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The Evil in Kansas
• Part 5
• Spring came along, the only time in Kansas where the season was actually pretty. After winter, with it's iced over, dead tree branches, and day after day of gray skies, finally spring would come. It was a welcome change
• With it came spring break for the kids and this year something else new was coming. Keith my online boyfriend was going to come for two weeks. This would be our first time meeting in person. We never had even shared current pictures of each other! So along with their excitement for being out of school for a week and meeting Keith, I was extremely excited too.
• When I got my tax refund I managed to score some pretty cheap tickets to Arizona and we would fly back for a couple days for him to meet my family and friends that I'd left behind in Phoenix. So we had a lot of fun stuff to look forward to.
• My boss Allen, at The Branding Iron 2, had given me a week off so that this could be accomplished. I'd saved every penny and dime for spending money along the way but it wasn't much after paying the bills.
• The trip had gone well, the only hiccup had been the morning of our flight to Arizona we'd almost missed it due to the fact Keith and I had gotten severely drunk the night before. Fortunately Id had adjoining rooms for me and the kids. Becky, who had driven us (due to my car, “Jim Bob", only wanting to run when he wanted to!), had kept an eye on them for me.
• We returned back to Phillipsburg around 2am and I don't think Keith was expecting the house that he saw. Where I thought it was old country and charming, I'm sure he thought it was run down and elapadated.
• We unloaded all of our crap out of Becky's car outside my back porch and into the house we went. Keith said nothing if he was surprised in the appearance of it. Maybe he thought it was charming too. I never knew.
• He offered to take his suitcase upstairs to the master bedroom, once we were settled.
• The kids and I exchanged glances. If we slept up there, it would be the first time for any of us.
• "Nobody sleeps upstairs", Ian told him. I had occasionally but it was only when I was drinking and passed out.
• "Why not?” he asked, looking at me with his brows raised. That ticked me off, as I'd told him of most of the occurrences, and the kids fear of being alone in their rooms. He knew damned well why.
• "Our house has ghosts in it", Ivy chimed. Keith chuckled about it and said, "Oh there's nothing wrong with being upstairs, I'm sure! You guys are just fooling me!”, he laughed.
• I had told him several times about incidents in the house where hed seemed to actually believe me and have sympathy for me. Maybe now I was seeing a side of Keith that I didn't quite like. Why was he joking around about something that we took so seriously?
• So he decided we would sleep upstairs, but first he wanted to investigate my daughter Ivy's bedroom, as that was the one room in the house nobody would sleep in or go into. If we had to pass through it to get to mine, it was done in a fast sprint!
• He went upstairs and he sat down on her bed for about half an hour maybe, while the kids and I stayed downstairs in the living room.
• He came down saying," There's nothing up there that I could tell. Nothing scared me, no weird creepy feelings, nothing!", he exclaimed. The kids and I just rolled our eyes at him, as I began tucking them in on the sofa bed. ( this would be an ongoing occurrence with the house. It decided when it wanted to fuck with you and when it didn't)
• He may not have felt anything but I was pretty sure he'd pissed something and someone off!
• We had an enjoyable time getting to all know each other, and soon it was time for him to go home. (Keith would visit again for a month that summer, and we took the kids on a trip to Yellowstone - On a walk with just Ian and I, he quietly asked if he could please, please, not take the ADHD pills anymore! My heart broke, but I also felt like I'd been backed into a corner, that somehow the school's threat's had been bullshit! I was NOT going to force my son to take anything he didn't want to! It just meant I, as his mother, would have to pay more attention to him, and redirect, redirect, redirect! I also had an ace up my sleeve in the form of a certain "double shot on the rocks", made by a particular asshat at his school! Ian has never taken ADHD meds since that day, and Mr. Gower never made one peep the following fall when I sent Ian to school with a very short note simply stating Ian would no longer need any medication, just more attentive teachers, please!)
• I went back to work and the kids went back to school. I was working 2 jobs, generally working from 6 am to 10 or 11 at night. I rarely saw the kids, and on my day off, I usually sat in the dining room, or now, in the upstairs bedroom, drinking
• After Keith left from his second visit that summer break in June, my mom called and said my grandmother, my favorite person in the whole world at that time, was getting ready to pass. She had lived about two hours from me in Wamego, Kansas, but earlier in the year, her health had deteriorated so fast that my mother had moved her into hospice in Phoenix with her. I got to speak to my grandmother one last time before she passed away.
