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As I wasn’t witness to the next day’s events, I must rely entirely on Ethan’s testimonial, which I’m sure is true in essence; but with his flair for the dramatic, I’m unable to say where reality bridges fancy. I received an hysterical phone call early in the afternoon from Ethan as he was enroute to my office. All I was able to understand was “emergency,” and “snake.” There was a great deal of crying in the background, so I assumed that there was possibly more than one emergency on the way. Luckily Dr. Zee had stopped in for a moment and I had an extra, and much more experienced, hand to assist. We met Ethan just as his truck pulled up. He jumped out of the truck and tossed a howling Emmy into Dr. Zee’s arms crying “A snake bit ‘er,” and ran around to the passenger side to assist me. I was attempting to get some information from Shelly before I removed her or Jimmy from Ethan’s truck, but neither of them would give me an answer. They were both covered in blood and screaming wildly. Shelly was clutching at her right ankle, which was covered by Ethan’s wadded up t-shirt, and refused to let me look at it. I pulled Jimmy out to get him into an exam room and Ethan followed carrying Shelly. He dumped her on an examination table for me and ran to check on Emily. I first checked Jimmy for injuries and found that he had none. All of the blood on him apparently came from his mother, as did his present state of hysteria, so I sent him out with Kate, our receptionist. I continued to press Shelly for answers, but all she did was scream and cry. She pushed my hands away every time I attempted to remove her hand from her ankle so I could look at it. I finally yelled at her to behave herself and forced her hand from her ankle. To my amazement, there was a relatively small wound that was just deep enough to require a few stitches. To my further astonishment, there appeared to be no other marks anywhere on her. I asked her repeatedly if there were any other wounds on herself or anyone else. She insisted that it was just her ankle, and that she was unaware of the extent of Emily’s injuries.
As I stitched and dressed her ankle, she explained how she obtained the injury. She claimed that she had made a pitcher of fresh lemonade shortly after she sent the children out to Ethan in their bathing suits. She claimed that she saw him standing in the middle of the hallway with his back to her, and he appeared to be staring up at the ceiling. She called to him and asked if he would like a glass of lemonade, but he didn’t answer her. It was not unusual for him to be so deep in thought that it was difficult to get his attention, so she decided to bring the lemonade to him. She called to him again as she approached him, but he walked away from her and out onto the front porch. She tried to follow him to the porch, but claimed that she was accosted in the foyer by some unseen force. She asserted that, as she entered the foyer, she was grabbed around the ankle and thrown to the floor, sending the glass of lemonade crashing to the floor as well. She called out for Ethan, but he was no longer there. The door slammed shut behind her of its own volition, and she was turned onto her back by the entity that held her ankle. She kicked and fought, but was unable to break free of its hold. She alleged that she clearly saw and felt a wound being slowly and deliberately opened up on her right ankle, but was unable to see the attacker or the weapon it used. She then heard a man, presumably Ethan, yell from outside and the attack stopped as abruptly as it began. She reached up to open the door that lead to the porch and crawled out, but was unable to see Ethan, so she lay there calling for him and hoping either he or one of the children would hear her. Seconds later Ethan came to her from inside the house and took her to his truck and brought her to me.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she said, “but you do believe me, right?”
“Of course I believe you, Shelly.” I left her to relax for a few moments while I had a chat with my cousin. I first went to check on Emily who, as it happens, was only suffering from the bite of a harmless water snake. Dr. Zee had both children calmed to the point where they were both sitting quietly and sucking on candy. I explained Shelly’s present state of mind to him and that, in my opinion, her injury wasn’t sufficient enough to produce the copious amount of blood that soaked her, both children, Ethan, and the interior of his truck. He attempted to glean more information from her while I checked on Ethan, whom I found sitting in my office. I pulled up a chair and sat down next to him. He was slumped over with his head in his hands. I handed him his keys. “Kate parked your truck for you.”
“Okay.” He had a greyish pallor, and his eyes were red and swollen. “Yeh got anythin’ I can put in it for the ride home? It’s a mess.”
“Yes, there’s a blanket in my truck. Will you be alright to drive?”
“Yeah.”
“You did a great job, Ethan. You held together, did all the right things, and everyone’s going to be just fine.”
“Yeh sure? Yeh know I ain’t good in a crisis.”
“You did fine,” I said as I put my arm around his shoulders. “Dr.Zee said you didn’t vomit until after Emmy’s bandage was on. That’s exceptional for you.”
“Even though I knew it was just a water snake, all I could see in my mind was my baby girl dyin’ in my arms. That’s all I thought about the whole way over here.”
