider a rabies shot,” he said. “Do you know where this thing came from, in the first place? You got a basement? Have you seen any more?”

“Yes, we have a basement,” Maryann said. “Do you really think there might be more than one?”

“We don’t know how many there are. This is something new and different, to us, anyway. Another agency may have come across this; we’re going to try to find out. I think it would be a good idea to get hold of a wildlife management agency, and have your placed swept for more of these critters. With something as aggressive as this, it’s better to be safe than sorry.” He glanced at the thing in the cage. It was rattling the wire bars, emitting short shrieks, sounding like an angry bird. “Do you and your kids have a place you could stay for a couple of days?”

Maryann gave Nate a troubled look. “I guess we could probably stay at Aunt Janice’s,” she said.

“Cool!” Nate exclaimed.

“Do you really think this is serious enough to warrant us leaving?”

“Like I said, ma’am, in this case, I think we should be cautious. At least until we can make sure the property is clear.”

Maryann sighed. “Okay, we’d better pack some clothes for a couple of days. Nate, dial the phone for me, would you? You’ll have to hold the phone for me, too.”

Nate laughed a little and she gave him a look. “I know it isn’t funny, Mom, but it is, just a little.”

Maryann turned back to the officers. “We’ll get Gordie off the bus and then we’ll be go.”

“We’ll give you a call when set up a meeting with wildlife management,” Officer Dillard said. “Will you be available to let us in?”

“I’ll have Nathan unlock the door for you. Just let me know.”

Maryann and Nate met Gordie at the school bus, and they all piled into the car.

“Where are we going, guys? Hey, did you find Harry P?” Gordie asked.

“We’re going to Aunt Janice’s to stay for a couple of days,” Maryann said. “And no, we didn’t find Harry P, yet. I’m sorry.”

His face fell. “What if we never find him?”

“Well, it looks like he escaped. He’s probably living it up by now, chewing his way through a cereal box in the cupboard. There are enough warm and cozy places for him to hide in the house. He’s probably found a place to make a nice nest.”

“If we don’t find him, I’m going to miss him. I love him so much!” Gordie’s voice sounded tearful.

“I know, Gordie, and I really am sorry that we lost him,” Maryann said. “We all love him, and we’ll miss him, too.”

Nate drove them to Janice’s where they dropped Gordie off, and then took his mother to the hospital to have her hands checked.

Animal Control scheduled a sweep of the Zeik property the next morning.

Meanwhile, in a maze of countless subterranean tunnels far beneath the basement floor, hundreds of six-inch tall creatures grew restless as they waited for their scout to return.

Bereavement Services, LLP

Juniper wiped through the foamy fog of lemon-scented furniture polish, clearing it from the sideboard’s surface until the walnut finish glowed. There; the dusting was done.

She had gotten the daily chores down to a science, and what had once taken the better part of each day now took only a couple of hours, leaving the rest of the day free. Simon didn’t know that, though, and Juniper wasn’t about to volunteer the information. He thought she spent all of her time slaving away.

That’s the way it had been during the first few months of their marriage. He had loaded her down with so many tasks that it was nearly impossible to complete them all by 5:30 p.m., when he came home from work. She was often sweaty and disheveled, dinner either still cooking or burned, the kitchen a mess, when he walked through the door.

Eventually, Juniper managed to coordinate everything and became efficient at her work. She completed the chores with time to spare, and used that extra `time for herself. She read books, watched television, or relaxed on the rear patio with a drink, observing the comings and goings of the wildlife in the woods and fields that surrounded the house. Simon came home every evening to a hot, perfectly prepared dinner awaiting him on the polished and elegantly set dining room table.

After a few days of being greeted coolly at the door, Simon questioned how his pretty young wife was spending her days. At the time, she was unaware that he
wanted
her to be flustered, frazzled, and exhausted, running around the house in a panic, trying to get things done by the time he arrived.

He had not been pleased at Juniper’s explanation of efficiency. The reprimand, as usual, was physically harsh, and he doubled her list of chores, practically pushing her out of bed the next morning to start work despite her freshly bruised ribs.

He shook his finger at her. “Don’t ever let me catch you sitting around reading worthless smutty romance novels or watching television,” he said. “I didn’t marry you to use up my electricity watching Jerry Springer and those other idiotic reality shows all day long.”

His newly wedded wife didn’t bother to argue that she watched the History and Discovery channels, not reality television. Nor did she correct him and tell him that she read books from his own library; it really would have hit the fan, then. She had learned enough of his obsessive-compulsive habits to make sure each book looked untouched when she returned it to its shelf each day.

