The Gordons of Wheaton

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Which was peculiar because everyone in Wheaton Montana had known the family who lived in that cabin, the Gordons, and everyone knew that the whole family had been dead for years.

The Gordon’s were, by all accounts, a typical Wheaton family. The dad, Ray worked as the town pharmacist. Franny, the mother of the family, was a homemaker and could be seen regularly supporting her youngest children, the twins, Robby and Samantha. Philip Was the brooding teen everyone mostly ignored.

There was also the Gordon family dog, a little dachshund that only made a peep when she met a mean-looking large dog around town. Otherwise Baltis Gordon was a sweet gentle little dog who loved frolicking with the twins at riverside park, or chasing tennis balls when Franny and Ray would play at the Baker Park courts. She’d park herself under the dining table when Philip would have his friends over for friday-night board games and wait for crusts of pizzas to be handed to her. She was so well-behaved she would often be seen at the end of the driveway that led up to the Gordon cabin all by herself sniffing around in the flowers and woods there and going on the type of oft-halting promenades to commune with nature in ways only a dog does.

It was an unseasonably warm July for Montana and news reports of the snow losing more body than usual up the mountain pass in Glacier park were a weekly occurrence. The town of Wheaton would remember it as the tragic month the Gordons would lose their lives one-by-one starting with the poor, sweet dachshund, Baltis.

July of that year started off on a sour note when the Gordons were seen sadly coming home from a trip to Glacier park. They often let Baltis run off-leash and never worried about her when they would hike in the park and up at the mountain pass there weren’t many places for her to hide from them. This time though Baltis was spooked when a mountain goat chased her from the trail, the Gordons all laughed and, when the goat was seen disappearing over the mountain, they called for Baltis to return, but she didn’t.

The Gordons were stunned, Robby and Samantha had tears stinging their cheeks in the cold mountain air, and the sun had long since passed over the mountain and hikers passed them with lit headlamps. Ray finally called Philip back and with a baleful look at Franny knew it was time to make the difficult decision to leave.

With a promise that he would come back to the park every night to look for Baltis he and Franny finally were able to shoo the crying children into the family wagon. They took one last scan of the landscape with the wagon’s headlights, hoping they might see the shine of Baltis’ collar, but they didn’t. The Gordon’s left one of themselves up in the wilds.

Even teenage Philip, who, in training himself for manhood had been careful to show no emotion for several years, had a little furrow in his brow and some water in his eyes when he thought of little Baltis braving the forest all alone. The twins didn’t stop crying the entire ride home and when the family finally flopped down in the living room, free of their dirty hiking boots, the crying started up again when they saw Baltis’ empty bed in the corner and her bowl of food that would go untouched for who knew how long.

For that whole week Franny and the kids were determined, she kept them home from school for several days and they made the 45 minute drive to the park several times. They handed out flyers with Baltis’ picture and posted them on every town bulletin board and grocery store entry. By the end of the week Franny and Ray were having talks about finding another dog. There would never be another animal that could fill Baltis’ shoes, of course, but in time the kids would grow to love a new furball. Samantha made Franny promise to keep a candle lit in the front window of their cabin so that Baltis would be able to see them in the night and run home.

By the end of the week, Ray was returning from what he knew would be his last trip up to the mountain pass for some time and just as he pulled into the driveway something caught his eye, a dark lump lay under one of the trees that lined the edge of the Gordon’s forested front yard. The twins were always playing with sticks and building forts and the forest was constantly strewn with toys, but this was something else.

Ray stopped the car and craned his neck to see in the darkness what was there, he thought he saw the lump move but couldn’t be sure. Carefully, not to get even his own hopes up, he heard the raspy word “Baltis?” Escape his lips. Just like that the lump jumped up and dashed across the grass. She was halfway to Ray before he realized that it was her, Baltis had returned! Ray scooped her up and was running up the driveway laughing hysterically before he even realized what he was doing.

The Gordons all came running into the living room when they heard Ray calling for them. Baltis’s tail was wagging so hard her entire back half was felt squirming through the immense family hug. She looked up at the candle which had become unlit as the family rushed past it and a little whisper of smoke trailed out of the wick.

Franny grabbed Baltis’ face and squeezed it to her head, as she did so she noticed a little red scar coming out of the corner of the dog’s mouth. She didn’t think much of it because the Gordons were together again, and the rest of the night was joyous and warm in their cabin.

