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Chapter One: New Neighbors
A suburban city just under fifty miles away from the state capital, Clovedale was a utopia of second generation wealth with long rows of perfectly spaced three story houses that stretched for miles, each with large rolling lawns of green that were never neglected. In front of these houses were long, wide lanes that were lined with tall, healthy sycamores. Clovedale was precisely the place that you would see those old fashioned street lamps made of black iron and that were tall and skinny, topped by engraved boxes with white glass not quite transparent enough to see through, but just thin enough that the glow from the light bulb within would give off a perfect, rustic amount of light to see one’s path in the dark by.
In Clovedale, there were three elementary schools, two junior high schools, and one high school where anyone with parents of considerable societal rank were sent to be judged and to learn how to judge others.
Catherine Blaire had been drawn into it all from the first day she had walked its halls, read in its classrooms, and ate in its lunch room, but three years had passed and Catherine was a different person.
She was taller than most of the other girls, but not tall enough to really stand out. She had a pleasant face, with her mother’s high cheekbones and green eyes and her father’s delicate nose, chestnut brown hair, and round chin. Her hands, small and elegant, were from another generation; one where little girls played pianos and were never asked for much. Her body, naturally slender was kept firm through rigorous abdominal videos provided by her mother.
“Is she all right?” asked a calm voice through the mists.
“I don’t know, she hasn’t been conscious yet,” replied another, more frantic one that was closer and more distinct.
“Why hasn’t anyone gotten her out yet?” someone barked and suddenly Catherine realized she couldn’t breath.
“The door’s jammed… we were waiting for the fire truck to get here with the jaws.”
“She’s moving-” the calm voice said. “Honey?” Catherine tried to open her eyes, tried to respond, but it was like her brain was growing heavier and heavier and she couldn’t use it to think. “Honey? Can you tell me your name?” the voice asked, it’s falsely sweet tone dripping through her sense like nails on chalkboard. “I need you to answer me if you can… can you look at me sweetheart?”
Catherine felt the breath return to her chest and willed her eyes to open. When they did, dull, cool sunlight filtered in and she had to close them again until they could adjust.
“What’s your name?” the voice asked and Catherine finally had a face to put with the voice. It was an older gentleman with a kindly look on his face, but his voice was ringing with false kindness.
“Catherine,” she answered, her voice weak and hoarse. “Fuck… what happened?” she asked as she tried to move her arms and legs. Looking down she could see that she was smashed into the dashboard, her legs caught underneath. The twisted metal of the door trapped her left arm and her right was lying useless at her side. Realization suddenly traveled from her senses to her mind and that was when the throbbing began. The rest was a blur.
“Catherine, honey, you were in an automobile accident. The ambulance is here, but we’re still waiting on the fire engine. It should be here any minute—don’t move though… Just lean back,” the calming voice said and Catherine did as she was told. “Everything is going to be all right.”
She sighed as everything went black and she was yet again whisked off to another place entirely.
“What?” Catherine asked, suddenly realizing that Ella had asked her something. She looked into her friend’s blue eyes, which were narrowed in disgust.
“What’s with you?” she drawled again after taking another bite and chewing it much the same way. “I mean, where do you go when you look like that?”
“Look like what?” Catherine snapped, feeling irritation slowly build. It started as a burning in her throat and a heaviness in her head that began to spread throughout the rest of her body.
“Like you’re off in la la land visiting someone you used to know,” Ella replied and Catherine’s anger dissipated.
“I was just thinking,” Catherine said vaguely and Ella guffawed.
“About…” she led, and Catherine’s cheeks turned pink.
“Well… I was just--”
“Michael!” Ella suddenly shouted as she jumpstarted from her seat and Catherine looked behind her to see what had distracted her friend. She then watched as Michael Johnson approached and swept Ella into his arms with as little effort as it took for him tackle sophomore quarterbacks.
“I’ll see you later Ella,” Catherine said as she stood and pulled her bag over her shoulder. Ella nodded, not even deigning to give her a verbal reply and Catherine shook her head slowly as she walked away.
School had been over nearly an hour and Catherine had no ride home. Her mother and father were at work and besides Ella, she didn’t know anyone else with a driver’s license.
So, with her head bent against the wind. Catherine began the two and a half mile walk home.
As she walked, her mind reverted to the subject it seemed most fond of very lately. Her suicide.
The first time the word had dropped into her mind was three weeks after the accident when she had crawled into the darkest, deepest place in the back of her mind and thought she would never come out.
At first, she had been horrified and forced the thought without any consideration out of her mind. But slowly, as the pain got worse and there was nothing else, she had been unable to fight it.
Within weeks she realized that the thought of such an easy escape offered her something no therapy her parents could have bought her could. It offered her a light at the end of the tunnel. Something to look forward to. A tomorrow.
