JACOB
Whatever it was I expected from pushing the old door open, it wasn't what I found. The stark difference between what I imagined and what reality set before me pulled the breath from my lungs on a big rush of air that neither disturbed nor altered the interior of a house I hadn't stepped in for years.
The hinges didn't groan for the door to swing inwards, a gust of musty air didn't billow out until I was caught within its embrace. The smell of mold or mildew didn't attack my senses, and dust didn't dance beneath the overhead lights when my hand found the switch just inside the door.
Nothing had changed and yet everything was different, simply because I was the only breathing body walking into the foyer.
“Dammit, boy, can't you move faster? These groceries aren't light!”
“Be quiet, Jacob, and listen to your father. He knows what's best for you.”
“Why is he always so mad at us, Jacob? We didn't do anything wrong.”
Three distinct voices, one loud and low, one high and soft, one so small and scared that it frightened me when he whispered. They'd always followed me inside these walls, but now, they were silent.
Nothing had changed and yet everything was different.
The overhead lighting still shone off the polished brass handles of the stately stained oak tables within the large foyer. The black tile with metallic silver striations still gleamed as if hand cleaned by Jericho and me following punishment. On hands and knees, we’d scrubbed until our faces could be easily seen within the stone, our reflections showing us each light bruise forming from where our father had inflicted his reprimand.
The silk flower arrangements my mother had constructed as a means to escape the sounds of crying children were still set neatly within their intricate glass vases, no dust marring the petals or leaves to show they hadn't been handled since her death.
Across the foyer, the staircase rose in a lazy curve to the second floor, the balustrade oiled to a gleaming shine. There were no scuff marks or indentations, no holes in the walls or peeling paint. There was nothing to tell the tale of what madness existed inside this house when I was just a child.
A lie, this house and all its glory was just one giant fabrication, and the twin boys trapped inside had been the only souls to realize it.
Turning to my left as I stepped inside, I saw the formal sitting room my mother had forbidden us to use. The white carpets were pristine, the white couches with nailhead details appeared brand new. The wood tables were unmarked with scratches or water rings, and the crystal coasters sat perfectly stacked in the small brass racks that held them. Never did I step foot inside that room, not even on the day I left home at eighteen. It was my mother's space, her lie hiding the truth that the perfect home she'd put together was nothing more than a farce.
To my right, a doorway opened into the custom kitchen with gleaming chrome and solid oak cabinets. The countertops and appliances were dated from the passage of time, but still you could see the expense in the design. I could smell the savory roasts my mother would cook for Sunday dinner, the same scent that wafted beneath my nose as my father marched me down the basement steps to inflict another punishment.
Another few steps had me inside the hallways leading to the back family room. On my left hung a large, ornate wooden cross, the dark stain contrasting sharply against the brass detail running the edges and gemstones embedded at all four points. In the center was the crucified Christ, his eternal suffering only made worse by our sins.
“Each time you act out, boy, it's another whiplash on Jesus.”
My father's belt would come down on me then, giving me strike for strike of what my Savior had suffered as a result of me. I was never one to enjoy the lashings, but I'm convinced my father did. I used to stare at the crucifix and see myself, used to imagine my father dressed in Roman clothes laughing as he beat me thoroughly. Where Christ was made to bear the weight of his cross as he walked to where he'd be erected, I’d crawled along beside him bearing the weight myself, not physically but emotionally.
It took me years to understand that my actions weren't what killed the Savior, that my failures weren't the spear piercing His side. If anything, it had been my father's willful abuse, and my mother's quiet compliance, that drove a man who had never sinned to His eternal cross.
Was I the evil one for childish antics? For disobeying? For having fun during the years where fun was nothing but innocent exploration? Or had my parents been the evil ones, abusing two boys who couldn't fight back, while they draped themselves in holy robes and promised it was better for us to be hurt by them rather than suffer damnation?
The pain returned with phantom fingers tracing each welt, each cut, each bruise to both my body and ego. Pushing forward wasn't easy, but I forced one foot in front of the other, the sound of the soles of my shoes against the tiled floors counting down my penance for having ever been a young man.
While walking me to the front doors of the large parish, Father Timothy had spoken carefully. His choice of words, his tone while speaking them, his patience in delivering a cryptic message, still haunted me as I entered the family room that had surrounded four people who were never a true family.
