Family Values
hirty year old Janice Shriver stood at the top of the stairs and stared down
into the murky depths of the basement carefully eyeing the steel door at the bottom. She'd been
standing there for a full minute now not sure what to do next.
Behind her, her grandfather, who was in his nineties stood silently watching her every move through his grey cataract eyes. He was still wearing his best Sunday suit with the bow tie loosened and the buttons on his shirt partially undone. They had arrived home from Janice's grandmother's funeral not a half an hour earlier and were both tired and ragged. Minutes ago they sat at the kitchen table and shared a pot of coffee talking about what Janice had realized, a family lie that started 24 years ago at the drug store in Mankato.
Her grandpa had told her the real truth about what had happened that awful day. As he told her, Janice listened and traveled back in time with her own thoughts to the five-year old little girl that went shopping together with her dear old grandmother.
She remembered that was the day Janice's parents had went to see a man in Minneapolis about a bagel business that was for sale there. She was left with her grandparents that day while her ten-year old brother David went off to school. Her grandmother had made a light lunch that morning and then took Janice off to run some errands. They went first to the bakery and then the post-office and then finally to the drug store to get a card for David who was turning eleven the following Saturday. While inside the drug store, Janice, who had her brown locks tied in a pink sash and her stuffed green frog tucked safely underneath her arm, stood in front of the birthday cards peering into each one looking for the right one to bring a gleam into David's eye when he opened it. Her grandma had read each card aloud while Janice just looked for the one with the best picture on the front.
They finally settled on one with a drawing of a sunflower on it, stem and all. There was a happy face where the seeds where supposed to be and Janice told her grandma that she liked that one the best. Just as they decided on the card, Janice looked down the aisle and saw a huge rack full of beautifully colored pinwheels. She left her grandmother's side and headed for them with Francis Frog still tucked under her arm.
"Now, Janice, you stay close by," her white-haired grandmother said in her sweet, soothing voice as she turned and started rummaging through some half off ankle socks in a large bin. Her pear-shaped body bustled to and fro as she dug deeper into the socks.
Janice sat on the floor in front of the pin-wheel rack with three of the rainbow colored wheels between her tiny fingers. Francis Frog was put aside for now but not forgotten. The pin-wheels swirled about as she blew huge gasps of air at each one. She watched them turn and turn not realizing the commotion that was starting to develop at the sock bin.
A man in his late twenties was searching through the cards when he saw the old woman at the sock bin. He looked once, then did a double-take, realizing that something was wrong. The old woman who was moments ago sorting through the socks, was now hunched over holding her stomach in pain. He reslotted the card he was looking at and walked over to her with his hands in his jacket pockets.
"Something wrong, lady?" he asked her and she looked up at him and then made a feeble attempt to grab his shoulder before collapsing face first on the dirty floor. "Holy cow!" he yelled as he got to one knee and tried to turn her over. He rolled her over, struggling because she was rather large and that's when he saw the blood seeping through her aqua-blue polyester pants down at her crotch area. "Oh my God! Somebody call an ambulance! This woman needs help." he yelled to other customers in the store.
Janice heard the word ambulance and turned away from the pin-wheels for a moment and saw her grandma on the floor with a strange man leaning over her. A few seconds later, more people gathered and began to circle her poor grandmother who was writhing on the floor clutching her stomach.
Janice placed the three pin-wheels on the ground and got up to see what was wrong with her grandma. She started to walk toward the small crowd that had started developing and turned back to retrieve Francis Frog. When she turned around again a man wearing a white-shirt and tie arrived at the gathering and started pulling people aside to get through and see what was wrong.
Janice started crying, thinking that her grandma had done something wrong and was getting in trouble by all those people. She could only see grandma's slippers pointing up at the ceiling and moving about like she was dancing on her back. Janice slowly walked forward, crying hard because she thought that if grandma was doing something wrong they might think she was doing something wrong too. She started to think that grandma was in trouble because she went and played with the pin-wheels instead of staying by her side. The man who was looking at the cards before turned from the crowd and saw her walking up the aisle with her green frog. He got up and quickly walked toward her. The space the man had made in the circle of people was open and now Janice saw her grandma there and almost wet her pants. She saw the blood and grandma there writhing, clutching her big belly.
