Chapter Thirty-Four
Erin was staring at the television screen from her seat at one end of the couch, but today, more than usual, she was having trouble paying attention to it. In general, she’d prefer to be reading a book rather than watching most of what was on the TV, but Mary was out of the house, so she had some rare time alone with her father, and he was watching television.
Her mind kept wandering back to Mary’s departure, though. Earlier that afternoon, Erin had been upstairs in her bedroom working on her homework when she’d heard yelling coming from the bedroom of her father and stepmother. The wall muffled their words, so she couldn’t hear specifically what they were saying, but apparently Mary was extremely angry about something, and her father was trying to calm her down but slowly lost his temper. The argument ended with a door slamming, and Erin heard someone storm past her closed bedroom door and down the stairs, followed by another slam of the heavy front door.
She hadn’t dared to venture out of her bedroom for an hour; although it seemed more likely that Mary was the adult who’d just left the house, she wasn’t certain, and she didn’t want to deal with an angry Mary before she’d had a chance to calm down.
Thankfully, her guess had been right. She had cautiously ventured downstairs to find her father sitting in his recliner, watching some sitcom and looking distraught. She hadn’t asked what the argument was about.
The quality of the shows they were watching hadn’t improved much over two hours, but her father’s mood had. He still didn’t look happy, but at least he didn’t look as depressed. He still hadn’t said a word to her the entire time she’d been there, but she couldn’t really blame him — after all, she hadn’t said anything to him either.
Her stomach rumbled; it was nearly seven, and she hadn’t eaten since lunch at school that day. Her father didn’t really seem interested in getting up, though, and she still wasn’t ready to interrupt what he was thinking about. She was perfectly capable of getting dinner for herself, of course, but the time alone with her dad was such a rare occurrence that she could wait until later. She wasn’t going to starve.
She snapped to attention as she heard a loud creak. The back door of the house, which led straight into the basement, had been opened. Why was Mary coming back in that way instead of using the front door?
She looked over at her father, who’d apparently noticed the sound too.
“FRANK!”
Erin’s father visibly stiffened as he heard his wife call out his name, and Erin felt a chill run down her own spine. It wasn’t the anger in Mary’s voice that bothered her; while she didn’t particularly care to experience her stepmother when she was angry, the anger was such a frequent occurrence lately that Erin had at least learned to tolerate it. No, something sounded slightly different about Mary’s voice. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it scared her.
Her father turned to her and spoke for the first time that evening. “Erin, hide.“
So whatever had scared her had scared him too. She didn’t need to be told to hide twice. Adrenaline coursed through her veins as she stored herself in the first suitable place she laid eyes on: the front hallway coat closet.
The closet wasn’t completely dark; the door had horizontal slats on it angled steeply downward, so that she could see the wooden floor immediately in front of the closet if she looked down, although nobody would be able to see her unless they were laying on the floor looking up. Even then, she’d probably be difficult to see if she stayed still. Yet she still felt scared, and she could feel her heart beating rapidly as she heard her stepmother stomping up the basement stairs.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” shouted Mary, apparently now confronting Erin’s father.
“I…”
“You know what I’m talking about! Just look at this place! I leave you alone for a few hours and…”
The scared girl in the closet clamped her hands over her ears. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to hear. She had no idea what her father could have possibly done, but she got the feeling it didn’t matter; Mary’s reasons for being angry had almost completely separated from reality over the last half-year.
Erin didn’t even particularly care what her stepmother thought her dad had done. She just wanted them to stop yelling at each other. No matter how hard she pressed her hands against her ears, she couldn’t drown out the sound of their angry voices; all she succeeded in doing was muffling the specific words they were saying. Even then, she managed to register small pieces of the conversation.
“…you and that filthy…”
“…Mary, you’re not being rational here. Calm down…”
“…I do all the work around here, and you just ruin it all anyway…”
“…maybe I can’t, but…”
“…you’re turning the kid against me, Frank, why are…”
“…you don’t need that, Mary, put that away…”
The sound of the gunshot in the small room was deafening, and Erin involuntarily jumped. Her ears were still ringing as she heard a dull thud and a gasp. The sensation of warm fluid running down her legs barely even registered in her frightened mind. One of them had just shot the other!
