Rosenville Chapter 1

There was a noise coming from the first floor hallway.  Lucinda Barrett was half asleep and thought she had dreamt the sound. She rose out of bed and grabbed her housecoat to pull around her. Once covered, she made her way to the bedroom door and hesitated.Lucinda veered around to see if her movements had waken her husband as she turned the knob and opened the door  quietly as possible.

Creak.

Lucinda stiffened.

She was wrong.

Lucinda tip-toed back over to the bed and nervously leaned over to her husband’s side of the bed to shake him. “Steve.  Steven, wake up,”  she whispered.  The only light in the room was from the full moon that illuminated the dark night sky. She kept an eye on the door, watching, waiting. After nudging him once more he finally answered her.

He rolled over to face his wife.  “What…what time is it?” he asked as he wiped his eyes to focus on her face. He looked around the room and realized it was the middle of the night.

“Shh…I think someone is downstairs.”

With a dazed look in his eyes, he stared at her.  That’s when he heard it.

Creak.

Someone or something was walking across the hardwood flooring downstairs.  He had installed the hardwood himself and knew exactly the floorboards that needed to be replaced since they made a noise every time bared weight on them.

Steve shot up in bed like a rocket.  He pulled back the covers and rushed over to the closet.  “Lucy, get the kids and go.” He pulled out a 30” single barrel shotgun from behind the clothes.

“Steve, no,”  she said, shaking her head. Her voice gaining some strength, but not much. Unaware of who was in the house, she did not want to draw any attention to where they were. “That’s not going to make a difference.  Please, come with us.”  Lucy felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, her stomach had butterflies flying a muck and the adrenaline in her body was knowing no bounds.  She watched her husband from behind as he was fumbling in the dark, trying to load the weapon with shotgun shells.

Steve turned to the side to keep his face obscured from her view. Especially his eyes. His eyes would betray him if she could get a read on him at this moment.  He did not want her to know how terrified he truly was. And he was.

They told me they would be coming, he thought.

Lucy caught a glimpse of Steve’s profile.  The moonlight was reflecting off his sandy-blond curls.  His earlier five o’clock shadow had now doubled.But what she noticed most of all was how his usual olive complexion was now pale and almost stark white.  He looked like all the blood had drained from his face and was just a statue of the man she loved.

He took a deep breath before walking over to his visibly shaken wife. Lucy was now staring at the bedroom door, listening as the noises were becoming louder; something glass was shattered, trinkets thrown and broken. He grabbed her right arm to get her attention.  “Lucy, you have to get the kids and get out of here.  Get as far away from here as you can.  Just go and don’t look back.”

“Steve, no!”

“Promise me.  Promise me no matter what you hear, you will take the kids and go.  They don’t want you…” He focused all of his attention on her eyes.  His eyes were pleading with hers to understand, and for just once in their marriage, he needed her not to question him.

Why did they want him?

“Steven,” she cried out and threw her arms around him.  As much as she wanted to fight with him over this, just as she had almost everything else, Lucy couldn’t. She knew.  She knew this was probably going to be the last time she would ever see her husband... Again.

He kissed her on her lips.  “I love you,” he said, rushed.  She wanted to tell him the same.  Tell him that she had always loved him-for as long as she had remembered, but her voice was lost somewhere deep down in her chest-hidden not only from him but herself too.  She was having a hard enough time breathing, let alone speaking coherently.

Steve placed the gun  he was carrying in front of him and pulled Lucy out into the hallway behind him.  He stationed himself at the top of the steps and nodded for Lucy to go to the other bedrooms.

She paused on the other side of the banister when she heard someone rounding the landing at the bottom of the stairs. Shock took over her entire body. Lucy looked at her husband in dismay.  At first she thought it was just a random break in. Now she knew.

This can’t be happening, she thought.

She struggled with what she should do. If Lucinda and the children stayed, she thought maybe they would kill them too.But they had promised to leave her and her family alone.

Why now?

Steve tilted his head towards Lucy and she continued on into David's bedroom. Lucy entered  the baby's room and closed the door behind her. Steve was now very grateful that his wife had won the argument about putting in a Jack-and-Jill bath that connected the two bedrooms.