"Is that your grandma?" the man in the jacket asked her. He stooped down so his eyes were level with hers and asked her again when she didn't answer. Janice nodded and squished her frog doll over her face to hide her tears. She cried as hard as she could, not wanting the man or anyone else see her bawling like this. "It's going to be okay honey." the man in the jacket assured her. "Your grandmother is going to be just fine." he said not really sure himself what was happening.
"Is she with this woman?" a voice asked from behind them. Janice peeked around her frog and saw it was the man wearing the tie. Probably the man who owns the store she thought.
"Yes, is she okay?" he asked peering over to the crowd and he saw that the blood was spreading further down the poor old woman's legs and he knew she was not okay. He didn't know what the hell could be wrong with her. Heart attack was his first thought, but after he saw the blood, he quickly dismissed that diagnose.
"I think you should take her to the front of the store." the manager said looking back over his shoulder. "Give her anything she wants. Candy...soda whatever. Would you mind doing that sir?" he asked.
The man in the jacket knew the manager meant to get the little girl away from the frightening scene and crowd of people gathering around her grandmother. He scooped her up and wiped her tears away with his gentle finger and told her it was going to be alright. He led her down the other direction and passed the pin-wheels and headed to the front of the drug store with little Janice crying after her grandmother who lay bleeding on the floor. She remembered grandma lying there, bleeding from her tummy as the man in the jacket carried her away and then after that........nothing. She couldn't remember anything after that except that her parents had told her that grandma was sick
And then this morning after the funeral, Janice's grandfather told her the rest of the story from where her memory had left off as she gripped the cool railing leading to the bottom of the stairs and stepped over the threshold to the basement. She descended the first step and could hear her grandpa in the kitchen behind her starting to sob. Janice was determined to see this through and to her surprise got her feet moving slowly down the stairs, using the steep railing to balance her. She crept down the steps thinking that....now she knew why she had never seen her grandparents basement. The reinforced steel door was coming into full view, looming before her like a giant vaulted door. Her grandpa's story zigged and zagged through her confused mind.
As they sat at the kitchen table and sipped coffee that morning, her grandpa told her that as that nice fellow carried her away to the front of the drug store her seventy-year old grandmother was giving birth to an undeveloped fetus that had been festering in her womb for nearly thirty years.
When the paramedics arrived at the sock bin they immediately cut away the polyester pants and saw the head already making its way out. They lifted her onto the stretcher in enough time to see the baby squirt out of her with one giant heave followed by a piercing scream from the old woman that shrilled across the store. A giant membrane-covered umbilical cord hung from the infant's stomach like a rotten tree limb. It was alive and kicking, covered in mucus and bloody membrane from head to toe. The two paramedics looked at one another stunned and then slammed their rescue kits onto the gurney and started pushing for the exit like the wind with grandmother still conscious and screaming as the infant between her legs began to wail.............
Her grandfather told her that the doctors back then were baffled by this post-menstrual delayed birth as they first called it. There were no warning signs, no contractions, no labor........just birth. Her grandmother survived the birth and lived for another twenty-four years until she died in her sleep last Tuesday night. And the tiny, hairy infant that came from her seventy year-old womb that day in the drug store, also survived.
Janice felt her bladder threaten to burst as she stood in front of the steel door. Behind it she heard the muffled sounds of a cartoon tv show. Her palms were drenched with sticky sweat as was her forehead and face. The old stairs were behind her now as she stood at the bottom of the landing and then finally, she reached for the steel knob and turned it slowly to the left. It gave no resistance and she pushed inward and opened the door ever so slowly.
