BLOODY RED
We bought our house in Snellville just over a year ago. We moved here for the schools, but chose this house because it’s in an established neighborhood with quiet streets and quiet neighbors. For what we paid, it’s a big house with plenty of room for the kids. Moving here was supposed to be the starting of a new chapter in our lives… the “Leave it to Beaver” chapter, perhaps.
It hasn’t been very “Leave it to Beaver.” Unlike that idealistic family of the Black & White TV sitcom era, our time here in Snellville has been marked, at first by the bizarre, and more recently by the terrifying (and mildly disgusting). As a result, our new home representing the starting of a new chapter is for sale. This is why we won’t be divulging exactly where we live. If any potential buyers knew what’s across the street, they’d never buy this place. I know we wouldn’t have!
The problems started almost as soon as we moved in. We hadn’t even unpacked all the boxes or settled on final furniture positions before my wife started complaining about the cats. She had a right to complain. The previous owners of the house apparently were fond of “rescuing” cats. By “rescuing,” I mean they would monitor the cats at the local animal control office and adopt the ones who were about to be put to sleep. Their newfound feline friends would then be brought home and let loose on the neighborhood. They’d leave cat food out on the front porch for them, but according to our new neighbors, that’s where the care would end.
As a result, our first night in our new home was met with several cats meowing outside our door at eleven o’clock at night demanding to be fed. This happened EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Being the man of the house, dealing with these PM panhandlers was my duty. I began with borrowing the enormous “Galaxy Gusher 2000” squirt gun my son had gotten for his birthday. After a few days of getting drenched, the bulk of the cats had decided waking us wasn’t a good idea. A couple of stragglers still showed up, howling and whining every couple of nights, so for them, I upped the attacks to a still less-than-lethal BB gun. No worries, folks. The BB gun is a dinky spring-loaded pistol that can barely shoot 50 feet. All but one disappeared after being zinged with that thing.
The remaining kitty cat was a monstrous red beast who seemed immune to pain. To his credit, he did bring us the entrails of whatever he killed, leaving his offerings on the altar that is our $189 custom monogrammed door mat (a wedding present from my wealthy, but slightly insane aunt). Fortunately for us, this red beast, who we came to call “Bloody Red” only showed up at night once a week or so. I’d managed to drench him with the Galaxy Gusher 2000, and zinged him in the butt three times with the BB gun, but he didn’t seem to care. A few days after my assault, he’d show back up with random innards of some unfortunate rodent. This is the cat my wife would complain about the most.
“It’s creepy,” she’d say. “He just sits at the end of the driveway watching the house.”
“It’s a cat, honey,” I’d reply. “He’s probably quietly watching for chipmunks or something.”
And so, my wife’s concerns about Bloody Red were usually dismissed and ignored by me. I dismissed them until I noticed something. Across the street from us was a house that I thought was vacant. It wasn’t. One afternoon, while mowing the yard, I noticed a tiny frail old woman sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of that supposedly vacant house, petting what looked to be an red cat. The ONE cat I couldn’t chase off wasn’t actually one of those stupid rescue cats. It was the PET of the only neighbor I hadn’t met. I made my mind up to go introduce myself to her when I finished mowing. I’d introduce myself, tell her about our family, and get to know her. More importantly, though, I’d mention the issues we were having with her bloody red cat if the conversation allowed for it.
As luck would have it, by the time I finished, she was gone. The rocking chair was gone, too. I did say our time here has been marked by the bizarre, didn’t I?
A day or so later, I asked our favorite neighbors, the Holsenbecks about the strange lady across the way. The response was, again, bizarre. The Holsenbecks are a retired couple who go to church regularly, largely keep to themselves, and maintain an immaculate golf course like yard, complete with a crisp American flag waving from atop a rather large flagpole and a “Jesus is Lord” statue nestled in the flowers approaching the front door. From them, I expected a straight forward answer. Instead, when I asked him what he knew about the little old lady across the street, Mr. Holsenbeck simply said, “Don’t mind her. She’s crazy. Leave her alone, and she’ll leave you alone.”
Mind you, for him to refer to someone as “crazy” was in itself rather out of character. Perhaps he’d say something like, “She has some psychological issues. Just keep her in your prayers.” Or, I might have expected, “She has special needs and doesn’t do well with new people.” Instead, he just blurted out that she’s crazy. I asked our neighbors on the other side as well, and got an even crasser response that I’ll not dignify by repeating. To sum it up, I was told to stay away from her because… yeah… she’s cRaZy!
