Forsaken Repose: The Restless Dead

Dedication

To my wife. It's all worthwhile because of you.

All
works contained within are copyright Theron C. Barger. Reproduction
in any form is forbidden except excerpts to be used for the purposes
of reviews.

TABLE
OF CONTENTS

1-
Doing It For The Family

2-
The Bloom Is Off The Rose

3-
The Status Quo

Doing It For The Family

Jenna Stone drops the cardboard box onto the living room floor,
releasing a clearly audible sigh of relief as the weight falls from
her arms. Placing her left hand on her lower back, leaning back a bit
and wiping her sweat-soaked brow with the back of her right hand,
Jenna inhales and exhales deeply a few times.

“Are we done yet?” the small voice to Jenna's left
inquires of her.

Turning and stretching both arms high over her head, Jenna smiles
down at her eight year old son, Bryce. The little boy looks up at his
mother, his deep, soulful, brown eyes exposing his weariness. Jenna
reaches out a hand and tousles her son's dark brown hair.

“Yeah, we are.” Jenna shrugs and casts a sweeping
glance around the room. “Of course, we still have to put
everything away.”

“Aw,” Bryce complains, squeezing shut his eyes and
clenching his little fists. “That will take all night.”

A soft laugh escapes Jenna. “We're not going to unpack
everything tonight. I still have to do a lot of cleaning and
painting. Besides,” Jenna adds, kneeling in front of her son,
“it's not like we have a lot of stuff to unpack.”
Playfully, Jenna lifts her hand and swipes her index finger down the
bridge of her son's nose, causing him to step backward, shake his
head and laugh loudly.

Standing, Jenna points at the doorway leading to the hallway.
“Head upstairs and take a bath. You're going to your new school
tomorrow and I want you to be clean and well-rested.”

A sour look crosses Bryce's face and, for a moment, it appears as
if he is going to resist. However, being nearly exhausted, Bryce has
not the will to fight. “Okay, mom,” he says, turning and
walking through the doorway and turning left as he heads for the
stairs.

“We might not have a lot of stuff,” Jenna mutters,
looking around the living room, “but what we have sure is heavy
enough.”

Slowly, Jenna makes her way out of the living room and into the
hallway. She pulls open the front door and leans against the door
frame. The sun has completed half its descent into the horizon,
leaving the sky painted a dull orange and the white clouds shaded
dark. A cool breeze wafts past her and into the house. The house
carries a heavy, musty odor that has faded some, due in large part to
her opening every window in the place the minute she and Bryce
arrived.

Every muscle in Jenna's body screams for rest, but Jenna wants to
make certain she's locked the moving truck she rented before she
settles in and makes a quick dinner for herself and her son. The
day's work is taking its toll, and several minutes pass before Jenna
can find the strength to proceed across the porch and toward the
rental truck.

Lifting the handle of the passenger's door, Jenna finds it to be
locked. The same is true for the driver's door. Looking left and
right, the woods surrounding her newly-acquired house are dark and,
strangely, silent. Growing up, Jenna lived fairly close to a large
patch of woods and the commotion of birds and crickets was
nearly-constant in the early spring. The woods here, however, issue
no sound at all, which sends a cold chill down Jenna's spine.

Indeed, everything about the house – including how she came
to possess ownership of it in the first place – sets her nerves
on edge. Walking back toward the large, two story Victorian, Jenna
recalls the lawyer who showed up at her apartment door one day,
informing her that she was the heir to an old property. Not only did
it strike Jenna peculiar that she was the inheritor of an old house,
but that she hadn't known anything about being related to the
original owners for the first thirty-one years of her life. Jenna was
raised solely by her mother, who never spoke about – let alone
introduced Jenna to – her family. Jenna simply couldn't
understand how she could be the inheritor to a property from a family
of people that she never knew. The first she ever heard of all this
was when the lawyer, Ian Ghering, arrived to tell her. What's more,
the lawyer's sense of timing was impeccable, considering Jenna's
recent separation from her ex-boyfriend, Derick. Her ex-boyfriend's
reluctance to show his face and chip in financially to help out is
made even worse by the fact that her son is, in fact,
his
son.
Jenna is Bryce's mother through adoption, not birth. Jenna assumed
that her willingness to adopt her boyfriend's son would be enough to
have him stick around, but clearly it wasn't. Despite tolerating her
ex-boyfriend's frequent business trips that took him away from home,
sometimes for weeks at a stretch, Jenna stuck by his side and assumed
he'd always do the same for her.

When she and Derick were together, Jenna believed that she, Derick
and Bryce were what she had always hoped for – a family like
the kind she'd read about in books and seen on TV. She thought they'd
be together forever. She found she was mistaken one Dear John letter
later when Derick left, leaving Jenna to care for Bryce on her own.
Still, Jenna never took out on Bryce her anger at having been
abandoned. As far as Jenna is concerned, the second she adopted
Bryce, he became just as much her son as her deadbeat ex-boyfriend's.

The whole matter with the house struck Jenna as suspicious but,
never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Jenna gladly accepted
the house. The lawyer explained to Jenna that a home inspection
revealed the house only needs cosmetic repairs and the property taxes
are incredibly low. To Jenna, who felt she could bear the burden of
an hour-long drive to work as long as she had a fantastic house that
she could easily afford, the whole thing feels like a steal.

As for Bryce, he has always been a reserved kid. He spent a lot of
his time inside his bedroom when Jenna and Derick were together, and
he never seemed to want to bother too much with other children. Jenna
hopes this house represents a fresh start for both herself and Bryce.

