6. Thursday, September 7, 2023 #2
He salutes her again and a bomb of rage suddenly goes off inside her.
She fights hard against the urge to hurl the electric kettle at him, followed by insults that will shatter him into a million pieces.
It’s as though the domestic inequality she has endured over twenty-two years of marriage has erupted in a seething rage that has no end.
Unwilling to surrender to it, she tries to hurry out of the house.
Turning to get her purse off a hook at the front door, she finds it pinned under Quinn’s backpack and Polly’s jean jacket, even though there are two other free hooks.
That’s all it takes. Grabbing Polly’s jacket, she hurls it onto the floor with a string of curses, then rips at Quinn’s backpack so forcefully the whole hook pops free of the wall and both the bag and her purse come crashing down.
“Jesus Christ, Alice,” Geoff says, shock and dismay clear on his face.
“What? I can’t even have one goddamn hook to myself?” Bending down, she untangles her purse from Quinn’s backpack. “Add the hook to your to-do list,” she barks before storming out the front door. Ignoring his huff of disgust.
In her car she scrolls for the grounding meditation her therapist recommended and turns it up loud.
Taking long, slow, deep breaths, she envisions roots growing from the soles of her feet, just like the trees that surround her, reaching down to connect to the earth.
She imagines her rage draining out of her and being absorbed into the soil.
The anger slowly subsides and she’s left confused and full of shame.
She works hard to block out the look on Geoff’s face—the one that makes her feel like a crazed woman about to murder him.
He’s lucky he’s still alive.
Geoff
He has no idea what he’s looking at, but whatever it is, it does not feel good.
Not wanting to risk another fight with Alice, or her rage, he got the trail cam up and running again and then as soon as Polly left for the training for her new job, he shoved her furniture to one side of the room and pulled some of the carpet back.
Just as he’d hoped, there’s hardwood flooring underneath the low-pile industrial carpet, which for the record smells fine to him.
It’s what’s been done to the hardwood underneath that’s the problem.
Dozens of markings have been carved or burnt right into the floor, so deep in places that even paint wouldn’t cover them up, which is obviously why carpet had been put down in the first place.
It’s a collection of weird symbols. In the center are stick figures, two adults holding the hands of a child in between.
Under them are two words that he thinks must be Latin, Donum Silvis.
He uses Google Translate and it says that the words mean “gift of the woods.” The rest of the symbols are contained in small circles orbiting the figures.
He uses the camera search function on his phone to look up the weird symbols.
Each one takes him to pages on occult practices, modern witchcraft, and spell casting.
“That can’t be good,” he says to Panda, who’s sitting beside him panting.
He texts some photos to Alice and hopes she doesn’t tell him to go rent a sandblaster and sand them down or some other fool’s errand.
“Gift of the woods,” he murmurs, as though saying it out loud might help him to understand what the hell it means.
Panda whines and scratches the carpet, then turns and runs from the room.
He stares at the ellipses after the last photo he sent to Alice, dreading her reaction. Then they suddenly disappear. He’s pretty sure that she’s looking it all up herself, even though he’s already told her what he found.
He puts his phone back in his pocket and kneels to get an even closer look, pushing back more of the carpet.
When he gets right down to the symbols, it looks like they were painted with a reddish-brown that’s soaked deep into the crevices of the wood.
He runs his finger along one of the carvings and it comes away with a slight stain.
Putting his finger to his tongue, he tastes rust.
Holy fuck, it’s blood—
He jumps to his feet. Did the woman who killed her family do this? he wonders. Was she a witch? A satanist? The questions keep coming until the ring of his phone startles him out of it. He pulls it from his back pocket. It’s Alice.
“Hey,” he says, working hard to sound calmer than he feels. The taste of blood lingers on his tongue.
“ ‘Gift of the woods’?” she says. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Yeah, I have no idea. Or why it’s in Latin.”
“Right. I think it’s a language they use in spells or rituals. For witchcraft?”
“Again, I have no idea. I’ve never done a spell or a ritual.” He knows his tone might piss her off, but he’s the one standing in front of it all, feeling like he discovered something he shouldn’t have.
“And those symbols?”
“Yeah, they’re fucking creepy. I’m getting a very bad feeling here.”
“Oh God. Do you think the house is cursed?” He wishes she hadn’t asked that; he hadn’t even thought of that possibility.
“Do we believe in curses?”
There’s a long pause on the other end, and he’s worried that she’s starting to.
It’s not like they can just pick up and move if she does.
How many people would be willing to buy a murder house?
Where would they go if they could unload it?
They can’t get their old place back; it sold within days of them listing it.
“Cover it up,” Alice finally says, the sound of her voice startling him. “Nail the carpet down, to be safe. The kids cannot see what’s under there. Don’t tell a soul about any of it.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” he replies, relieved that they don’t have to move, and he doesn’t have to sandblast the floors. More than happy to just pretend he never even saw it.
Alice hangs up without saying goodbye.