Nice. So much for “Leave it to Beaver.” We’d just bought a house across the street from a psycho!
I relayed this info to my wife, hoping that knowing our midnight menace wasn’t some stray, but the pet of the needy old widow across the street would calm her. At first, it did. For a while, my wife and I just ignored Bloody Red. We ignored the random organs left at our front door. What else could we do?
A few weeks passed, the leaves began to turn, and our sauna-like days turned mild with cool relaxing evenings. This old house has one feature that we both love - an attic fan. So, as the evening temps would drop, we began leaving the windows cracked and the fan running. It made for a great night’s sleep! Well, it made for a great night’s sleep for a few days, anyway.
I often get in from work rather late, and with it getting dark by 7, I usually get home after dark. One night, a couple of weeks before Halloween, I came home extra late - close to 10 - with every light in the house on, all the windows and doors closed, and no attic fan. Once inside, my hysterically frantic wife greeted me at the door almost shouting, “I don’t care if that cat belongs to some poor widow woman! Next time you see it, shoot it! I don’t mean with that silly BB gun, either, I mean with the real gun! Kill that filthy thing!”
“Whoah! Whoah! Whoah!” I said as I hugged her and tried to comfort her. “What’s going on?!”
“While the kids were playing, I dozed off on the couch for a nap, and that filthy thing climbed up and got in the blankets with me!”
I snickered in spite of myself. “It was probably just cold, honey. It didn’t mean any harm. He probably just squeezed through the open window.”
She slugged me, shouting, “No! It’s nasty! It left mud and blood and crap all over the place! Kill it or I will!”
“Okay, okay, I will. Instead of shooting it which will get me arrested, how about I set a trap for it?”
“I don’t care, so long as it’s GONE! You understand me!? IT’S OUT OF HERE!”
Now, my wife rarely loses it like that, and she’s the animal lover in the home, so I was a little taken aback at how much this had rattled her. Later, I saw the mess the cat had left, and she was right. It had left black & rust colored grime on the blankets that smelled like a dead animal. She was right. It had to go!
That next weekend, I spotted the old lady on her porch, rocking and petting that filthy animal. I was tempted to approach her about it, but remembered the bizarre warnings from my neighbors. So, instead of confronting Queen Crazy, I went back to Mr. Holsenbeck to ask him to clarify what he meant by his warning. He was reluctant, but after I said I’d just go confront her myself, he broke down and explained.
“It’s all mostly rumor and hearsay, but this is how the story goes. She and her husband got married while they were still in High School, right before he was set to ship off for war. They were madly in love and all that mumbo jumbo. Apparently, after being overseas a while, his letters became less lovey dovey, and she began to suspect he was cheating on her. How’s that for imagination? He’s being shot at, and since he can’t bring himself to compose sonnets, she thinks he’s cheating. When he finally came home, everything was fine for a while, but she became suspicious again. She claimed to catch him smooching on one of the neighbor ladies, even. This drove her positively mad, and after making a big scene in town about it… a scene so absurd the police were called… she got sent off to a mental hospital. She was truly crazy. After a couple of years in a padded room & some electro-shock therapy, they sent her back home. Immediately, the suspicions returned, but even crazier, this time. We’d hear her yelling and screaming, hear crashes and bangs as she threw things at him and generally enjoyed some pretty trashy displays out of her. For his part, her husband was always very calm about the whole thing, always apologized for his wife’s lunatic behavior and tried to explain that she’d had a rough upbringing.”
Realizing I’d never seen the husband, I asked what was probably the dumbest question I could have. “I’ve seen her a couple of times, and seen her cat, but never him. They get divorced?”
Mr. Holsenbeck looked at me sideways like he couldn’t comprehend how something so naive and stupid could come out of my mouth. “No, goofball. She killed him.” He paused to let that sink in. “She cut his head clean off with one blow. Cut it off with an old dull axe. She hit him so hard, it broke the handle.”
“What the heck? That frail little woman? Why is she not in jail?”
“Ruled insane,” he said flatly. “That all happened at least 20 years ago. After she killed him, she didn’t tell anyone. He just quit showing up for work for obvious reasons, so his boss called the police. When the cops showed up, she was out there in that rocker with his head in her lap, just stroking it and rocking the day away like nothing had happened.”
“Gross! That’s disgusting! Even creepier since everytime I see her, she’s in that rocker stroking that nasty cat!”
“Riiiiiight,” Mr. Holsenbeck said, showing his Southern drawl. He looked away and towards her house.
“What?” I asked.
