Once upon a time this traditional, nuclear family from New York City moved up to the Catskill Mountains, to a house below the road, to “escape from it all.”
The Father, Bob Dedsen, had killed a man and embezzled great deals of money. He was now “retiring to the woods to treat his wife’s alcohol problem.” His wife, Nancy Marie Dedsen, had been sober for 7 years. She attended AA programs in the West Village almost daily. Those weren’t the only support groups she frequented.
Having retired from business at the age of 29 to marry Bob Dedsen and raise a family, Nancy Marie Dedsen found a giant gaping hole in her life when her kids started school. She befriended other mothers in her same situation and started the “Rainy Day Arts Club” where she and the other mothers met, usually daily, and planned arts and craft activities to do with their kids. They even took up home improvement projects for a while; every woman in the group had a quilt they had worked on together. They attended pottery class and went to “Color Me Mine” so their houses were filled with hand made every day objects. Then they burned out. Soccer practice and Little League on Saturday mornings was just too much for them. Laundry and the cleaning lady and their children’s ADD or OCD or whatever the fuck it was. They fell to drinking every day. Up at six, breakfast for everyone, drop kids off in the schoolyard at 8, brunch with the girls at 9. Sometimes they would still be at the bar at 3 pm when the kids were waiting to be picked up. Nancy asked Bob if they could hire a nanny to pick the kids up from school. Or at least $40/day to pay a HS kid to play with them in the park and get them snacks. “What are you staying home all day for? I would pick them up but I have a job. We want our kids to be raised by us, not some stranger.” Bob said. So Nancy drank harder and her friend Carol started bringing cocaine to Brunch to get them ready to pick the kids up. Sunglasses and hoodies, all of them now 40. Oh, and Tuesdays at the Beauty Parlor. Their husbands expected them to look good. Nancy was always late. She got her first child, Lisa Marie, to pick her little brother Timothy up from school every day. They would come home and play video games all afternoon. Now Nancy is 7 years sober but she still doesn’t pick her kids up from school, or even hang out with them in the evenings. When Carol died of an overdose and was found holding the “Rainy Day Arts Club” disbanded, blaming each other for their sink into lechery. Nancy discovered AA and quickly latched onto the idea of support groups in general. She attended AA, Ala-non (for the families of alcoholics), Debtor’s anonymous (“It’s how I balance my checkbook!”), Rageaholic’s Annon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Sexaholics on Friday mornings. And on the fourth Wednesday of every month she attended Reverend Jen’s anti-slam, where the weirdest, most honest and dirty people in NYC get up on stage and channel their emotions therapeutically through performance art. She even joined a church, two actually. She attended Catholic Mass on Wednesdays and a Lutheran young adult service on Thursday evenings, and on Sunday she made waffles and attended an evening rock and roll church on 23rd street. She liked to think she was that hip milf you’d seen hanging at these places on TV, like Nancy Botwin in NYC. She certainly had the cool routine down and lots of “friends” who she kept in touch with for support.
Now her husband Bob had ripped her out of that life she loved and driven her three hours upstate into the wilderness and desolated communities of the lower Catskill region, a mountainous area below the state park, notorious for devil and alien sightings, as well as secret military operations. Not known for its support groups. There was a church in Woodstock that offered AA and such, but that was over an hour away, 45 minutes if you took that dangerous shortcut and drove fast. That wasn’t good enough. Bob said she should join the little church down the road in Claireville. Nancy drove past once or twice but they didn’t seem very inviting.
And how, you may ask, did Timothy and Lisa Marie feel about this move their father had inflicted on them? Well, there was a school about 45 minutes away and a traditional yellow bus that came to pick them up every morning. The just had to walk up the long, wooded, driveway to the road and wait in the rain and the fog and the snow for the bus to come. It wasn’t usually sunny in the morning. Their mountain was almost always covered in fog. At least in the mornings and at dusk. The house lay below the road. The first day they got on the school bus, which served kids of all grade school ages, this know-it-all second grader with brown pigtails, a turned up nose, and an old Monkeys lunch box to match her vintage wool sweater, had pointed out that a house that lies below the road, like theirs, is full of sorrow. “I should know, she said, Wednesdays child is full of woe, that’s me, Wednesday, born on Wednesday, pleased to meet you. Did you know it’s awfully foggy on your road? I live on the other side of the mountain, its sunny there this morning.”
