It Happened in the Night Ch. 01-02

With the van full of food and supplies, Brian walked over to the liquor store and smashed the glass door in with a crack from his foot. The only thing on his mind was relieving the pain and fear that were corrupting his thoughts. He really needed a drink to calm down and try to get his mind off his anguish. His brain rejected that logic as dangerous.

Nonetheless, his legs carried him through the doorway and into the store. Bottles lined the walls and the rows. Every different type of liquor and brand was available. He walked along until he saw some white rum, which gave him flashbacks to his college days where he would drink it straight from the bottle. "That would go down smooth right now," he uttered to himself, getting used to having nobody else to talk to. He picked up the biggest one he could find and grabbed a bottle of Bailey's Irish cream for good measure. At home, he would have nothing but beer. That would not be strong enough for the relief his body craved right now. He grabbed the bottles and headed back to the van.

It was only quarter after twelve but it felt much later. The day had been traumatic for Brian. He was in a very reflective mood as his van pulled into the driveway of the house that had felt like home until this morning. It no longer felt that way to him. The house felt more like a prison. He wanted to run away from this little town and all the memories that it held. But he couldn't when his family was still dead in their bedrooms. They couldn't be left like that.

As he walked towards the door, keys in hand, the vision of his neighbors house came flooding back to him. What if they weren't dead? He was positive that the sound he had heard was the bed creaking. What else could it be? Then the way the curtain swayed after he ran away from the house. Somebody was watching him and he had to be careful walking through the front door.

The key turned in the lock and Brian looked inside. Everything was quiet; too quiet. Closing and locking the door behind him Brian crept around the house. He looked down the stairs. Nothing. There was nothing in the kitchen or dining room either. His heart felt like it was beating out of his chest as he walked down the narrow hallway towards the three bedrooms. He checked in the bathroom. It was empty. The floor creaked beneath his feet. Their goes any element of surprise he might have had, Brian thought to himself shaking his head.

Brian slowly pushed the door to Matt's room open and was relieved to see him lying in the same place he was before he left the house. He sat on the edge of the bed looking at his son. Shame was flush on Brian's face. It was awful to admit that he was glad Matt was still dead. Perhaps he wasn't losing his mind quite yet.

After exiting Matt's bedroom, he entered Josh's room, only to see he was still in the crib right where he'd left him. A quick inspection revealed nothing else in the room. He stood by the edge of the crib and tried to fight back the tears that welled up inside but couldn't hold them back. His family had meant everything to him and they were gone.

Only one room left to check upstairs. His hand trembled with fear as he opened the door to his bedroom. He would never have imagined when he woke up this morning he would be terrified to open up the door to his own bedroom. The door squeaked as it opened. Karen was still lying on the bed. Something wasn't quite right about her though. He couldn't think of what it was.

Finally, it hit him like a ton of bricks. His knees buckled forcing him to the floor. "Karen," he shouted. "If you're alive say something, anything." The room was silent. All he could hear was his pulse reverberating in his ears.

Regaining his feet and his nerve, he crawled over to the bed where she laid facing against the wall. He shook her forcefully. "Karen, honey. Wake up. It's Brian." No answer.

Her face was colorless, her skin icy and clammy as ever. She looked very dead. But how could it be? She wasn't wearing this shirt when he saw her before. It didn't match her black and pink pj bottoms that she still had on. The shirt she wore, he bought her on their holidays last weekend. But there it was on her body. Brian's mind revolted and told him it was time to leave the room. He had never been so terrified in his entire life.

Brian closed the door behind him and went outside to get the supplies out of the van. Thunder boomed in the sky. It wasn't raining again yet, but he could feel the humidity rising. As he piled the supplies in the upstairs living room, he formulated a plan. He knew what he needed to do.

"I can't do this," Brian yelled at himself. "But if I don't I'll never be able to sleep again."