The rose-orange colored light that spilled into the dark forest around the cabin created a shadow that none of them noticed. It may have been nothing, but it could have been a dark figure, standing at the edge of the driveway where Baltis had been found, near Ray’s car which was still running, it’s door swung open to the night. Not one of the Gordons looked out the window, they were too busy rejoicing the family member they thought had been lost forever. It was the last time any of them would feel anything close to joy again.

Life for the Gordons went on after that. They all noticed the little red welt near Baltis’ mouth and after Ray had inspected it and concluded it to be ‘Just some poison ivy’ and ol’ Balty must have rubbed against some on her big adventure home’ the family was at peace. The red spot was healing slowly, afterall, disappearing back towards Baltis’s drooling maw. Franny wondered if they should get something for it, but she trusted her husband. He was a good pharmacist, and one who worked in Montana and had seen every type of welt, rash, and scrape that nature can throw at a living creature.

About three days after Baltis’s welt had fully healed, Becky Selter and her young granddaughter Zoey were on their way back from a little hike out in the park on the opposite side of the lake. The route they drove took Becky and Zoey right past the Gordons’ mailbox. Just as they went by Becky tilted her head back and squinted her eyes, she slammed on the breaks of her Buick Roadmaster.

Franny had just popped a fresh chocolate pudding into the fridge and stood up licking a dollop off of her finger when a knock sounded into the house. She heard Samantha and Robby go silent, looking from their dining table crayon drawings to the front door.

“Alright, pudding’s ready in five minutes, clean up some of those papers!” Franny said as she headed towards the door.

She opened it to see two faces as white as ghosts standing on her front porch, whiter still because they were framed by the trees lit by the noon-day sun. Franny recognized little Zoey right away, she was in the same class as Robby and Samantha.

“Hi Zoey!” Franny said immediately “and hello…” she said, not remembering Becky’s first name.

Becky stood for a moment, seemingly unsure of what to do.

“Becky.” Becky said.”Hello, Francis.”

“Yes, hello Becky!” Franny said, a little uncomfortably at the formal version of her name.

“What can I do for you?” She asked after waiting a moment.

“Well, I think you’d better come with me.” Becky said gravely. “Would it be alright if Zoey stayed with the children for a moment?” Looking past Franny’s shoulder to the kids holding crayons, staring at her like a pair of owls.

Franny didn’t know what to say, her eyes thinned a bit, almost wondering if Ray was up to one of his pranks.

“Well, okay, what..” And she stopped short when Becky gave her a look that said ‘not in front of the kids’.

That’s when Franny started to get worried. Becky leaned down to Zoey and said something quietly to her, and the scared looking little girl stepped past Franny to join Samantha and Robby at the table. Franny followed Becky down the driveway which wound a little ways through the woods.

As they neared the road she saw the Selter’s car parked a little ways into the ditch and in front of it, just off the road, she saw a little lump in the grass. Becky was nervously leading her straight towards the lump and as she stepped aside, Franny saw that it was Baltis. She was laying in a lifeless heep, shiny red all around her.

“OH!” Franny exclaimed as she went to her knees next to the little dog’s body.

“Yes, well, yes I’m sorry,” Becky fumbled for words “Must have been hit by a car, poor little thing!”

“No, no way.” Was all Franny could say “She never went into the road, there’s no way!”

“Well maybe a leash” Becky said, trying, and failing, not to sound accusatory.

Franny felt a chill run up her spine and her arms broke out in goosebumps as a breeze brushed the fur on the dead dog’s ear. She put her hand onto Baltis’s neck, the only part that wasn’t coated in blood.

“We just got you back, you little shit.” She whispered as tears started flowing down her cheeks.

“Oh Zoey!” Becky exclaimed, “I told you not to say anything!”

Franny turned around and saw the shocked faces of three little children, two of which were totally speechless and standing stone-still. Robby and Samantha came running to Franny screaming Baltis’ name. All the joy they felt at his return dissipated out of them into the woods. Franny grabbed them before they could get to her body and she turned them away from the dog and hugged them tightly.

“Oh, I’m just so sorry!” Becky said, and stood there for a moment before herding Zoey, who craned her neck to see more of the blood, back into the Buick. “We have to be going, but if you need anything please call us!”

