Janie Foster
April 11, 1975
As ten-year-old Janie Foster stepped off the school bus, she was grateful for the cool air that washed over her. Mr. Gordon, the bus driver, liked to turn the heat on much too high. She was glad he did this during those frigid winter months that plagued upstate New York, but it was nearing spring now, and though it wasn’t by any means hot outside, she’d felt like she’d been suffocating the whole ride to her stop on School Street. Suffocating from the heat, but also from the happy shouts and chatter of her classmates who were looking forward to going home on a Friday afternoon.
On ordinary days, the thought sometimes passed her mind as she looked up at the green street sign reading “School St.” that it was funny how the bus picked her up from one school only to drop her off at another each morning and afternoon. Her house sat on the corner of School and West Street, and across the road just a few houses down was the old elementary school. Janie had just finished the first grade when the district shut it down and combined the local elementary schools into one larger one in a different part of town.
Today wasn’t an ordinary day though. She had purposely sat at the back of the bus so that she could be the last one off at her stop. Otherwise she would have to worry about the kids behind her as she walked home. She would have to feel their eyes on the back of her head, urging her to walk faster and reach her house already so they could speed up and get home themselves. The walk home only took two and a half minutes at most, but she needed to buy as much time as she could today. Even though just a few moments ago she couldn’t wait to get off the bus, in a way, she still wished the ride home had lasted longer.
The school day too had been so, so long – she hadn’t been able to focus on a single piece of work placed in front of her. Her eyes would move over the words in her textbook, but she would stop after every paragraph or so and realize she had no idea what she’d been reading. Her eyes drifted outside the window during math class. They looked over the playground, the swing sets and blades of grass swaying gently in the breeze, the red cardinal who briefly perched itself at the top of the slide and turned its head directly towards Janie for a moment before flitting away.
Her eyes were looking at all this the same way they had scanned the textbook: looking but not really seeing, not making sense of the things they passed over. But they did linger up at the blue sky and the clouds that looked so soft today, like fields of scoops of clean, white vanilla ice cream. She knew from science class earlier that year that if it were possible to try to walk on a cloud, you would only fall right through it. But looking at these particular clouds, how real and there they seemed, it was hard to believe that if she could somehow get up there, she couldn’t just lie down and fall asleep forever, enveloped.
“Janie, are you with us?” Mrs. Finch asked from the chalkboard.
“Yeah.” The word was out her mouth before the class even had a chance to swivel in their chairs, eyes prying, smirks lifting at the corners of their mouths.
“Okay, good. I want you to get this.” Mrs. Finch tapped her piece of chalk on the last long division problem she’d solved on the board.
You bitch. You bitch – you have no idea.
The thought popped into her head without warning, frightening her. It was almost as if she herself hadn’t been the one who thought it, but that someone else had spoken it. It was like one of those fake bookshelf walls that hide secret rooms in houses had creaked open in her mind and a voice, not even very loudly, had spoken this thought.
Of course, Mrs. Finch wasn’t a bitch. She felt bad for even thinking so. Her voice hadn’t even sounded smug or annoyed, just concerned. Even still, it sent her heart beating in her ears.
Now, her eyes downcast, looking at the sidewalk, she tried not to think of that joke – that stepping on a crack would break your mother’s back. She stepped on the cracks maybe in spite of it, telling herself it was just a superstition as her feet momentarily flattened the sprouts of grass peeking up between the concrete, nervous all the same that maybe it wasn’t.
She stopped when she reached home – the big white house with the pretty wrap around porch. Winter hadn’t been ready to leave Whitehall this year, and the last patches of snow still lingered here and there. She tried, instead of just looking at the snow, to really see it. To try to breathe in some of its coolness to calm the whirring engine of her mind. She sat on the porch for a while, leaning against the house, hugging her knees to her body and resting her head on them. In a way, she knew waiting would only make it worse. But she couldn’t yet bring herself to enter the house.