Timothy and Lisa Marie did not like this new house. They missed their friends and their hangouts and Lisa, now 16, had just started smoking pot with her friends, which she thought was pretty cool. Timothy, 13, was into skateboarding and was disappointed that there were no busy sidewalks he could ride his skateboard on and frighten pedestrians. Neither of them expected to make any friends at their new school because they thought that, being city kids, they were too cool to hang out with mountain laurels.
Bob, anxious to give his wife something to do and knowing there was no way they could move back to the city, knocked her up as soon as they got out there. He decorated the house with guns and taught Timothy and Lisa Marie how to shoot. They built lots of fires and had family game night. They only had a television for movies. This TV would be left on all the time because the screen appeared dark, only Timothy’s ears were sharp enough to hear the faint whine of the TV and turn it off.
Lisa Marie armed herself with the latest Adventure Girl clothing and Adventure Girl magazine and trudged off into the woods every Saturday to escape her mothers weekly “cleaning time.” The woods were often dark but the trees were thin and the ground was crisp. She walked around, stopped to read, and smoked a little pot she scored off a boy at school. She was laying in a patch of wild grass she found in a clearing when someone walked up to her. She looked up and saw a handsome man, vaguely resembling a young Tom Riddle Jr. Black hair, mysterious smile, all black and white and sleekly dressed. Her heart started pounding. She sat up, “uhh hello,” she said. He gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” the mysterious sexy young man said. “My parents told me you had moved to the mountain so I figured I’d come by and say hi. Your mom told me you were here (in the woods). Lisa, right?”
“Lisa Marie, actually. Marie is a family name.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, my name is Daniel. My family and I live one property over. You’ve probably driven past my house.”
Their romance builds. They only meet in the woods, in secret. Nancy knows something’s up by the way her daughter is smiling at happy to be here. Lights are left on. Doors open. The TV whine grows less faint.
It’s a gray Sunday morning. An old brown Pontiac drives down the road to the house and a handsome but pimply young man with Jimmy Page hair wearing a brown corduroy jacket steps out of the car. He says he’s come to take Lisa Marie to church with him. Says the Church is in the town of Neversink, nearby. Nancy says that’s a wonderful idea and goes with them. The church is small and white, in the New England style. Most of the congregation is old. The young man, Nathan, introduces Nancy and Lisa Marie to his granny, Mrs. Franklin, a short squat old woman with one bulging eye and one normal eye. Before leaving church Granny warns Lisa Marie to “be careful who you talk to.” Nathan drives them home and this becomes a regular thing. Nancy Marie pushes Lisa Marie to hook up with Nathan (date) because he is such a nice young man. Lisa thinks only about Saturdays with Daniel and visiting him in the woods every day after school. Daniel never shows up on Sunday.
Bob has become a writer and a phony carpenter in the basement. He thinks these pursuits are manly. The only time he spends with his family is mom-forced family games, and evenings where Lisa Marie is wearing next to nothing. When not forced by his wife into family games he spends all his time in the basement-garage “working” ie- smoking pot he buys off the same dude as his daughter (unawares), working out, masturbating to internet porn, building something. He is a sexy older man by the time his baby is born, although Nancy has become more pear-shaped. Their sex life is booming for a while until the baby is born and they have to stop doing it. Then Nancy is tired and old looking so he ignores her completely and starts frequenting the local diner where the waitress has a wicked tongue. He says he goes there to write and always brings back a sandwich for Nancy Marie.
