Come Find Me

Pure white sunlight pours in through the slats of the blinds, reflecting brightly off the December night’s snowfall and stirring me from my sleep. Maple is curled at my feet, basking in the incoming warmth and light. She opens her eyes, letting out a sleepy meow as she’s awoken by my movement.

“Oh, did I wake you up sweetheart? I’m sorry,” I coo to her as I scratch between her ears. Tristan stirs beside me, also awoken by me breaking away from his embrace. He reaches for me, still asleep, and replies that, no, I hadn’t awoken him, that he was already awake. I chuckle softly to myself before kissing his forehead and begrudgingly working my way out of his arms and the warm, satin sheets.

These creaky old floors are chilly this time of year, so I slide my slippers on before moving into the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Maple trails behind me, the bell of her collar tinkling along with the soft patter of her paws. She follows me just long enough to watch me take a large glass bowl and the box of pre-made pancake mix out of the cabinets before heading off to get Tristan out of bed to help me cook our breakfast.

I hear the soft, staticky scratch of the record player, then the romantic crooning of Nat King Cole serenading me from the living room as Tristan waltzes into the kitchen. He scoops me into his arms and sweeps me off my feet, dancing me through the kitchen for a moment, singing along with the record before stopping us in front of the stove, kissing my cheeks before releasing me. Oh, I couldn’t be more in love.

The soft thump I hear next, I hardly acknowledge it. How could I take my mind off this? It’s just Maple, anyway, hopping out of bed to join us in the kitchen. Or it’s the creaky bones of the house, its arthritic joints complaining at our jostling of them. It’s nothing.

“Alright, darling, what’s for breakfast? Maple’s favorite, it looks like?”

“Yep,” I reply, sifting through the storage drawers for all my measuring cups and spoons. “Oh, and did you hear that thump a little bit ago, honey? Would you be willing to check and see if everything is okay while I work on making the pancake mix?”

“I didn’t hear anything, but, yeah, sure. I’ll go take a look,” is his good-natured answer. He knows how anxious I am, and he humors me every time the anxiety takes over my otherwise rational nerves.

I hear Tristan walk over to the front door, and his statement quickly follows.

“My love, you might want to come look at this.”

I ask Maple to keep an eye on the pancake mix, then hurry to Tristan’s side. He sounded so serious, what could it possibly be?

Sitting before him, on our front porch, was a rectangular box, wrapped in plain brown paper. Pretty unassuming. I ask Tristan if he’s ordered anything online, and he shakes his head no. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the black speck of a drone flying away from our house and into the horizon. Oh, I suppose the delivery websites have evolved to drones now. Tristan, it seems, hasn’t noticed it.

“It hasn’t got either of our names on it, or anyone’s. Let’s open it, I guess, see what it is.”

My heart sinks into my stomach as my mind begins to race with ideas of what this package could be. Who would possibly leave this here, with no identification as to what it is or who it’s for? What if it’s a bomb, and Tristan picks it up and it explodes? What if it belongs to someone close by, and we anger them by opening it? But I express none of my worries as Tristan picks the package up effortlessly, and it doesn’t explode.

Breakfast is a fleeting thought as we’re overtaken with curiosity. Maple hops up on the dining room table, sniffing carefully at the package as Tristan sets it down and grabs a small knife from the kitchen. I stand behind him, resting my chin lightly on his free shoulder as he runs his knife along the paper-covered seams of the box and lifts the flaps.

All that lay in the box is some crumpled, yellowed newspaper and an aged photo of a woman and a newborn, standing outside a brick house that looked eerily like ours. Taped carefully to the photo, is a small, rusty skeleton key. On the bottom of the photo, a date. May 11, 1944. And a phrase.

Come Find Me.

Tristan and I sit at the table, Maple circling around and around before curling up in a chair next to us as we pore over the package. I remove the newspaper, and I’m taken aback by its weight. This is not just paper, it’s wrapped around something. I spread the paper open gingerly, revealing an antique pocket watch, and a thick, heavy wrench, the top dark and stained, as was the inside of the newspaper that touched it.

“What could this possibly mean?” I inquire to Tristan as he studies the photo. “Maybe those people used to live here back then? But who could we possibly ask, this was apparently taken… what, almost 80 years ago? And what’s with the wrench and pocket watch? And what do you think the key could be for?”

Tristan suddenly gets a familiar twinkle in his doe-brown eyes. Mischief. Oh no.

“The key could be for, I don’t know, the attic, perhaps?”

My eyes go wide as I process his question. We just moved into this ancient house a few days ago, I’d been so exhausted and scrambled from the move that I hadn’t taken the time to explore the vast old place. A beautiful home, ours. According to neighborhood rumor, no one’s wanted to move in since two of the previous women who owned it over the decades have died here, so we got it for a great price. Grim, but good for us.

“I didn’t even know we had one, my love. When did you find an attic?”

The twinkle in his eye brightens. “Couldn’t sleep the first night, the place gave me too much of the creeps. So, naturally, I had to go exploring. But, I couldn’t get in to the attic, even after I tried ti pick the lock. That’s got to be the attic key! I wonder what’s hiding up there…”

I take the photo from Tristan’s handsc giving him the key in exchange and answering, “Lead the way, my love. But at the very first sight of a spider, I’m screaming and running away.” I gather the wrench and watch in their paper and follow behind Tristan on a venture to the attic.

As Tristan laughs at my remark, I flip the photo over and two names are revealed.

Ruthie and baby Patricia.

“Oh!”, I exclaim as Tristan pulls the attic door open and lowers the ladder with a heavy groan, matching in volume the creak of the ladder as it’s stretched out, probably for the first time in decades.

“What’s up darling? Are you okay?”