It creaked inward, the hinges screaming for oil as the darkness inside gave way to the glare of a black and white television screen. And beyond the tv in the shadows she saw the outline of her hideous uncle standing in the dark hunched over like some repulsive troll from one of Grimm's fairy tales.
She could tell from her vantage point at the door that it was covered in hair from head to toe and its bones and cartilage were mis-shaped and deformed. Though its head couldn't have been seen from the tv's glare, the mangled body that protruded from her grandmother's inside that day on the drug store floor was indeed alive and was more freakish and disfigured than she could have ever imagined.
She knew the thing was watching her from behind its twisted, dented face but that didn't stop her from entering the room in the basement that housed the thing away from family, friends and society for the last twenty-five years.
As she stepped inside, the stench of urine and rotten garbage engulfed her nostrils. The thing hunched down low behind the tv, cowering from her unwelcome and unannounced visit. She saw its claw-like hands wrapped around the tv set, using at as a shield from her and it was obvious it was more afraid of her than she was of it. That was much was clear but that didn't lessen the tension she felt as she stopped and looked around the newspaper-strewn floor and tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness but couldn't because of the tv. She could make out shapes around the room. An old mattress was in one corner covered with six or seven old quilts that her grandmother had knitted. There was an old wooden dresser in one corner with an antique picture frame lying face down on the top. The walls were made of cinder blocks smeared with old, badly peeling white paint. The ceiling was left unfinished and exposed the pink insulation between the rotted wooden rafters. In the corner behind the door was a filthy toilet and next to it, an untidy pile of gauze and bandages. Some of them were bloody and soaked with yellow pus. Janice wondered what these were for as she slowly stepped toward the tv set and the cowering thing behind it.
She hesitated once, and then walked up to the tv and looked behind it and saw her disfigured uncle for the first time. When it saw her peeking, it lashed out with its claw-like fist and came inches from scratching her face. It growled softly, like an animal that sounded exhausted and beaten. It then retracted its hand and covered its face and started to whimper like an animal and then she saw its hairy, pointy ears. Then suddenly, from upstairs she heard a loud thud as something hard hit the kitchen floor. The thing behind the tv heard it too and Janice looked up at the ceiling stepping back once, almost tripping over a pile of shredded newspapers.
"Grandpa?" she called back up the stairs. No answer. She waited a second or two, then called again as she turned and headed back to the steel door. "Grandpa? Are you okay?" He didn't answer. She briefly looked back behind her at the tv and then went out of the basement and back up the stairs.
"Grandpa?" she called again when she didn't see him in the kitchen anymore. But down on the floor she saw him sprawled there holding his chest, staring up at her through his white, filmy eyes. "GRANDPA!" she screamed as she went to his side and knelt on the linoleum floor.
"Grandpa, what's wrong?" she asked terrified. Her grandfather gargled as spittle flew from his mouth but no words came. "I'm going to call 911, be right back grandp-"
But before she finished, he suddenly grabbed her arm and squeezed it tight preventing her from leaving.
"Don't leave me, Janice......" he said to her in a tired, exhausted voice, as he struggled to speak. "I'm dying.......There won't be enough time." He let out a long, exhausted sigh and released his grip on her arm as his eyelids flickered and then shut.
"Grandpa, you need help......" She looked down at him and realized he was right. He was drawing his last breaths of air, but he opened his eyes again and looked at her.
"Oh Janice......please take care......of......" he struggled to finish, white drool starting to drip from the corners of his mouth. "Don't...let him..." and he stopped and pointed toward the basement door and then leaned back and closed his eye again, this time forever. His chest rose once more, and then he lie there on the kitchen floor.
"Grandpa!?!. Grandpa??" Janice screamed down to him, but he didn't move again. "Oh my God!" she cried out. "Oh my God!" Her grandfather lay there silent on the kitchen floor, never to move again.
