Well, clearly I didn't make it through this Halloween Challenge one bit - maybe the next one will go better? I got one story out at the beginning of the month and then pooped out for the following four weeks after. Granted, there were plenty of ideas, I made a lot of progress brainstorming stories but what I gained in preparation I lost in the execution. So, instead of sharing an appropriately scary story (as I've finished absolutely nothing this past month, big surprise there) I thought I'd share some of what happens next from my story that I started in an earlier post of mine. (Spoiler alert! It's not finished, though that's not much of a spoiler now than it is an inevitability). Enjoy!
Jack hated returning home. Tarrytown, New York was a small village a few hours north of Manhattan where the great Hudson river petered off into a smaller tributary and the term upstate really did mean upstate instead of merely Westchester County and Yonkers. It was filled with the soft, quiet sort of people that were content to slowly spend their lives tucked away in their little corner of the world before humbly dying and laid to rest in the village cemetery alongside generations of other soft and quiet people. It was for good reason that Tarrytown was nicknamed Sleepy Hollow. With four traffic lights, one grocery market, a small lending library, the post office, and an odd old schoolhouse, the town was sleepier than most others north of them in New England. With all the lights of NYC below, Jack had fled for the city the first chance he got, then onward across the country, and he never looked back.
But now here he was, driving into Sleepy Hollow in a borrowed ford pickup truck with all of his hopes and dreams piled into slightly damp cardboard boxes and stacked together like tetris cubes. He never thought he would ever return.
The letter burned against his leg, shoved away in his pants pocket and creased with a thousand folds since its initial opening. He could feel it pulsing in time with his heart, a steady drumbeat through the thick denim, and he steadfastly ignored it. It was a death march and a summons, sealed with the cloying smell of gardenias that lingered for far too long in the air. He could smell it even now, days later and miles away from when he received it; the scent was in his hair and his shirt and his mouth and his lungs, threatening to drown him with the news that it carried.
Dearest Jack,
Your father is dying. It is not so urgent that I needed to phone you, but it is urgent enough that I am calling you home. Please, he hasn’t much time now. Doctor Richards says it is a matter of months, likely before the year is out. He is asking for you. It has been too long. You need to come home.
I have asked around and there is an opening in town at the school. Mrs. Horten has recently retired and her music class desperately needs an appropriate substitute. Darling, I know it’s not what you wanted, but this way you can stay. You can stay with us.
Jack, death has a way of changing us and time can heal all wounds. The past matters little, in the end. Your father has not forgotten, but he is ready to forgive. I can only hope that you can too.
All my love,
Mom
With a watery cough, Jack tugged at the handle on the truck door and slowly cranked the window open. It got stuck three quarters of the way down, but it was enough to chase away the smell of his mother’s perfume and clear a bit of the ache in his gut. It smelled better up here. Time in the city had clogged his lungs with smoke and exhaust, but the clean autumn air upstate did a world of good.
He turned off US-9 onto Old Broadway leading into town. Traffic light number one, the post office, Gunther’s Groceries, traffic light number two and the library, then a sharp left at the railroad tracks, and he was tumbling along the dirt road that bisected the town between north and south. A steep curve around the old Dutch church with its cemetery and he hit the covered bridge. Jack nervously gunned the engine a bit to hurry across the bridge, and the old truck rattled and echoed against the wooden planks as it crossed. Childhood superstition spurred him to cross it quickly, a childhood superstition that - though he hadn’t been back in Sleepy Hollow for almost a decade - still made him check his rearview mirror for any stray horses on the road and for any headless riders upon it.
Safely across and with no one behind him, Jack continued for a few more miles northwest out of town to reach his own home. Like everything else in Tarrytown (Sleepy Hollow), his house was a historical relic. Built before the revolution was even an idea in the minds of the founding fathers, the early 18th century Dutch two story brick home had been in the family for generations. To his mother, the home represented the long standing history and honor that the family carried, and it was a source of great pride every year to be a part of the parade of homes that showcased significant historical pieces of the town. To Jack, it was just another reason to get out as soon as he could.
Jack pulled into the circular drive in front of the home and as he did, he thought he caught something in his rearview mirror, a flash of darkened shadow or something else across the reflection. But when he blinked, the shadow was gone, and it left him feeling like an idiot to let the local superstitions get to him. He was better than that. Sleepy Hollow was not haunted, no matter what the legends said.
With a loud whine and some irritated clanking, the truck ground to a stop and Jack unfolded himself from the small cab. Long legs shook out the stiffness of the drive and his back cracked as he stretched his arms up over his head. Deciding he would be better off waiting to unpack, he slammed the truck door closed with a rust laden thump and started up the driveway to the door.
“Jack!”
Before he could even raise a fist to knock on the painted wood, the door was opening and he found himself inside the house and with his arms full of his mother. She was nearly a foot shorter than him and she had her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling his head down to her height so she could kiss him gently on the cheek.
“Jack, thank you so much for coming home,” she said, releasing his neck and pushing on his shoulders to get a better look at him. “It’s good to have you back.”
Jack returned the hug and kiss before she let go, and then straightened up to his full height so she could look him over. “Thanks mom, I’m glad to see you too.” He didn’t mention how the smell of her perfume flooding his nostrils sent a wave of nausea through his gut, undoing the benefits from the earlier open truck window.