"You were a priest, Jacob. You understand how we're bound to remain silent regarding a person's confession to God. But what I can tell you is that God wasn't the only person to whom your father confessed his sins. You just have to dig deep enough to find it."
I still couldn't wrap my head around what he'd been trying to say, couldn't think past the deafening white noise that reverberated in my brain as I drove the lonely miles to my childhood home. Even now, that noise threatened to crush me, especially in the moments where it became clear enough for me to hear the whispers.
"What if he finds out, Jacob?"
"He won't find out."
"But, what if..."
My eyes darted to a corner of the room, to the place where Jericho and I used to play with the toys deemed appropriate by my parents. Our father was a doctor and had many books on human anatomy. Jericho and I had found one in particular quite curious. Sneaking the book out of my father's office hadn't been easy. Hiding it in plain sight in our toy corner had been dumb. But somehow my mother never stumbled upon it while dragging a vacuum over the carpets, had never noticed the corner peeking out beneath a pile of Lincoln Logs piled haphazardly on the floor beside their bucket.
“But, what if...”
We were nothing but small boys who wondered about the usual things. How can a bird fly and defeat gravity? How is it possible for a fish to breathe underwater? Why was our mother's body different than our father's, and why did she always keep herself so fully covered?
That book taught us in graphic detail how women differed from men. I remember feeling nothing when I first looked at the pages, my tiny fingers running down the paper over areas much different than what I had seen when standing naked in front of a mirror. It was an idle curiosity, nothing more, but my father didn't agree.
"That's Satan speaking inside you, boy! Drop your pants, let me show you what the good lord created your body for."
It was the first time I fought back. I wasn't able to sit again for a week. He beat me until blood seeped from the wounds his belt had left on my ass. Those images were cemented in my head by his violence...my need to strike out at the very thing that caused me so much pain.
I still liked to inflict that pain, loved hearing them moan and beg for more.
Fuck, how he'd made me crawl. Over carpets, and tile, over wood flooring and the small, hidden, unfinished room he kept inside the basement. The dirt from the floor of that room would always jam itself beneath my fingernails. It would leach inside my open wounds, would kick up into dusty clouds that tickled my nose while I wept. I'd been locked away so many times, that room had become my haven.
Perhaps that's why the darkness crawled inside me. Perhaps I spent so much time locked in shadow, it pulled the dark parts out. The last time I remembered being shoved inside, the light diminishing as he closed the door, was when I was fourteen. I'd broken the door down with angry fists, marched up the stairs to find mom cooking at the stove, and I'd eyed my father where he sat reading his Bible to tell him, "Never again."
The beatings stopped for me that day, but they continued for Jericho.
Turning right, I passed the overstuffed couch where my family often sat to watch television. Never movies or sitcoms, cartoons, or educational shows, the only flickering pictures we got to watch were religious sermons. My father's faith was so resolute that he swore the good Lord resided inside him.
"Do you know how many lives I've saved? How God himself works through me to give my patients life? How dare you question me, boy? I can give life and I can take it away."
There was a time I believed my father saw himself as God, and it wasn't until I walked inside his office that I realized where Jericho might have gotten it.
"So, God sent Christ down to help man, but Christ chose the Kingdom of Heaven as his home. He abandoned mankind when he died. He left us in the Devil's dominion."
"Keep going."
"So, God sent another Christ. And that Christ will eradicate sin and teach us to fight it. To destroy it if we believe in him."
"I told you that?"
Eve had nodded yes to the question.
"And who is the new Christ?"
“You.”
Jericho thought he was God, too. At least, according to what Eve had told me that morning in the parish kitchen while I cooked her breakfast.
No. Not Jericho.
Elijah thought he was God.
The light flared on when my hand hit the switch, anger coursing through me like a tidal wave, crushing me and dragging me until I was hopelessly lost in the undertow, drowning beneath an angry, churning sea.
My father's desk still stood proud in the center of the room. His bookshelf still filled with the books he used in his practice. Sitting on the right side of the third row from the top was a book that I'd taken a beating for, its title printed in bold black letters on the spine: Female Reproductive Anatomy.
If he didn't want us to find that particular book, why did he shelve it so low that it would be within our line of sight?