Brian rustled around in the bags he had brought into the house and pulled out the full forty-ounce bottle of white rum. Wasting no time, he twisted the top off and took a long pull from the bottle. It burned all the way down his throat. At first, he thought his stomach would rebel, but he kept it down. He hadn't drank straight liquor since college and it was going down smooth. Too smooth. "Only a few more drinks," Brian told himself. "Just enough to take the edge off."

After another three drinks, his mind became blurred enough to shut off the voices in his head that were yelling at him to leave town and never come back. He had to finish things. Brian couldn't stand loose ends. "I'm not just going to discard them like garbage for the animals to snack on," he argued with himself.

His mind made up, Brian paced out onto the deck and grabbed the grey fiberglass shovel he had brought from the hardware store and headed outside as the rain started. The grass was slick from the rain and his balance was failing. So it was no surprise to Brian when his feet slid out from under him and he slipped down the rest of the hill. He thought he could feel eyes watching him from his neighbor's house, but was too preoccupied to care. His mind was concentrating on finding the perfect spot.

He marched across the yard and starting digging. The pouring rain made holding the shovels handle tricky. Bit by bit the ground gave way to his shovel and the hole got bigger. Lightning crackled across the mid-afternoon sky as the storm closed in. High winds drove the rain against Brian, soaking him to the bone. His flimsy t-shirt was no defense against the storm.

He dug for hours without stopping, sheer determination and panic driving him onwards. The storm had abated and was now only a light sprinkling rain. Blisters had begun to form on his hands that were unused to physical labor. His shoulders tightened in knots and his body shivered from the cold but Brian was relentless. The hole finally complete, he leaned on the shovel and looked down into it. The earth lay bare before him, opening up like a willing woman spreading her legs to allow access.

Brian smiled at that thought as he trudged back up the hill. He slipped countless times, but didn't slow down. His brain warned him that his energy would not last much longer and he had to finish before he passed out from exhaustion. He strode into the house and down the hall towards his room. Opening the door revealed his wife unmoved from before, much to his relief.

Inside the closet was a collection of old sheets and comforters. They included a few unopened ones they received as wedding presents seven years earlier. He grabbed a larger one and strode over to the bed. His hands shook as he laid the comforter over his wife's prone body. He began to wrap her in it making sure that it was tight around her arms and legs. She was surprisingly light, he thought as he lifted her off the bed and carried her down the hallway. He went downstairs and put her just inside the door to the back deck.

Brian raced back up the stairs, knowing how important time was. He pulled another comforter from the closet and proceeded to wrap Josh the same way. In his mind, he was wrapping parcels, like Christmas presents to set under the tree. His brain couldn't handle the truth of what he was about to do.

After repeating the process with Matt, he carried them both down the stairs and laid them next to their mom. Brian slid the patio door open and hoisted the bundle that held his wife's body over his shoulder and walked down the end of the deck onto the slippery hill. His feet betrayed him again and he landed with her on top of him. He was so thankful he couldn't see her inside. Tears ran in torrents down his cheeks as he reached the edge of the hole and dropped her inside.

Turning away from the hole, he trudged back up to the deck and grabbed the other two bundles. They were lighter in weight but his burden was twice as heavy. When he reached the edge of the hole, he collapsed on the ground. The three of them had been so close and now he would have to go on alone. Alone. He gently unwrapped Matt's blanket, exposing his face and pressed his lips to his forehead. "Goodbye, son."

With shaking hands he closed the blanket and tossed his son in the hole next to his mom. Only one more to go, he thought. Brian lifted the lightest bundle and tried to let him go but couldn't do it. He unwrapped him and held him tight against his chest, rocking him like a newborn baby. "Oh Josh, why, why did..." he moaned softly through tear dripping lips. The cold chill of Josh's body against him brought him back to reality. He closed the bundle up and placed it down on the other side of his mom.

