“You must listen to us, Simon. Only you can break this murderous chain. Just like your grandmother, and her mother before her, and their sisters, and mothers and grandmothers before them, your mother too has made many attempts at murder. Your ancestors were successful as you once were. Very successful indeed. And now your mother will soon be successful as well. That is, unless she is stopped.”
I thought about my dad, and how ill he has been feeling lately. He wasn't one to run off to the doctor at every little sniffle. He told us he would be getting better on his own soon enough.
“It's your mother, Simon. She's been poisoning him, killing him slowly. Just like your poor grandpa, and his ancestors before him. All of them died a very slow and painful death. - Yes, slow and painful indeed.”
Their voices boomed inside my head. I want to look behind me, towards the stairs and the hall. I want to see if I can tell if anyone of my family was stirring in the night who could break this invisible grip and free me from my prison that has no walls. I pray that someone would wake. But I remain stiff as a board and unable to move, and worse yet, unable to call for help. I am forced to listen to the owls carry on about slow and painful deaths of the men in my family, carried out by the women of their time, and I'm forced to stare into those four amber eyes that now seem to have a sinister look about them that I had never seen before.
“You must stop your mother from doing any more harm,” says one of them. I think the other owl blinked, and in that instant blinking moment I felt the slightest release of pressure from the iron fist that held me in place.
I contemplate for a moment that if perhaps both of them would happen to blink at the same time, would that release the grip on me enough for me to fight and escape their hold on me? I quit thinking about it just in case the owls have the ability to read my mind. Their grip tightens on me a little again, and I come to the conclusion that the answer is yes. They can in fact read my mind.
“How do I stop her?” I ask. “I'm just a kid.”
“Kill her!” their dual voices reverberated inside my skull.
“No!” I mentally project to them in a silent but wild twelve year old scream. My mind instantly travels back to when I needed Mom for everything. She fed me, she clothed me. She taught me how to tie my shoes and learn my ABC's. She cut my sandwiches in half and peeled off the crust for me because for some reason I was convinced that I didn't like the brown crust. She taught me how to make cookies and how to give the dog a bath.
The owls continue to read my mind and follow me into my brief past even though I suspect that they must already know it. They were with me almost the whole time.
“Does she love you?” asked one of them. “Of course she loves me. She loves all of us!” I proclaim, thinking of my entire family.
My attention remains glued to their eyes and their voices sound more demanding.
“You will kill your mother,” they demand of me, “and you will do it soon!”
Knowing now that they can read my mind, I stay focused on their beady little eyes and do not allow one thought of my mother, or anyone else for that matter enter into my mind. I cannot afford to think lovingly of anyone for even an instant for fear that the owls will think quite correctly that for the first time in my life, I was now scheming and plotting against them. For the moment, I was going along with them, and they told me how to go about doing my mother’s murder. It was a nightmare, only not a nightmare. It was more real than that.
“You will poison her,” they instruct with a precision in their voice. “The same way she has been poisoning your father, and the same way your grandmother did away with your grandpa years ago, and her mother and grandmother doing away with their husbands and so on up the family line.”
I could not believe what I was hearing. I loved a good mystery, but this kind chilled me to the bone. My own family? My heritage? All the women guilty of murder? This I had to somehow investigate on my own.
“Poison her with what?” I ask, hoping that they cannot sense my disloyal thoughts which consist of smashing the clock upon which they perch into tiny little bits with Dad's heavy sledge hammer which I know is standing on the floor in the corner of the garage right below where he keeps all the stuff you can hang up like brooms and leaf rakes and such.
“You will do no such thing!” an evil scream blares into my ears.
They know. Those damn owls know my every thought. No matter how subtle a thought I have, no matter how instant an idea may come into my mind and I push it away or replace it with another, they know. Those two owls are intricately connected to my every mental thought and physical fiber. I start to feel as though I cannot breathe. I'm afraid of becoming one of them. A kind of panic rushes over me but the iron grip keeps me from bolting.
A fear begins to well up inside me but eventually fades away into the darkness, leaving me with thoughts I could never dream of.
I begin to question myself. Am I really capable of murder?
“Yes,” came the response, but it is the owls voice that replied – not mine. They are buried inside my head and I have no escape from them. They own me. They have total control of me.
The hall light comes on, sending a shaft of yellow light beaming down into the living room. Its sudden electric glow takes the owls and me by surprise. Thank God! It's Dad! I can't see him of course because I'm still facing the clock, forced into a never ending staring contest with the owls. But even with my back facing the hall, I can tell it's him by the way he shuffles his feet which wears holes in the heels of his slippers from dragging them with every step he takes. I know this because he gets a new pair every Christmas. In another three months, the holes will be as big as silver dollars, and Santa will come again with a brand new pair that will hopefully last him another full year.
The invisible iron fist is still clinching me tight, squeezing me like a small bird in a large man's muscular hands, so I am not able to turn around enough to see him, but the sound of his slippers swooshing on the hardwood tells me that he is coming, and in fact he is almost directly behind me. If I were to guess, I'd say he's inside of four feet away from me.