Almost back on the front porch, Jenna casts an idle glance at an
upstairs window. Silhouetted behind the thin curtain lurks a tall,
gaunt figure. So unexpected is the sight, that Jenna finishes her
step onto the porch before her mind screams at her that something
isn't right. From her current position, the awning over the porch
blocks her view of the window. Quickly, she takes a step back and
stares up at the window, only to find no one standing there.

Unsatisfied the figure was merely a figment of her imagination,
Jenna races across the porch, into the house and up the stairs.
Standing at the top of the stairs and looking left and right along
the dimly lit hallway, Jenna finds all the doors to be closed.
Flipping on the light switch and waiting for the two wall lamps to
flicker to life, Jenna takes stock of her situation.

To Jenna's left (and about halfway down the hallway) stand two
doors, one directly across the hall from the other. To Jenna's right,
there stands three doors. Much like the doors to her left, two of the
doors are located about halfway down the hallway and face one another
on opposite walls. The third door is closer to where Jenna stands, on
the wall opposite her. The sounds of her son splashing in the tub and
making airplane noises are clearly audible through the door.

The figure Jenna saw was standing in her bedroom window, so Jenna
tuns left and begins taking slow, hesitant steps toward her bedroom
door. Her eyes remain locked on her bedroom door where she expects,
at any moment, for the door to be thrown open and the tall figure to
rush out at her.

Reaching her bedroom door, Jenna slowly extends a trembling hand
for the doorknob. Her fingers wrap lightly around the cold metal,
turning it slowly. Pushing open the door and then taking a step back,
Jenna's eyes quickly scan her bedroom. Several cardboard boxes and
the yet-to-be-assembled frame of her bed are the only occupants.

Inching cautiously toward the closet door on her left, Jenna once
again twists the knob and leaps away as she pushes open the door. The
closet is empty, save for a clothing rod running horizontally beneath
a bare shelf.

With only the door to the master bedroom remaining, Jenna circles
wide around the boxes and stops just in front of the door. Glancing
over her shoulder, making certain her bedroom door is still open in
the event she needs to make a hasty retreat, Jenna reaches for the
doorknob, turns it and pushes open the door. The bathroom is empty,
and a quick peek inside the claw foot tub shows it to be vacant as
well.

Sighing with relief and chalking up the vision of the tall, gaunt
figure to exhaustion, Jenna turns to exit the bathroom, only to find
a shape moving swiftly toward her. Squeezing shut her eyes, all while
screaming and flailing her arms wildly, Jenna stumbles away until her
back strikes a wall.

“Mom?”

Jenna's eyes snap open to find Bryce, naked but for a towel
wrapped around his waist, staring up at her as if she's lost her
mind.

“Are you okay?” Bryce asks, tilting his head to the
side as he scrutinizes his mother.

Jenna throws a hand over her heart, leans her head back against
the tile wall and lets loose a relieved laugh. Lifting her head and
looking directly at her son, she replies, “Yes, I'm fine. Just
a little tired, is all.” Jenna arches an eyebrow at Bryce. “Why
are you walking around wearing nothing but a towel?”

“I don't know where my clothes are,” Bryce answers,
his wide eyes and tense posture indicating he's not completely
convinced all is well. “Are you sure you're okay?”

Pushing off the wall, Jenna gently wraps her arms around her son
and hugs him. “I'm fine. I'm sorry if I scared you.”
Releasing Bryce, Jenna smiles down at him. “Let's go find your
clothes, okay?”

The corners of Bryce's mouth tug upward a bit and he reaches up to
take his mother's hand. “Okay. Do you know which box they're
in?”

“Absolutely,” Jenna replies confidently, taking her
son's hand and walking him toward the bedroom door. “All your
clothes are in boxes in your room, and the box sitting on the wooden
chair has the clothes you'll need for bed. We'll also find you
something to wear to school tomorrow.”

Jenna leads her son out of her bedroom and across the hall to his
own room. Very little of the setting sun's rays pierce the thin
curtains covering the pair of windows in her son's bedroom, so Jenna
flips on the light and takes a step into the room, stopping suddenly
when she hears a splash underneath her foot. Looking down, Jenna
finds a puddle of water underneath her shoe. Her eyes follow the
watery trail that leads from the bedroom door, to the sole chair in
the room and that ends at a vent set into the floor near the window
to her left.

Squeezing tightly her son's hand, Jenna takes a step back,
dragging Bryce backward with her. With as much calm as she can
muster, Jenna asks Bryce, “Were you in here a minute ago?”

Bryce looks up at his mother with concern etched on his face. “No.
Why?”

“Your floor is wet,” Jenna observes, throwing a quick
glance over Bryce's head at the hallway leading to the bathroom. A
watery path stretches from the bathroom to Bryce's door. Looking over
her shoulder into her bedroom, the floor is bone dry. Not a single
drop of water lies on the floor of her room.

“Mom?” Bryce's voice wavers as he utters the question.

In the next instant, Jenna pulls Bryce into her bedroom and slams
shut the door. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Jenna's mind races as
she attempts to figure out her next move.

“Mom?” Bryce's voice is more insistent now, demanding
some form of reassurance.

“It's okay,” Jenna says, although even she can hear
the near-panic in her voice. Shaking her head once, she forces a
smile and looks down at her son. “Everything is fine. I think
we might just have a plumbing problem.”

Bryce's brow furrows a bit. In a tone that makes clear he's not
entirely convinced, Bryce replies, “Oh, okay.”

It suddenly occurs to Jenna that her son is still wearing nothing
but a towel. Determined to get her son's clothes, but not at all
eager to enter her son's room – much less with her son in tow –
Jenna considers her options. She could leave her son in her room
while she rushes into his and snatches out some clothes for him to
wear, but that would leave him alone briefly. On the other hand, she
could take him with her, but if whatever made that watery trail is
still inside his room, she'd be leading her son into danger.