As the first shovel full of dirt landed on top of them, Brian's body began to convulse. He managed to turn just in time to avoid vomiting into the hole. The unimaginable horror was almost over. Just finish filling the hole, he told himself, and then I can go on with life. He knew he was only fooling himself. One by one, the shovels of dirt landed in the hole until he fell to the ground completely spent.

He lay in the wet grass for several minutes before he dare try and move. He regained his legs and looked into the hole. It was then he realized it was over. The trip back up the hill seemed to take forever but eventually he reached the deck and entered the basement again. His mind screamed to get to bed before he passed out. Weary legs carried him up the stairs and into his room. He managed to lock the door on the way in and dropped like a rock onto the bed. Sleep was a welcome refuge.

Brian awoke from his slumber into a pitch-black room. At first, he wasn't certain whether he was awake, asleep or dead. His mind cleared up enough that he started moving around and was pretty sure he was awake, not dead. Utter peace crept over him for a few minutes as he lay on his familiar bed in the darkness. His mind had yet to relive the events of the day. He could actually feel his body crumple as it hit him that his family was dead.

Loneliness crept into his mind. He forced himself to crawl over to the edge of his bed and pull the blinds open. The moon was nearly full and there was not a cloud in the sky. Light swept in through the open window, giving sparse illumination to the room. Next Brian moved over to the bedside table and realized that in his exhaustion he had forgotten to bring the flashlight into the bedroom with him. "Good luck finding it in the dark," he muttered to himself.

The house was quiet, deathly quiet he thought. His mind drifted to Shakespeare's Hamlet and the passage about the "sleep of death". In that moment of weakness, Brian thought he would welcome that kind of sleep. To be free from the pain that wracked his heart would be a blessing. Somewhere from deep inside his mind a voice screamed "you're not dead yet, don't give in".

His mind suddenly stopped arguing with itself as he heard a noise. Brian had always known that his hearing was better than most and he had often used it to his advantage. The darkness has a way of amplifying other senses since the body can't rely on sight. The noise he thought he heard was the creaking of the steps leading up from the basement. It was very quiet at first and gradually got louder.

The strange thing was it didn't sound like just one person either. He listened carefully, concentrating on the noise. Steps creaked over and over, as if someone was trying to be silent but the steps wouldn't cooperate. What he heard next continued to haunt him for a long time to come. "Bash," he heard the sound say in a little voice that sounded just like Josh. His heart threatened to leap out of his chest. Then he heard it again as if to confirm his fear.

Tears streamed down his face as he heard a voice that sounded like his wife say "get your clothes off you two and get in the tub". The sound of the water running in the bathtub brought it all home to Brian. How could this be? They were dead. He had buried them himself, with his own hands. His mind registered a cross between joy and terror.

They continued to frolic in the bathtub. The sound of their play a familiar one and yet it wasn't the same. Something about their voices was different. It was a more low guttural tone than the high pitch joyful cries he was accustomed to. Brian pinched himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming. "What the hell is going on?"

Brian's critical side was coming around. "But if they are in the bathroom, they can't be in the backyard can they?" With that thought in mind, he raced to the window hoping there would be enough light to see. There was. He could vaguely make out the hole in the ground. An open hole with piles of dirt on either side was all he saw. They had escaped. Brian as if he'd been struck by lightning. His hands shook as he slid down the wall, his back pressed against it for support.

What he wanted more than anything else was to run into the hallway and sweep them up in his arms one last time. One side of his mind didn't seem to care if he paid the price with his life. The other side had alarm bells ringing at full force. If they were back from the dead, his life could be in serious danger. He could hear the water emptying out of the tub as both kids were off to their rooms to get ready for bed.

There was nothing but the deafening sound of silence for a few minutes as they retreated to their rooms. Then he heard Josh's bedroom door open and close with a soft creaking noise. Time seemed to stand still as Brian waited for another sound. Someone tried to turn the door handle but they found it was locked. "Brian Honey. Matt wants you to read him a bedtime story. Get out here," he heard the voice that sounded like his wife say. It talked to him as if it knew he was in the room.