The sound was coming up the darkened stairwell. The steps groaned under the visitors weight.

Footsteps.  One by one they made their way up the steps, but Steve could not see anyone.  “Who’s there?”  he shouted out into the night. His voice echoed back at him.

No one responded.

Steve backed up against the wall and waited for the fight to come.

Lucy had retrieved the baby from his crib, grabbed a couple items of his and stuffed them into Caroline’s, the four year old, bag.  Caroline was sleepy and started to cry when she was first woken up, but calmed down somewhat after her mother pulled her into her chest.

The three of them went to the open window in Caroline’s room.  Lucy instructed her young daughter to make her way down the trellis that was right outside her window.

“Mommy, I can’t,”  the girl whined.

Lucy heard a noise in the stairwell.  She held her son tight in her arms and told her daughter, “Caroline Rose Barrett, I have seen you climb up this very thing many times.  Now I need you to listen to Mommy and do as I say.”

The four year old tensed up before going through the window, grabbing onto the lattice.  Lucy peered out the window and made sure that her daughter was handling the climb down just fine.

Steve had his eyes fixated on the top of the stairs where a shadow now loomed.  “Who’s there?” he shouted.  “Show yourself!”

“I told you we would be coming,” a strange voice said and advanced towards Steve.

Steve anxiously pointed the gun the stairs.  He pulled the trigger and was pushed back by the force of the gun. Never before in his life had he ever pointed a gun at another being, only when he hunted.  Now he was almost sure that he had hurt someone.

Laughter was heard in the same direction that he had just shot at.  Panic overtook Steve, who had slumped down the wall behind him.  For the first time since he found out, he truly believed.

“What do you think you are shooting at?  You know that can’t harm us.”

Steve covered his eyes, fearful for the retribution to come.  “Please.  I promise I didn’t tell anyone.  No one knows.” He felt movement around him.  In one quick moment he was standing and being pinned against the wall behind him by nothing, just pressure.  “Please?”  he pleaded once more.  The air in his lungs was becoming limited.  It was like he was drowning, but in absolutely nothing.

“We don’t give second chances.  You more than anyone should know that.”  the voice said before Steven Barrett let out one final scream in utter pain.

Steve Barrett had known that.  They had killed his brother, Andrew.  Or at least he suspected it had been them.  But none of that mattered anymore.

Lucy Barrett had made it safely down the trellis with her infant tucked safely into her side.  She was just about to the edge of the woods when she heard the final deafening scream of her husband.  She wanted to go back to help Steve.  It was hard enough to continue to climb down when she heard the gun shot, but at least she heard his voice afterwords.  But what she was doing now was tearing her apart. Lucy thought all of this was behind them.  She felt responsible.  Her husband was killed and he never even knew the reason, other than being married to Lucinda Rose.

His blood was on her hands.

She looked down at her two small, helpless children and made the choice.  If she went back, there was a good chance they would kill at least one of her children.  She had to persevere on.

Lucy wiped the tears from the corner of her eyes.  There would be time for crying later,  when she was far away from this hell.  “Come on.  We have to go,” she said to her daughter, Caroline, but more to herself.

A woman in a dark overcoat was standing in the driveway, watching as the mother and her two young children escaped from the house.  She made no movement.  No attempt to aid them in anyway.  It was her job to observe the night’s events and keep the rest of the family there.  Lucinda Rose Barrett was to be questioned about what she knew and her memory erased. That was what was supposed to happen.  But this woman, this bystander, had other plans.

Two men in matching dark overcoats strolled out of the front door of the Barrett house like nothing had happened.  A third man, who was in the car waiting for the others, got out and walked over to the side of the woman.

“I thought we had orders to keep them here?”

“Yes... We did,”  she mocked.

“Then why did you let them go?”  he asked as the two other men were now present for the conversation.

She turned to face the inquiring man.  “Because someday, Lucinda Rose is going to be very important to us.”

One of the other men entered the discussion.  “How do you know that?”

The woman took her finger and pointed to her right temple, tapping it three times.

The first man rolled his eyes. “You better be right about this.”    He walked back to the car parked across the street.

