Concrete House -- Part 11: Jacob -screen_writer-

The next morning Dawn awoke, surprised to find the other side of the bed empty. Usually, when BB spent the night drinking, he would sleep through the next day. Getting up out of bed, Dawn put on her robe, and walked out into the kitchen. There was no BB out there, but the silverware drawer was open, and the toaster had been moved. Dawn frowned at this, but didn’t worry. She knew that BB had been drunk, and he did strange things when he was drunk. ‘Where is he though?’ she wondered. Then a thought, maybe he wondered into Brian’s room, and lay down on the floor.

She walked down the hallway Dawn to Brian’s room. The door was cracked just a hair. Dawn reached for the doorknob, and just before she touched it a shiver came over her. The shiver was unexpected – just as they usually are; yet there was something very weird about this shiver, and she was unsure of why she felt that way. After a seconds pause, she gently pushed the door open. What she saw in Brian’s room brought more then a shiver to Dawn; her eyes got wide, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. A scream of surprise and horror almost escaped her mouth, but didn’t quite make it. Brian was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in a suit, talking to an empty chair. The sheer bizarreness of the situation is what scared Dawn the most. To her knowledge Brian didn’t even own a suit that looked like this one did. It looked old, and musty.

As soon as Brian knew his mother was in the room, he stopped talking, and looked up at her. The look of hate in his eyes tore Dawn’s heart in two. “You scared him away.” Brian said tonelessly.

Dawn stood in the doorway, her mouth hung open; no words came to her for the longest time. Finally, frightened, Dawn muttered, “Scared who?”

“Jacob.” The instant after Brian uttered that name; the closet door gradually – silently – swung open. Dawn, with her attention unyielding from her son, didn’t notice the door open up. There was a few seconds of silence between the two. To Dawn Brian seemed much older. The night before he was a perfectly normal child, asking if his grandma was all right, overnight, he seemed to have grown up and became a thirty-year-old man. Suddenly, Brian spoke in the same toneless, lackluster way; “I’ll be out for breakfast in a second.” Unable to speak due to the tremendous fright, Dawn shook her head up and down, backed out of the room, closing the door as she went.

The house seemed incredibly silent, and Dawn started to understand the shiver she felt earlier. ‘Who’s Jacob?’ she thought, and wished she had asked Brian that question, but her fear did not allow that. Out in the hallway, however, the dread she felt in Brian’s room had partially subsided, and Dawn, who was never one to believe the irrational, just told herself that Jacob was an imaginary friend her son had created. He was in a new house, and he had no friends, therefore Dawn figured it was perfectly normal for him to create a friend. ‘I would be worried if he didn’t’, she told herself, trying to convince herself that was the case. Relief began to set in, yet then, Dawn thought of the suit her son was wearing; the relief she had felt was quickly swept away. She rationalized Jacob, but the suit was completely unexplainable, and rather strange. It was still very early in the morning, ‘even if Brian did own a suit that looked like that, why would he be wearing it now?’ she questioned.

There was an urge to go back into her son’s bedroom, and ask him about the suit, but then, after a few seconds of thinking about it, she decided that now wasn’t the time to ask. It was just a suit, nothing that could hurt him, she surmised. There were other matters at hand, namely BB’s disappearing act, and Reverend Thompson’s disappearing act. So instead of going back into her son’s room, Dawn walked into the kitchen, and on her way she started to rationalize the suit as best she could (if something strange was going on, she would have to deal with it; that was something she didn’t want to do). By the time she was out of the hall and in the kitchen, she came to the conclusion that her mother had bought Brian that suit, and she just didn’t remember it. She also concluded that he was wearing it because he missed her. ‘There, that’s the end of that’, she thought.

Before starting breakfast, she got the idea to call the church, and see if Reverend Thompson was all right. If Reverend Thompson was all right, that would be a huge weight off of her shoulders – and she needed as much weight lifted off those shoulders as possible. Picking up the phone, she paused, and thought, ‘What if he’s not all right?’. That crazy thought was wiped away. “Everything’s fine” Dawn muttered to the empty kitchen.

At the moment she started dialing, there was a loud ‘KNOCK KNOCK’ on the front door. Dawn jumped out of her skin with a swift, yet loud, scream. For a moment she stood at the kitchen counter, breathing heavily, with the phone in her hand. Then she heard, “Ms. Rickenhower… Dawn?” The voice was unmistakable. It was Roy Freemont. Before going out to the living room to greet him, Dawn stood at the counter, catching her breath, and listening. “Ms. Rickenhower?” There was a strange tone in his voice, and she wondered why on earth did he just walk into the house; she had locked the door. But then figured that BB had left it unlocked. ‘Still’, she thought, ‘you don’t just walk into someone’s house’. To Dawn, Roy seemed like a nice man, but she didn’t know him. And with all the other odd things going on, who knew about him. That’s when she considered dialing 911.

“Dawn you dummy” she said in a whisper, disgusted with herself, “There’s nothing strange going on here, it’s just your nerves because you’re in a new place.”

“Ms. Rickenhower… Roy Freemont here.”

Dawn, after fiddling with her hair, making herself presentable, walked out into the living room. “Mr. Freemont, what are you doing here?”

Roy stood in front of her, looking very embarrassed because he was seeing Dawn in her nightclothes. “Sorry to just walk in like this, but the door came open when I knocked.” Dawn thought that was odd, even when BB had come home late before, drunk, he always shut the door. Roy looked down at the floor and spoke again, “Ma’am, this mornin’ when I went out back to throw some garbage away, I noticed that the cellar doors were open. Now, I don’t mind you usin’ it for storage… It’s just I know you have that little one, and I don’t want him goin’ down there and getting hurt. It’s awful dangerous.”

“I didn’t go down there, and I know Brian didn’t.” Dawn said. Roy looked up at here. Dawn went on, “BB – the guy who stays here with me – I can’t seem to find him. He was out late last night, but I know he came home, I heard him, but now I can’t find him. I don’t know why on earth he would go down in the cellar, but… could you check…”

“Oh, there’s no one down there. I already checked it out. Everythin’ seems fine.”

“Weird.”

There was a long moment of silence, before Roy broke it, “Well, I just wanted to warn you… you know… just so your son doesn’t get down in there. Those steps are pretty difficult to maneuver.”

“What steps?” Brian said, startling both Roy and Dawn. He stood in the hallway, the suit he had had on was now gone, and his regular clothes were back on him. And his voice was child like once again. There was no sign of the Brian that Dawn encountered in his bedroom a few minutes ago.

After the initial shock of Brian sneaking up on her subsided, Dawn said, “Don’t you worry about what steps sweetie.” She turned to Roy, and began to introduce Brian to him, but the look on Roy’s face stifled any words Dawn had in her.

Roy Freemont stood, looking at Brian; his mouth moving, trying to make words; his eyes questioning. It was a look of quiet alarm. This was the first time he had seen Brian, and it was something he wouldn’t soon forget. Finally, he snapped out of his mini trance and turned to Dawn. “Ms. Rickenhower, I gotta get down to the store.” And with those few words, Roy left.

To Be Continued…

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