• I told her, "It's okay grandma, you don't have to take care of us anymore. You can go now. We'll all be okay, you can rest now. Go..", of course I didn't think I was going to be too okay, and the first thing I did was drink. I got so intoxicated, that I got mad and punched the front window of my door, breaking it and cutting my left wrist pretty bad. I didn't even remember doing it.
• Of course it scared the kids and they didn't know what to do so they called Keith who said you should call an ambulance and of course the police came. They took me to jail and took my kids into custody. I went to court the next day where the judge informed my new case workers from the child welfare department, that I was to see my kids that afternoon and every other visitations with them as I had not gotten in any trouble previously.
• A week came and went and I still hadn't seen my kids, so I went directly to the judge to inform her of this. It took her 2 minutes to call somebody and I got to see my kids finally, that afternoon.
• I was ordered to take AA classes but I was left for 31 days alone in that house without my kids and for some reason I found myself almost every night, sitting at the dining room table drinking. Oh I still went to AA, but it just made me want to drink, more than quit.
• After 31 days I did receive my children back. It was the end of the summer and things were oddly quiet at the house. The kids were pretty sullen, and extremely pissed at me. I didn't blame them. I had quit drinking in front of them. I managed to stop for about a month but it didn't last.
• One late afternoon right before Thanksgiving, after the lunch rush at the restaurant, one of the waitresses came in and told me I had a visitor.
• I thought,' oh God who's come here to see me now, at my job!?', thinking it could only be bad news. I went out to the dining room and they're sitting at the first table was my father, Danny
• My father and I did not,( do not), have a good relationship. I have no respect for the man and really don't like him too much, for that matter. I tolerated him and was civil when I did have to see him. Danny was and had always been extremely overweight, and as a child, it helped to intimidate me and kept my siblings and myself in constant fear of getting a beating. His highest weight had been 480 pounds! A heart attack, among other things, finally convinced him he'd better loose some weigh! He'd managed to drop 100 pounds by this time. He still could give me a look though that made my skin burn in anticipation of a belt or his hands striking my skin.
• "Hey Dad!?", I was not expecting him to show up without notice, although he'd done it before. He knew I wouldn't appreciate it.
• "What's going on? Is everything ok?", I asked him.
• "Oh I just stopped on the way to Mom's, and figured I'd come a day early, and get you and the kids. We can all spend Thanksgiving together", he said matter of factly.
• I was a little pissed off! He hadn't bothered to call me, he'd just shown up expecting that I would be able to take time off and just go Willie Neely across country to Missouri, on a moments notice ?
• My boss just happened to be walking through the dining room at that moment, while I was trying to make an excuse, and said if I needed a couple days off that would be fine.
• Great!
• I asked him what the plans were, and he figured hed crash at my place that night and we'd leave early the next morning. Again another assumption, and he just figured I'd be okay with it! Well I didn't have much of a choice so we went along with this plans.
• He stayed the night and the next day we were on our way. We arrived at my grandmother's house pretty late in the evening. I put the kids down for bed as they were really tired from the long ride and my father and I sat out in the living room chatting and just shooting the breeze when all of a sudden he said,
• "You know Mary, I have to tell you something," he said, pausing and looking down at his hands, and rubbing them back and forth.
• "You know I don't put much stock in ghosts or such things, but there's something in your house", he said quietly. He wouldn't look at me.
• "What do you mean Dad?", I asked? Looking at him expecting a pretty quick answer. I didn't get one.
• He sat there for a minute thinking the words over in his head before he spoke.
• "Well, you know I was sleeping on the floor last night and something woke me up. I couldn't figure out what it was", he explained, then continued. "But I heard or felt something whispering or maybe a growling type sound in my ear. So I sat up to see what it was, then out of nowhere, something grabbed me by my arms and drug me into the kitchen! Damned thing scared the living Jesus out of me! " He exclaimed. He was looking at me then, I think hoping that I'd reassure him it had just been a dream, but I couldn't.
• My father was close to 400 pounds! Something would have to be incredibly strong to have been able to pull him nearly 5-6 feet across the living room and into the kitchen!
• "Are you sure you weren't dreaming dad?", I asked, although I already knew the answer.
• "No I wasn't dreaming kiddo. I know what happened. I was wide awake, Mary! Something's wrong with that house. I suggest that you get a medicine man in there or something to bless the place, that would be my suggestion! That or move the hell out, as soon as you can...
