When Leonard Came Home

The house was filling with the putrid smell. Martha wouldn’t dare open a window, for fear that someone would see. She sat, straight backed, severe, holding a rag over her nose and mouth. Her eyes, tired and bruised, never left the dining room table.

           Her brother was laid out on that table, his back contorted at an unnatural angle, a pool of blood spread out beneath him, dripping to the floor. Martha’s husband, Ray, made to remove the broken broom handle with the sharp end from his chest, which was protruding slightly through the part of his back that wasn’t touching the table. Martha moved to stop him. God forbid they remove it.

           The smell was coming from him. When he first showed up on the doorstep she smelled it, but not like this. His hair was greasy and slack around his face. She and Ray had been too dumbstruck at first to do anything but stare slack jawed at Martha’s dead brother.

They buried him weeks ago with little fan fair. The church refused to bury him given the circumstances. Suicides didn’t get the sacrament of burial. They refused to allow them to bury him in the family plot as well. They had to scramble to buy a single plot in the city owned yard.

When, weeks later, he was standing, leering, with wide dead eyes, asking to come in, Martha couldn’t find a single word in response. Her mouth had opened in a scream. Ray tried to slam the door shut but Leonard’s boot was in the way.

“Patsy, please. I’m so tired. Won’t you let me in?”

She couldn’t answer, her throat clung to a scream and a sob at once, choking her like a frog.

His boot slipped out just enough for Ray to get the door closed. She could see him, swaying dumbly, his right hand limply clawing to get in. His face loomed closely behind the glass, his eyes burning through the simple lace.

Martha was sick in a puddle on the floor. The shock hung in the air like the faint pungent smell that wafted in when Ray answered the knock. She was shaking, her hand trembling to wipe the sick from her lips. She looked up at Ray who was as white as a ghost, maybe even a little green himself.

Then there was silence. Leonard was gone, his silhouette gone from the lace curtain. Marth broke into more sobs.

Ray drew her up, held her close, and backed them up against the cabinets behind them. Neither of them spoke, but shook like autumn leaves on the branch, ready to fall at any moment.

That was almost ten hours ago. Now the sun was coming in at that soft morning angle, drying the blood at the edges. As she sat there, covering her nose, her mind went to mundane places. She thought of the mop and bucket behind the cellar door. She thought of the Spic & Span bottle under the sink. She could almost smell the soapy water.

She sat alone, watching, waiting to see if he would move. Outside she heard the sounds of the metal shovel digging into the earth. Would he get up again, knowing she was alone? But with the rising sun her fears abated a little, despite the light of day revealing the true horror of Leonard’s face.

They had stood in this room for what seemed like hours, but it must only have been moments. Their backs safe against the cabinet wall.

           “What in the hell…” Ray said at last. In her shock Martha noted how uncharacteristic it was for him to cuss in her presence. But then, here they were.

           Before Martha could answer him, before she could make a conjecture as to how her brother was here, they heard his footfalls on the front porch.

           “Stay right here!” Ray whispered to her. She went to reach for him, afraid for to be away from him, but he was gone before she could get her hand on his sleeve. She could hear him checking the locks on the door and windows out front. And just as his limp pawing at the front door started Ray was back.

           “Patsy, please…” Leonard was calling. “I’m so tired Patsy. I just need to rest. Don’t you love me, Patsy? Why won’t you talk to me? I’m your brother, Patsy. Are you really going to leave me out here?”

           Ray had a finger to his lips, his eyes wide. Don’t say a word, Martha.

           He was pushing her towards the back stairs. Probably to go hide, she thought. Probably to call someone. But who could they possibly call for help? Who would know what to do?

           Upstairs Martha huddled down beside the bed. Ray stood in the closet doorway loading his pistol. And downstairs Leonard was still on the porch begging to be let in. She held her hands over her ears, hoping this was all just some horrible grief dream.

           “You stay right where you are.” Ray was saying to her. Yes, she was nodding.

           Ray was gone then, going quietly back down the stairs, hugging the wall so as not to be seen. Everything went quiet. Not quiet like Leonard stopped knocking, not quiet like Ray’s heavy boots weren’t thudding on the floor boards. No. It went quiet like the complete absence of sound. It reminded her of swimming in the pond as a child. When she would float on her back, and her ears would go under the water, she felt like the world was shut off. When the sound was subtracted from the world, she would panic for just a moment. That’s how she felt then, hiding behind the bed.