“All good!”, I call to him as he ascends into the unknown. “I’ve found the names of the people in the photo! Ruthie, and Patricia’s the baby!”

I place the photo carefully in my pajama shirt pocket and keep a tight grip on the wrench and watch before taking a deep breath and heading into the unknown myself.

The small circular window of the attic does little for illuminating the attic as I bring myself in. I hear Maple’s bell jingling, and a chorus of meows as she circles around the base of the ladder. I call down some “we’re okay” reassurances to her before heading deeper in to the cobweb-adorned dark.

Tristan must have found the light source, because I hear him pull a chain and a dust-jacketed yellow lightbulb hanging from the rafters turns on, swaying slightly with the sudden movement.

“Aha! Let there be light,” he exclaims triumphantly, the light shining on his excited grin.

“I’ve been waiting to show you this, my love, but I knew this kind of creepy stuff wasn’t really your thing. But now we’ve got to explore!”

“Right,” I answer, taking Ruthie and Patricia’s photo from my pocket. Who are this mother and child? What’s their story? What was their life inside these walls like?

I sit cross-legged on the floor beneath the lightbulb, leaving Tristan to his exploration while I study the photo, wrench, and watch. I run my thumb over and over the case of the gilded casing of the watch before taking a deep breath and popping the casing open to reveal the face. Along with the face, though, another name is revealed. Raymond H. Combs is engraved on the inside of the casing. I glance over to the wrench, and it’s there as well, on the handle.

“Another name, darling! Raymond H. Combs!”

“Oh, that’s awesome!”, Tristan replies while I’m still eyeing my find. “But you’ve got to see this.”

He ushers me over to a large, dark chest. It must have been caked with dust before he opened it, because it’s all floating in the air now, landing in his thick curls and long eyelashes.

I peer in to the chest as he’s freeing himself from the grip of the dust, and my heart dives into my stomach when I lay eyes on the blood-soaked dress. Identical to the one that Ruthie is wearing in the photo I hold in my trembling hand. On top of the dress is laying a filthy shovel that’s stained the dress with dirt.

Barely visible through the bloodstains, the name R. P. Combs is stitched inside the collar.

“Ruthie Patricia Combs, I imagine,” I mumble to Tristan, running my thumb across the tiny bumps of stitching. “Oh, Ruthie, what’s happened to you?”

“I think I know,” Tristan replies darkly. He holds a small, faded emerald book in his hand, the cover worn and spine broken. On the cover, barely legible, is the name Raymond Harrison Combs. The name in the casing of the watch and on the handle of the wrench.

“Come take a look at this entry. July 11th, 1944. Just a month after the date on that photo.”

Tristan places the book gently in my hands, and I read the entry aloud, as if speaking the words will dampen the terror they bring.

Patricia is ever so fussy today. Screaming and crying all the night through since her birth, will it ever cease? I just don’t know how long I can take it. And Ruthie. God, that woman. Useless ever since she became with child. Argumentative. Meals are late and sub-par. Useless.

I acquired the maple sapling the night previous, perfect to plant tonight. The spot in the yard will be dug today while Ruthie tends child and house, six feet wide by six feet deep. Ruthie’s new home, she’s just yet to know…

What will I do when the time comes? How will I bring myself to be rid of my wife? And the child? I suppose she can be sent to Mum and Dad… say that Ruthie’s left us to travel Europe or something of the sort…

The deed is now done. The sapling, planted. Now to watch it grow.

“Oh my God… Raymond killed Ruthie and shipped their daughter off to his parents. Bashed her head in with that wrench. Buried her in their own backyard.”

The words seem unreal as they leave my mouth in a throat-cutting whisper. Who could ever do such a cruel thing to someone they once loved enough to marry and have a child with?

“Okay,” Tristan says in the matter-of-fact way he does when he’s trying to deduce something. “Someone sent this package to us, the new residents of the legendary Combs house, to unlock the attic and find all of this stuff about Ruthie. But who could it have been? The baby, Patricia, all grown up? She could still be alive. Right?”

I sit down, crossing my legs and resting my elbows on my knees, head in my hands as it’s weighed down with the shock. Poor, poor Ruthie…

“Uh, I suppose,” I answer shakily. “You think there was anything else in the package that we didn’t see, that could tell us who? Like a letter or something?”

“Come on, then,” Tristan says, holding his hands out to me to help me up. “Let’s go look. Maybe we missed something.”

We had. Taped to the inside of the brown wrapping of the package, was a letter dated May 11th of this year, sent from a nearby nursing home.

From Patricia Louise Combs.

The script is a beautiful, shaky cursive, the handwriting of a dying woman.

Dearest Residents,

Welcome to the home of my infancy and womanhood. I trust that by the time you receive this letter, I’ll be off in Heaven to join my beloved mother.

Only on his deathbed did my father confess to me his sins. All my life, I thought my mother had abandoned me for a fast, carefree life in the European countryside. I never knew, that every time I sat beneath that maple tree in the backyard, my mother was right there at my side.

I got this home back from my father after his passing, and now it belongs to you. Please, honor my mother within these walls. Honor my memory. If you are residing there with someone you love, never stop loving them.

Grow your family. Love your family. Never again repeat the sins committed in this house.

And, if you could, now that my mother has been buried with the rest of her family, please cut down that rotten old maple tree.

Forever yours,

Patricia Louise Combs

I hadn’t noticed that tears had welled up in my eyes until I saw them fall upon the letter and feel Tristan’s arms wrap around me and hold me tight. He squeezes me for a moment, then takes the letter from my hand and sets it on the table. He then turns quickly away, heading to the bedroom.

“Where are you going?”, I ask as I wipe the tears from my eyes. He turns back, planting a strong, sweet kiss on my lips before replying.

“To cut down that damned tree.”