“Come on in dear,” she turned and led him through the entryway, closing the door behind him as she did. “Your old room is ready for you upstairs, I haven’t touched it much since you’ve been gone.”
“Thanks, I’ll get the boxes later,” he said, following her into the kitchen. The words of the letter hung in the air between them, unspoken and unwanted. It was as if they avoided mentioning anything, then Jack’s father would no longer be dying and this would be like any other visit home from a long lost son. If the words were left unsaid, then they couldn’t be true.
“Was the drive difficult?” his mother asked, pulling down mugs from a cabinet and filling the kettle with water. When in doubt, make tea and small talk.
He shook his head and took the tin of tea leaves from her. “No, not so bad at all. My friend Bill lent me his truck. Not much need for it in the city and it’s about on it’s last leg anyway.”
“Well if you need another vehicle, let me know. You know we’ve got plenty around here,” she said, not quite meeting Jack’s eyes at this small reference to his father.
“Thank you mom, but Billy’s truck should do fine. The school isn’t that far away, I can make do.” He busied himself with scooping out a spoonful of tea leaves into a small strainer, which he carefully placed in his mother’s favorite teapot. It was painted with pink roses and gold trimmed, far too dainty to pair well with the large starbucks location souvenir collectible edition mug from NYC and the short squat mug declaring Best Mom Ever, but he had broken two of the teacups from the set over the years and she no longer trusted him with those that remained.
“I told Principal Sanders that you can start on Monday. He’s been letting the children play the recorder quite haphazardly and the poor substitute they’ve found can’t tell the difference between a quarter note and a quarter rest. He was happy to hear that you’d be taking over the position,” she said.
“Well I can’t say that I’ll be any good at teaching them the recorder, but I can certainly get them to read a little music. It’ll be better than forcing them to listen to Mozart every day at least,” he said with a forced little smile. He could remember that his music teacher when he was younger was convinced that children were in desperate need for the classics, and would always play the long symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart as a means of forcing them to appreciate good music and none of that new metal and disco rap sound they enjoyed so much.
“That’s true,” his mother said and huffed a small laugh. “Your father couldn’t get enough of the classics either.”
They quickly lapsed into silence, the truth looming in front of them that neither really wanted to face. Jack couldn’t bring himself to bring his father up. Dying though he may be, they had not parted ways as father and son when last he was home and he had no idea how he was going to get through this. He hated everything about this situation. He didn’t want to be here and he wished that it wasn’t his father on his deathbed that brought him back.
The harsh sound of the kettle whistle jostled him out of his thoughts and he quickly snatched it up before his mother could, pouring the hot water into the prepared teapot. He let the leaves steep in silence for a few moments and then split the steaming liquid between the two mugs, handing her the short squat one he had made for her back when he was in the third grade and taking the souvenir NYC one for himself.
“He’s asleep upstairs right now, but he continues to ask for you Jack.” The whisper was thrown to him through a veil of steam, his mother almost hiding behind the mug she had raised to her lips.
He didn’t say anything, just gulped at his tea and burned his tongue and his mouth as the hot liquid slid down his throat.
“Please Jack, say something dear.”
He slammed his mug down with a sharp crack. “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to apologize to him? Say that I regret calling him an old fool and for running away? That I’m sorry that he was so blinded to what I wanted that he never gave me a chance to speak? Because I won’t, I don’t know why I’m even here. The bastard can rot in his grave for all I care.”
His mother didn't look at him. Just calmly set her mug on the counter and cupped her hands around the edges. “You don’t mean that Jack.”
He snorted and she snapped her head up to look at him. “You can’t mean it Jack. He’s your father.”
“The man stopped being my father the day he threw me out of his house.” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. It was getting long again, he would need a cut soon. “I came back for you mom, I’m not sure why, but I did it for you.”
“I had hoped you did it to see your father. I don’t care what happened between the two of you, you owe him this much.” Her voice had hardened into steel and her grip on the mug tightened until her knuckles stood white against the painted blue porcelain.
Jack spread his arms. “I’m here aren’t I? I came home. Let me do this in my time,” he said, then slumped back over to rest his forearms on the counter, breaking eye contact with his mother.
“Don’t take too long, he hasn’t got much time left,” she said, that steel edge still sharp in her voice. A steel edge that brokered no further argument.
He gulped the remainder of his tea down, still hot, and clattered his mug into the sink. “I’m going out for a walk, clear my head. I’ll be back in a bit.”
She stared him down, but nodded her consent.
An almost apology in his eyes for starting an argument the first fifteen minutes he’d been home in nearly a decade, he brushed gently past her towards the front door. He paused in the hallway to look up the spiraling staircase towards the second floor and the inevitable reunion he would have to make. In the third bedroom to the right lay his father, dying now of a cancer thought to have been beaten five years ago, but was surging forward with a ferocity and swiftness that could not be denied a second time. He still didn’t know how to feel, didn’t know what he was going to say. Anger and hurt and grief and confusion swirled around him, turning his stomach and clenching his fists. He couldn’t do it right now. Couldn’t do anything.
He turned away and walked out the front door.
Well, that's all I've got for scary stories (or the makings of a scary story). I've taken some artistic and geographic liberty with this one, so no nitpicking on some details that I already know are different. There's another writing challenge just around the corner coming up in November (more on that later), so we'll see if I make it to that one...
Happy Halloween!
:) Kathryn
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