DOWNHOME

A NOVEL BY JAMES PARRISH

©Copyright 2013 by James Parrish

PROLOGUE: SANDRA, BOUND

 I am so beyond screwed.  Sandra thought. Yet somehow amid incessant drip, drip, drippings of rain drops falling from the crack in the ceiling to her forehead, her eyelids had finally grown heavy.  Earlier that night she managed to wriggle her wrists in such a way that the bindings were not cutting circulation off to her hands-or jabbing flesh like a watch band pulled far too tightly.  Although hours seemed to stretch on like decades sitting upright in a rickety old wooden chair, she had endured the twisting and aching of her spine, the pins and needles below her shins where the rope had been knotted, and the nagging reality the fiercest self-inflicted pinches could not deny: this was no bad dream.  This was, as Sandra Coffey had told herself long ago, a living nightmare.

Every muscular contraction through her rapidly-thinning body caused the chair to creak; yet despite her best efforts, the old piece of southern craftsmanship would not break.  To ensure total restraint, in addition to the arm/leg bindings, a thin but strong rope was tied around her torso just below her bosom and up to the rafters a foot or so left of the crack in the ceiling.  Drip, drip, drip…   

This ribcage noose was rigged months ago a night after the wretched brothers had deemed her unworthy to be allowed freedom to move about the room.  After her many attempts to destroy the chair tilting back and forth until crashing onto its side, the youngest brother, Marley Causser, the one Sandra knew by his widely-spaced bounds of approach, entered the room with a wad of the thin rope.  Still, she eventually doubted the strength of the rafter it was tied to, so tipped over again later.  Sadly, only then did she realize the purpose of the third binding.  Swinging like a pendulum, the thin rope strangling her insides and the spiteful chair still clinging to her like a stubborn abscess, she allowed herself to remain in this painful position, more terrified of the potential punishment.  To her relief, the eldest brother, Russell, was the first to find her that night.

Yet somehow amid the drip, drip, dripping, the aches and pains, the pins and needles, the hunger, and the rage, she had found the strength to close her eyes.  How many weeks or months had she been shut in there?  She wondered.  For in this tomb she was kept, the only escape was inside her own mind.  She would pray for sleep; beg for it.  In dreams, she could stretch out her arms, embrace her husband, and relish in the contentment that was once her life.  But the cold reality would soon rain down like the drip, drip, dripping drops, and the trauma of being held against her will at the hands of the brothers’ Causser found her even in the most ungraspable peaks of her subconscious mindscape.

         So deprived of a restful sleep, the moment her lids sealed, the dreams began.  Mostly consisting of uncomfortable memories as a captive, it was often difficult to gauge reality drifting in and out of consciousness.

She felt Marley’s calloused, penetrating finger pounding upon her forehead in the rhythm of his voice: “Drip, drip, drip…”

         His scarred, filthy palm filled the middle of her vision as she flipped her lids open.  The stink of motor oil, whiskey, sweat, body odor and blood filled her nostrils.  She pulled her head back from his bullying finger mocking the maddening drops of rain, but even after he slid his hand away, the constant dripping, now like hammers, persisted.  The only light in the dark, dank, musty room streamed down from the crack above.  She had learned to gauge the time by the position of the sun or moon’s light casting into the room.  When the illumination was directed vertically, she knew it was noon or midnight.  When the soft blue light flickered between the storm clouds above shone down upon Marley Causser’s grimacing mug, she guessed it was late night.  Then her stomach turned.  At that moment, every ounce of fear that once was, was replaced by the unyielding hatred that peaked several nights ago, when he took her child away before ever even allowing her to lay a finger on the newborn.  Marley tilted his head to the side, obnoxiously taunting the rage aflame in her eyes and spoke with the thick twang of the Deep South.  “You feelin’ sparky, Sandy?” 

A guttural growl rumbled from the depth of her soul, and the image she saw next baffled her.  Expecting Marley to slap her again as he always did when she showed him “sass”, as he would call it, an abnormally bright, nearly neon blue light reflected on his face which stretched wide in shock.  She had felt the scream coming and had intended to blast Marley’s stupid face with it, but as the howl parted from her teeth, it was no longer her voice.  Instead, a chorus of voices, all as pained and determined as her own, sprung forth like the final, climactic, shrill shrieking of a legion of demons being exorcised from a possessed victim.  But these victims, she knew by the mere tone behind their pleading, indecipherable screeches, were not evil.  They were like her, an innocent torn from the real world and cast into the depths of Hell on Earth.