Nancy and Bob’s baby is a boy. They name him Second Samuel because he is the second son. Nancy starts inviting Nathan in for lunch after church once the baby is born. It helps to have some company. Nathan pretends he’s there for Lisa Marie still but Lisa Marie slips off into the woods looking for Daniel. She calls for him, finally he appears. This is the first time he’s appeared on a Sunday, but Lisa realizes it’s past midnight now so it’s Monday. She goes to the little lean-to her father built in the woods with Timothy. She had decorated it with a bed and some wooden chairs. When Daniel comes to this, “their spot”, she stands up to greet him, all aroused. He kisses her and she sits on the arm of the chair. Daniel leans over so their lips never part. She breathes heavily. He slides his fingers under her skirt. She wraps her legs around him and moans before he hoists her up and over to the camp bed. It’s good, it’s hot, it’s what she wants, but the next day she’s sick. The more they fuck in the woods the paler she grows. Wrapping herself up in scarves, arm warmers and shawls. One night she doesn’t come out. Daniel is waiting in the field. He knocks on her window and she invites him in. This time, when he comes she stops moving. Still and cold on the bed he covers her up and laughs, glowing with power.
The baby monitor comes on in Bob and Nancy’s room. “This fucking bullshit,” Bob says and leaves the room, Nancy hears his footsteps on the stairs and the “dddawwwn” sound of the computer turning on. She grabs the baby monitor and goes to check on Second Samuel, who is sleeping in a small bedroom next door. She goes into his room but he is sleeping quietly. She fixes his blankets, gives his mobile a twirl, and leaves the room, partially closing the door behind her. She hears coughing coming from Timothy so she opens his door and looks into his room. Next to his bed there is a huge black shadow leaning over him and choking him. Nancy shrieks and turns on the light. The demon vanishes and Tim wakes up, annoyed. Bob, hearing his wife’s scream, runs upstairs. He tells Nancy and Timothy to go back to sleep and he goes back to his computer which he stays glued to for the rest of the night and the whole next day. PICTURE: Daniel’s face barely illuminated by the computer, standing behind Bob.
Lisa Marie never wakes up for school the next day. Tim catches the school bus and Nancy says she’ll let Lisa sleep because she’s been so sick lately. After Tim leaves up the driveway she goes to wake Lisa up. Lisa is dead. Nancy screams and panics and Second Samuel starts crying. She grabs her baby and runs to call the paramedics. Bob doesn’t come upstairs. The paramedics make her check the girl’s pulse. The body is cold. They tell her they’ll be there in half an hour. Nancy hangs up the phone and starts to cry.
She hears slow, heavy footsteps on the stairs. Bob has a crazy look in his eye and is holding a shotgun. He sees her and starts firing. Nancy throws her tea in his eyes and he screams and goes blind. Now he is shooting in all directions. She dodges and weaves, puts on her raincoat and her rain boots and runs outside, wrapping the baby up in a baby quilt she made once upon a time. She runs into the wet woods, Bob follows her out but goes back inside to grab a jacket and boots. In the woods she runs into the clearing where Lisa Marie first met Daniel. Daniel has Nathan tied to a chair. We hear a story about how Daniel and Nathan were brothers. Nathan was at his Granny’s the day their house burnt down killing Daniel and their parents. Granny told him never to speak of it because she had set the fire to kill the demon that she suspected possessed them. Nathan had assisted her. There had been a demon and it had henceforth manipulated Daniel’s body so it could continue its path of destruction. “We now have your husband,” he said as blind Bob stepped into the clearing with his puffy jacket, boots, pajamas and shotgun. All seems lost as Nancy is tied up and the baby is put in padded cage. Suddenly Granny and her friends from church come stepping into the clearing waving magic items and praying for deliverance from the demon. They circle around the players in this drama chanting and praying fervently. Daniel screams but his voice changes to a roar as his body is ripped apart. Bob’s heart bursts into flames. Then everybody is invited back for coffee and Nancy and her sons (Timothy arrives home after school to find his father and sister dead) return to their unsold apartment in NYC where Nancy writes a bestselling book about the story, resumes her support groups where she meets influential people who take her in and give her a good job. Timothy goes to college and Second Samuel is raised by Portuguese Nannies.
The End
(oh wait, is Second Samuel possessed???)
-LA