If my father had hidden a second confession in this house, it had to be within this office. Creeping forward, I pull the toggle of a lamp on the desk as I passed by. A warm green glow emitted from the stained glass lampshade, a color that reminded me of him.
My knees popped as I bent down, my forearms resting on my thighs. I squatted there for several minutes before reaching to grab the book. Running my fingers down the front cover, I endured the memories for a few quiet seconds. It surprised me when I found myself throwing up a silent prayer.
The book fell open in my hands. I flipped the pages and found nothing.
Slamming it closed, I let it drop to the floor and closed my eyes against the memories. Rage crept inside at the stream of images: the basement door, the way Jericho would look back at me from over his shoulder, the way my mother would guide me away from the kitchen the moment my twin started screaming.
I hated the man who worked in this office, and because of him I'd hated God.
My arm flung out, my fist knocking over the neatly arranged books until they'd spilled from the shelf, their covers opening like the flapping wings of dying birds. They landed in a pile to the left of the shelf and I turned my gaze to the rest of the room.
There was no hesitation to my actions, no time to control the rage. Before long I'd broken every lamp in the room, every anatomical model, every framed photo and degree. I'd dumped every drawer, punched holes in the plaster walls, tipped over bookshelves until every piece of my father's legacy was in a messy pile on the floor. There was nothing in this room but his memory, no written confession, no hastily recorded tape. Out of breath, throat sore from screaming, I ended up on top of that pile, a piece of his legacy just the same.
My chest beat hard with labored breath, my teeth clenched as my shoulders shook, and for the first time since the day Eve showed up on the lawn of my parish, I cried until my tears ran dry. Scrubbing my palms over wet cheeks, I rubbed at my red stained eyes. Every horrible memory continued its battering assault, every voice, every mistake, every stupid fucking decision that led me to this day. To this moment. To this point in my cursed life.
My father pushed me away from God and Cassandra shoved me back. And after twelve years in that sleepy town, I thought I could drop my guard.
Why? Fucking why was this shit happening to me? Why couldn't the universe just leave me alone? How fucking fair was it to grant me a life where I'd been forced to climb out from beneath an abusive hand just to discover I wasn't better off alone?
The memories. The whispers. The grating images of what my father had done. Each memory worse than the other, driving me to my feet, forcing another bellowed cry from my lungs until I was marching in a direction I promised myself I wouldn't go.
Within a single minute - sixty short seconds that were nothing remarkable in the span of all time - I found myself staring at the basement door where it stood in the kitchen, my hands clenched into painful fists, my fingernails digging into my palms, and my head pounding with every dark thought that mocked me until I opened the door.
Like any typical basement, a staircase led down. There was nothing especially troubling about the space, at least not in plain view. Yet, as my eyes took in the rows of storage shelves, as I scanned the shadows for memories I knew all too well, I couldn't help the sense that something was watching me as intently as a predator would its lunch.
Charging down the steps, I ignored the way my stomach twisted over itself, the stabbing pains in my gut that threatened to drop me to my knees. Inside my head, all I could hear was my brother scream as he begged our father to stop.
I hated the sight of his bruises, couldn't stand the high pitched cries, and for every step I took down into the bowels of my personal hell, those pain-filled shrieks only grew louder.
Three steps led me to a doorway, to what should have been a storage closet if it had been finished, but I knew the room for something else, knew what horrifying secrets it harbored inside.
This room, this cage, this small out of the way prison had been where Jericho and I were left for hours at a time when my father's beatings had ended.
My palm slammed down on the worn metal handle, the door creaking open to welcome me inside. There was no light in the room, not a single bulb to illuminate the dirt-ridden floor my father never bothered to have finished.
As if by God's hand, the chaos of memories was wiped from my head, the smoke clearing and parting until only a few words spoke clearly.
Those words weren't from my distant past, weren't from another day, another time, or another age.
They were Father Timothy's words spoken as he escorted me out, the words I somehow knew he'd chosen carefully.
With a clarity that forced the breath from my lungs, I finally understood what he meant.
"What I can tell you is that God wasn't the only person to whom your father confessed his sins. You just have to dig deep enough to find it."
Dig.
I have to dig.
I stared down at the dirt floor before walking away to grab a shovel.