“You’ll see,”  the woman said in a sing-song voice while she and the other two men made their way over to the parked sedan.


                                                  **********

Lucinda Barrett walked with her two small children for almost two miles in the middle of the night.  The full moon and the clear skies helped with her journey to the nearest road, where a trucker happened to be driving past-when he spotted the remainder of the family.  The driver was so worried about Lucy, who only asked him to drive them to the nearest gas station, the next county over, that he drove her and her children to her in-laws’ house across the state’s lines.

When she arrived, her mother-in-law asked her what had happened.

“I don’t know,”  Lucy answered.  Her sobbing was uncontrollable.  She wanted to tell.  She wanted to tell the whole world what she knew.  But she couldn’t.  That was the power that they had over her.  No matter where she went, or what she did, they saw to it that she could never tell anyone.  No one could.


                                            40 years later

Avary Rose was packing up the last box and writing the contents of the box with a black marker.

Ava’s bedroom.

The music on her Ipod was blaring through the docking station she received as a present last Christmas.

“Will you turn that shit down!” her brother, Kellan, screamed from outside her locked door.

“What?  I can’t hear you,”  she shouted back at him, knowing full and well what he was saying.  She hated when he tried pulling that big brother act with her.  He was only three minutes older.  It was just by chance that he was delivered first.

He banged on the door.  Over and over again.  The frame shook violently every time his fist came in contact with the wood.

She walked over and opened the door.  “What do you want?”  She huffed and placed her hand on her hip for emphasis.

Kellan pushed past her.  “Excuse me,” she sarcastically said.

He stormed over to her nightstand and unplugged her Ipod.  He turned around to face a visibly angered teenage girl.  “I asked you to turn this shit down.”  Kellan flung the device on the bed. “But you didn’t hear me.”

Avary lit up like a firecracker when he touched her things and this time proved no different.  She rushed at him like a bulldozer, attacking his midsection, like her father had taught her to do, and sent him flying to the floor.  When she was younger she wanted to be a football player, and when her father was teaching her brother all about the sport, Avary tagged along and picked up on a few things.

She jumped on top of him and kept him pinned the best way she knew how.  She sat on his legs and pushed back his torso to the carpeting.  “Ow,” he cried out in pain.  Avary was sitting on his knee that had just healed after breaking his kneecap in football this past year.

“Serves you right.  Now don’t touch my shit again,” she said and threw her finger at him to add to the effect. She rolled off of him, and stood up while hovering over him.  She offered him a hand, to which he accepted, and helped her brother to a standing position.

“Nice move,”  Kellan said as he was rubbing his sore knee.

“Well I did learn from the best.”  She turned around to the direction of her nightstand where there was a framed photo of her and her dad. Avary stood there gazing at the picture.

“I miss him, too, Ava,”  Kellan said.  His voice was soft and pained.

“I know.”  She blew out the air from her lungs that she was trying to hold in, rather than give the tears and her emotions any ammunition to build on. “It’s just…if he was here, than he could have stopped all of this from happening.”

Kellan walked up behind his sister and turned her around.  He saw the heartbreak written all over her face. Her eyes were glistening and he knew at any moment the floodgate was going to open up, again.

Their father had been gone for over a year and it was still hard for Avary to handle.

If Kellan was truthful with himself, he would admit that it was just as hard for him, but he had to act like he was not venerable. An impenetrable being with no weakness.  That’s how he was raised to be-a robot. He was afraid if anyone knew what was really going on with him…Then no one would respect him. He was the man of the house.  Those were the last words his father said to him before he left to go over to Afghanistan, two years ago.

“Come here,”  he said and pulled her into his chest for a hug. He felt the loss too.  He missed his father more than he could ever say.  He missed his mentor, his pal, his hero.

Kellan stood a good 6’2”.  Whereas Avary was lucky to be 5’6”.  Hardly anyone even believed that they were siblings, let alone twins. Everything about the two of them was polar opposites.  Kellan with his shaved blond mane, his muscular frame and his tanned olive complexion.  He liked sports, cars, computers and anything to do with science. He wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps…someday.  And with a day like today, it was feeling like pretty big shoes to fill.

