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Coffeyville, Kansas
Seven months earlier
Day 1 of The Rise
Sarah Morse returned her children’s overdue books to the public library at a quarter past five in the afternoon. Nancy Smith, the librarian for the better part of three decades, had already locked up, but, upon seeing Sarah, offered up a polite smile and reopened the doors. Nancy waved off the overdue fee (a measly sixty cents), news Sarah returned with a wide smile
(smile)
and a shake of the hand.
Sarah was home by 5:45. After she hung her coat and dropped her shoes, she filled a copper pot with water and set it to boil. Dinner was a traditional she loved, and she did it well. The vegetables came next. The market was stocked with fresh carrots, celery, zucchini, cucumbers and green beans. She cut them into a quarter inch dice and placed them in a Pyrex bowl, smiling
(a smile)
as she went. As she readied the garlic, her attention was displaced when her two children came bounding into the kitchen. Josh, the older of the two, was eleven and spoke with a slight stutter. The stutter was more pronounced in his younger years, a trait he countered by barely speaking. Sarah and her husband, Bruce, took Josh to a speech counselor, where he had gone every Tuesday and Thursday for ninety minutes a session. The appointments were tedious and tiresome, but they helped significantly. Josh still found a stutter slip off his tongue from time to time, but the occasions were grossly diminished.
Sam—or “Samantha” as her kindergarten teacher called her—was the youngest. She was short and sweet with a tangled mess of red hair and freckles peppering her face like disconnected raindrops. She was the spitting image of Peppermint Patty from the old Peanuts comic strips. She followed her brother around wherever he went, and they could often be seen walking up Main Street hand in hand. Josh had enacted this particular policy after Sam wandered into the street and was nearly hit by a passing vehicle. He ran to the edge of the sidewalk, snatched her hand into his, and pulled her back to safety. The car, as Josh recalled, passed by without so much as a glance. This incident, however, was something they had kept from their mother ever since. Rightly so.
“Mommy, what’s for dinner?” Sam asked tugging at Sarah’s jeans.
“Pasta,” she said.
“Didn’t we have that last night?” she asked.
“No, sweetie, we had chicken last night.”
Sam put a finger to her lips and scrunched her eyebrows, thinking long and hard. Then, satisfied with her mother’s response, climbed into her chair at the kitchen table and placed a napkin in her lap.
Sarah, in the midst of slicing the garlic, heard Josh rifling through the fridge. She looked and saw his white Nikes in the gap between the floor and the refrigerator door. “Don’t eat anything,” she told him. “Dinner’s in five.”
Josh closed the refrigerator and took the seat across from his sister. They both had full glasses of milk already poured. He leaned forward and took a sip, placing his lips at the edge of the glass and slurping up the topmost layer.
She mimicked him.
He pulled his head back abruptly.
She mimicked him again.
They engaged in a brief game of “Mirror Image” before Josh made Sam laugh with his classic “Bulging Eyes” routine and milk shot out her nose. This made Josh, too, burst into a fit of laughter and the two giggled until they heard the sharp, splendid sizzling sound as Sarah slid the vegetables into the hot skillet. She gave them a quick stir, then went to the pantry to grab the pasta.
The three of them heard the front door open, then close, then footsteps. Seconds later Bruce Morse entered the kitchen dressed smartly in a grey suit and simple black tie. He set his briefcase down on the table, but pulled it back when he caught Sarah’s glare. He smiled his boyish smile—that smile she had fallen in love with twelve years earlier—and then kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, my love,” he said, rubbing the small of her back. “Smells good.”
Bruce walked across the kitchen, kissed his children, then went to the fridge and retrieved a beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon was all he drank, but the mere smell of it when he cracked a fresh can appalled Sarah. In spite of her belief the beer had always turned rancid, she restocked him with a fresh six pack nearly every week.
Love.
(A smile. (A splendid, splendid smile))
Food was on the table by 6:45.
As they ate, Sarah looked out the window above the sink and saw the sun had fallen behind the other houses lining her block. The effect produced a soft, orange glow in their neighborhood.
(Another smile)
What a lovely evening, she thought.
And it had been.
“Do we have any cheese?” Josh asked, his mouth full of zucchini.
“Josh, don’t eat with your mouth full,” Bruce told him.
“Lemme check.” Sarah pulled herself away from the table and went to the fridge. When she inspected the shelves she found the fridge was cheese free. “Doesn’t look like it,” she said, and sat back down.
They ate in silence for the next few minutes before Sarah asked the table, “Do we have any cheese?”
Bruce blinked and he heard his jaw click. “I’m sorry?” he asked, not sure if he had heard her correctly.
“Do we have any cheese?” Sarah asked again.
“You just checked, sweetheart.”
There wasn’t a glint of recognition on her face.
“We don’t have any,” he finally said. He looked at his children who shared the same quizzical expression. “Sarah…” he said quietly. “Sarah, is everything…?” But his words trailed away.
There was a bizarre (smile) on her face; artificial, yet profound and troubling. He couldn’t look away. And, while he wasn’t sure, he thought he saw a small, red flicker in his wife’s eye. The kind of red you see in photographs, though this was far less pronounced, and seemed to only circle the eye—like a faint ring—rather than embody it. But then, as soon as she blinked, he saw her warm, hazel eyes staring back at him.
