I swore to myself when I was 18 year's old that I would never again come back to Faulkner Montana.
There was nothing left here for me.
Best laid plans, however, tend to screw me over in the end.
I'm no stranger to bad fortune, everyone knows that to be true, because every single person in this God forsaken town knows me. Hell, most of the country knows me.
When I got out of this place, I watched it shrink in my rear view mirror before I refused to look back at it at all. This place was nothing but a nightmare to me.
It's a hell hole surrounded by the most beautiful mountainous views, a sky painted with orange and pinks in the mornings, and a deep cobalt at night. Here the stars are more clear than any other place I've tried planting my roots in. It's all a facade, this beauty that pulls you in, makes you think this is a place you can see yourself waking up with a smile for the rest of your life. Like most things though, when you pull back those layers of beautiful wrapping, inside is just a regular old town, just like everywhere else in this world.
No place is perfect, I'm aware of that, I just hold to the belief that Faulkner is even worse than anywhere else. Monsters live here...or they-he, did.
As soon as I take the exit off of the highway leading down between the valleys that will lead to my home town, I feel the panic start to set in.
My pulse is louder, my palms grip the steering wheel ahead of me with an unnecessary amount of force, and I can feel the nervous sweat beginning to pool beneath my arms and on the palms of my hands.
This is a mistake.
It's the mantra I've been repeating to myself over and over for the past two weeks, since I got the call to come back home.
This is the last place I'd like to be, but my options were limited. I'm the only one they were able to track down.
My great aunt Ruth, had finally died.
When I got the message from her lawyers handling her estates, I didn't feel sad. If I'm being entirely honest, my first thought was that only the truly worst people live that damn long.
At the ripe old age of 98, Ruth Jacobs, had finally gone on home to her home in the sky with her ever merciful lord and savior.
I wonder if that's the same savior that apparently told her not to take my brother and me in after everything happened. She was the next of kin, after all. A statement made by the police that fall that didn't seem to register with her.
I guess I get it.
Who wants two cursed teens?
Certainly not Ruth Jacobs.
Ruth Jacobs wanted a pack of Marlboro reds and a hefty glass of wine before bed after a long day of winning at the bingo hall. Her daily plans had not left any space to be responsible for two kids. Because of her, we were split up and put into the system.
Or, at least I was.
Dallas ran away, only a year shy of freedom anyway. I begged him to take me with him wherever it was he was going, but he'd said no. I cried myself to sleep for months after being placed in a temporary foster home in the next town over from Faulkner. The family was nice, as nice as people who aren't your real family can be to a troubled teen with a haunted past. But they'd never been real family to me.
Dallas was the only one who had, and even he had chosen to leave. Had I been old enough at the time, I wouldn't have blamed him. I was mad for a long time but I knew I would have left too.
Now I'm the only one who knows where Dallas is anymore. Which is why I'd been chosen as the next of kin for great aunt Ruth.
I'd not seen the woman since that last day in the court room when she signed her rights to Dallas and me over to the state, washing her hands of us and our cursed names once and for all.
I guess people took it easier on her since she was only a Jacobs by marriage. One that hadn't even lasted all that long. The town could still accept her since she wasn't the one who's blood had created the monster my father was. Her blood was clean and mine was tainted. It was as asinine and simple as that.
"Its been another beautiful day down here in the valley" the radio host's cheery voice filled my ears. "Those of you who got out to the slopes today were in luck as the snow as not stopped falling, giving everyone that fresh powder-."
I hit the off button on the radio and instead let the swoosh of the windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth, caress the silence inside the car.
It's late November and the winter season is in full gear. Snow capped mountains surround me as I maneuver my little rented Kia around the curving salted roads.
As I turn off of the main road, I can just see the lights of downtown, the Christmas decorations twinkling. I can practically hear the Christmas music playing outside on the streets, people bustling from shop to shop or stopping to get a hot coco from Mason Rickwood's booth, assuming he's still alive and still does that.
It strikes me now, how things may not be just as they are all frozen in my memory. It's been ten years since I drove away, swearing to never return. Even a place so stuck in the past as Faulkner Montana could have changed in that much time.