She watched as Marley threw his hands up to his temples as the blue light that emitted like a flame from her turned his black eyes into two bright, glowing sockets.  His mouth flew open to cry in agony, but no sound came out.  It was as if the blue light chorus had drowned out even Marley’s last beckoning to life.  And in an instant, the image was gone, and the room was black again.  Eyelids fluttered, and there it was again, the hammer droplets upon her anvil brow.  Drip, drip, drip…  

“That must’ve been a dream.  Damn.”  She muttered.

But there was someone else in the room with her.  She could feel it.  If the scent of Marley had not found its way in to her dream land, she might have smelt Russell Causser leaning over her right side.  Although the sweat and blood smells were comparable to his kid brothers, there was a sickly, bittersweet essence trailing; a subtle difference that was one of the few comforts she had come to embrace in the condemnable abode.

 She bolted upright and leaned left.  Russell shushed her and slapped his hand down onto the arm of the chair before it toppled over.  When Russell’s scarred, wrinkled face came into focus, the gleaming blue of his bloodshot eyes set her at ease.

“Please, Sandra,” he whispered.  “You don’t want to wake up Marley or Vance!” 

         Sandra grinned with a frown and sniffled, replying in the same low tone.  “Thank you,

Russell.  I don’t like where that dream was going.”

“Was it the blue flame light again?”  He inquired.

 She wrinkled her brow and pictured the light immersing her mind with a cool, soothing tranquility.  “There’s something…so sad about it.  I mean, it’s so…warm…and freeing.  You know?”

Russell tilted his head, nearly crossing his eyes to keep up with the fleeting imagery.  He sat down upon the noisy floorboards, legs folded, and gazed up to her, the portrait of a child absorbing his first campfire tale.  Russell Causser had just turned 48.

Sandra knew Russell was fascinated with her.  From the first night, he was her savior.  She also knew his innocent obsession could be used to her advantage, but the energy as of late had left her—especially after giving birth in that very holding room and losing copious amounts of blood.  Since that horrible night, the blue flame light appeared every time she shut her eyes.  In fact, she had noticed it even in a waking state, but dismissed it off to delirium.

         “I—I think…” she continues.  “I think it’s Death.”

 Russell’s eyes widened, stunned to hear the dreaded word that had always been such a prevalent presence in the home of Causser.  He grasped the arm of her chair and pulled up to his knees with a pleading expression of remorse upon his face.

         “Don’t you think that way, Sandra!  I know you bled out a lot when you had little junior, but I managed to stop it, remember?!”

Despite the predicament he was undeniably a part of, she felt great compassion for the one fairly-decent Causser brother.  After all he had done for her, she had come to realize he was a prisoner as well, but unlike her, there was no life for him waiting beyond the front door.  Sandra Coffey was dying, and she knew it.  Unless she was rushed to the hospital immediately, there was no hope.  She had come to accept her fate.  Chris, her husband and father of her child, would never find her in time.  Even if she had broken free and somehow managed to get her baby, there was no civilization within miles.  She had played the scenario over and over, and not once did it end with either her or Chris, Jr., surviving.  If mere exhaustion did not impede an escape attempt, a gun or knife in the hands of Marley or Vance Causser would.  But they would not be the ones who would come after her, and she knew this.  As she had witnessed before in a young blond girl that fled through the backwoods, Marley would merely send Toomey: the creature in the basement…

When she was still allowed to walk about the room, unbound-and very much pregnant, she heard the screams of the young girl, the kitchen door directly below the holding room being slung open, and the snapping of twigs & rustling of bushes.  As Sandra peered out the sole window facing the back of the house, she saw a flash of blond hair jet into the darkness of the dense forest.  Then she heard the doomed cry bellow from Marley’s gullet: “TOOMEY!”