“Next time you see her on that porch, make sure you get a good look at that cat.”
“Why? We already got a good look at it.”
“You sure it was a cat you saw?”
“What are you trying to say, Mr. H?” I attempted to give him a look that would motivate him to quit playing with words. I attempted to be a little intimidating, but obviously I failed.
“I’m going to leave it at that,” he said, unimpressed with my not-so-intimidating stare. He turned from me, looked over his shoulder as he pulled a cigar from his breast pocket saying, “I’m not going to put any crazy thoughts in your head. You’ll just call me crazy.” He walked back to his door, leaving me standing between our houses to ponder about the nonsense I’d just heard.
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Figuring Mr. Holsebeck was just having fun with me, I largely dismissed what he said at first. But, as I lay in bed that night, I began replaying in my mind what I’d actually seen. Had I seen a cat in her lap? Surely she didn’t still have the head. That was crazy talk. I mean, Mr. Holsenbeck said she had the head in her lap when the police came, so the head was gone. Still… the mental image of that crazy old bat petting her dead husband’s head had seriously freaked me out. In spite of the crazy thoughts haunting me that night, I fell asleep pretty fast as I curled up with my wife. Not an hour after falling asleep, though, the big red beast, Bloody Red, returned and cried on our porch until I my wife jabbed me with her elbow.
“Go kill that thing!” she demanded.
I had failed to get any traps like I’d promised my wife, and after Mr. Holsenbeck’s crazy story, I felt cornered. I had to do something. So, I begrudgingly clawed my way out of bed, grabbed the “real gun” and made my way downstairs. Peering at me through the sidelights by the front door was that ugly fat cat. Dried brown and red blood made a wreath around his mouth and the intestines of his latest victim were squishing up between his paws.
Disgusting. So, what could I do? Was I actually to SHOOT this cat and probably go to jail? In a way, seeing him was a good thing. After all, this fairly well cemented in my mind that the headless husband story… well… body-less husband’s head story really was nonsense. Bloody Red had already learned that if I opened the door, he was going to get zinged with a BB, so I formulated a little white lie to tell my wife and proceeded to LOUDLY begin to open the front door.
Sure enough, the cat vanished before I even managed to get the storm door open.
“Sorry, hon… he got a way before I could get him,” I said softly as I climbed back in bed. She didn’t respond. She was already back asleep. Disaster averted!
“Go kill that thing!” she demanded.
I had failed to get any traps like I’d promised my wife, and after Mr. Holsenbeck’s crazy story, I felt cornered. I had to do something. So, I begrudgingly clawed my way out of bed, grabbed the “real gun” and made my way downstairs. Peering at me through the sidelights by the front door was that ugly fat cat. Dried brown and red blood made a wreath around his mouth and the intestines of his latest victim were squishing up between his paws.
Disgusting. So, what could I do? Was I actually to SHOOT this cat and probably go to jail? In a way, seeing him was a good thing. After all, this fairly well cemented in my mind that the headless husband story… well… body-less husband’s head story really was nonsense. Bloody Red had already learned that if I opened the door, he was going to get zinged with a BB, so I formulated a little white lie to tell my wife and proceeded to LOUDLY begin to open the front door.
Sure enough, the cat vanished before I even managed to get the storm door open.
“Sorry, hon… he got a way before I could get him,” I said softly as I climbed back in bed. She didn’t respond. She was already back asleep. Disaster averted!
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A couple of weeks passed with nary a thought of the body-less head, Bloody Red or the crazy lady across the street. My wife and kids had decorated the house for Halloween… a silly plastic grinning jack-o-lantern in the window, fake cobwebs on the shrubs and our very own styrofoam cemetery.
“HERE LIES
DR. ACULA
1549-1597
HIS LIFE HAS COME
TO AND END
NEVER TO DRAW
BLOOD AGAIN
?”
It was a Saturday evening, and we’d had a busy day raking leaves and cleaning out the gutters. With Halloween just a week away, we had capped the evening off with a kid-friendly horror movie and home made pumpkin pie. My wife, however, doesn’t like horror films, so a few minutes into it, she went to bed to read while I hung out with the kids on the floor watching the movie. When the movie was over, I put the kids to bed and returned to watch some late night TV (solo TV time for a father of 4 is RARE!) It wasn’t long before I was out cold, though. Sadly, my slumber was short lived. It seemed like I had barely fallen asleep before my wife let out an ear piercing scream! She’s not one to scream, so I practically exploded out my chair and bounded to the top of the stairs in only three panicked leaps! In the first tiny fraction of a second as I entered the room, I saw it.