She heard some rustling, and finally a voice. “Frank! Stop playing around like this!”
Mary’s voice was not the voice she’d been hoping to hear. That meant that it was her father who…
Erin felt like she wanted to be sick.
“Get up, Frank!” Mary’s voice had gone from nervous to desperate. Erin still heard no movement; apparently her father was not getting up.
“God damn it, Frank! God damn it!” Mary started sniffling, which soon turned into all out sobbing.
Erin desperately wanted to get out of that closet, wanted to see her father, wanted to make sure he was going to be okay, but the rational side of her mind just barely managed to constrain her emotional side. Mary had just been very angry, and was apparently now in great distress, and she had a gun. If Erin left the closet, she could very well be laying on the floor next. So she waited, tummy churning, as she hoped against all hope to hear her father get up.
It seemed like an eternity before she heard the sobs die down. Mary started wheezing a little, which turned into audibly heavy breathing.
“I’m sorry, Frank!” she whispered, and for the second time that evening, Erin was temporarily deafened.
Once the ringing in her ears subsided, the only thing she could hear was her own heartbeat. Nothing outside the closet was making any noise at all. Had Mary just shot herself as well? Erin didn’t dare leave to find out; she simply folded her arms across her chest and grabbed onto her own shoulders, gripping herself in a rudimentary hug.
As the minutes rolled on, she finally managed to convince herself that it wasn’t some sort of trap; she hadn’t heard so much as a breath from Mary since the second gunshot, and with how heavily she had been breathing before, Erin should have heard something. Her own heart rate was lowering, and the life-or-death terror she’d felt before had dwindled into a general dread of finding out for certain what she hoped wasn’t true.
Her palms were sweaty, making it exceedingly difficult for her to turn the doorknob as slowly as she wanted to, but eventually she managed to crack the door slightly and creep out.
As she looked upon the living room, she could see her father’s entire body. Mary had fallen on the other side of the couch, and Erin could only see her from the waist down. Neither of the adults was moving.
Her father had an ugly-looking hole in his chest, and was lying on his back, with both red stains on his shirt and a red pool under him. There was a large gash on the side of his head; he must have hit the corner of the end table on the way down.
Erin shuddered slightly as her fears were confirmed; the absolute stillness of her father’s body was completely unnatural, and only served to bring back memories of her mother lying in a similar position in the casket a few years earlier. Her mother hadn’t been all bloody, but she’d had the same unmoving serenity that Erin’s father now had, and the effect was considerably disturbing.
Her eyes began to water as she made the mistake of moving to the other side of her father, exposing Mary’s entire body to her field of view.
Mary was missing a considerable section of her head, and the wall which Erin had been unable to see until she moved far enough into the living room was covered with a spray of blood.
Erin turned and ran back into the hallway, tripping and landing on her hands and knees in front of the same closet she’d been hiding of. The nausea she’d already been feeling increased enormously, and she found herself emptying what little was in her stomach onto the wooden floor between her hands.
When she felt like nothing more could possibly come out, she slowly stood up in a daze, and did the only thing she could think of doing. Her feet led her into the kitchen, and she turned on the sink and put her hands under the running water, washing the vomit off of them.
The cordless phone on the counter caught her attention, and a rational thought once again found its way into her mind. Without even bothering to dry her hands, she grabbed the phone. Her legs felt like rubber, and she sat down on the floor and dialed 9-1-1.
She gave enough information to the operator to get them to send out the appropriate emergency services, but her brain effectively shut down after that. The operator remained on the line with her, trying to keep her calm until help arrived, but she was barely listening as she rocked back and forth on the floor, her knees folded up to her chest with one arm wrapped around them as the other hand loosely held the phone. Her vision began to blur…
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