She looked over across the street at the old school and wondered how it might look now if she were to go inside it. It probably still held all the cold of this past winter inside its walls. She imagined cobwebs in the built-in book shelves of the counter of her first-grade classroom. Rats were sure to have made comfortable homes of the cubbies where children used to hang their coats and bookbags. The strangest thing of all though, Janie thought, would be to see it so empty. She’d known it had been stripped of anything before it closed that could be used at the new school. The desks, chairs, and tables would all be gone. Bulletin boards would not display tulips with a May calendar or apples with a September one. No child’s artwork would remain there. Just bare walls and tiled floors, extending forever outward into space like the planes that Mrs. Finch had talked about in a geometry lesson earlier that year. It’d only been about four years since they closed this old school down, but no cars were ever parked outside of it and not a single light was on now that Janie could see. Maybe one day they would do something with it before it fell apart completely. Fix it up and turn it into cheap apartments, perhaps. Fill that space with furniture and life and warmth again, even if its days as an elementary school were over.
Her attention shifted to the old playground. The neighborhood kids still played there, but no one was there now. She remembered a time at recess in kindergarten when she found herself trapped inside the tube slide. Had she looked before she threw herself down the slide with all her might, she would have seen that four other children were piled up, blocking the exit. Before she even had time to think about what was happening, someone else had done just as she had, and then someone else, and someone else. It took about two full minutes for the grumpy lunch aide to even notice the usual through traffic for the ever-popular tube slide had halted and demand the children clear out from there at once. The enclosed space with too many other people in it was one thing – the thing that really sent her into panic was having no way of escaping. That was up to Nate Benson, who cozily kept his place at the bottom of the slide. During those two minutes, she had wanted to shout at the other children, to even kick her way out if she had to. But all she could do was sit there, shut her eyes, and wait for it to be over. It had to be over sometime.
Those two minutes reminded her of how she’d felt all day. Only now, she couldn’t just wait for it to be over. Well, she could, but the trouble was she could put an end to it anytime she wanted. All she had to do was stand up and walk through the front door. Really, this was all very silly, and probably for nothing. Mother was probably right there in the kitchen chopping celery for a roast, scowling at her behind the counter despite the glass of white wine she’d been sipping on every now and again.
But Janie knew better. Last night, after dinner had been eaten, the table cleared, the dishes washed, her sister Karen up in her bedroom to do her homework, and she’d thought her parents had gone to their bedroom too, she’d been sitting on the couch reading—with Tomato the orange cat curled up and sleeping sweetly on her lap—when she heard what had started all of this to begin with.
It was a sound so quiet that it would’ve been easy to ignore it and keep on reading. But she decided to listen, and after a moment, something about this sound made her skin prick up. It was a slow, rhythmic creaking from below. This house was old, but she’d never heard a sound in it like this before, not even as it settled on the stormiest of nights. There was something too human about the timing of this sound. Gently lifting Tomato from her lap so as not to wake him, she stood up from the couch, trying to keep the floorboards beneath the plush pink carpet quiet.
She walked softly across the floor to the staircase and paused again to listen. Upstairs she could hear her father and Karen talking, but couldn’t make out their words. Holding on to the railing with both hands, turning her body sideways, she snuck down the stairs that led to the front door landing. Peering into the darkness of the stairway that led to the basement door, she felt sick to her stomach. The creaking was louder from here, and it was coming from the basement. She thought about running then, quickly up the stairs to her bedroom and only coming out the rest of the night to brush her teeth. But before she knew it, she was creeping down into that darkness. A thing she wished she’d never done.
Crouching down now, her cheek to the cold metal of the frame of the door handle, one eye up to the keyhole, she saw her mother. At first it seemed like she was dancing, swaying back and forth to the rhythm of some music she couldn’t hear. Except, she could hear it. She was swaying in time to that dreadful creaking. Her arms were lifted up above her head, joined together at the hands and holding on to something Janie couldn’t see that she was leaning all her weight onto. From here she looked like almost like a swimmer just about to dive into a pool sideways.
Janie stood up and lifted the glass door knob up as she turned it to quiet the clicking sound it would make. Now, she could hear her mother’s breath whistling out of her throat shallowly. Mother’s eyes were fixed on the dirty mirror above the laundry sink. She looked like she was dreaming. And then Janie looked up and she saw that her mother’s hands were grasping a rope that was slung over a wooden beam of the basement ceiling, on one end of which was a loop. But not just any kind of loop, one that had coils at the top. There was a special word for that way of tying a rope, only she couldn’t think of it now. The sounds of that old wooden beam creaking as her mother swung, back and forth, back and forth, filled up her mind until she could think of nothing else.