She sobbed and buried her face in her grandfather's white shirt dripping fresh tears all over his black tie. For the first time in her life, she felt alone and totally afraid. Her grandmother's gravedirt was still fresh and now her poor grandfather. And then there was............... She quickly glanced at the basement door in just enough time to see her secret relative peering at her from behind the door. Its mangled featureless face disappeared behind the door when she looked up. Its furry claw-like appendages slipped away as it retreated quickly to the basement below.
David Shriver's head disappeared down the steps as Janice stood in the kitchen and watched her brother go down to the basement alone. Just an hour earlier, they paid their last respects to their beloved grandfather who had died on the kitchen floor just six days ago.
Below, Janice could hear the steel door creaking open and then the sound of cartoons again that played night and day on the old black and white. She'd invited her brother back to her grandparents house when the service was over and had explained everything to him over coffee as they sat at the kitchen table. She told him the whole story, starting back at the drug store and how their grandparents had kept their little secret from society. She spared him no detail as she told him of the hideous human-like thing down in the basement. She cried as she told him of her trip to the basement last week and seeing the thing for the first time. She was repulsed by it and was terrified of it just the same. For the past few days, she remained at the house with the basement door tightly bolted. The thing needed to be fed and Janice found a bag of Alpo dog food in the pantry and she knew what it was for, especially knowing that her grandparents loathed dogs and cats. She filled a small plastic bag with the food everyday and tied it tightly and walked halfway down the basement steps and threw it at the steel door below. And every other day, she left a gallon jug of tap water on the steps and then she would quickly run back up the stairs and bolt the door. And everyday, the food and the water would be gone.
She loathed the thing in the basement and cursed her beloved grandfather for thinking she'd be inclined to take on such a task. The burden of it all drove her to a nervous breakdown. That's when she decided to tell David and then together they would decide what to do about the retched thing in the basement. She poured herself another cup of hot coffee, ignoring the bad stomach cramps she'd gotten just lately and waited for David to return.
Downstairs in the basement David stood in front of the rickety dresser and picked up the fallen picture frame that was caked with dust and grime. Janice was right, the thing was afraid of him as it coward behind the tv set softly whimpering. He didn't get a good look at it but from what Janice had told him, it definitely wasn't normal. Human-like, but not at all human. The way it was born into the world and the fact that it spent its entire existence in this filthy and dark basement gave it no chance at all at being normal.
He brushed away the dust on the picture frame and saw a blown-up snapshot of him, Janice and his grandparents outside the gates of the zoo back in 1972. He was only eleven in the picture but he remembered the day clearly. They'd just started summer vacation that day and were going to go-
David's childhood memory was interrupted when upstairs something fell to the kitchen floor, followed by his sister's scream.
"Aagggghhh"
"Janice?" He called up to her forgetting about the picture for now. He eyed the creature behind the tv set and turned around and walked over the shredded newspapers and almost tripped over the small nuggets of dry dog food. "Janice?" he called to her again. He took one last glance back at the tv set seeing nothing but a pair of hairy paw-like hands grasping both sides of the set.
He went past the steel door and back into the light as he climbed the steps two at time. When he got to the top, he froze in his tracks at the sight that lay before him. The blood was the first thing he saw and it was puddling up on the floor underneath his sister who was now backed up on the stove holding her black dress up over her knees. David's heart pounded quickly, but his feet refused to obey him. Janice was clutching her stomach as the crimson raindrops fell from the inside of her dress. And that's when David saw it too.
Janice had her dress pulled way up now as she thrashed up against the stove and screamed in agony. And as she stood there and bled, her breathing becoming more labored with each gasp of air as a tiny, hairy head popped out from between her bloody legs. And though she tried not to push, the deformed head struggled out of her and it was followed by a tiny, premature skeletal body covered with membrane and clotted blood.
It dangled there between her legs and hung by a slimy green umbilical cord and then feverishly gasped for its first breath of air as David fainted and then collapsed backwards down the stairs, breaking his neck long before he hit the landing in front of the massive steel door...............................