She had learned enough to remain silent about why she thought he had married her, to begin with: she had thought he’d loved her. He had been good to her when they met. A gentleman. Well-mannered. Generous. Attentive. Affectionate.

But as soon as they had crossed the threshold of his home, the crash course in Simon Kurst’s marriage practices had begun. She was, for all intents and purposes, his servant. His possession. To use as he saw fit.

The honeymoon, as they say, was over.

Juniper learned many things early on in her marriage, such as how not to speak unless spoken to; how not to argue; how to correctly clean the house, wash the clothes and dishes, dust the furniture. Everything had to be done exactly to Simon’s specifications; and the smallest details were subjected to Simon’s meticulous daily inspection – down to the measuring and marking of the liquid laundry detergent bottle.

The one thing she didn’t worry about were the already opened wine bottles; the glass was too dark for Simon to see the levels of the liquid inside, so he didn’t mark them. He marked the vodka, the scotch, and the rum bottles. Juniper didn’t like any of those, so she never had to worry about replacing the contents of any of them.

One of her lessons was that even though Simon expected perfection of Juniper, he was suspicious when he received it. What she learned from this were which trace items to leave undone: enough to allay his suspicions, but not enough to earn extreme punishment.

Two years later, however, nothing had changed – except for Juniper. Finding herself repeatedly on the receiving end of Simon’s unpredictable and inescapable rage, she had become increasingly rebellious, though she didn’t show it. Where once she had been soft and loving, she had become hard and indifferent. She was just waiting.

Now, as she opened the sideboard drawer and prepared to polish the silver, she heard the familiar drone of the mail truck, which drove by every day at quarter past eleven. It never stopped there. All of the mail went to Simon’s office or to his post office box.

When the sound of the truck’s motor slowed, failing to fade into the distance, Juniper left the silver and peered out the bay window. She watched as the small, square truck drove carefully down the driveway and stopped. Cutting the engine, the mail carrier jumped out.

She reached the door just as the knock came.

The mail carrier held a small envelope. “Are you Mrs. Juniper Henry Kurst?” he asked her. She nodded, and he indicated where she should sign on the green and white receipt. He tore it off at the perforations, handed her the envelope, and touched his cap. “Have a good afternoon, ma’am.”

After the truck had reversed up the driveway and trundled away, Juniper turned the envelope over. It was an off-white greeting card envelope, roughly textured, addressed to her and lacking a return address. She hesitated only a second before she tucked it into her back pocket and grabbed the hose to wash the mail truck’s dusty tire tracks from the driveway. The warmth of the summer sun would dry the asphalt long before Simon came home from work.

Inside, Juniper sat on the sofa and slid her finger along the edge of the flap, separating it from the envelope. She pulled out a card that matched the envelope, along with a self-addressed, stamped return envelope. On the card were penned a few short lines, together with a return address. The card was signed “Uncle Drew”.

Her heart fluttered with joy and her spirit lifted. Uncle Drew was not her real uncle, but her father’s best friend, so he may as well have been family. They had grown fond of each other when she was growing up.

She sat for a moment, contemplating the postmark and thinking about what this really meant.

During the first few months of her marriage, the newly wedded Juniper had often thought of Andrew, wishing there were some way she could contact him. She needed help, but didn’t know how to get it. Her parents were both deceased; and Simon’s isolation tactics had succeeded in driving away the two or three good friends she’d once had. Now she was alone, with no one at her back. She wasn’t permitted to drive any of Simon’s three vehicles or to use the telephone, unless it was a call she was making for him or if he was close by, listening in. She was flat-out banned from using the internet.

She never attempted to do any of those things, for fear that her husband would find out. He often warned her that if she tried to leave him, he would kill her.

Juniper believed him.

She had never thought of the solution that stared her in the face for two years, so obvious that she could have kicked herself. The old mailbox at the top of the driveway, sitting abandoned and unnoticed. Finding stamps might have been a problem . . . but still, the United States Postal Service held the key.

Juni, you’re an idiot
, she thought, echoing Simon’s favorite put-down.

She glanced at the clock. It was quarter to twelve! She needed to send a reply; however, she had too much left to do right now – including finding a hiding place for her post card.

She went upstairs into their bedroom and scanned for an inconspicuous spot. Finally, she decided on the carpet that covered the hardwood beneath their bed.

With some effort, she lifted the left corner of the bed. She slid the envelope between the hardwood and the carpet, at the corner, pushing it far in, beyond where the bed frame’s foot would rest. She lowered the foot gently down and stepped back to inspect the carpet.