It wasn’t a cat.
It was ROLLING! It was rolling and then somehow popped through the gap my wife had left in the window!
“I thought that was you! I thought he was you!” she was crying. She was standing on the bed, now, pointing at the window where it had escaped.
“What the heck was that!?” I shouted as I slowly made my way to the window, terrified.
“I thought it was you!”
“Thought WHAT was me?” I asked, knowing what the answer was but not wanting to admit it to myself.
“It’s her husband, isn’t it? It’s her husband! His HEAD!”
With one hand, I pulled my “real gun” out from beneath the boxers in my underwear drawer, and with the other, I slammed window shut.
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The next day, we skipped church. We hadn’t slept at all, and needed to collect ourselves mentally. The Holsenbecks, of course, had no idea what had happened and they had gone to church as usual. They are awfully helpful folks, so I sent Mr. Holsenbeck a text at about the time he should be getting out of service asking him for help with wiring up a ceiling fan.
White lie number two.
After he texted back that he’d be over as soon as church was out, I followed up with “and my wife wants your wife’s advice on some curtains.”
White lie number three.
“I’ll drag her along, too.”
It wasn’t thirty minutes before they tapped on the front door and let themselves in. My wife was already upstairs in our room waiting for them, so I just said, “It’s the ceiling fan and curtains in the master. C’mon up.”
“Sure thing,” he replied. “You can’t wire a ceiling fan?”
“This one’s giving me trouble.”
“Shut up, Bob,” his wife scolded teasingly. They’re quite the cute couple… when they aren’t lying about the murderous crazy woman across the street, anyway.
When we got in the room, I went and stood next to my wife, facing them, and let them take in the scene.
The white cotton sheets of our bed had a huge rusty red blob of blood and mud where the head had curled up next to my wife the night before. Leading from that huge mess were two trails of dried blood and ooze criss crossing each other to the window.
The Holsenbecks took a moment to absorb the scene. They exchanged a long slow gaze, the kind people who have been married for years share when they seem to talk telepathically. I knew what they were doing. They were deciding if they should continue the lie or spill the beans.
The beans made a mess.
“Honey,” Mrs. Holsenbeck began saying to my wife, “he’s only coming here for you. You’re young and pretty, so he’s coming here for you. That’s why he leaves the gifts on your step. They’re for you.”
“Honestly, that’s part of why we were glad you two moved in,” Mr. Holsenbeck explained. “Everyone else on the street is retired. You’re the first young couple to move here in at least 5 years. The other young women keep moving out.”
“Because of him,” Mrs. Holsenbeck continued. “He really was a bit of a hound dog. He was always flirting with other women. He always had affection for women other than his wife. Even now, he hasn’t stopped. Why, since you’ve moved in, he doesn’t leave the rest of us women gifts, anymore. Why, I was even going to start leaving my windows cracked again!” She was actually smiling. Mrs. Holsenbeck, the sweet loving fairy tale like grandmother from next door was actually smiling because of… well… whatever this was!
The beans made a mess.
“Honey,” Mrs. Holsenbeck began saying to my wife, “he’s only coming here for you. You’re young and pretty, so he’s coming here for you. That’s why he leaves the gifts on your step. They’re for you.”
“Honestly, that’s part of why we were glad you two moved in,” Mr. Holsenbeck explained. “Everyone else on the street is retired. You’re the first young couple to move here in at least 5 years. The other young women keep moving out.”
“Because of him,” Mrs. Holsenbeck continued. “He really was a bit of a hound dog. He was always flirting with other women. He always had affection for women other than his wife. Even now, he hasn’t stopped. Why, since you’ve moved in, he doesn’t leave the rest of us women gifts, anymore. Why, I was even going to start leaving my windows cracked again!” She was actually smiling. Mrs. Holsenbeck, the sweet loving fairy tale like grandmother from next door was actually smiling because of… well… whatever this was!
Mr. Holsenbeck, seeing our mouths hanging open and unblinking eyes tried to sooth us saying, “It’s all okay. He’s harmless. He just wants the attention of a pretty girl. He’s harmless!”
After a moment of pregnant silence, my wife finally managed a stammering, “The cat. The head. The husband?”
“Are all one, sweety,” Mrs. Holsenbeck said. “Are all one.”
After a moment of pregnant silence, my wife finally managed a stammering, “The cat. The head. The husband?”
“Are all one, sweety,” Mrs. Holsenbeck said. “Are all one.”
