I was digging up the veggie garden, getting it ready for a new season of growing our food and also the excess produce that I sold at the local market, when I stumbled across the shoe.
Or rather, the shoe stumbled across me, I was mindlessly shoveling dirt and thinking about nothing in particular, when I was suddenly brought back to reality when a small pink ballet shoe flew up and smacked me in the head.
I stared at the shoe in confusion.
I’d lived here for years,just my wife and I.
We had no children, although we had desperately tried.
There was no reason, no plausible explanation as to why there would be a shoe, let alone a child’s shoe, beneath the dirt in my garden.
I was the one who planted the veggie garden in the first place. I would know what was beneath it.
I was still standing and staring when Sasha called me in for morning tea.
She frowned when she saw me standing there like in a haze, and, still dressed in her slippers she wore around the house, she rushed over and asked if I was okay, had something happened?
“I’m fine, it’s just this damn shoe.. I can’t work out how it would be under there. Or why. It’s so strange, that’s all.”
Sasha led me inside the house where there were freshly baked date muffins waiting, and she poured me a mug of coffee.
She patiently listened to me rant about how weird the situation was for a while, and then she said something that made sense.
She said, perhaps, just maybe, the kids down the road had been playing around and lost a shoe. It was a small thing, not much bigger than my hand, so it would’ve been easy to miss if I had shoveled it up last year without even knowing.
I felt calm at her explanation, my shoulders sagged a bit and I felt that heat rush out of my body.
Of course.
Sometimes it was like my mind always went to the darker side of things, when there was really no need.
The next few days passed without incident. I’d almost forgotten about the shoe, until I was planting bulbs in the front yard and I came across a toy train. It was one of those small wooden ones, just the one carriage.
it looked handmade or at least hand painted, the intricate details where stunning, even despite being buried underground for goodness knows how long.
I slipped the train in my pocket, and for some reason the feeling of knowing it was right there in my pocket close to me, gave me an odd sense of comfort.
For some reason, I didn’t tell Sasha. I just kept it in my pocket, feeling the edges of it every now and then, reminding myself that it was there.
It became an obsession, sort of.
I was waking up earlier, eager to get out into the garden and see what else I could find.
I couldn’t explain it. Not in words at least, but I had a feeling, a knowledge, that there was more to be found.
I felt like I was putting a puzzle together, just at the beginning, finding all the pieces.
Sasha noticed, but she didn’t comment.
She was there when I returned home, a meal waiting, a smile on her face.
She didn’t ask about anything, she kept busy herself with her baking and other things, I presumed. Truth be told I had no idea what she got up to when I wasnt around.
I imagined her reading, curled up on the couch watching TV.
It didn’t matter, really, I knew she was content with life.
My morning tea breaks turned into late lunches, with no time for the afternoon tea I used to indulge in.
I no longer sat around and thought aimlessly, I was headstrong, with a purpose.
As my obsession grew, so did my “collection”.
To add to my list, I had found a pair of wire framed glasses under the apple tree in the back yard.
They looked to have been broken at the frame but had been haphazardly repaired with some tape. The lens were missing.
Buried beneath the rose bushes were two soft toy dolls.
They were creepy, eery. Mouldy and raggered but somehow still intact. I could make out they were home made, a type of rag doll. One had brown hair and one green button for an eye. I couldn’t tell for the other doll, it’s face and hair had long disintegrated and was unrecognizable.
The dolls stunk like the wet earth, so I put them in a ziploc bag and put them with the other things I had found.
When the back yard was full of holes, and the front yard was much the same, I should have stopped. I should have been done, finished, that’s it. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I knew there was more.
I pulled up our patio, feining excuses about damp rot, but Sasha just watched from the kitchen window as I ripped up the wooden boards, a sad smile on her face.
I knew, and she knew, that I was loosing it.
I had promised her I would be better. All that hard work, all those years of trying to be better.. I knew I was being irrational but I couldn’t stop myself.
I wanted to tell Sasha I was sorry. But when I looked up again next, she was gone.
I wondered how long it would be, until she left for good.
I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t.
She had put up with so much over the years. And the pain of not being able to conceive.. That had shattered something in us both, something that I thought was almost impossible to come back from. But she had always been there. Always stayed.
Halfway through, I pulled out the last board and stopped. I didn’t want to, but I made myself go inside, to check on Sasha.
She was indeed as I had pictured her. Curled up on the couch, a book in hands.
She glanced up at me from where she lay.