I only wish I could say the same thing for myself.
I'm driving back into this cursed place, every bit as lost as I was when I left it. Seeing the place I once lived, once loved, all around me, it takes me back to things I don't want to remember. To times I was happy. It's hard to dwell in those small happy memories though when so much more is encased by the evil that took place here.
I jump as my phone starts to ring in my lap, the loud cheerful tone striking in comparison to my dark thoughts.
I struggle to get one of my gloves off, still holding the wheel with the other. Even in a rental I couldn't afford one with good working heat. I've spent the entire drive bundled in a parka with my scarf wrapped tightly around my neck and gloves to keep the chill out of my fingers.
I hit the accept button, then drop the phone back onto my lap as I take a turn a bit too sharply.
"Shit, hang on." I mutter, gently coasting the car back up onto the road and off of the grassy shoulder. I grab the phone again, holding it to my ear while using my knee to help my other hand continue to steer. "Hello? Sorry." I mutter into the phone.
"Missy?" Mrs. Statham's voice floats from the phone. "Oh do be careful out there, dear, this snow is just really something." She says then stops, as if questioning herself. "You are coming, right? Like, you're close aren't ya, honey?"
I sigh into the phone. "Yeah I'm almost there." I tell her, still screaming at myself what a mistake this all is.
"Oh goody!" She says. "So I've got everything ready to go for you-." She trails on but I'm not really listening. Not as I take the turn down a dirt road that winds between thick foliage on either side.
I want to slam on the brakes.
I want to tuck tail and run.
But the tires keep rolling forward, until there it is.
My family home.
The long dirt driveway seems to go on forever before it opens up to a clearing in the woods. A modest two story white brick home with the faded blue shutters on the large windows. The tiny porch is illuminated by the glow of the one orange light beside the front door.
I park in the yard in front of the home, the same spot my own mother used to use. Beside me, sitting in the nice white Tahoe, Mrs. Statham hopes out of the driver's seat, pulling her puffy expensive looking pink coat tighter around her plump body.
"Do you need any help with bags or anything?" She shouts at me, shuffling her feet by the side of my car.
I don't miss the way her eyes shift uneasily back and forth between me and the house. No wonder she'd called to see where I was. Even though I'm nearly twenty minutes ahead of schedule, she's been here sitting in the yard of John Jacobs all alone. I can feel the unease rolling off of her as I step out of my car, my knees weak from the drive and my body stiff from being sedentary for so long.
"I've just got the one." I tell her, opening the door to the backseat to grab out my one large black duffel, slinging it over my shoulder.
"Oh, ok." She says, swatting snow out of her face. "I guess you don't need much to only stay a few days."
A few days.
The thought sends a chill through me that the snow could never touch.
"You have the keys?" I prompt her, not wanting to stand around and small talk.
"Right right." She shoves a gloved hand down into her coat pocket and pulls out a single gold key with a red tag attached to the key ring. "All yours." She passes it over as if she's not able to get it out of her possession quickly enough. "So," she says, turning to walk up towards the house and I follow. "Like I said on the phone, I've had some people out to clean and everything to make sure you'd be comfortable."
I appreciate the thought, I do, and I tell her as much. But I know in the back of my mind as I ascend the three front porch steps, the third creaking just as I remembered, that no amount of cleaning would rid this house of the evil that still clings to every wall.
I stall at the front door, looking up into the light beside the door. Every part of me knows I shouldn't be here, shouldn't have come back to this place much less this home.
Mrs. Statham clears her throat behind me and I fumble to stick the key into the lock, twisting it and hearing that click. I remove the key and turn the knob, pushing the door open in front of me.
I step aside and let Mrs. Statham step in first, something she doesn't seem too pleased to be doing either but I needed just one more second to catch my racing breath before I stepped inside.
I jump as she closes the door behind me as I walk inside.
"Oh my God." My heart slams against my chest.