“You can relax now, she’s fine. Her hand will be sore for a few days, but that’s all. She’ll be out running around and playing in a day or two.” I stood up to close my office door and returned to my seat. “Can you tell me anything about Shelly’s wound?”
“No, I didn’t see anythin’.”
“Can you give me a time frame?”
“Yeah, I think so.” He spoke slowly and stared into space to collect his thoughts. He paused frequently to make sure that he was remembering things correctly. “Um...it was after lunch...no wait, lemme start again. We all ate lunch in the kitchen like usual. It was about eleven thirty. The kids asked me to take ‘em swimmin’. I told ‘em to give me about an hour or so to finish somethin’ I was doin’, and then I would take ‘em. I figured that would be enough time for their stomachs to settle. So I went back to the porch, I cleaned and locked up all my tools, and rolled up the power-tool cords and stuff. They came through the front porch in their bathing suits to tell me that it was one o’clock already, so I went in the house to get my sunblock. I left my boots in my bedroom. That’s why I ain’t got no shoes on.”
“Okay, I’m following you.”
“We all walked down to the dock. As I was puttin’ sunblock on Jimmy, he shouted that he saw a snake, and he jumped behind me. Emmy was standin’ next to me. I yelled at ‘er, but she dove so fast to catch it that all I could do was grab ‘er hair, but it was too late. I yanked ‘er back, and she was still holdin’ the thing by the tail. It had its mouth around ‘er hand. The first thing that jumped into my mind was that it was a cottonmouth, so I grabbed a hold of it. But I got a real good look at it, and it was just an old water snake. So I tossed it in the water and it swam away. The next thing I did was rip off some of my t-shirt to wrap around ‘er hand, and then I scooped ‘em both up and ran to my truck. They were both crying and I was already startin’ to feel sick, so I tossed ‘em in the cab real quick and ran into the house for my keys. I ran through the kitchen hollerin’ for Shelly, but I didn’t hear her answer ‘til I got to the hallway table. I picked up my keys and that’s when I heard her yellin’ from the front porch. I went to get ‘er, and that’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“Wait ‘til yeh get home and see it. It’ll freak yeh out. I went to the foyer door. I opened it to get to ‘er, and I saw the whole thing was full of blood.”
“What ‘thing,’ do you mean the foyer?”
“Yeah, the whole thing’s covered in blood, and there’s a lot on the porch too where she dragged herself. I just picked ‘er up and took ‘er with me.”
“She must’ve been lying like that for some time, that’s the only way I can account for so much blood.”
“No, that blood was all fresh. It was still warm.”
“Maybe it just seemed that way because you were upset.”
“I’m tellin’ yeh it was fresh! It wasn’t even sticky. It looks like somebody dumped buckets of it in there.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll talk more when I get home. I have other patients to see.” I left the room and went outside to fetch a blanket from my truck to cover up the blood in his. He came out holding both children in his arms, and Shelly followed on crutches. I helped her get settled, and Ethan handed Jimmy to me to place on her lap. He sat in the driver’s seat and tucked Emmy in next to him. I leaned in the window and told him to get some sleep, and that I would bring home pizza for dinner.
“That’s a good idea. Does pizza sound good, Em?” Emmy, who normally did backflips at the mere mention of pizza, just buried her face in her father’s chest and nodded her head. Shelly and Jimmy didn’t respond at all. “Um...yer gonna have to clean that mess up.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“Yeah well, yeh know how I am with blood and stuff.”
I arrived home four hours later and they were all still asleep, so I left the pizza boxes on the table and fed Thor and the guinea pigs. Once I had the pets taken care of, I went to inspect the foyer. I followed the trail of bloody footprints left by Ethan until I reached the foyer door. I opened it and was astounded at what I found. The entire surface area of the floor was covered in blood that had to have been nearly a quarter of an inch deep. It showed no signs at all of congealing and still felt warm, unlike Ethan’s well-dried footprints and Shelly’s bloody imprints on the porch. I did notice some pieces of the lemonade glass that Shelly spoke of, so at least that part of the story was accurate. I spent the next hour mopping and scrubbing, and it was then that I realized that no blood had spattered onto the walls or glass of the foyer. There weren’t even any bloody fingerprints where Shelly would’ve opened the outside door. There were, however, numerous bloody finger and hand prints on Ethan’s tool chests, which were sitting on the porch and were all locked as he had stated. Just as I was finishing up, Ethan came downstairs carrying a bleary-eyed Emily. He placed her on her feet when he reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Hey,” he mumbled as he ran his fingers through his disheveled hair.