He didn't answer; couldn't have if he wanted to. His sanity hung by a thread, he was nothing more than a huddled mess on the floor. Panic struck a cord deep inside him as he heard the voice say, "Sorry Matt, I guess Daddy isn't ready to come out and play yet. Maybe later." It sounded so matter of fact and happy. Brian couldn't get over the joy that came through in the way the voice spoke. She was enjoying tormenting him, Brian could tell.

He heard the door handle rattle again. "So Honey did you like the shirt I put on for you this afternoon. It was all for you, I know how much you like it."

Brian choked back his sobs, trying to remain silent. His mind issued a silent scream, as he realized she must have been awake earlier. Or she could at least see and hear him. Sweat began to trickle down Brian's forehead. The calm demeanor he had been trying to maintain was cracking. The voice sounded like his wife, had to be his wife. How else would she know about the shirt?

"You're so boring Brian, you always were. I'll get in there eventually, said the spider to the fly. And when I do, I'll eat you all up," the voice intoned, this time adding more of a snarl at the end. He detected an undertone to her voice that if pressed to describe it, he would call reptilian. Something in the way the S sounds slurred together. The thought chilled his blood.

This was a game to her, Brian realized. She was simply toying with his emotions, softening him up before she swooped in and took him. There was a sinister, malicious quality to her voice. He thought she was getting frustrated that he was playing so hard to get. Something stiffened in Brian, not his erection, but an iron will deep inside his mind. If she did come in, he wasn't giving up without a fight.

"Brian, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. If you let me in on your own, we can have some fun. Remember last night how you fucked me hard. My body aches to have you inside me again. Please open the door and let me show you how much I missed you. I'll even let you fuck my asshole, like you've been obsessing about since we met."

He sat on the bed listening to her. Her voice sounded so much like his wife's it was melting his resolve. The thought of sex hadn't occurred to him all day, but now his mind drifted off to the night before. It was the last happy moment he had and he could feel his cock harden thinking about it. How soft her skin was and the smell of her body as he licked her pussy flooded his mind. His will power bent and stretched as his hand lowered to his growing cock.

"My pussy is wet for you Brian. Would you like to taste it? I just did. It's so sweet and juicy. Why don't you let me in and I'll let you bend me over the bed and fuck me from behind."

Brian had never heard his wife be so vulgar. He couldn't help being turned on by the sound of her voice saying those things. A hand slid under his pants and gripped his cock. His hand jerked back and forth, rubbing himself. The mixture of emotions running through his brain made it difficult to concentrate on anything.

"I'd love to take that hard cock in my mouth and swallow every drop you give me," her voice related as he heard the smack of lips coming together from the other side of the door.

His hands strummed his cock with increasing speed. Then he suddenly stopped. "I won't give in to you," Brian declared to himself, shaking his head. He lay down on his pillow and waited for her reaction.

"Maybe tomorrow night I'll bring a friend along," she said laughing. "Oh, by the way Brian, the neighbors told me to say hi. They are so sorry they were sleeping when you broke into their house earlier. Sparky would say hi too, but he's dead. Really dead, not like us. He was just too noisy."

Brian shivered at the thoughts of what happened to poor Sparky. What kind of animals had they become?

"I'll see you in the morning Brian, even if you don't think I'm watching you, I will be. Someone's always watching you. Watch your step. I'll leave you a message before I go to sleep. Sweet dreams," she tittered away, as he could hear the sound of her walking down the hall. That was the last time he heard her voice that night.

After that, Brian lay in bed tossing and turning for what seemed like hours. He couldn't believe what he had heard and didn't know if he could face seeing them in the morning. That inner core of strength was fading and he began to sob again thinking of what happened to his life. Eventually his brain stopped churning from exhaustion. Sleep finally took him.

*

Thanks for taking the time to read my story. Any feedback or votes would be greatly appreciated.