Read Part One and Part Two first. The shock and horror that filled the young boy’s mind was confirmed as his mother was knocked over
from the scariest creature the boy had ever seen. The raccoon, who obviously had been alarmed by all of the noise that the footsteps and the opening and closing of appliances must have created, shot so fast out of that door. The boy was frozen in terror, as his mother sat on the floor for a moment, and his own mood was changed by the way his mother was laughing. To the young boy it was a maniacal laughter that was totally out of place but to the mother it was the common laughter of someone who was scared for no reason. The raccoon on the other hand was out the back door before anyone could even take an inventory of how big it was, or even its color. The young boy again is back to thinking of what could have happened to his father. Throughout all of this commotion there wasn’t so much as a peep from the man in which the boy had thought would protect him from everything. Now he was more scared as this man he thought he knew when they left New York, is now doing God knows what upstairs while he was left to fend for himself with a mother who obviously has lost her faculties too. Assuming the boy even knew what faculties were, but then again he isn’t telling this story, he is just living it. “Honey?” the mother called out trying to gauge the situation as it pertained to her husband herself. The silence was awkward, even in this scenario where the silence had been so terrifying. The boy is looking about the room, too afraid to get away, even as his mother had lost her firm grasp of him in all the commotion. “Honey? What are you up to?” the mother called out again. The silence otherwise continues. Too afraid to go check out the situation himself, the boy simply stares at his mother wondering why she doesn’t take the situation more seriously. She is simply standing there brushing the years of dust off of her clothes. The boy stares at the door to what must be the basement, hoping that she doesn’t think taking him down there is a good idea, but he probably should have thought about getting away before she had taken his hand in hers, like she just did. The boy struggles to get out of her grasp and she seems to take this as the simple pangs of a young child, determined to be independent, as she grasped more firm. The horror of her starting to take him towards that door starts making his sweat feel cold. At the top of the stairs his mother now attempts to turn the light on, to no avail. The light in the basement has apparently decided that it had no intention of looking at whatever unspeakable horrors lurk down there, and the boy wouldn’t have blamed it. Of course the mother was intent on walking down there, while the boy pulled defenseless to keep her in the kitchen and in his mind just plain sane. Who in their right mind would walk willingly into the basement of a house like this especially when there is no light to alert you to whatever unspeakable evil has built its lair down there? The mother takes that first step downward and the terrified little boy is completely helpless to keep himself at the top of the stairs. His foot lands on the first step down. It creaked like it wasn’t ready to handle any weight much less his. The second step gave off more of a groan, then the creak that the first one did. Then it happened, exactly like the boy knew it would, the sound of a crack, and then the full weight of the boy’s mother was being held by the young man gripped with fear and roughly one third of his mother’s weight. Flailing in the dark like any adult without the wherewithal to just fall and get it over with, like a child would. The boy instinctively thought like an adult for maybe the first time in his life as his free hand latched onto the doorway that was barely within reach. His grasp was true, as his mother managed to steady herself from the broken step that had taken her and her son by surprise. She couldn’t want to go further, with all of the warning signs she has already ignored? For the first time since this whole ordeal of this miserable house had been dropped in this poor little boy’s world, his mother did as he would have wanted her to, as she gave up on walking downward further into that moldy basement. She dragged him along with her as she walked back into the kitchen, and her son was perfectly happy to be in the kitchen for the first time today. She managed to parade him out into the living room, or what would have most likely been a living room had there been walls, and then out onto the sea of poison ivy that infests what maybe a hundred years ago was a lawn. A look to the left told the young boy that the running river had not changed its opinion of the house since they had ventured inside of it. The mystery of the missing parent was now solved as the young boy spied his father leaning up against the car having an animated conversation with someone on his cell phone. His father finally said, “Ok, I’ll let them know,” just before he slipped the cell phone back into his pocket. He took a step towards them onto the lawn, that still to the little boy looked like serpents trying to drag his father into the dirt, that laid just below the tangling weeds. The father said, “Well gang it looks like the company won’t be moving me to Shamokin Dam after all, let’s get back home.” The mother piped up, “Thank Goodness, I didn’t want to look at another house like this again. Don’t they all seem to look so horrible?” and with that she let go of her son’s hand and let him free for the first time today. The little boy finally had his freedom to do whatever he wanted to, and how did he use that freedom? He plunked himself down in the sea of nasty weeds and poison ivy and started to cry. The tears of a miserable little boy who must have been holding in these exasperated tears for the longest of time, and now he had his audience to explain his angst to. Like a normal child, finally he was going to let everyone involved with this day know exactly where he stood, and he wasn’t going to hold back at all. His wail belted out exactly what his parents should have known all along was coming, “BUT THEY DON’T HAVE BIRCH BEER BACK HOME! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HAVE BIRCH BEER NOW?!?!”
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