Franny sat for a long time with her children, holding them closely and they all cried over their thought to be newly-saved dog. Their blonde heads on either side of her cheeks, Franny looked down at the dog in the grass, she looked for a long time at the blood and noticed something strange, the blood was pouring out of Baltis’s stomach in what resembled a root structure. It was thicker than it should have been too, just as she noticed that something in the field across the road caught her eye.

In Montana the sun in the middle of the day can sometimes shift, or a tree will cast a long shadow as it waves in the wind, but Franny thought the shadow she saw there in the field, amidst the long grass was too dark for a tree. She’d never seen the sunlight shift in a way that resembled a man, crouching down, and seeming to hide from her view.

Another chill ran down her spine as she stood quickly up and looked to where the shadow was, but it was gone, and there was nothing. If a person had been there she would clearly be able to see him now and she wrote it off as nerves around the day’s horrible new development. Now that they had a moment some of the sadness wore off the kids and curiosity overtook them. Robby tried to pull towards the little dog and Franny stopped him.

She spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of Baltis’ little body, the only other time she had to play family undertaker was when the Gordons’ outdoor cat froze to death under the porch three winters before, and when that happened there was no blood.

Franny lost track of the kids when she went into the garage to get some more garbage bags. The trees shaded the garage in a way she sometimes didn’t like, becoming a mother never really cured Franny of thoughts of boogymen and monsters. She walked into the empty space, and it was cool, like a cave. The car was currently parked outside the downtown pharmacy in the middle of Wheaton.

They kept the garbage bags on a shelf in back of the garage but when Franny went to pick up the box she accidentally knocked it behind the freezer, she hesitated for a moment, looking at the dark crevice, but finally she leaned forward and reached for the garbage bags which were just out of her grasp.

She could feel the blood rush to her face as she reached for the box, her whole arm and half her head was pushed into the dark space behind the freezer and the box was at her fingertips when she felt something on her leg, a familiar hand pressing on her thigh from one of the kids who wanted something.

“Guys I’ll be with you in a second!” she said to either Robby or Samantha who surely wanted a popsicle or some of the pudding she had been chilling. She strained a little more, her weight fully behind her arm when the hand on her thigh suddenly became unfamiliar. She felt the pressure go up and around her waist from either side and grab onto her hips just as she heard the voices of Robby and Samantha yelling from somewhere down the driveway.

Franny’s whole body froze with horror and she tried to push herself off the wall, she slammed her head into the shelf above her and fell onto the freezer, she let out a scream that traveled into the darkness as she felt the full force of someone lean into her body. Suddenly the portrait of a man she had seen in a movie as a child filled her mind, his face was twisted into a grin, a shadow passed across him, and suddenly in a violent maelstrom the trees behind him were soundlessly torn apart.

All she could think was that finally he had come to get her, the man she was afraid of when she was little. She gave one more push and the pressure let up and she fell backwards onto cold concrete. Franny wheeled around to find that she was alone in the garage, all the hair on her body stood on end. She looked down to see the box of garbage bags in her hand.

Franny was on edge from the garage, she couldn’t shake the image of that man, she thought she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and those trees being torn apart behind him. It was as if she walked from a nightmare back into waking as she passed from the shady forest into the daylight where her kids were squatting next to Baltis’ body, both of their hands and faces were covered in her blood.

When Philip got back from his weekend job at the cafe both the children were playing in the bath. Franny came out of the bathroom and told Philip she had some bad news. He followed her to the garage and when they got to the sliding door Franny wouldn’t go in, she was very nervous and tried to dissuade Philip from looking, but he wanted to see little Baltis’ body. He wanted some closure to the great tragedy of the family dog.

When he got to the freezer Franny almost said ‘be careful’ but stopped herself, knowing how ridiculous that would sound. He opened the glad bag that held Baltis and sighed heavily when he saw all the blood, now slightly browned, on the dog’s fine coat.

“She was a good dog.” Philip said, smiling at his mom.

Franny didn’t smile back.

She called Ray and wasn’t sure if she should tell him now or wait until he got home. Before she could say anything he told her that he was slammed and that he would have to stay late. She decided it could wait until she saw him in person. She got the kids to bed, Philip was in his room blasting his music as usual, and Franny poured herself a large glass of wine.

Ray finally came home around 9pm and she collapsed into his arms, as she hugged him she told him that Baltis had been hit by a car and she burst into tears, which Ray assumed were about the dog.