“I’m sorry, Sasha.”
“I know.”
“Its just that these ideas.. Once they get in my head.. Well, they’re hard to get out. I know I’m not well. I’ll book into the doctor in the morning, okay? I want to get better for you.”
“I know.” her voice is flat, disappointed and teary. I feel like such an asshole. I go to hug her, but she pulls away, tells me she’s going to bed.
I let her go.
After a while, I can hear her snoring softly upstairs.
I know I can’t be loud. I’ve made promises. I definitely can’t take anymore of the patio apart, it’s much too noisy.
So I grab a torch, the patio is only half removed, but I know there’s enough space for me to crawl down and at least have a look around.
Looking back, I wish I had went to bed with my wife.
But as the saying goes, curiosity got the better of me. And we all know curiosity killed the cat.
It was dark, even with the beam of light from the torch I struggled to see.
And the smell.
The wet damp. It was freezing, the air like ice against my shivering skin.
I started to suspect that there actually was damp rot in here, just from that awful musky stench.
The torch fell from my fingers when the light shone on something strange.
I knew what i had been staring at, but it was as if my mind just couldn’t comprehend it.
When I reached down to pick up the torch with shaky hands, I brought it up slowly and deliberably, making sure to even my breathing as I did so.
Sasha stared back at me, although her eyes were empty, and her body wrapped in plastic.
Dark hair cascaded down over the makeshift wrapping, her mouth open in what appeared to be a scream of horror.
I fell back, landing on something with a sickening crunch.
I knew, before I looked. I had landed on a body, the small body of a child, who was also wrapped but this time in a mickey mouse doona cover.
“Blake.” I said, without knowing how or why.
I didn’t remove the Doona. I didn’t need to. I knew my son lay beneath, just like I knew it was his toy train I had found.
I laid my head down onto the stale blanket, and I cried.
I saw the girl next. She was wrapped in a barbie blanket, laying next to her brother.
I held her for a moment, picturing the dark hair and ballet shoes. “Bella.” I whisper to the dark night air.
My body is next. Of course. Laid next to my babies. I am not wrapped in anything. I am dressed in my work clothes still, a jumpsuit that says Danny’s Auto Mechanics. A gun is in my hand. I don’t look at my face,or what would be left of it.
I stay down there for hours, until morning comes.
When I go inside, Sasha is making breakfast. Today, it’s Blueberry Pancakes.
I sit at the table as she servers me.
“how is this possible?”
She shakes her head, smiling but struggling to keep it. I can see tears rolling down her cheeks.
“We are dead, Sasha. The kids are dead. Where are they? Why aren’t they here with us?”
Sobs engluf Sasha. She drops the fry pan, pancakes and metal splatter on the tiled floor.
“I don’t fucking know, I don’t know why this is happening. You don’t remember, and I hate you for it.” I’m shocked by sashas poisonous voice, the hatred in the way she is looking at me. “It’s purgatory, that’s what this fucking is. I made a mistake and now I have to live this over and over. I can’t escape.”
I Stare at her, incredulous.
“I’ve been trying to get out for so long. I’ve been the dutiful wife. It hasn’t worked. I’ve tried to kill you, but it doesn’t work, you just wake up the next day, or a few days later, deciding to potter with the garden that day. You don’t remember the kids. I see their faces every fucking minute of every fucking day. They haunt me.”
I didn’t remember the kids, her words were true and they stung.
I didn’t remember them, but I knew I loved them.
But seeing them, seeing their belongings had brought back a memories I had no idea even existed.
” You.. You killed our kids.. And then.. I killed you, and.. myself?”
Sashas smile is nasty, she barks a laugh at me.” Well done. You’ve finally worked it out. Until tomorrow or next week, I guess, ugh. When you wake up with no recollection of this and we start all over again. Ugh. I’m so sick of this.”
I open my mouth to speak, but I can’t think of anything to say.
Sasha leaves the room, upstairs I can hear her slam our bedroom door closed.
I dont want to forget this.
I don’t want to wake up one day soon with no knowledge and go about my day believing these lies.. I don’t want to be stuck here another day with the woman who killed my family.
Our family computer is old, and the internet is slow. I’ve tried to Google solutions but most things I’m finding are cult related and I’m scared to get into that sort of stuff.
I found this thread, and ice created this account with a new email address I made, so maybe someone here can help me, or I can at least try and document my journey, incase I forget..
Please, if anyone has any ideas on how to move on, literally, from this mess, I would be so so grateful.