No more red—if there ever was any, he told himself.
“Oh,” she finally muttered, and went back to her plate of food with that strange (smile) still coloring her face.
“How was school today, Josh?” Bruce asked, one eye still on his wife.
Josh didn’t have a chance to respond when Sarah slid away from the table, stood, went to the fridge, and opened the door.
“Sarah?” Bruce asked.
“Hm?” she responded.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting the cheese,” she said promptly
By now Josh and Sam were turned in their chairs, watching their mother as she hunted for the non-existent cheese.
“Honey?” Bruce said.
“Hm?” she said again, still with that same chipper tone.
Bruce left his dinner and went to his wife. Sarah had always had clammy hands. And warm. Oh, God, how they were warm. But when Bruce touched the hands he thought were his wife’s, he nearly shuddered. They felt like blocks of ice. He let go of them, almost startled. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. And then those beautiful hazel eyes (smiled) back at him. “Would you excuse me?”
“Where are you going?”
“I forgot something.”
“What did you forget?
“I forgot something,” she said again.
“All right.”
That strange (smile) spread across her lips again. It was horrid and rotten, curled up as if two fine strings were yanking at the corners of her mouth. Sarah turned robotically toward the foyer, her joints suddenly stiff and rigid.
Bruce watched as she walked through the foyer and disappeared into the living room. A moment later he heard the garage door open, then close with an abrupt click.
“What’s wrong with Mommy, Daddy?” Sam asked.
Neither of the children were eating by now.
“Nothing, sweetie. Just eat your food,” he told.
But she didn’t.
They heard the door to the garage open again, then close that same abrupt click. Bruce could see the outline of Sarah’s shadow as she made her way through the foyer back into the kitchen. She was holding something, holding it with hands that seemed frighteningly powerful. He squinted to make out the object, but her shadow was much too dark. Bruce wouldn’t have to wait long, however, to see she was gripping his Nosler M48 hunting rifle. The gun had been a gift from Sarah’s father three Christmases earlier. Bruce had even gone hunting with the old man a dozen times since then. But as the seasons passed, the trips became more infrequent, and the rifle had rested comfortably in the Morse family garage for quite some time.
Sarah stepped into the light of the kitchen and her family stared back at her without a gram’s worth of understanding. She pulled the rifle close to her chest as if it was a nursing baby. Her eyes were unblinking and cold, lifeless even.
“Sarah, honey, what are you doing?” Bruce asked.
It’s quite possible that ‘doing’ had been Bruce Morse’s last word. It was hard to tell considering the groans and moans spewing from his bloody mouth. Sarah pointed the rifle at her husband in between the “hon” and “ey,” cocked it when Bruce said “you,” and pulled the trigger an instant after that.
The gun kicked back with such force Sarah’s arms flew up in the air, but her mechanical grip remained true to the gun.
A shower of blood leapt out of Bruce’s back and splattered against the refrigerator door. He slipped down it, a smearing of blood trailing him like some horrible streak of paint. His final expression was that of shock and terror—and there was nothing more understandable than that.
That wasn’t my wife, he thought. And then the light left his eyes forever.
“M-m-m-mom, w-w-w-what are y-y-y—“ But that was all the stuttering Joshua Morse could muster before Sarah turned the gun on him and fired another shot.
The force of the bullet sent Josh hurtling backward as if yanked by some invisible chain. The chair slid a full six inches before finally toppling over. The bullet had passed through Josh’s skull, tearing bone from the side of his head. When the coroner would arrive some hours later, he would remark that the boy’s face was nearly “unidentifiable.”
Sam was different. Apart from reacting to the earsplitting gunshots, she had remained quite still. Her fork was still in her hand, though she wasn’t eating. The whole thing unfurled before her like some horrid stage play.
Sarah’s eyes hadn’t blinked since she left to retrieve the gun. And they didn’t blink when they shifted to her daughter. Sam stared at the barrel of the gun with this hollow sense of curiosity. Her arms and head were still, but her feet dangled from her chair, rocking back and forth like a metronome.
The third shot got the attention of the neighbors. A few had already wandered into the street trying to decipher where the shots had come from. The third left no doubt: something had happened at the Morse house.
Sam was dead before she hit the floor.
Sarah leaned the rifle against the kitchen table and headed for the front door.
When she made it outside she locked the top and bottom locks, stuffed the keys in her pocket, and took a seat on the porch steps.
Maggie Wallace, her neighbor from three doors down, approached Sarah with tentative concern. “Sarah…is everything all right?”
Sarah looked up at Maggie, the hazel in her eyes sparkling in the streetlight that hung over her yard. Night had finally come. That soft, orange glow was gone. There was no more promising light. The world had gone dark.
“Yes.” Sarah said evenly. “Everything’s perfect.” She craned her neck and stared up at the sky. The stars twinkled above her in a symphony of peace. She closed her eyes, soaking in the night that had come on so suddenly.
And then she smiled.
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