SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2023
Quinn
It’s the first time that Quinn’s been in the new house alone.
His parents went out to brunch and his sister is at work.
They were gone when he woke up this morning.
He found a note on the kitchen island from his mom explaining where everyone was.
He read it through twice, surprised that his parents had gone out together for no reason other than to have brunch.
They’ve been different since the night his dad got lost in the woods.
Twice now he’s walked in on them kissing.
And they haven’t gotten in one fight. He’s pretty sure that’s a record.
It’s pouring outside. After finding the note and realizing that he has at least an hour to kill without his mother interrupting him, he gets back in bed with his AirPods and pulls up the Killing Their Own podcast. He’s obsessed with the whole Justine Gordon thing and wants to listen to the next episode.
The other night he spent ages searching for information online until he found a photo of the Gordon brothers.
The younger one, who was his age when his mother killed him, had brown hair like his but was skinnier than him, wore glasses, and had some acne.
The photo was taken in the bedroom he’s presently occupying.
It doesn’t look that different from how it does now—clothes on the floor, a TV, an unmade bed, a few posters on the wall.
Suddenly, he understands why his mom doesn’t want him looking into the murders.
He still can’t believe that she moved his entire family, nana included, to a murder house.
The more he finds out, the worse it feels, but he can’t seem to stop. He tells himself he’ll just listen to the end of the podcast and then try to forget the whole thing. Isn’t it better to be informed about something than to be in the dark? He presses Play.
Cleo: Welcome to another episode of Killing Their Own.
We’re back with our deep dive into the Justine Gordon case, the woman who killed her husband and two sons over the course of three days in May 2019 and blamed it on the woods that surrounded their family home.
We have an incredible interview for you today, listeners!
I was able to get an in-person interview with Justine Gordon herself.
I sat down with her at the high-security psychiatric facility where she’s being held for an indefinite amount of time after being deemed mentally unfit to stand trial.
Justine had one very specific rule for the interview.
There is to be no discussion of the murders themselves. She only wants to talk about the woods.
Cleo: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview, Mrs. Gordon.
Justine: Please call me Justine. And I’m happy to talk to you today in the hopes that I can make sure something like this never happens again.
Cleo: And how do you think this kind of thing could be prevented in the future, Justine?
Justine: My first recommendation would be to burn those woods right down to the ground. Get rid of the whole thing. If that’s not going to happen, then people will just have to heed my warning: Stay out of the woods. It’s as simple as that.
Cleo: When you say “Stay out of the woods,” Justine, do you mean all woods or the woods around your old house?
Justine: Not all woods. Just the ones around my house. There’s evil in there.
Cleo: What kind of evil? What do you mean?
Justine: [silence]
Cleo: Justine, you claim that your husband and sons were what? Changed? By something in the woods?
Justine: [long pause] Not just changed. Taken over. Possessed.
Cleo: Did you think they wanted to harm you?
Justine: I don’t know what they wanted. [long pause] No, they didn’t want to harm me.
They didn’t do anything to me. But they weren’t my family anymore.
They were different. Has someone you loved ever changed so much that you couldn’t recognize them anymore?
Couldn’t reconcile the difference, and it made you feel like you were crazy?
Cleo: Yeah, I think I can relate to that. But you said that your husband and sons went into the woods and came out possessed. That feels different. Did you ever go into those woods, Justine?
Justine: Yes. I went in when we first moved there, for walks. But I always felt like I was being watched, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. When I figured out that something in the woods had taken my family, I went looking for answers. I went back in.
Cleo: Did anything happen to you while you were in there? Did you see anything strange or come out feeling different yourself?
Justine: I saw things. Shadows and figures that were there one minute and gone the next, but no, I didn’t feel any different when I came out.
Cleo: Do you have a theory as to why your family went into the woods and came out possessed but the same thing didn’t happen to you? Why were you spared and not them?
Justine: I have no idea. [pause] No, I do. I was spared because I’m the mom. I’m the one who found the house and moved my family there. What happened to them is all my fault. [starts to cry] It’s all my fault.