Ever since that dark day, Catherine had accepted its benefits and allowed it to seed into an elaborate plot without pain and without blood.
The day it happened, she would go home, grab a coke, go up to her room and write the best poem she would ever write. Then she would go into her bathroom and take out the zip-lock bag of her mother’s sleeping pills that she had slowly pilfered over the last few months: fifty two to be exact. Next, she would pour herself a nice, steamy bath in which she would soak and wash for a few minutes, then drain the tub of everything except for the soft, spongy, white pillow bubbles left over from her Angelina Watermelon Bubble Bath Mix. Finally, she would open her coke, revel in the fuzzy taste of that first drink, enjoying it like she hadn’t enjoyed it in months and with the next drink, she would swallow first five, the next drink; ten, the next drink; fifteen, the next; twenty, and the final drink; the last two, which she would take her time with, rolling them each slowly over her tongue one at a time until their bitterness dissolved and was lost, mixed in her own saliva. By then, she would probably be feeling the effects of the overdose and everything would no doubt be fuzzy, but then, if the article she had read online was correct, her mind would go to a white place where there was no longer a physical realm at all and everything would be open and without limits. Her mind would grow heavy and slowly, she would sink into a white darkness. If no one found her, the next logical step would be to die. The day she did it, her parents would be far away, she had decided.
Before she realized it, Catherine was walking down her street. She lived at 121 Burkland Drive, one of the more affluent streets, she had found out soon after arriving. This had given her a sort of boost into good opinion among her peers, but what had really pushed her into the popular scene was her participation in Volleyball and her decision to do stats for football.
There weren’t two things more highly looked upon than the girl’s volleyball team and the boy’s football team. If you were somehow connected to one or the other, your spot at the popular table was almost guaranteed.
In the distance she could see her house. Stopping suddenly, she allowed herself a moment to admire it. Three stories tall and three times the necessary width, her house was a monster among fellow monsters. Her parents, upon moving into the neighborhood, had decided to leave it much the same colors: white with navy blue trim. But they had also taken it a step further. They had added a sort of sailor theme to the place. All throughout the house one could find paintings, pictures, figurines, toys of little white and navy blue boats that were either beached or out in the ocean. One boat painting even showed the boat sinking.
Sighing, Catherine began walking forward again. This time, her progress was marred not by her own house, but the one next door. In the driveway of 119 Burkland Drive, there was a large U-Haul truck and it looked like its back hatch was still open.
Curious, Catherine let her steps slow even further and she altered her course a little more.
Once in front of the house, she stopped to look at it. The back of the truck was opened, but it seemed as though whoever had been unloading it had gotten distracted. Looking upwards at the house, she noticed a pale, thin figure looking out at her from the uppermost story.
Catherine glanced quickly away and resumed walking. What a freak, she thought to her herself.
Stepping in the front door, painted a deep blue, Catherine set her bag down in the foyer then walked towards the stairs.
“Hey cluster fuck,” drawled a menacing voice from the hallway on the first floor landing.
“Hey asshole,” Catherine replied, her voice just as dangerous. “So, Brandon, they finally gave you a key, did they? I hope they’re prepared to lose a lot of stuff…”
“Shut up Kate,” he snapped playfully.
“Just because you’re my favorite cousin doesn’t mean I have to overlook your flaws,” Catherine said, pulling him into a hug. “You’re a thief and that’s a fact, so accept it as a term of endearment and move on.”
“Right…” Brandon pulled away and looked at her. “You look like shit, how was school?”
“It was wonderful…”
“Drives you crazy, doesn’t it?” he asked, looking into her eyes as if he could see what she felt.
“What does?”
“All the fakes? All the frauds? All that money with no place to go?” Brandon paused, looking away for just a second before snapping his eyes back onto her. “Death changes people.”
“No one died, Brandon,” Catherine said, her voice a little edgier than she would have liked.
“I think someone did,” he replied, his tone full of a finality that couldn’t be argued with.
“It seems almost pointless, don’t you think?” Catherine asked, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she looked at her feet.
“Living itself?” Brandon asked and Catherine nodded. “Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Sometimes, through the way we live it, life becomes pointless, but life itself always has a purpose.”
“And you really believe that don’t you?” She asked.
“I surely do,” he drawled with a strong western accent that he was little too good at. “Now, hows about you and me go out?”
“Where?”
“Kreg’s Pizza Palace? Dana’s Danish Delights? Mickey D’s? It’s your choice… but beware. It’s a test,” he said with a mysterious smile on his face.
“You’re such an ass, Brandon.” Catherine thought for a moment then said, “Kreg’s Pizza Palace. I feel like a little bread and meat smothered in sticky, stretchy cheese.”
