THE NIGHTMARE WITHIN: Chapter 1

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

As she pulled the Ford Explorer into her mother's driveway in Chicago, Carin's heart felt empty.  Kevin sat in the passenger seat, wearing the same blank expression as the previous two weeks.  She was hoping that completing the move to her mother's house would help draw him out of his grief.  It would take some time, but she was hoping to see some inkling of her sweet little boy still inside him somewhere.

The front yard was so lush and green that it looked like a bed of emeralds.  Newly planted baby pine trees lined the drive on either side.  The leaves of the two large oaks in the front yard hung limply and had curled in the heat.  The yard was mostly shadow and cool air, a luxury during the heat of summer.

She eased the Explorer to a stop, and shut off the engine, leaving them in silence.  It was as if with the turn of the ignition key she expected Kevin to snap out of it, for him to show the same joy he always did when they would go to her mother's house.  A minute or more slipped by and neither one of them stirred.  The mounting pain behind her eyelids wanted release.  It would be so easy to let it overwhelm her, to let it drown her in its violent and brackish waves.  Her temples pounded and if she didn't get things under control, she was going to start crying again.  She didn't want to be in that condition around her mother.

She took a deep breath, fighting the hitching in her chest with every inhaled ounce of air.  Her hands still gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white and trembling. 

Come on Carin, you can do this.  You have to do this. 

She slowly let out the pent up air from her lungs.  She had to do this.  "Hey, bud, let's go inside.  Your grandma's waiting for us."

Kevin didn't say anything or even look at her.  Tucking his baseball glove under his arm, he opened the passenger door.  He was nearly to the front door before she remembered to move.  She grabbed her purse and hurried to catch up to him.

That wasn't so hard, was it? Carin thought.  But getting out of the car wasn't the worst of their problems.  Moving on with the rest of their lives would be their true challenge.

Kevin stood staring at the door, his eyes rimmed with brown bags.  Carin was digging in her purse for her key when the door opened.

"Oh, my babies, you made it."  Carin's mother reached out to touch them.  She had been blind since childhood, but she got around so well that Carin sometimes forgot.

"Hi, Mom.  Thanks.  Thanks for everything."

They didn't say anything else.  Her mother leaned in for a deep hug with Carin, and then shared a dead-fish embrace with Kevin.  He slinked away to the living room and turned on the T.V.  He flipped the channels until he landed on cartoons, and then he watched like a zombie, barely blinking.

When the door closed behind them, darkness shrouded the interior of the house, even with the sun still high in the sky.  All the curtains were closed and not a single lamp was alight.  A rush of air that bordered on an arctic freeze greeted Carin and she realized her mother had the air conditioning cranked up high.  Her mother was raised poor, and not until Carin was into her early thirties, did her parents pull out of it.  Some of the frugal practices never went away, and Carin doubted her mother was aware of most of her quirks.  She almost never used the air conditioning, even during the blistering heat of summer.  Her mother had consciously cooled the house for their benefit.

The smell of the house was comforting and familiar.  The well-oiled molding and oak shelving her father had built into their home, a little each year until it looked so much more than the cookie cutter G.I. housing it had once been.  A repotted plant, moist and freshly turned soil, fragrant leaves and snaking tendrils, probably in the kitchen window where it would get the best light.  The rose-scented powder her mother dusted the carpet with before vacuuming.  For the first time in months, even long before James's murder, Carin felt a measurable amount of ease.  Walking into the home of her youth and knowing she would find solace here once again seemed to wash away the coppery tinge of anxiety from her mouth.  In its wake, she was aware of how emotionally raw she felt.  It was a palpable feeling, yet distant, almost as if they were someone else's emotions mentioned to Carin in hushed tones.