Avary on the other hand was skinny, so skinny that her family had worried that she was anorexic for a while. She had dead straight, raven black hair, and was so pale, she even burned in the shade. Avary liked books, school, show tunes, dancing.  Your typical girl.  All except one thing-something she told no one.  She even tried to keep it hidden away from herself.  She was also a master of denial.  So much so that while her brother and her mother had been totally packed for over two weeks now, Avary waited until the wee final hours. For the past few months she denied what was going on around her.

Avary liked it when she and Kellan were that close.  Most of the time they fought like they were in the midst of World War three.  But him comforting her was what she needed today of all days.  Moving day.

When she pulled away from his grasp, she noticed the wet spot on his shirt from her crying.  Snot mixed with tears would most likely leave a mark.

“Eew…” Kellan whined as he realized what his sister had done.  “You might as well blown your snotty ass nose on my shirt.”  He started to back away when Avary started to laugh.

“Well come here and I will,” she joked and flinched like she was going to rush at him again.

Both of the siblings were laughing.  For the first time in a while they truly enjoyed being around each other.  Kellan observed Avary’s puffy eyes and nose and pointed for her to look in the mirror.  “Ugh, I look disgusting,” she said, complaining as she walked over to the mirror to fix her smudged eyeliner from all her crying.

“Well what do you expect?  If you ask me, it’s a much needed improvement.”  He had to put her back in her place, drop her down a few notches. Keep her from knowing how he really felt.  That he cared.

“Get out of my room,”  she demanded and pointed into the hallway.  “Don’t you have something else to do than bother the hell out of me?  What did you want when you came barging into here anyway?”

“Oh, you mean other than telling you to turn your shitty ass music down?”  Kellan stood at the frame and bobbed his head back through the opening.

“It’s not shitty.”  Avary threatened to close the door, but stopped when she noticed he was not going to leave so easily.  “What are you bored?”

“No.  Mom wants you.”

Great.  Just great.

She rolled her eyes and attempted to actually slam the door in his face.  He grabbed the door and stopped her.  “You know, you really are a bitch.”

“Learned it from the best….also.”

Kellan shook his head.  He knew there was no way to mediate between the two of them.  He’s tried, many, many times, only to have it backfire in his face.  Avary blamed their mother for so many things-things that she needed to let go of.  Kellan walked down the hall to his room and left her in peace.  What little peace she would have before talking to their mom.

Avary walked out into the hallway, past her brother’s door who had followed her lead and turned up the volume from his stereo so loud she was sure the neighbors were going to be calling, complaining.  She went to the top of the stairwell and tried to yell over the sound of her brother’s music.  “What, Mom?”  She huffed.  She rolled her eyes.  She was her usual sarcastic, smart ass, sixteen year old self.

“Come down here, please,”  her mother yelled back.

Avary took her deliberate time, pounding her foot down on every step, before she made it to the first floor.

Got to let her know I’m coming down the steps, she thought.

Her mother, Charlotte, was sitting at what was left of the kitchen table.  She was putting the extra plastic cutlery and paper plates and towels that they had been using for the last week or so into a box.  There was an opened left over pizza box from the night before on the table with a couple of pieces remaining.  Avary grabbed a slice and shoved half of it into her mouth.

“What?” she asked with her mouth full of food.  Her mother hated when she talked while eating and Avary knew it.  She did it to get on her nerves.  Avary hoped if she bothered her mother enough, she would leave her alone.  That was the usual routine.

Charlotte blew some air out through her nose and closed her eyes briefly before speaking, “The movers are going to be here in about a hour.  Do you have everything packed?”

Was that all she wanted?  She could have brought her lazy ass up the stairs and looked, Avery solo dialoged to herself.

Avary turned her head and acted like she was looking out the window.  She rolled her eyes.  “Yes, Mother.  I packed up the last box a few minutes ago.  Did you need to know anything else?”  she answered.  Her voice was thick with her usual sarcasm that she used when she spoke to her mother nowadays.

“You know…” her mother began.  “You could have had everything done weeks ago if you had done what I told you to do.  There was no reason to wait until the last minute…”

Blah, blah, blah.  Does she ever shut up?