He, like Philip, wanted to see Baltis once more but when Franny looked toward the dark garage she begged him to stay with her. He relented and decided he could see Baltis when they buried her in the morning and they went to bed uneasily.

Franny woke in the middle of the night, creaking from the forest suddenly jolted her upright. She looked out the bedroom window at the trees swaying in the wind in the moonlight. The clock read four AM.

She tried to suppress it but she finally had to crawl out of bed and cross the dark into the bathroom. She sat on the toilet with the door open as she usually did looking down the hall towards the twins’ room.

Her eyes were blurry from sleep and still getting used to the darkness. She looked down at her hands and thought about the pressure she felt on the freezer. She didn’t like thinking about it and had gotten quite good as a mom at suppressing those little thoughts that come at night. Thoughts of that man’s face in shadow. She went to grab some toilet paper when she saw a dark mark on her hip. She pulled her shirt up and there on her leg were four bruises about the spacing of a man’s hand. And on the other side on her buttocks another pressed bruise of a thumb.

She dropped the toilet paper and goosebumps spread all over her body and she looked up in shock. There, halfway in the doorway of Samantha and Robby’s bedroom, was the shadowy figure of a man, leaning partially out of the bedroom and staring at her.

Franny froze.

For a long time she sat, staring at the figure, where his eyes would be if she could see them. She tried to scream but all that came out was a terrified moan. She felt like a rat staring into the eyes of a giant cat, just before being bitten into. Then, finally, after what seemed like an hour the figure shifted and moved into the children’s bedroom.

That man’s twisted face shot into Franny’s mind and she lept up from the toilet and ran down the hall screaming for Ray. Her arms seemed to lead her as she went like a gust of wind down the hallway, so horrified of what she might find when she turned the corner into her kids’ room. But being a mother took over in that moment and she went in spite of herself.

As she spun around the door she cried again in terror, there in the middle of the room was the figure of a man standing with arms impossibly outstretched the eight foot distance to both the children’s beds. Franny stood stunned for an instant until she saw her kids, soundlessly struggling against the grip of the man’s hands covering their faces.

Franny fell back against the wall, pushing the back of her head against it, instinctually trying to be as far from that dark figure as she could. Then something burst in her, she thought of her children and she threw herself against the figure and began pounding his back as hard as she could all while screaming for Ray.

Through her smeared vision she looked up as she wailed on the man with everything in her and to her horror she saw the man looking down at her, smiling. She fell back again and went to the closest bed and grabbed the body of the child, she pulled as hard as she dared but the man’s grip was absolute. She looked down to see Samantha’s face beet red, her eyes like saucers staring back into Franny’s. All she could do was scream for Ray as she felt her child struggle underneath her.

Suddenly the light went on and Ray and Philip swept into the room to Franny’s side. She held tightly onto her daughter’s body in a traumatized grip. Ray grabbed his wife’s shoulder and screamed her name, stammering, he asked her what had happened, what did she see. Franny held her daughter’s head and slowly looked to Robby’s bed where Philip was sitting and shaking the boy’s little shoulders. She heard Philip’s voice calling out Robby’s name and she looked up towards his wide, terrified eyes.

Tears were pouring down her cheeks but even through them she could see the bright red mark near Robby’s mouth where the hand had gripped him. She reached out to his outstretched hand but it was already too late, both children were dead.

About a week went by, if you had asked Franny how long it was she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. She sat for an eternity that week and she stared at nothing in particular. She ate nothing, she only drank when Ray made her. She was inconsolable, and she hadn’t spoken a word since that night. The trees swayed around the grieving mother creaking and, in her mind, laughing at her.

Ray dealt with it the way he dealt with everything, in a detached, scientific way. He didn’t push the feelings out, but he pushed them down. He was in total shock, but he knew his job and he did it. After three days off he went back to work. Wheaton needed a pharmacist and for now he could be just that and nothing else.

Philip did push the feelings out, also from within his total shock he was almost able to blissfully forget about the twins. He had never known how to show emotion and starting now was out of his depth so he pretended nothing had happened which was only interrupted when he caught a glimpse of his mother in her dim room, sitting at the edge of the bed and staring at nothing. Besides, Philip had a new horror to deal with, a line of very scarlet-red acne had appeared at the corner of his mouth and he was busy searching ways to cover it up before the next board game night.