No more than five seconds had passed before Sandra saw the wide, muscular frame of Toomey, the youngest Causser: a mutated figure bounding out on his knuckles and nubs like an ape and grunting with each crouched stride spanning at least two full-grown adult males’.  The blond’s ten second head start gap was bridged in another five seconds.  An eerie, ear-splitting grunt Sandra imagined may attract a Sasquatch was followed by the girl’s final scream cut short by an eerie gurgling sound.

But still, the welfare of her child weighed heavily on her mind.  She just knew it would likely cost them both their lives.

Six months had passed.  In Sandra’s head, it had been a lifetime.  The first five months and 27 days she was in survival mode, not wanting to alert her captors of scheming, but also terrified that the next punishment would induce labor prematurely.  A brutal beating at the fists of Marley Causser is what led to the initial contractions and her water breaking.  Thankfully, she was, at the very least, a little over 8 months pregnant on that gloomy, blood-soaked night.

Sandra twitched her head and sneered, a defense mechanism she had enabled to block unwelcome thoughts or memories.  Since every waking moment, and some asleep, were anything but serene in the creaking home, the twitch had become more of a nervous tick.  She would find herself wondering how long it would be before she would become the portrait of a deranged woman, the kind seen in every mental asylum in service.  She pictured the torn white terrycloth robe, her stringy brown hair intentionally shading her face, the constant, defined nodding, the murmurs, the mutterings, and of course, now the nervous facial tick.

Russell reached up and gently touched her forearm, hoping to lend a kindness so devoid in her world, and in his.  Instead, his action jarred her from her dense and cluttered cluster of psychological vomit.  She nearly leaned too far again, but he was quick and clutched the arm.  “It’s okay, Sandra.  It’s just you and me.”

Sandra glared at him, an instance forgetting which Causser was kneeling beside her.  The seed of the long-deceased Henry Causser had passed to his three sons around the eyes and the nose, giving them all an unfortunate likeness to one another.  With Marley so close to her central mode of thought, she saw him first, but his empty black eyes did not match.  Vance, the middle brother, being such a scarce presence nowadays since the birth, she was all too happy to dispose his greasy, chubby, furry face from her brain, so Marley’s face dissolved to Russell’s from his glassy blue eyes out.  And so her fuming, vehement look of utter hatred and disgust lightened again to one of a loving, caring friend lending an ear.

Russell’s expression was similar, but he also knew she would eventually ask him to see the child again.  He knew it was coming.  He could read it in the way she stiffened her posture up from the twitching and nodding.  He hoped she would not, because he did not want to have to deny her once more.  So, he opened his mouth to start a distracting chat, but it was too late.

         “How is my baby boy?” Sandra asked, the tears building in her swelling eyes.

         Russell detracted his eyes from hers, glancing blindly at the shadows on the wall.  

“He’s fine, Sandra,” he said.  “He’s doin’ just fine, Miss.”

As the words left his frowning mouth, he was already beginning to stand, knowing the air would soon turn colder and he would have to leave again with his head hung low in shame.  Sandra leaned forward, ready to insist he remain with her a while longer, but the question lingering on the tip of her tongue was just what the balding, middle-aged man had suspected.  She knew this and so decided to create a little distracting chat of her own.  

“Um…are you feeding him…from a bottle?”

Russell tilted his head like a curious little boy, surprised the dreaded inquiry had not emerged but still betting it soon would.  Still, his good half always led him to give the benefit of the doubt.  “Yes.  He’s eating all right.  I-um…found some uh…formula for the little guy.  He’s been as cozy as a kitten, sleeps most of the day and night.” 

She fed off the glistening in his eyes that propped up with a grin as the thought of the infant came to mind.  That was all she had: to live vicariously through Russell Causser’s parenting in the stories he told her.  Well, there were also the brief moments she would be awakened by her child’s cries loitering up through the floorboards, but those instances sadly made her maternal instincts bubble in rampage as her breasts pumped milk to feed the absent offspring.  In spite of the stubborn jumble of emotions clotting her head, she smiled.  “I’m glad,” she whispered, running a looser finger across his worn, clammy hand.  

“You know, I get the feeling that if you had the opportunity, you would be out from under your brothers as quickly as I would.”

