Bentley Little - The House

never told Mom and Dad and I never said a word about it to anyone until now."

Laurie picked up the photo again, looked at the face of the grim woman who had been her mother.

She could see her throwing a lamb down hard enough to kill it.

"I dreamed about Dawn and a butcher. You saw my mom slaughter a lamb. This is just too close for comfort."

Josh nodded. "I agree."

"I want to see the house," Laurie said. "I want to go there. You said you'd recognize the name of the town if you saw it?"

"I just need something to jog my memory."

"Let's find a map, then."

"All right." Josh looked at her. "Let's do it."

They left before dawn, and it was still only midmorning by the time they reached the town of Pine Creek.

The country here was beautiful. Wooded foothills, redwoods, the snowcapped Sierras high to the east. The two-lane road wound through valleys and skirted canyons, twin borders of green leafy ferns hemming in both sides, low gray clouds providing a ceiling to the forest, light mist shrouding the shadowed areas between the trees.

But Laurie barely registered the scenery flying by the windows. She kept trying to remember exactly how her parents had been killed. They'd been murdered--of that she was fairly sure--but the details remained hazy, the specifics unspecific, and try as she might, she could not mentally reconstruct the events that had led to her adoption.

She had only a vague feeling that the girl, Dawn, was involved somehow and that the grim couple in the photograph whom she knew to be her biological parents had died a horrible, gruesomely unnatural death.

It all came back to her when she saw the house.

They drove out of Pine Creek and down a narrow winding road. Josh said nearly everything had changed in the years since he'd been there. There'd been no McDonald's in town then, no Wal-Mart, no Holiday Inn, and the condos that had sprung up on seemingly every side of Pine Creek had certainly not been there.

But he grew quiet as they drove into the countryside, as they moved farther away from town. He recognized this road, he said. He recognized this area. And Laurie could tell from his tone of voice that he felt the same oppressive dread she did as the car sped beneath the overhanging branches of the trees.

They drove up and down side roads, pulling in and backing out of long dirt drives, and after an hour or so, through this process of trial and error, they finally found it.

The house.

It looked exactly as they both remembered. It had not been repainted or refurbished. It had not deteriorated or gone to seed. It looked just as it had all those years ago.

And everything came back to her.

It was as if an entirely new door had been opened in her mind. Memories suddenly flooded in: knowledge, emotions, events, sensations. Things so thoroughly forgotten that she'd been unaware she'd ever known them, their presence in her mind having left not even a residual trace.

She recalled the meal rituals, the way they'd all held hands and hummed before eating breakfasts that corresponded precisely to the dawn, dinners that always accompanied sundown.

She remembered Mr.Billington , the man who lived with them, the man who was supposed to have been her father's friend but of whom her father had always seemed afraid and who apparently had no intention of ever leaving.

She remembered the animals. The way her mother had incorporated their unpredictable disappearances and sometimes terrifying reappearances into children's stories designed to make her feel that this was normal and not something of which she should be afraid.

She remembered her parents' deaths.

She'd been playing with Dawn, not in the woods, where Dawn wanted to play, but in the barn, which was also supposed to be off-limits. They were practicing their marriage ceremony, Dawn as usual taking the role of both minister and groom. For rings, they had Coke can pull-tabs and were wearing wreaths they'd woven from weeds. Laurie pretended to be enjoying the game, but there was something unsettling about it all, about Dawn's solemnity and almost ferocious dedication to strict marriage tradition.

Dawn had just pronounced them husband and wife and had given herself permission to kiss the bride when they heard a softly muttered "Shit!" from the yard outside.

"Hide!" Dawn ordered.

Laurie hurriedly ducked into the tool closet, closing the door. It was her father, and she knew he'd take the strap to her if he caught her in the barn after he'd specifically told her she was never to go near it.

She expected Dawn to follow her or to find a hiding place of her own, but her friend stood her ground as the big door opened and her father entered.

"Hello, Ralph," Dawn said.

Ralph! She dared to call him by his first name?

Against all odds, her father didn't seem to mind.

Didn't seem to even notice. To Laurie's shock and surprise, her father chuckled, and in a voice more tender than any she'd ever heard him use with her mother or herself, he said, "Dawn."

There was whispering then, whispering and low murmuring, and what sounded like her father's belt buckle being unfastened.

Was Dawn going to get the strap?

Laurie knew it was dangerous, knew she should remain still and quiet, but she could not resist, she had to know what was going on, and she pushed open the door a fraction of an inch and peeked through the crack.

She didn't know what she'd expected to see, but it was definitely not this.

This was something she could not have thought up in her wildest imaginings.

Her father stood there, in the center of the barn, and his pants were pulled down. Dawn was kneeling before him and his hands were on her head and his peepee was in her mouth.

Laurie grimaced with distaste, not crying out in disgust only because of the fear that now filled her completely.

She did not know what was going on out there, she did not understand what was happening, but it made her sick inside and she felt like throwing up. Holding her fingers against the door, she slowly let it close.

She was suddenly certain that Dawn had known this would happen, had known her father was coming to the barn.

And had wanted her to see it.

The tool closet had another door at its opposite end, one that led outside to the yard, and carefully, quietly, Laurie inched toward it, careful not to touch or disturb the scythes and machetes, rakes and clippers hanging on the walls. Her father was saying something, murmuring in a low soothing voice, and she did not want to hear it, she did not want to know what it was.

There was no lock on the rough wooden door, no catch, but the hinges were squeaky, and she pushed the door open slowly, slowly, trying to prevent the escape of a single sound. When there was enough room between the door and the jamb for her to sneak out, she slid through and, just as slowly, closed the door once again.

She hurried across the open yard and was almost to the house when she saw her mother emerging from the garage, carrying what looked like the can of gasoline her father used for the tractor. Laurie was about to call out, but she changed her mind when she saw the look of grim determination and single-minded purpose on her mother's face.

The feelings of shock and disgust within her were replaced by a feeling of dread, the overwhelming sense that her mother knew what was going on in the barn and was going to do something about it.

Laurie wanted to hide, to run upstairs to her room and pretend that none of this was going on and play with her dolls until her mother called her for lunch, but she knew that ignoring what was happening would not make it go away, and she was not at all sure that her mother would even be making lunch today.

She was not sure that her mother--or her father-- would still be alive come lunchtime.