I nodded to him. “How do you feel, Emily?”
“Okay.”
“And you, Ethan?”
“I’m okay, still a little wiped out. Did yeh see the mess?”
“Yes, I want to talk to you about that later. I brought home pizza, but it has to be reheated. Are Shelly and Jimmy still asleep?”
“Yeah,” he said. I went upstairs to wake them for dinner while Ethan reheated the pies. We had a quiet dinner and afterwards I put fresh bandages on Shelly and Emmy because they had soaked them when they were getting washed up. Shelly complained so bitterly about the pain in her leg that I upped her dose of sedatives. Not long after dinner, she hobbled back upstairs for bed. We put the children to bed about an hour or so later and retired to my study for a desperately needed talk. I repeated to him the story that Shelly had told me, and that it was exactly the same as what she told Dr. Zee.
“What did yeh think of that mess?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I told yeh, it was fuckin’ freaky.”
“I can’t account for that amount of blood. It couldn’t possibly be all hers. She’d be dead, or damn near it, if she lost that much. She’s not even pale. She has better color than you do.”
“It’s the house,” he said quietly.
“I think she must’ve staged something. There’s no other explanation. Are you missing any tools?”
“Nope, they’re all accounted for.”
“What about your tool belt?”
“Locked up, like everythin’ else. Maybe she cut herself on the glass she dropped.”
“No, that’s a precision cut she has, straight with uniform depth. A piece of glass would’ve left a jagged cut. It had to be something like a razor. One of your power tools maybe?”
“No way! She woulda cut ‘er foot off if she even tried. She ain’t that strong anyway. She wouldn’t be able control any of ‘em. Besides she woulda had to plug it in, and then unplug and wrap it up all in the space of a few seconds. If she cut ‘erself before she left the kitchen, there woulda been blood tracked through the house, and I definitely woulda seen it if there was. It just don’t sound feasible.”
“Neither does the amount of blood I saw, or the fact that it was still fresh. There’s an extra piece to this puzzle, and we’re not seeing it.”
“It’s the house, that’s the missin’ piece.”
“We must be messing up on the time frame. She had to have had more time to stage all of this than we realize.”
“How could she? The kids were in the house with ‘er. After they came out to me, I was in here. It couldn’t possibly have been more than a couple of minutes between the time I went out with the sun block, ‘til the time I came in for my keys.”
“She must have a razor on her somewhere...”
“For Christ’s sake, Heather, it was the fuckin’ house! Will yeh listen to me for once?”
“It’s not possible that she could’ve planted stage blood or animal’s blood, and maybe treated it with some kind of anti-coagulant, but it’s totally feasible that the house is blood-letting itself. What’s next, Ethan, a plague of locusts?”
“If yeh think it’s such a crazy story then why didn’t yeh take any samples? It’d be pretty easy to prove if the blood was all human or not.”
“Oh, right, like I’m going to explain to someone that my disturbed houseguest made the walls of my house bleed, and I was just curious as to what blood type it may be.”
“Yeh were always a shitty liar. Yeh’d think with that brain, yeh’d be able think up better lies. Yeh never in yer life cared what other people thought. Yeh always swam against the current, and yeh expect me to believe that yer suddenly worried about what other people might think. It ain’t workin’. I know yeh better than that. Yeh know the fuckin’ truth, and yer gonna have to face it sooner or later.”
“Well, we have something more important to face right now. Like what to do about our unstable friend.”
“She is not unstable. She knows exactly what she’s doin’, I’m sure of it.” He rose to pace the floor and expel some of his temper.
“Alright, Ethan, you believe whatever you want to believe, but something has to be done. Today she injured herself; tomorrow it may be one of the kids. We can’t take that chance. I think we should call Jim.”
“No way! All he’ll do is blame the little guy for everything. Let ‘er tell ‘im.”
“I know you don’t like Jim, but Shelly is his responsibility. He has a right to know what happened today.”
“Dude, I’m tellin’ yeh, it’s a mistake lettin’ him in on anythin’.”
“Then what do you propose we do, sit around and wait for her to hurt the kids?”
“She ain’t gonna hurt the kids.”
“You can’t be certain about that. You don’t know what she’ll do.”
“She didn’t even hurt ‘erself. She ain’t gonna hurt them.”
“Oh, here we go again!”
“Just let it lay. When ‘er brother’s done doin’ what he’s gotta do, then he’ll come get ‘er and everythin’ll be fine again.”
“I don’t know, Ethan, this goes against my better judgment.”
“Will yeh just trust me?”
“Oh God, that’s always a bad omen.”
“Real funny, Heather.”
