I visited her once during a troubled time in her marriage and she told me that a very extreme event had taken place in the house a week or two before. She had been watching TV with her husband, it was early evening and her young daughter was asleep in bed upstairs. They both heard a loud clattering noise from the kitchen and went to investigate.
A drawer was open, a large knife was on the formica counter and blood was liberally splashed over the nearby surfaces. They began running around the small house looking for an intruder but found nobody. They checked the doors and windows and found them intact and locked by my security-conscious brother in law. They rushed upstairs and found their young daughter sound asleep in bed.
Having stared at the perplexing scene for a while, they could think of nothing else to do than to clear up the mess, wash the knife and put it back in the drawer before going to bed themselves.
I asked her why they had not taken a sample of the blood before cleaning up, and she said that had not occurred to them.
My sister died some years ago and I regretted never having reminded her of this shocking event when I had the chance. Later, I brought up the story with her now adult daughter. She said that, surprisingly, her mother had never mentioned it before.
Last night - for the first time - I began to think that she had just made it up. That would have been so like her, and so like me to want to believe it.
Made it up? Really? To what purpose? Was her husband with her when she told the story, or was she the only one who talked it over with you? I have so many questions!
ReplyDeleteI think I was the only one. She used to like winding me up with a straight face and this story could have been one symptom of a physcolognical crisis she was going through. There again, it could have happened. I'm not sure.
DeleteWas she describing a dream maybe and somehow it became real. A dream that tangled her wish for something to happen to her husband. Or else she was a good story teller. As you are ;)
ReplyDeleteI think my answers to Jennifer were more like it. When I was a child she spent ages trying to convince me that the Holy Bible was pronounced 'Holly Bibble'. That's what she was like.
DeleteWhat convinced me was the short history of her strange relationship with her very young daughter. They had wordless communications with each other. Added to that was the bad relationship with her uncommunicative husband which made me think of classic poltergeist behaviour. All became normal after child/mother psychology sessions following a nervous breakdown. I might have happened.
Delete'it', not 'I'
DeleteI like I.
DeleteA misapplied talent, unless she was Daphne du Maurier.
ReplyDeleteOr Edgar Allen Poe.
DeleteI can believe all this. My youngest brother and I did this to each other all the time. How I remember the leprechaun in his pocket. For the need of magic. you know.
ReplyDeleteMy sister was 9 years older than me, so I was always a good target.
DeleteThe human mind is mysterious. Telling a gruesome story about a bloody knife found in the kitchen, panic about a sleeping child and noises coming from the kitchen. Then, nothing found and everybody goes to bed. It is like something out of Alfred Hitchcock.
ReplyDeleteNot my idea of domestic bliss.
DeleteMy older brother delighted in winding me up too. And my cousins. I think I had "gullible" tattooed on my forehead. But then, I wanted to see the best in people, and still do. And I adore my brother still!
ReplyDeleteIn my old age I have realised what I should have realised many years ago - there is no accounting for relatives and their behaviour. Ploughing one's own furrow is perhaps the best - easy to say when it is too late.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why people make up such fanciful stories. My sister has done so all her life. It just seems as if her stories serve no purpose. I believe it is mental illness. She is very religious, bordering on fanatacism. Somehow she manages to find churches that fall for her stories. She preaches in some of them. She sent links out to the family, very proud of her accomplishments. Imagine my surprise to discover that I'd grown up in a house with a dirt floor, no running water, no electricity. I remembered it as a very nice ranch style house.
ReplyDelete