Russell leaned down again, edging a half-smile at the notion.  But his wandering eyes told of his longing and hesitation.  He was, after all, the only brother to show his face that was as ragged and torn as his hands, in the two shops of Marre, the tiny, unincorporated vicinity nearest the home of Causser.  It would only take a right-hand turn instead of a left to depart his personal hell forever.  But now, there was little Junior…and Toomey.

“I couldn’t,” he stood again, nearly knocking Sandra back at the speed of his stance.  “I couldn’t…leave…Toomey.  He needs me.  He’s always needed me.  If I left him…  If…  He’d…  He’d die, or he’d kill Marley and Vance.  I couldn’t…  And now…now, little Junior downstairs…he needs me too.”

 Sandra leaned forward the best she could, knowing she had opened a can of worms she wanted to empty.  Russell’s hand was close enough for her to grasp, and she did so.  The fire in her eyes was the intermingling of survival and maternal instincts, forced outwards to convince even the most dogged of subjects to wane to her will…even Russell.

“Listen to me,” she began, squeezing his hand.  “You…are going to die if you don’t get out of here.  From what you’ve told me of Toomey, he could live off the land basically like he does now.  And Junior…Junior…well, that baby is not your responsibility to raise, Russell.  It’s mine!  You never asked for this, Russell.  You don’t deserve the treatment they give you!  You are smarter, kinder, and the only of your brothers to have an ounce of humanity inside!  You have to think of you for once!” 

Her grip had become viselike as her whisper strained; forcing her views that, although staggeringly accurate, were realities he had lived with for a lifetime.  Still, the concept of leaving had never occurred to him to be a possibility.  The land surrounding his home and Marre was all he ever knew.  There was a wall of blankness, like an empty page where the world beyond existed.  For the longest time, he believed the tainted words of his father, Henry Causser, who had ingrained into his three sons how to live off the land, and how to survive off the lives of others.  The world beyond was, as far as Russell knew, merely a breeding ground for the victims that would soon tread into the Causser trap.  Then, they would come to Russell.

Then, at the age of 16, Russell met Beatrice.  Beatrice…  The name, her name, was like a smelling salt to his thought train.  He snatched his hand away from Sandra.

         “You,” he whispered, nearly in a whimper.  “You don’t understand, Sandra Coffey.  You…you were reared in that world past the town marker.  I was reared here, in this house, and I was told never to listen to what the breeding ladies say.  Daddy said so, and after Marley put him in the ground, Marley said so.  He said you talk with a snake’s tongue, saying one thing just to lead me down the wrong path.”

Sandra could tell her words had fallen upon deaf ears again, that the teachings of backward, redneck, murderous, cannibalistic values had reigned supreme once more.  She leaned back and held her head low again, sickened by the pride of the Causser boys.  One day perhaps Russell would see the truth, but it would not be this night.  She cared about nothing at that moment, and so she spoke above a whisper in a cold, solemn tone that stabbed into the deepest depths of his soul, as murky and convoluted as it mostly was there.  “I understand,” she said, eyes upon the floor.  “You are too blind to see…anything.  Take care of my little boy, Russell.  And please, leave me now.” 

Russell stood there, his hands cupped before his chest as if pleading for another bowl to feed his empty soul.  A single tear welled up in the dried duct of his left eye, and his lips trembled in a frown.  He nodded, hurt, and reached into his jean pocket.  Checking his back, he removed a vial of reddish liquid with an eyedropper lid and shook it in her line of sight.  She glanced up at it, sighed, and nodded subtly.  With his fingers under her chin, he gently leaned her head back, unscrewed the vial, and let four drops fall into her slightly-opened mouth.  She shut her mouth and winced at the bitter taste as he shut the vial, replacing it in his pocket.

         “T-Thank you,” she offered, frowning.

He turned, still crushed but happy to ease her suffering and quietly exited the room with his head held low in shame.

Sandra waited for the door to creak to a close before moving a muscle.  Once she heard Russell’s footfalls trail away to the left and down the rickety stairs, she tilted her face up to the falling drops of water from the crack in the ceiling above, letting them wash away her pains.  “I am so beyond screwed.” Drip, drip, drip...