“Simon?” he says to me as I hear his shuffled midnight approach, still half asleep and half awake. I try to say something but I can't. The owls tighten their grip on me even more. I'm standing there still facing the clock on the wall, my back facing Dad. My lack of response is no lack at all. I'm fighting inside. I'm kicking and screaming, but Dad doesn't hear me. “Dad!!! Dad!!!” I holler at the top of my lungs, but he hears nothing because no air escapes me. I cannot turn around to show him the fear I must have in my eyes.
“Son, are you sleep walking?” he says to me as he places his hand upon my shoulder, but in an instant his comforting hand slips away. Those were the last words he spoke before collapsing to the floor with an unconscious thud.
“What have you done to my father!” I yell with an incredible effort. Still no sound escapes my lungs, but I know the owls can read my thoughts, so I wait impatiently, demanding an answer.
“We are not concerned about your father,” says the female owl looking down at his sleeping limp body now crumpled up on the floor behind me. I know that must be where she's looking because I can't imagine her looking anywhere else other than into my own eyes. The two owls look exactly the same, so I cannot actually tell which one is male and which one is female. I can only tell them apart when they speak, because their human voices make them come alive in my head. I believe my dad is OK because I can hear him breathing, like he's just sleeping on the floor, under some kind of spell forced upon him by the intolerant female owl.
I notice the time is almost three o'clock in the morning. I've been trying to break free for what seems like forever and I am completely exhausted, but the owls are not finished with me. I get the sick feeling that this night, this encounter, is only the first of many more like this to come.
CHAPTER
3<
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I remain a perfect statue throughout the entire rest of the night. The hardwood floor under my bare feet is cold, and it makes them feel almost clammy as the coldness turns them numb and radiates upward into my legs. But the welcoming yellow glow of the morning sun just breaking over the horizon finds its way in around the edges of the curtains which begins to give me hope. I desperately want this nightmare to end. And with the arrival of daylight, all I can do is hope, and wait to see if anyone of my family will come out and see me standing here stiff as a board, and snap me out this imperceptible iron grip.
I eventually hear the curtains being drawn open and it startles me. I must have dozed off for a bit. The quality of sleep is pretty much nil because how can anyone really sleep standing up? The unrestrained morning sunlight floods into the room and fills the house from wall to wall. My legs suddenly crumble and give way, causing me to fall to the floor. It feels like the grip the owls have on me is gone. My chest feels less compressed and finally I'm able to draw a full breath into my starving lungs – the cool morning air fills them full, and it is the sweetest thing I ever tasted.
From the floor, I continue to catch my breath, breathing in slow deep cycles. I look around the room and I don't see Dad anywhere. Mom is standing by the window looking at me dumbfounded. I don't think she even noticed me standing in front of the clock when she first came into the room. I look up at her. I'm hardly able to move as my muscles and joints have yet to regain their flexibility. She dashes over and kneels down at my side.
“Simon! What happened, honey? Are you OK?” Her lovely caring voice and her watery eyes bathes me.
“Were you sleep walking? Did you have a bad dream?” she asks, placing her palms on each side of my cheeks and drawing my face up to hers. She looks into my eyes but they return nothing to her other than a blank stare. Then she wraps her arms around me the same way any loving mother does with a child in need. She pulls me in for a tight hug, and as much as I want it to last, I know I'm getting to old for these kinds of motherly gestures. Besides, my body is still recovering from being squeezed all night long from the owl’s invasive grip. She finally pulls back and I take another deep breath blinking my eyes several times to lubricate them and wash away the dryness that built up while locked onto the owls for the last several hours.
I look deeply into her big round green eyes, and I can sense that the owls are watching, but for now, their power over me is diminished, perhaps even gone – but I doubt it.
I decide right then that I cannot tell my mother anything, at least until I can take the time to research the supposed murders of my ancestors myself and to find out if there was any truth to what the owls have said. But for now, I only tell her that it was a dream that brought me out into the living room. Only I know it wasn't a dream, because it took years for the owls to draw me to this point.
“Where's Dad?” I ask worriedly about him, remembering him collapsing on the floor earlier.
“He's in the shower,” she says, “he'll be out soon.”
I'm relieved for Dad's sake. And I wonder if he'll remember anything.
“Mom,”... I start. And then my words jump out of my mouth. “It wasn't a dream.”
My words were not planned. They came out without me thinking about them first. I was not going to tell her anything, but it just blurted out of me - “It wasn't a dream.” She cocks her head and looks at me quizzically.
I'm suddenly hit with an ear-piercing screech and a feeling of an invisible grip slowly grasping its muscular tentacle like fingers around my neck and drawing tight. I know it's the owls giving me a warning not to continue, not to divulge my experience I had with them. They want their secret kept with me, and with me it will stay, - but not for long I promise myself.
Later, Mom serves up breakfast and we all sit around the table taking it in. I feel like everyone is looking at me, even when they aren't directly. I try to shift the attention and so I look at Dad. He acts like nothing weird has happened during the night, but I figure that's just because he doesn't remember a thing.