There was a quietly agreed-upon consensus in the town of Wheaton surrounding death, it was a thing meant to be hidden and talked about in hushed ways and as little as possible. The people of this small town were not quite equipped to handle a topic as large, especially when talking to someone like the Gordons, who had experienced it first-hand.

To the moms of Wheaton Franny’s absence from the funeral and post-verbal state at first seemed like the appropriate level of grieving, but they were quick to take offense to it. To the other dads Ray’s cut-off emotionless drinking seemed like a fine way to grieve, but soon they grew suspicious. And Philip, the teen brother of the twins was paid almost no mind at all.

The Twins’ coffins were brought in, the reason for both their deaths as told by the ill-equipped Wheaton chief of police, seemed to be a rare genetic dysfunction of their lungs which caused them both to suffocate on the same night. A fact that only stirred up more suspicion surrounding Ray.

What happened next at the funeral happened very fast. The coffins were opened, and then quickly shut before many people could see inside. Whispering rippled through the crowd and Ray and Philip Gordon, as well as Ralph Dalton, the chief of police, were brought to the front of the church. The coffins were opened and the police chief and Ray looked in, everyone in the church saw Ralph look quickly from one coffin to the next and then up at Ray who stared down at the children. The coffins were quickly closed and then Ralph told everyone that they were unfortunately going to have to leave the area in his very official police chief voice.

Zoey was outside playing across the street with a friend of Philip’s who sometimes babysat her. She saw her grandmother and parents leave the church and, with everyone else, just mill about outside. Then a moment later she heard a scream emanate from the church and saw everyone wheel around to face the door. A shot rang out into the dusk air and another scream.

Zoey begin to cry and her babysitter picked her up and hesitantly walked her over to the people gathered there. Zoey was placed amidst her family and tried to gather what had taken place inside the church. From the mouths of the people of Wheaton she put together what had happened.

Everyone was leaving the church because inside the coffin of the twins was something “unnatural” it was full of blood, Zoey kept hearing the word “Root” and “Growing” as people described it. A lot of people were wondering about Franny and why she wasn’t there.

People were saying Ray had killed his family and he killed Philip inside the church just now.

“I didn’t see what happened but Philip and Ray were near the coffins and then Philip's body went flying against the wall, he was all mangled up, I’ve never seen anything like it, Ray must have done it, he was the only one nearby. Ray killed his family.”

“Ralph shouldn’t have fired, Ray was running away, he took justice into his own hands!”

“Those poor children!”

Zoey crept up onto the porch of the church and as policemen went in and out through the large front doors she could just make out inside, the bodies of the twins. Their coffins had fallen down, their white clothing was covered in blood and next to them lay Philip who’s lifeless eyes stared up into the ceiling of the church.

Zoey started when she finally saw Ray’s body near the front door. There was a bullet hole in his head and blood poured out of it. Just as Zoey saw a faint red mark by his mouth she felt something touch her foot, she looked down and saw a strange red worm, it looked like the root of a tree, and it was touching her toe that was poking out from her sandal. Zoey started and pulled her foot back and ran back into the crowd of people.

A few hours later Ralph entered the Gordons’ cabin. Franny was laying in the middle of the living room, and her guts were spilled open, the blood poured out of her stomach all around the living room in what looked like creeping vines. When he saw this scene Ralph immediately stopped wondering whether shooting Ray was the right thing to do.

The people of Wheaton don’t talk about the Gordons much, they avoid the subject. Only rarely will it be broached among the drunkest men at the bar, and even then it’s hushed very quickly and discouraged from being brought up again.

Some weeks after the events at the funeral Becky and her Granddaughter Zoey would usually have taken a different route home, but it was already dark when they left the park by the lake. Becky meant to drive quickly past the cabin but she thought she saw something up the driveway.

A little light flickered from a candle in the window of the Gordon’s cabin. At first Becky's heart skipped a beat, but she realized it was probably just some of Philip’s friends who used to go around there and play board games, she sighed and clutched her necklace, putting the car in gear.

Only Zoey saw the shadowy figure of a man looking out of the window at her, and felt the beckoning pull of the candlelight. The cabin soon disappeared into the shadowy trees, Becky was anxious to get Zoey home and into bed. The town pharmacist was gone now and there was no one to ask about the troubling little scarlet line forming at the corner of her granddaughter’s mouth.