Avary countered back.  “You know, Mother, I was hoping that this was all some sick joke of yours.  And when I figured out that wasn’t the case, I just thought you’d realize how wrong you were about this and cancel the whole thing.”

“Ava.”  Charlotte stood up and went over to the window to look out at the back yard.  There was the dilapidated tire swing that David had hung from the old oak tree for the kids swaying back and forth in the wind.  God she missed him.  She needed him.  Charlotte was having a hard time talking to, let alone dealing with, Avary ever since her father left.  When he died, it destroyed all of them, but seemed to have impacted her daughter the most.

Daddy’s little girl.  And that she was.  Charlotte and Avary never bonded the way that David had with her.  When Avary was sick or had a nightmare, it was David that she cried for, not her.  Not her mother.

It had always stung a little bit, the relationship that the two of them had.  That was a lie that she would keep telling herself till the day she died.  She never wanted children at first and was a very distant mother to her newborn daughter.  Charlotte had a terrible pregnancy and was on bed rest for most of the duration.  She had to put her life on hold, she told herself.

She spited the twins for everything in the beginning.  Kellan was in distress when Charlotte went into labor and had to be kept in the hospital for almost three weeks after his birth.  Once Charlotte was sent home, she felt guilty for Kellan’s condition and spent almost every waking moment at the hospital with him.  She was fearful that God had listened to her late night prayers about not being ready to be a mother, and that he was actually answering her.  It was during that time, when she left Avary at home with either her husband, or her mother-in-law, that she figured the fracture in her relationship with her daughter began.  And she felt guilty for it now.

She turned around to face her daughter. “…I know this is hard for you.  You tell me every time you can, how this is such a bad thing for us.  But you have to trust me,”  Charlotte said and raised up her arm to reach out to her daughter.  Avary stepped back away from her; like her touch was an open flame that was going to burn her.

“Trust you?”  Avary laughed.  “You’re kidding, right?”  She walked around the table, in the opposite direction of where her mother was standing. Avary stopped to give it a last ditch effort to save the whole thing.  “Mom, do you not see that you are tearing us away from everything that we know?  Everything we love.  For what?  A little security?  If it’s about money, you can have all the money I have in savings and I’ll get a job.  That’s it, I’ll get a job and give you every cent I make.  Just please don’t do this.”  Her voice was pleading in the end.

“Ahh, Ava.  I wish it was that simple.  I signed papers.  As of tomorrow, this is someone else's house.”

She did not understand.  Avary was afraid that when they moved she would start to forget her father, forget every single thing about him.  She could hear his laugh bellowing in the kitchen.  She could see his smile every time she walked through the door, even if she had to imagine he was there to greet her.  She could smell his cologne whenever she would go into the back of her mom’s closet.  All of those memories would be lost to her forever when they left.  That house was imperative for Avary holding onto that connection to her father.

Tear drops were making their presence known and Avary closed her eyes tightly to keep them reigned in.  “If he was here, none of this would be happening,”  she said void of emotion.  She did not want to get herself all riled up and show her mom just how much this was hurting her.  The only thing Charlotte figured was Avary did not want to leave her school and the few friends that she talked to.  Avary never told her, or anyone, the real reason-that house was the only place she felt normal.

“You don’t know that,” Charlotte spat back at her.  She hated when Avary brought David into the fight.  She knew how to push Charlotte’s buttons.

“What makes you so sure that moving to a house, in a town that we have never been to is the right decision?”

“I’ve been there, Ava.  Remember?"

“And why did you not take me or Kellan along with you to look at it?  Oh that’s right, you knew that both of us would be against it.  So then you keep your plans secret for another three months.  That sounds real promising, Mother.”  Avary said brusquely.

“I am not going to do this with you, Ava.  I have told you time and time again that we cannot afford to live here on one income, and a teacher’s one at that.  Now we have a place to live, that is paid off.  I have a job with a  promotion that is going to pay me almost double what I am making here.  The town is smaller, yes, but that does not necessarily make it a bad thing.”

“Then fine.  You go and I’ll stay here.”