It looked completely undisturbed.

* * *

Simon blinked groggily. His head throbbed. He turned over, pulling the blanket to cover him, and became aware of his sore arms; a steady ache that spread down through his hands. He raised his right hand to look. His knuckles were swollen and smeared with dried blood.

His slight groan brought the pounding in his head to a furious crescendo. With his knee, he nudged his wife, who lay next to him on top of the covers, still wearing yesterday’s clothes.

“Juni, go get me an ice pack and some pain killers. I’m wicked hungover.” When she didn’t stir, he nudged her harder. “Juni, come
on
!”

She didn’t move.

“Dammit,” he said, and sat up. Vertigo rushed through his head and nausea roiled in his stomach. He sat very still for a moment, willing both sensations to go away. When he felt a little more stable, he reached over and shook Juniper, wincing at the pain in his knuckles. “Wake up, lazy ass, I need some pain killers!”

When there was still no reaction, Simon cursed again and threw off his blankets. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and felt for his slippers with his feet. Not finding them, he gingerly tilted his head and looked down. Juniper had forgotten to set his slippers next to the bed.

Worthless!
He thought.

He stumbled around, searching. When he found the slippers, he shoved his feet into them and made his wobbly way to the bathroom.

The pain in Simon’s head made it difficult for him to focus as he rifled through the medicine cabinet. He finally found some acetaminophen and swallowed four of the tablets. Drinking from the cup he kept on the bathroom sink, he chased them down with lukewarm tap water. A wave of nausea washed over him and he clung to the edge of the sink, sweating.

Man, what a hangover! He needed something in his empty stomach.

“Juniper!” He called. “Get up and make me some breakfast!” He listened for a response, for the sounds of Juniper stirring. He heard nothing. Sighing, he looked at himself in the mirror above the sink. Squinting, bloodshot brown eyes looked back at him, the lines in the skin around them seeming somehow deeper than they had the day before.

He used the toilet and gave his hands a cursory rinse. The broken, torn skin on his knuckles smarted beneath the running water.

He stumbled back into the bedroom, to the side of the bed where his wife still lay sleeping.  “You’re really letting me down, here, Juni. You know what happens when you let me down.” Ignoring his aches and pains, he grabbed her shoulder and shook her forcefully. He suddenly drew his hand back: something didn’t feel right. Her shoulder, her arm . . . felt . . .
rigid
. And not even lukewarm. “Oh, shit,” he said.

Simon bent to examine her more closely. Her honey colored hair looked rusty, stiff with dried blood. He pushed it away from her face. The black and blue bruise around her eye stood out against her pale skin, as did the dried blood that had dripped down her cheek and down the front of her white shirt. He put his hand under her nostrils, but failed to detect a warm breath. He lowered his ear to her nose and mouth and listened, again trying to detect a puff of breath, but none came. He put his palm flat against the fabric at the middle of her chest, but felt no heartbeat; neither did he feel a pulse beneath his fingers against her chill, stiff wrist.

Nothing.

He threw his hands in the air. His thin lips flattened across his narrow, tan face. His brow furrowed, deepening the already permanent ruts across his forehead.
Stupid woman should have known better than to piss me off!
It was her own fault.

Now, Juniper had put him into a delicate position. He had to figure out what he was going to do with her. And he had to figure out who was going to take care of his house.
Who’s going to cook, wash my clothes? At least she could do that . . . and keep house. Now I have to waste money and pay someone. Until I’m remarried.

And what about the criminal part of it? Simon was smart enough to know that law enforcement wouldn’t be reasonable enough to realize that he had simply punished Juniper for her disobedience and that her death was the result of her own actions.
It was her own fault.
Hell, it was more or less suicide.

At least she didn’t have any friends and family that he needed to worry about. Still, if Juniper just disappeared completely, there would be questions.

Hands on his bony hips, Simon stared down at his wife’s lifeless form.

He could get rid of her body and say that she had disappeared, that she had left him. Why not?
No body, evidence no crime, right? Isn’t that how it goes?

That’s
what he would do. Get rid of Juniper’s body.

But before he took care of the details, he would have a good breakfast, even if he had to make it himself. He would need his strength for the morning’s activities. Then was going to clean himself up. A nice hot shower would make him feel like a new man.

The acetaminophen had kicked in, and Simon felt somewhat normal again. Cheered that he had formed a plan of action, he whistled as he shrugged into his robe and tied it as he headed downstairs.