Mrs. Statham laughs nervously. "Oh, I know." She says quietly. "It's darn near untouched." She says, minimizing the fact that it looks identical to memory. "It's been ransacked a few times and some places of wallpaper had to be...well...painted over...but for the most part it's very intact. I don't think many people had the gu-." She stops herself, bringing a folded hand up in front of her pursed dark red lips.
I know what she was going to say. This place is haunted, not to just me but to the whole damn town too. Most people would be too afraid to pass though that front door. I grew up in this little house and even I am scared right down to my very marrow.
I walk up the narrow hallway, the walls on either side still boasting our happy family photos. I step closer and realize that though the photos are there, my father's face has been blacked out. Somehow that makes them even more eerie than if I was just just see his face again after all of this time.
To my left is the living room. A small love seat covered with a sheet sits beside a tiny wooden side table with an old ornate lamp with a deep green shade. In front of the couch is a coffee table with the white lace runner my mother had spent months making still laying across its surface. Before that is the wall to ceiling faded brick fireplace where all of our Christmas gifts would be laid out on Christmas morning.
I know that the door off of the living room leads into my parent's bedroom, while if I go through the archway to the next room I'll be in the kitchen with a staircase leading up to the second floor landing where off of that narrow hallway is one bathroom and mine and my brother's old bedroom.
I can't bring myself to go any further than the loveseat in the living room. My father's old recliner is pushed up against the wall and I drop my bag there before I sit down onto the loveseat, staring at the mantle of the fireplace and my parents wedding photo still sitting there.
Like the others I've seen so far, even in this photo of the two of them standing beneath a flower arch, Dad's long arms reached out to hold Mom's tiny waist dressed in lace, my father's profile is blackened out.
"You can go." I say, not looking away from the photo.
"Oh, uh, are you..." she trials off because I know she's trying to be polite, but she also doesn't want to be so polite that she gets stuck being here any longer than she already has.
"I'll phone you if I need anything." I assure her and I hear her release the breath she'd been holding.
"Ok, dear." She tells me, already backing out of the room. "You've got my number and you can call me anytime, doesn't matter the hour, ok?"
"Alright."
"If you change your mind about staying here, Missy, I'd be happy to pay for you to stay back in town, ok? Don't feel like you have to be here if you don't want to be."
She's being kind. The kind of kind that I appreciate in a person. It's not faked or used as a ploy to get something from you. She knows I have nothing to give. She's already getting what she wants in this situation, so her being genuinely nice to me is a surprise.
I turn my head lazily away from the photo on the mantle and look into her big brown eyes across the room. "Thank you." I tell her and I mean it. "I'll see you in the office in the morning." I assure her, trying my best at a smile.
I don't know if it lands the way I wanted it to, but she grins and nods her head nonetheless.
"Yes ma'am." She says, pulling her purse up onto her shoulder a little tighter. "We will get all of that paperwork signed and we will get you out of here and back to your regular life in no time at all."
With that she turns on her heels and I hear her quick footsteps up the hall and out of the front door. It closes behind her with a final sounding thud. In seconds I hear her engine fire up and then her headlights cast a shadow out onto the walls around me through the window as she turns her car around and drives back up the long narrow dirt driveway back to civilization.
My fingers tighten around my phone in my coat pocket as the fact that I'm really alone sets in. I could call her. I could tell her she was right and I'd made a mistake.
But I know I won't.
The only thing worse than being here, would be being in the only motel in town. Within seconds everyone and their brothers would know I was back in town if I went there.
It's not worth the risk.
Just a few days and I'll be out of here with a chunk of change to really start over. Maybe I'll finally make something of myself. I pull my coat tighter. I'll go somewhere warm I tell myself.
I'll go somewhere I can wake up with the ocean outside of my window. I've never even seen the ocean in real life.
I dig into my pocket and wrap my fingers around the orange pill bottle. Only three pills left. Shit. I pour one into my palm, replacing the bottle back into my pocket.
I swallow the Xanax dry.
I rest my head back on the back of the sofa and I let my eyes flutter closed. I feel the warm cozy comfort of the pill fill my blood and I let it ease my mind away.
I drift into a gentle sleep with thoughts of sunshine and wave breaks lulling me away, my body drifting out to sea with a smile on my face.