“Ding ding ding, good choice,” Brandon said in his best imitation of a game show host. “You have won the wonderful, fantastical, one of a kind… ah heck!” he exclaimed. “You get to pay for dinner.”
“Well lucky me,” Catherine said with a smile as they walked out the door.
Brandon started the car and she couldn’t help watching his as his concentration spread from one thing to the next. She had known him since they were kids, since before her father had hit the business jackpot that had landed them in Clovedale, and they had always been close. If she had had a brother, they couldn’t have been close than her and Brandon were.
“Brandon Walker was a twenty one year old pick-pocket with asthma and a bad habit of grinding his teeth while he slept. He was tall, lean, and a good at wrestling with other taller, leaner men in spandex. He was generally good-humored, handsome, and easygoing when it came to everything. Everything except Catherine that was. Catherine was a delicate subject that he took very seriously.
Catherine on the other hand, was nearly his opposite, which was what they had decided many years back had made them so attractive to one another.
When Catherine worried, Brandon was mellow and when Catherine was mad, all Brandon had to do was say snorkel with an English accent or sing some stupid Disney song (he always had a large pool of them to choose from because of his soft spot for animated sing alongs).
“Never take yourself too seriously,” was Brandon’s life motto and a lot of the time it helped. But not lately. Not after the accident.
“Do you know who’s moving in next door?” Catherine suddenly asked as they drove away from the house. Now, the hatch of the truck was closed but one slim figure in baggy jeans and a black t-shirt was standing in the rain, his arms loaded with boxes outside the door. It looked as though he was waiting to be let in and he was soaked.
“Don’t you?” Brandon returned and Catherine shook her head no. “That’s too bad…” He said, trailing off mysteriously.
“I bet you don’t know either,” Catherine snapped. “You’re just blowing smoke up my ass so that I’ll beg you for answers.” He looked across at her and she smiled back at him as if she had him all figured out.
“Michael and Christian Young,” he said, not a smile on his face or a tell-tale twinkle in his eyes that suggested he was telling a lie.
“Really?” Catherine asked.
“No,” Brandon guffawed. “I pulled a name like Christian Young out of my ass just for you.” Brandon saw the serious look on Catherine’s face and said, “yeah, really.”
“Did you meet them?” she questioned, unable to hide the interest in her voice.
“Yeah… they’re kind of weird,” Brandon replied. “Not the type you’d usually see around here.”
“How so?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that… I think they’re…”
“What?” Catherine asked. “You think they’re psycho killers? Axe murders? Incestuous? What?”
“I think they’re bible-thumpers…”
“Bible thumpers? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say they’re weird?” she asked. The disappointment was impossible to hide.
“Isn’t it enough?” Brandon asked. “Seriously. The kid, Christian, answered the door, and I don’t think he looked me in the eye once and when his dad finally came to the door, he asked the kid if his room had been finished. The boy said, get this, no sir, then the father said, go get it done and the kid said, yes sir… Then he left.” Brandon shivered as if recalling the situation was revolting.
“And did the dad say anything to you?”
“Not much,” Brandon replied, turning the wheel slowly as he pulled into the parking lot at Kreg’s Pizza Palace. “He shook my hand though and nearly broke it.”
“So they’re a little old fashioned and the kid’s got respect for his dad,” Catherine said.
“It wasn’t respect,” Brandon said, undoing his seatbelt. Catherine followed suit. “It looked more like fear to me.”
“And you think they’re bible thumpers?” Catherine asked. “What out of that whole scenario gave you the smallest inkling that they worship go too much?”
“There’re crosses everywhere inside their house,” Brandon replied and they stepped out of the car. “I didn’t even get inside the foyer and I saw at least six, including a gold one on the cover of a large, leather, gold thread-embroidered bible. They take their religion very seriously…”
“And that’s not illegal,” Catherine said, picking small pieces of lint from her shirt as they waited for open seats in the restaurant.
“No, but child abuse is.”
Catherine shook her head slowly as she looked at him. “Did you see it?”
“No,” Brandon replied.
“Then you have no reason to assume there’s abuse going on.”
“I felt it,” Brandon said.
“Like you felt that ghost in your room last summer?”
“It was there,” Brandon said. “But that has nothing to do with this. You don’t need a supernatural sense to be able to tell something’s not right.”
“There is obviously no use in trying to be the voice of reason here so I quit,” Catherine suddenly said. “Now it looks like they have a table.”
“I win, I win, I win…” he sang under his breath just loud enough that Catherine could hear what he was saying.
A/N: I started this story for a contest online, but i didn't get far enough into it to win... doesnt make me any less fond of it. So, let me know what you think. Feed back would be GREAT :) thanks