‘With who?”  Charlotte challenged.  She knew that Avary had no place to stay.  She wasn’t even really that close to anyone.  She had more or less acquaintances, but no real friends.

“I don’t know…” she started to say and then continued, “Emma.  I can stay with Emma and her family.  When I went over to her house last week to get my book I lent her, she offered for me to stay with her and her mom.  Her parents are getting a divorce and she doesn’t think her mom would mind.”

Charlotte started to shake her head at her young, naive daughter. “Emma was probably just being nice, Ava.  I know for a fact that Mrs. Phillips is going through a lot right now and I don’t think dealing with another teenager is going to help matters.  So no.” She went back to putting the lid on the box.

“You are such a bitch,”  Avary retorted.  She tried to escape the room as fast as possible.  She had never called her mom that before, to her face.

Charlotte rounded the room and cornered her.  She stood in front of her, blocking her exit.  Charlotte had to fight back every urge not to slap her clear across the face. “Say that again to my face.  How dare you ever call me that.  I have raised you better than that.”

Avary glared at her mother, the hatred was beaming out of her eyes like bright lights out of headlights. Charlotte would have to have been an idiot to misread the look.  She read it loud and clear.

“Look at me how you want, Avery Caroline Rose, but if you ever call me that again, you will not be living under my roof.  Do you understand me?”

Avary stood her ground.  She didn’t blink.  She didn’t even breathe.  She carefully weighed her options.  After a few seconds of deciding that she had no other choice, she conceded, but only slightly.  “Yes.”  The words came out like burnt ashes.

“Then go upstairs and make sure your room is ready for the movers.”  Charlotte dismissed her daughter, even though Avary had not moved one inch.  Charlotte looked down and away from her to let Avary know the conversation was moot.  She understood and waited for her mom to leave the room before she made a move.

As soon as Avary went up the stairs, her brother was waiting for her.  He had his arms crossed across his chest and was leaning up against his closed bedroom door. “You know, you really do need to work on those people skills of yours, Ava.  Especially if you even hope to make any friends where we are going.”

“Shut. Up.” She tried to move around him and make it to her room.

Her room for only a few hours longer.  But at least in there, she could turn up her music, have a good cry and rage all she wanted against her tyrannical mother.

He blocked her passage and his large frame kept her trapped.

“No, Ava.  I am sick of your shit.  You are so ready to hate everyone and blame all of us for everything that is going wrong in your life.  I am sorry that we have to move.  I am sorry that you are so miserable and cannot even stand to look at us.  I am sorry that Dad died.  There you go.  Blame me.  Hate me if you have to, but stop this with her.  You are tearing this family apart….”

That was it. The tears started flowing and no matter what she tried to do, they would keep coming until she got all of it out.  She wanted to scream. She wanted to break something.  She wanted to hurt someone.  She threw herself at her brother and started pounding on his broad chest.

“I don’t want this. I hate this, I hate all of this. I hate you. I hate her,”  she screamed into his chest.

“Let it out, Ava.  Let it out.”

“I didn’t do this to us.  He did.  He did the day he left us.  How could he leave us like that?  How could she let him?  I need him here, Kell.”  She slumped to the ground right next to where her brother was standing.  “I have no one, Kellan.  I am all alone and I hate it.  And now when we move there, it’s going to be even worse.  I’ll know nobody.”

He squatted on the floor next to where his twin was.  He pulled her chin up and took the hem of his shirt to wipe her eyes. “I won’t know anyone either, Ava.”

She tried slowing down the sobs that were repeatedly coming from her chest.  “You can make friends anywhere, Kellan.  It’s easy for you.”

“Ava, you’ll know me,” he added with a smile.  “I promise I will be there for you, more than what I have been before.”

“But what if I hate it there?”

“Then you and I will run off to the circus like we had planned when we were eight years old.”

“You remember that?”

“Sure, silly.  It was right after Mom and Dad took us to the circus for our birthday.  We both wanted cotton candy and they told us no, so we figured that kids in the circus get all the cotton candy they could ever want and their parents never told them what they could do.”

Avary started to giggle.  It seemed like a lifetime ago when that all happened.  Back when her and Kellan were inseparable.  When life was so much easier.