The shallow, whistling, breathing and the creaking of the wood stopped for a moment, and Janie’s own breath caught in her throat. She heard her mother breathe deeply, once through the nose and watched as her gaze broke from the mirror. She watched as she straightened herself firmly on both feet again, took the rope down from the ceiling, and holding the loop in her hand, neatly wrapped the rest of it up. She walked across to the other side of the basement and placed the rope in a box beneath stacks of books, out of sight. Mother walked, her low heels click-clacking on the concrete floor, to check herself in front of the dirty mirror above the laundry sink. Not staring into the vision of some far-off dream anymore, but fluffing her hair, taking the pad of her finger around her mouth to clean up the lines of her lipstick, pressing her hands to her cheeks once, and smoothing her skirts.
Janie slowly backed away, walking up the stairs backwards at first, and then forwards, as carefully as before, and went unnoticed back to the living room where she scooped up her book and Tomato, not caring if she woke him up now. She went straight to her bedroom, and she didn’t even come out to brush her teeth that night.
Sleep came surprisingly quickly. She’d heard her mother’s heels come up the stairs and was so relieved upon hearing that sound, that the weight of how tired she was fell on her all at once. Even though she’d forgotten that word for the knot in the rope, she knew that people were hung in trees in the olden days when they broke the town laws, with ropes tied just the same way. And she knew enough to know that when people were sad enough, sometimes they hung themselves up in trees too. That night she dreamt a long, horrible dream that made her toss and turn. She could not wake up from it until early morning, and then she could not remember it, but she could remember the way that dream sounded, like one long eight-hour creak of old, rotting wood.
This morning as she dressed for school, she thought about telling Karen what she’d seen the night before. She had to say something. What if Mother really was planning to use the rope, and the next time she saw her, she’d be swaying from it again, but with her arms hanging limp by her sides instead of above her head? She’d be home alone all day with no one to stop her.
Janie waited outside the door for Karen to finish using the bathroom, but when it swung open and Karen’s half-closed eyes met hers, she found that no words would come out. They were too big. So, she just said, “Morning,” instead.
“Morning,” Karen grumbled back, but nicely, and went off to finish getting ready in her room.
Now, sitting on the porch still as it was nearing four o’clock, Janie considered her options. Karen was doing volunteer work for the high school’s National Honor Society and wouldn’t be home until at least five, and Dad wouldn’t get home from work until six. She couldn’t bear this waiting any more.
Grabbing a hold of the porch railing to steady herself, she stood up and made herself breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth, just like Dad had told her to when that hornet stung her last summer and she’d started to worry that she might be allergic.
At the time when she was stung last summer, she was thinking of how earlier that school year a kid in her fourth-grade class who had a peanut allergy, Arnold Douglas, had eaten a Snickers bar on Valentine’s Day. Mrs. Williams had a classroom tradition: every year, the day before Valentine’s Day, her students would be given the chance to make envelopes out of construction paper and tape them along the counter by the window, so that the next day, anyone who wanted to could hand out Valentine cards and candy to the class. The only catch was, you weren’t allowed to write your name on your envelope anywhere. It was Mrs. Williams’ way of making sure no one was left out, and according to the rules, if you were bringing Valentines or candy, you were supposed to bring enough for everybody. But of course, like many things in grade school classrooms, most children didn’t pay attention to the rules and told each other which envelope was theirs at lunch time. Besides, you could usually tell whose envelope was who’s by the way they decorated it. It was easy to tell that Stacey VanHousen made the light pastel pink envelope cut perfectly into a heart shape with white lace trim along the border, and that Arnold Douglas made a square shaped envelope out of green construction paper. She wouldn’t touch his. Everyone knew Arnold Douglas was completely gross.
She had seen Arnold pick his nose one time and even eat the booger. As awful as it had been, she couldn’t bring herself to look away, and so she watched as he smiled after he touched his fingernail to the tip of his tongue. He seemed pleased with himself for having gotten away with it with nobody else seeing. In that moment Janie remembered wanting to tell him, You gross jerk, I saw that!, but of course, she didn’t.
