The Rest of the Story.........

THE PORCH
BY
J WALKER BELL

Conclusion........

Mandy and Janway looked at each other for a brief moment. Then the whole house shuddered with a sudden jolt, and the rope jerked from the direction of the porch with vicious force. The rope was still wrapped around Mandy’s right hand, and Janway heard the bones in her fingers break with grisly snaps. She sucked in her breath to scream and the rope jerked again, this time pulling her off her feet. Her head hit the edge of the porch floorboard, blood from the wound splashed over the porch and ground. Janway stood frozen, thinking stupidly that he’d always been told that even superficial head wounds bled profusely. Whatever was attached to the other end of the rope began pulling Mandy under the porch. Janway heard an obscene, rumbling growl coming from beneath the floorboards.

Mandy found her voice and began screaming. They were throaty, horror-stricken screams. Her right arm and most of her head were already under the porch, but her left hand grasped the railing with frantic force and her legs scrambled for some kind of purchase.

Mandy’s screams released Janway from his paralysis. Rushing forward, he grabbed her legs and pulled backward with everything he had, hollering unintelligibly. The wet earth slipped out from under his feet and he landed hard on his buttocks. Another jerk on the rope and Janway was pulled along with Mandy another foot. Mandy’s screams increased another decibel.

The house shuddered again. Nails sprung from the porch floor and boards broke loose, letting in some of the fading light. Janway caught a glimpse of a shape under the floorboards. It might have been a large dog once. There was no way to know how long it had been trapped and crushed under the collapsed porch. No way to know how long it lay there with it’s broken skull and crushed hindquarters or how long the changes had been going on. If it had been a dog, all that was left were feral eyes protruding from a cracked skull from which all hair and skin had long since rotted away. The forequarters were a gangrenous green. The forepaws were bloated into massive hooked claws. The hindquarters were stretched into a snake-like length from the effort of pulling away from where it was trapped under the porch. The rope was still attached to the collar around its neck. Into its mouth Mandy’s arm had disappeared as far up as the elbow.

The floorboards crashed back into place. Mandy, sane and practical to the end, realized she could not pull free. She never truly believed in things that go bump in the night, and although she was terrified, it was not the mind numbing kind of terror usually associated with encounters with the unknown. She had been a fighter all her life, and so she did what she had to do. Freeing her left hand from its grip on the railing, she scrambled under the porch to fight the thing which was devouring her arm. Janway did the only thing he knew to do. He scrambled under the porch with her.

It was black under the porch and the air was foul. There was more room than at the edge of the porch, but not much. Mandy grimly fought the beast in that constricted space. She panted in huge gulps that left no room for screams. She clawed, bit and kicked with inhuman violence. Janway did what he could by grabbing and holding one of the beast’s fore legs. The beast kept tearing its foreleg from his grasp, leaving sheets of dead skin tangling his fingers, but Janway kept grabbing at it.

The beast released the remains of Mandy’s arm and lunged at her. The rotting jawbone of its toothless mouth dragged along Mandy’s head and tore open the scalp. Mandy and the thing howled together with maniacal sounds so similar Janway could not distinguish between the two. Mandy’s entire body stiffened and convulsed violently and Janway lost his hold on the thing’s foreleg. Mandy and the beast slumped motionlessly to the ground.

Janway got Mandy out form under the porch. He laid her on her back on the ground and kneeled beside her. There was little left of her right arm. Bone and severed blood vessels protruded from her shoulder, the artery releasing blood with every beat of her heart. Her head had been ripped open where the beast had chewed and tore at her scalp. Blood-soaked bone showed through. The flap of skin covered her face. Janway gently folded the skin back onto her head. Mandy’s eyes were open.

They did not speak. They both knew she was dying. In the moment they had left, they relived the seven years they’d had together, the love they had for each other, the joys, the sorrows, the companionship, and the reassurance for the last time that it was okay that there would never be a child.

When Janway saw her die, he saw the Mandy he knew so well and loved so deeply fade from those eyes.

Only, those lovely green eyes did not close in death. Those eyes did not grow glassy and unfocused, but continued to regard him. Her chest did not rise and fall because she was no longer breathing. No blood coursed from the serrated arteries because her heart no longer pumped, but the eyes watched him as he checked these things.

Janway looked into those eyes and saw something familiar. There was only a spark, but somehow he knew it would grow stronger with time, and sometime over the next few hours, or days, or months, those eyes would look on the world with the same feral madness that Janway had seen in the eyes of the beast. Knowing that, Janway took a rock and began methodically to smash into shards his dead wife’s head.

This is what Janway told his lawyer, but it was not what he told the jury. His testimony in court was much shorter. He testified that he and his wife had, indeed, stopped on the porch of the deserted house to get out of the rain. He then testified that he tried to convince his wife to have sex with him. She refused and he became angry and tried to force himself on her. She fought back, and he killed her by bashing her repeatedly in the head with a rock. When he described how he had battered her head, Janway looked straight at the jury so they could see the truth in his eyes.

Two months after his sentencing, Janway was found dead in his death row cell. The autopsy report concluded that he had managed to strangle himself by swallowing two pairs of socks. Recordings of his psychiatric counseling revealed he suffered from a recurring nightmare. In the nightmare he was pursued by his headless wife, who had clawed her way out of her grave and come for him. On the single table in his cell were two newspaper clippings from the Pennsylvania Herald dated a week apart, the second just the day before his suicide.

Janway's cell after his suicide

The first clipping began “The abandoned house and barn where James Janway brutally murdered his wife burned to the ground late yesterday afternoon. Authorities have not yet determined the cause of the blaze. Bones found during the investigation are still being inspected, but one source speculated that they were probably from a dog...” The second article began “The empty, broken coffin of a Pine Home Cemetery grave was discovered by the cemetery’s caretaker yesterday morning. Authorities are unsure when the grave was opened due to the steady rain of the past week. Vandalism is suspected because of the damage to both the coffin and the crushed up headstone. The identity of the missing body has not yet been determined....”

Happy Halloween Everyone!