“You don't remember hitting the floor, Dad?” I ask. Dad shakes his head and chews his soft boiled eggs and buttered toast. “I think you were sleepwalking, son,” he says.
“Again?” says Dale, before I even had a chance to respond. “That's the third time in the last week.”
Dale's full of it. I have never walked in my sleep before, and I don't know why everyone tries to convince me that I have. It's not that I was actually asleep. I knew where I was and what I was doing. As I have said, I am drawn to mechanical time pieces, particularly – grandpa's old cuckoo clock. I wanted to tell Dad what happened last night, but I look over at the clock, and I can see the two owls. They have a bead on me. Their eyes can see right through me.
Dale gets up, downs a small glass of milk and gathers his own dishes, sets them on the counter for Mom to take care of later and shoulders his backpack. He's ready for school.
“Tina, you're gonna be late!” hollers Mom up the stairs towards the bathroom, where I know she's doing her hair and makeup and trying to look pretty.
Dale and Tina's bus comes earlier than mine so they're usually the first out the door, then later Dad heads out for work, and my bus usually comes rolling up in front of the house about a half hour after he leaves.
I start thinking about school and the day ahead. It will be nice to get out of the house and away from those amber eyes which I can actually feel watching my every move.
Dad is moving slowly again today, and obviously not feeling well which seems to be a pretty regular occurrence for him these days. He gets up from the table, kisses Mom and off to work he goes, just a little later than usual.
Now it's just me and Mom. Everyone else has gone off to start their day. I have a few minutes and decide to help her with the dishes, so I go and stand beside her at the sink but she's too busy to notice me. She doesn't say anything. She looks completely absorbed in something, and I doubt it’s doing the dishes. I look back at the clock on the wall. One, because I'm curious if the owls are watching, and of course I know that they are. And two, I have to know what time it is and I quickly learn I have about ten minutes before I have to leave for the bus.
“Mom, tell me about grandpa's old cuckoo clock,” I say, as if it is just some random curious thought.
She turns to me for the first time since standing there, and she shoots me a look. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's enough to know that I've struck a chord. I watch her eyes as they shift over towards the direction of the clock. I can see the instant they fall upon the owls eyes gazing back. I can't describe it, but Mom's eyes were different at that very moment, almost like she was being drained, her soul being siphoned off. In that instant, she looks weak, vulnerable and helpless. Then she snaps out of her little trance and looks down at me as if I had just now joined her at the sink. I wonder what is on her mind, and why she is always so distant most of the time and yet sometimes so absolutely affectionate. Her strange behavior causes me to suspect that the owls are involved.
“That clock has been in our family for generations,” she says coldly.
“I didn't know that,” I say, washing my plate, fork and glass for the third time.
“I thought it was just grandpa's old clock.”
If what the owls told me is true, knowing now that the clock has been in the family for generations somehow made sense to me. I think to myself that if in fact there are murders in my family's history, that I'm convinced that the owls have somehow instigated them. Then I switch gears.
“How did grandpa die?” I ask, expecting a grip around my neck at any moment, not from Mom of course, but from the owls. I know they must think I'm pushing my luck, and I'm surprised that I don't feel any kind of torture from them. Perhaps their strength is weakened. Perhaps they need to rest too.
“Your grandpa died in the hospital, Simon,” she rep
lies with a somber tone, leaving it at just that. No detail. Then she switches gears on me. “You'd better get ready for school, Honey.”
“Yes Mom,” I say, sounding rather disappointed, but at the same time, looking forward to getting out of the house.
A few minutes later, I'm standing outside on the curb with some other kids from the neighborhood waiting for the school bus. Some I talk to. Others I don't, like Greg Sanders and Perry Scuttle. They are a little older than the rest of us and keep up that distinction with a pack of Marlboro's between them.
Greg Sanders is a tall skinny kid with bleached hair and a pock marked face from picking at his acne every morning. He wears a heavy black leather jacket all the time, even during summer when it's hot out. In fact I don't think I have ever seen him without that jacket. I figure that it must be laden with secret pockets to hide his stash because I know that Marlboro's are not the only thing he smokes.
And then there is Perry Scuttle. He's not quite as tall as Greg, but not short either. He's got a round face peppered with some adolescent facial stubble that makes him look exactly like what he is, just a kid with some stubble. But he is kind of stocky and likes to show how strong he is by arm wrestling everyone and pushing around every kid smaller than he is. I think Perry could actually be a nice kid if he just didn't run with the wrong crowd with guys like Greg Sanders.
There's Mitch Callahan and Carla Krenshaw. Their constant display of affection towards each other is quite obvious that they are boyfriend and girlfriend. Of course they're too young to think of as a couple, but then again kids our age are already pairing up in school. They hold hands everywhere they go and kiss in public. I think Mitch tries too hard with her because he carries her books and walks her to class every day, even though some of his classes are on the other end of the building. He buys her lunch as often as he can afford to and he doesn't let too many people talk to her. If it weren't for the few classes they didn't have together, Carla would never be out of Mitch's sight, so I guess you could say he kind of smothers her, but as near as I can tell, she doesn't seem to mind.