Still, she didn’t think anyone put that Snickers bar in his envelope on purpose. Of course, you would think Arnold would know enough already having lived his whole life with a peanut allergy that Snickers bars have peanuts in them, but it seemed kids like him were always doing stupid things like that and getting themselves in trouble. It made it hard to pity him because he didn’t even at least try to be the kind of person you’d want to be friends with. It was almost like he liked it better by himself, where he could pick his nose and eat it and smile to himself without anyone stopping him and telling him what a gross jerk he was. So, on that Valentine’s Day when she looked Arnold right in his puffy face, she couldn’t even feel sorry for him. She was only more grossed out by him, itching her arms because her skin had been crawling at the sound of his fat tongue trying to tell Mrs. Williams that he was “Hep! Hathing anth allerthic reathin!” She almost hated herself for being so mean to him, even if it was only in her own thoughts.
All of this had been passing through her mind moments after the initial shock and searing pain of the hornet sting last summer. “Settle down, you got to settle down, Jane!” she remembered how stern her father’s voice had been then. He wasn’t stern with her often, so when he was, she couldn’t help but listen in surprise. “If you keep panickin’ like this you’re gonna give yourself an allergic reaction even if you ain’t allergic in the first place.” She remembered how once he’d realized he’d gotten her attention, his voice softened as he said, “Now just breathe. It’s gonna be okay, you’re gonna be okay, just breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. That’s a good girl.”
The only thing that gave her the strength to turn the handle of the front door and step inside the house now was remembering her father’s voice. Maybe this was just like the hornet sting, just a whole lot of panickin’ for nothing.
She shut the door behind her, listening. No creaking. But she didn’t hear the sounds of celery being chopped for a roast, either. Just a chilling silence that filled the house.
Tomato trotted down the stairs to greet her, but when Janie tried to lean down to pet him, he didn’t stop to rub against her leg like he normally did. He kept right on going, down to the basement stairs and stopped at the door, mewing loudly and looking back at her, his wide cat eyes scared. Her heart sank.
“Mom?” she called out. No answer.
She followed Tomato to the basement door and stood there listening to his cries, not sure how much time had passed when she began to hear the same shallow, whistling, breathing of her mother. With a gasp, she flung the basement door open.
And there was the rope. It was swaying from the ceiling. But that was all. There was no mother, arms limp by her side or above her head, attached. Janie slowly turned, looking all around the basement, worried of what she might find. She searched every corner, around the walls of boxes piled high, even behind the hot water heater, not looking now at the warning picture on the side of the stick figure man up in red flames that had always scared her since she was little. She could feel the panic welling up in her and she began to cry as she ran up the stairs and searched the rest of the house, calling for her mother, and finding every room empty. Mother’s Chevy sat in the garage empty, the floors and seats spotless. She hated herself for crying, but knowing that there wasn’t anyone here now to tell her to grow up and stop it, she broke into full sobs, barely getting enough air in between.
She knew, she could feel it so surely now, that her mother wasn’t here anymore. That shallow breathing she’d heard earlier that she thought was her mother’s she now realized was just her own. And as she sat on the concrete floor of the basement where just yesterday her mother’s heels had been click-clacking, looking at what she now could remember was called a noose attached to the ceiling, she vomited. Not because of the noose and its gentle, empty swaying. But because of the way that quiet that filled the house, that just a moment ago to her had seemed chilling, now gave her the strangest sense of relief.
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Epilogue
On April 12, 1975, Elaine Foster of Whitehall, New York was reported missing by her family. To most Whitehall residents, the town seemed to remain more or less the same after her disappearance. Really, it didn’t change at all. But it began a chain of events that made a select few begin to notice that they had been living in a strange place all this time – a place that they came to learn has been strange as long as time is old. A place where, if you decide to listen, you can hear more than the creaking of rotting trees in the wind at night.
Collin Anderson Memorial Award for Fiction, Honorable Mention
Julie Currier is currently studying in the Early Childhood/Childhood Education program at SUNY Cortland and is looking forward to teaching her future students the joy of reading and writing.