• ††††
• *****
© M.E.Purdy
• Spring came along, the only time in Kansas where the season was actually pretty. After winter, with it's iced over, dead tree branches, and day after day of gray skies, finally spring would come. It was a welcome change
• With it came spring break for the kids and this year something else new was coming. Keith my online boyfriend was going to come for two weeks. This would be our first time meeting in person. We never had even shared current pictures of each other! So along with their excitement for being out of school for a week and meeting Keith, I was extremely excited too.
• When I got my tax refund I managed to score some pretty cheap tickets to Arizona and we would fly back for a couple days for him to meet my family and friends that I'd left behind in Phoenix. So we had a lot of fun stuff to look forward to.
• My boss Allen, at The Branding Iron 2, had given me a week off so that this could be accomplished. I'd saved every penny and dime for spending money along the way but it wasn't much after paying the bills.
• The trip had gone well, the only hiccup had been the morning of our flight to Arizona we'd almost missed it due to the fact Keith and I had gotten severely drunk the night before. Fortunately Id had adjoining rooms for me and the kids. Becky, who had driven us (due to my car, “Jim Bob", only wanting to run when he wanted to!), had kept an eye on them for me.
• We returned back to Phillipsburg around 2am and I don't think Keith was expecting the house that he saw. Where I thought it was old country and charming, I'm sure he thought it was run down and elapadated.
• We unloaded all of our crap out of Becky's car outside my back porch and into the house we went. Keith said nothing if he was surprised in the appearance of it. Maybe he thought it was charming too. I never knew.
• He offered to take his suitcase upstairs to the master bedroom, once we were settled.
• The kids and I exchanged glances. If we slept up there, it would be the first time for any of us.
• "Nobody sleeps upstairs", Ian told him. I had occasionally but it was only when I was drinking and passed out.
• "Why not?” he asked, looking at me with his brows raised. That ticked me off, as I'd told him of most of the occurrences, and the kids fear of being alone in their rooms. He knew damned well why.
• "Our house has ghosts in it", Ivy chimed. Keith chuckled about it and said, "Oh there's nothing wrong with being upstairs, I'm sure! You guys are just fooling me!”, he laughed.
• I had told him several times about incidents in the house where hed seemed to actually believe me and have sympathy for me. Maybe now I was seeing a side of Keith that I didn't quite like. Why was he joking around about something that we took so seriously?
• So he decided we would sleep upstairs, but first he wanted to investigate my daughter Ivy's bedroom, as that was the one room in the house nobody would sleep in or go into. If we had to pass through it to get to mine, it was done in a fast sprint!
• He went upstairs and he sat down on her bed for about half an hour maybe, while the kids and I stayed downstairs in the living room.
• He came down saying," There's nothing up there that I could tell. Nothing scared me, no weird creepy feelings, nothing!", he exclaimed. The kids and I just rolled our eyes at him, as I began tucking them in on the sofa bed. ( this would be an ongoing occurrence with the house. It decided when it wanted to fuck with you and when it didn't)
• He may not have felt anything but I was pretty sure he'd pissed something and someone off!
• We had an enjoyable time getting to all know each other, and soon it was time for him to go home. (Keith would visit again for a month that summer, and we took the kids on a trip to Yellowstone - On a walk with just Ian and I, he quietly asked if he could please, please, not take the ADHD pills anymore! My heart broke, but I also felt like I'd been backed into a corner, that somehow the school's threat's had been bullshit! I was NOT going to force my son to take anything he didn't want to! It just meant I, as his mother, would have to pay more attention to him, and redirect, redirect, redirect! I also had an ace up my sleeve in the form of a certain "double shot on the rocks", made by a particular asshat at his school! Ian has never taken ADHD meds since that day, and Mr. Gower never made one peep the following fall when I sent Ian to school with a very short note simply stating Ian would no longer need any medication, just more attentive teachers, please!)
• I went back to work and the kids went back to school. I was working 2 jobs, generally working from 6 am to 10 or 11 at night. I rarely saw the kids, and on my day off, I usually sat in the dining room, or now, in the upstairs bedroom, drinking
• After Keith left from his second visit that summer break in June, my mom called and said my grandmother, my favorite person in the whole world at that time, was getting ready to pass. She had lived about two hours from me in Wamego, Kansas, but earlier in the year, her health had deteriorated so fast that my mother had moved her into hospice in Phoenix with her. I got to speak to my grandmother one last time before she passed away.