           Leonard’s voice came like a match strike in the darkness. His pleas were incessant and unchanged, begging her to come to him, begging for the comfort of his sister.

           “Lenny, please. Go away!” she cried, her voice sounding far off to herself, like hearing someone else in another room. But he went on, calling to her in a silent voice only she could hear.

           And then it was gone, the silence and the disembodied voice of Leonard. She cried, whimpering softly.

           Through her tears she saw him, looming in the window. His pale white face hung in the window like a summer moon in the night sky. His eyes still wide and lifeless, keeping her rapt, bringing her to her feet. And she heard his voice again, pleading once more just to come inside and put his head down for some rest.

           He put his hands on the glass and slid the window sash up.

           Martha looked at his finger tips now, with their bruised skin and jagged, broken nails. In this morning light they looked like the hands of a very old man, curled up like a dead spider. The smell coming from that skin, in its myriad colors, was becoming unbearable. And the smell of blood, the smell of large pools of it, was overpowering her senses. She wanted to be away from him.

           She wanted to be away from all of this. The smells, the sunlight, the sound of the shovel hitting the dirt, it was all too much. But she couldn’t get up. Not just yet. She was tasked with making sure Leonard didn’t get up.

           He was a dead thing now, twisting around himself, twisting around the wooded broom handle sticking him like a pin holding down an insect under glass.

           He was a dead thing hours ago, pressing his dead hands against the glass. The window was open, the breeze carrying his rotten smell into the room. She could hear Ray on the stairs but she didn’t care. She was trapped in his eyes, like a rodent in glue.

           “Patsy, please. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I should have said goodbye. Let me hug my sister one more time. I can rest if I can just hug my sister goodbye.”

           She was nodding before she knew it, but her voice was stuck.

           “Please just say I can come in.”

           Was his mouth moving, she wonder?

           “Ok, Lenny. You can come in. You can say goodbye. But Lenny, you have to go.” She said in a broken utterance.

           Leonard smiled wide with his foul mouth, his teeth sharp and gleaming. His lips stained with a blood tinted fluid that dripped down his chin.

           “Martha, no!” Ray screamed, bounding into the room with thundering footsteps. He raised his pistol and pushed Martha to the side. But Leonard’s claw like hands were tangled in her hair and they hit the wall together. The nightstand upset and the lamp went to the floor with them, putting the whole scene in an awful relief.

           Ray pulled him back, straining through gritted teeth. Leonard’s grip was strong, stronger than he’d ever been known to be. Martha cried out.

           She shook her head of her own recounting. It seemed so long ago, like reliving some terrible accident. It all felt so fragmented. She wasn’t even sure how it all happened. Her world just tilted on some axis she didn’t know existed and everything was changed and would be forever.

           Ray had gotten Leonard off of her finally, but it was all a blur. In the melee Ray lost hold of the pistol. He got a hold of Leonard from behind and they were out of the room. Before Martha could get to her feet, she heard the crashing of Leonard’s body down the stairs, and Ray’s frantic clamoring behind him.

           There was scuffling and a curious sound, like a cornered animal. There was screaming. Ray’s voice was hysterical and high pitched. In her fog she realized she had never heard his voice like that. She clung to the door way, trying to make her way to the top of the stairs. She knew she had to help Ray. She knew it was imperative that she make it to him. But she was still in the glue trap of Leonard’s spell.

           There was more screaming and a crash, and sounds of breaking things. The chaos reached a fever pitch of shrieking, growling, and panting. The sound of bodies crashing into walls, smashing through cabinets. Martha’s feet moved as through molasses and when she had her hand on the banister it all ended abruptly with a sharp intake of breath and a thud.

           Ray stood over the battered body of Leonard when Martha came into the kitchen. She didn’t see the broom handle at first, just the blood spreading out across the linoleum floor. He turned to look at her, startled from his own reverie.

           “Martha, honey, you’re bleeding…”

           She looked down at her now bandaged hand, cleaned and tended to while they had sat waiting for the sun to rise. She couldn’t see the wound but she could feel the puncture wounds. They burned like tiny hot coals.

           She took a deep breath. The ruined kitchen was quite bright now, and the sounds of the shoveling ceased. Ray would take care of the body. Of course, he would never let her subject herself to the second interment of her brother.

           I want to lay down, she thought, it’s just so bright and it’s giving me a head ache.

           She looked up to see the shape of Ray approaching behind the curtain.

           I’m awfully hungry, she thought.