Cleo: [waits for Justine to stop crying] Justine, I’m confused. What are you taking responsibility for?
Justine: I didn’t murder my family! [hits the table] Those people were not my family. I’m responsible for moving my family to that house and those woods.
Quinn jumps at the sound of Justine Gordon’s hand slamming down on the table.
He yanks out his AirPods and slides down in bed, staring out the window at the woods beyond.
The return to silence feels strange. Is it just his imagination or does he hear faint whispers?
He studies the swaying trees obscured by the heavy rain, making them look like a wall that surrounds the whole property, trapping him there.
Is something really out there, he wonders, or can he ignore the ramblings of a crazy woman?
Sometimes his own mom seems crazy. He overheard her talking to herself in the kitchen the other day.
It sounded like she was angry, but he couldn’t make out at what or who.
A few times lately she’s walked into his room to say something but can’t remember what and stands there staring at him blankly.
She also seems on the brink of tears a lot.
Couldn’t all those things be signs of losing your mind?
But his mom has never gone in the woods, and his dad has.
So what does that mean? He spent a full night in there and came out acting like nothing had happened, so maybe he’s the one who’s going to go crazy and murder them all.
He has been acting differently. He hasn’t been hitting the bourbon and hiding out in his writing studio for hours.
He’s started making dinner and doing laundry and buying groceries when his mom asks.
And when his nana made a comment about it the other night, instead of getting shitty with her, he said it was long overdue that he pitched in more around the house.
Quinn knows he should be happy about the change in his dad’s behavior, but something feels off about it.
It’s like his dad is putting it on or something.
The wind picks up, throwing rain against the window like pellets, and thrashing the trees.
Panda, who was lying on the end of his bed, sits up, looks out the window, and quietly growls.
Quinn burrows deeper under his covers. What’s out there that scares her so much?
he wonders. She’s started acting weird inside too—growling randomly, not coming out of his room when he calls her, sometimes sitting facing the bedroom wall he shares with Polly’s room and growling at that.
She even snapped at the back of his dad’s leg the other day.
Thankfully his dad didn’t notice. Maybe his dog is going crazy too.
Another strong gust of wind brings down a branch just outside Quinn’s window.
What if a whole tree falls on the house?
He sits up in bed, ready to run, but to where?
The house is surrounded. Those fucking woods, he thinks, this fucking house.
He hears the sound of the front door opening and closing and then his parents’ voices, sounding high-pitched and excited—like two teenagers who just ran through a rainstorm together.
Relief swims through him at their arrival. And then the thought surfaces: What if they’re both going crazy—together?
Beverley
She doesn’t like to go into the main house uninvited, but she’s got cabin fever.
The rain has kept her holed up in there all morning and afternoon.
She tried painting, but the dreary day is uninspiring.
She tried reading but kept nodding off. It was when she started talking to the cats that she decided she needed to get out of there.
“Hello?” she calls out, stepping into the kitchen.
“In here,” Alice calls back with little enthusiasm.
She finds her daughter and son-in-law curled up on the couch together in front of a roaring fire, reading, with glasses of red wine in front of them on the coffee table.
Envy bites at the back of her throat but she works to swallow it away.
She used to have this—companionship, a lovely big home, lazy Sunday afternoons with a man.
Things that felt tangible and fixed at the time but then somehow faded away, like paint on the south-facing side of a wooden house.
You didn’t even notice it was disappearing until it was too late, and the wood was so rotten you had no choice but to tear it all down.
“Well, now, you two have the right idea,” she says with forced cheerfulness.
“Join us,” Geoff says in his new, uncharacteristically friendly way.
Beverley is sure she sees Alice throw him a look of annoyance, but it’s too fast to be certain. “Oh, I don’t want to intrude,” she says, hovering beside the armchair closest to the fire.
“No intrusion at all.” Beverley is grateful for her son-in-law’s words. She notices that Alice doesn’t agree.