• I told her, "It's okay grandma, you don't have to take care of us anymore. You can go now. We'll all be okay, you can rest now. Go..", of course I didn't think I was going to be too okay, and the first thing I did was drink. I got so intoxicated, that I got mad and punched the front window of my door, breaking it and cutting my left wrist pretty bad. I didn't even remember doing it.
• Of course it scared the kids and they didn't know what to do so they called Keith who said you should call an ambulance and of course the police came. They took me to jail and took my kids into custody. I went to court the next day where the judge informed my new case workers from the child welfare department, that I was to see my kids that afternoon and every other visitations with them as I had not gotten in any trouble previously.
• A week came and went and I still hadn't seen my kids, so I went directly to the judge to inform her of this. It took her 2 minutes to call somebody and I got to see my kids finally, that afternoon.
• I was ordered to take AA classes but I was left for 31 days alone in that house without my kids and for some reason I found myself almost every night, sitting at the dining room table drinking. Oh I still went to AA, but it just made me want to drink, more than quit.
• After 31 days I did receive my children back. It was the end of the summer and things were oddly quiet at the house. The kids were pretty sullen, and extremely pissed at me. I didn't blame them. I had quit drinking in front of them. I managed to stop for about a month but it didn't last.
• One late afternoon right before Thanksgiving, after the lunch rush at the restaurant, one of the waitresses came in and told me I had a visitor.
• I thought,' oh God who's come here to see me now, at my job!?', thinking it could only be bad news. I went out to the dining room and they're sitting at the first table was my father, Danny
• My father and I did not,( do not), have a good relationship. I have no respect for the man and really don't like him too much, for that matter. I tolerated him and was civil when I did have to see him. Danny was and had always been extremely overweight, and as a child, it helped to intimidate me and kept my siblings and myself in constant fear of getting a beating. His highest weight had been 480 pounds! A heart attack, among other things, finally convinced him he'd better loose some weigh! He'd managed to drop 100 pounds by this time. He still could give me a look though that made my skin burn in anticipation of a belt or his hands striking my skin.
• "Hey Dad!?", I was not expecting him to show up without notice, although he'd done it before. He knew I wouldn't appreciate it.
• "What's going on? Is everything ok?", I asked him.
• "Oh I just stopped on the way to Mom's, and figured I'd come a day early, and get you and the kids. We can all spend Thanksgiving together", he said matter of factly.
• I was a little pissed off! He hadn't bothered to call me, he'd just shown up expecting that I would be able to take time off and just go Willie Neely across country to Missouri, on a moments notice ?
• My boss just happened to be walking through the dining room at that moment, while I was trying to make an excuse, and said if I needed a couple days off that would be fine.
• Great!
• I asked him what the plans were, and he figured hed crash at my place that night and we'd leave early the next morning. Again another assumption, and he just figured I'd be okay with it! Well I didn't have much of a choice so we went along with this plans.
• He stayed the night and the next day we were on our way. We arrived at my grandmother's house pretty late in the evening. I put the kids down for bed as they were really tired from the long ride and my father and I sat out in the living room chatting and just shooting the breeze when all of a sudden he said,
• "You know Mary, I have to tell you something," he said, pausing and looking down at his hands, and rubbing them back and forth.
• "You know I don't put much stock in ghosts or such things, but there's something in your house", he said quietly. He wouldn't look at me.
• "What do you mean Dad?", I asked? Looking at him expecting a pretty quick answer. I didn't get one.
• He sat there for a minute thinking the words over in his head before he spoke.
• "Well, you know I was sleeping on the floor last night and something woke me up. I couldn't figure out what it was", he explained, then continued. "But I heard or felt something whispering or maybe a growling type sound in my ear. So I sat up to see what it was, then out of nowhere, something grabbed me by my arms and drug me into the kitchen! Damned thing scared the living Jesus out of me! " He exclaimed. He was looking at me then, I think hoping that I'd reassure him it had just been a dream, but I couldn't.
• My father was close to 400 pounds! Something would have to be incredibly strong to have been able to pull him nearly 5-6 feet across the living room and into the kitchen!
• "Are you sure you weren't dreaming dad?", I asked, although I already knew the answer.
• "No I wasn't dreaming kiddo. I know what happened. I was wide awake, Mary! Something's wrong with that house. I suggest that you get a medicine man in there or something to bless the place, that would be my suggestion! That or move the hell out, as soon as you can...
• ††††
• *****
© M.E.Purdy
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