My Bitter Sweetbrier (eBook)

B.C. Lee (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
376 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-5706-8 (ISBN)

Michael Aldridge lost his father before his own life had even begun and was raised by his widowed mother. They lived a transient lifestyle until Michael reached the age of five when his mother inherited her childhood home in Sweetbrier, New Jersey. While living there, Michael experiences overwhelmingly realistic, haunting visions of an unknown child and quickly discovers details about his mother's parents and the town of Sweetbrier that send him to the depths of Hell and back.

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Chapter One - Blueberry Pancakes

My father, Paul Aldridge, was a police officer for five years before he was shot and killed in his squad car. His death was part of some heartless New York City thug’s gang initiation (a pledge of loyalty was what they called it), and all he was guilty of was parking on the curb to enjoy his fresh cup of morning coffee. My mother, Christy Aldridge, who was just one month pregnant with me at the time, didn’t have it in her to fill me in on this part of her life; I pieced together most of those details on my own.

Without my father, my mother and I suffered financially, and we were forced into a nomadic lifestyle. We moved monthly to escape debt, find more work, find cheaper rent—always to save cash. We had to be frugal with our money, because we didn’t have much to begin with. My mother worked as a waitress wherever she could while we continued moving state to state, hoping one day things might get better.

As a toddler learning to talk, one of the first fragmented sentences I managed to form to my mother (or to anyone) was, “I’ve seen brudder in dream.” I meant brother. My pronunciation may have been off, but she knew what I meant, and me being an only child, it freaked her out. Whenever I’d ask her about him she’d profusely deny it, claiming it had to be my imagination making him up. She even cried the time I pressed her after having more of those dreams at age four. Looking back, she had lost her husband a few short years ago, so it was understandable why this made her upset, but still being so young, I simply didn’t know any better. I eventually kept it to myself out of courtesy; I hated to see her cry.

In early 1991, not long after celebrating my fifth birthday, my mother inherited her mortgage-free childhood home in Sweetbrier, New Jersey from her recently deceased mother, whom I had never met, and unfortunately or fortunately (I wasn’t sure which) never will. We moved there within a few weeks. The house was built in the 1800s and the last of its peers left standing in the suburban neighborhood; the rest of the homes built during that time had met their demise during the town’s gentrification in the 1980s, I later found out. Victorian-era craftsmanship adorned the front porch, covered in lead paint, cracked and dulled by decades of sunlight. My mother and I proceeded to load the hallway along the stairs with our bulky luggage and inadequate amounts of furniture.

“So, this is home now. How do you like it, Michael?” she asked me, dropping the last leathery piece of luggage with an inconsiderate thud, then lying on it in her fluffy winter coat.

“It’s nice, I guess…but it’s kind of scary.” I told her, thinking she would share a similar opinion about both the condition of the house and its decor.

“I know what you mean. I grew up here. Nothing has changed since I was your age, maybe even way before then. It’s a giant time capsule in here. Maybe we can fix it up and make it more comfortable for us, what do you say?” She smiled at me convincingly to reassure me, like any good mother tries to do for their child, but at that moment, it didn’t help me much.

“Yeah, at least until we move again.” I hoped.

“Oh, those days are far behind us now, Michael!” She shot up from the luggage with glee and landed on her feet, stepped towards me to kneel down to my level and explain so I could understand.

“I inherited this home from your grandparents, and it is the cheapest and best place for us right now, we can’t keep moving around. You’ll have to go to school soon. You’re getting to that age, and there’s a great school here in town where you can make friends and have a whole new life. Just think about…”

She continued to talk, and I stood there, becoming aware of minor movements in my peripherals. The oak floor and the pine-green plaster walls reverberated to a deafening hum, and my eardrums popped from the vibrations of the low-octave bass. I watched as pieces of wall and floor began to shake apart from each other, splintering, cracking and kicking up decades of dust when the ceiling collapsed. The rooms flooded with a darkness pouring in from the roof like water, flowing down the stairs and slowly rising up to the ceiling until the house was filled. I lost the sound of my mother’s voice, couldn’t move, speak or even blink—I was frozen. There was only empty blackness. My eyes never adjusted after what seemed like hours.

Then a thin beam of light shined out from a distance towards me. It lightly illuminated the hallway to expose the now damaged interior of the house. Chunks of plaster and wood debris from the shattered roof and ceiling floated in the dense nothingness.

I felt helpless, weak and heavy with negativity, until that beam of light became stronger, wider, brighter. It slowly pulled me in by my collar, and I heard my name as I came towards it. I thought this could be my father, or maybe my brother, trying to communicate with me. “Michael… Michael…” they whispered; a heavy breath trickling past my right ear and tickling my neck. Then the light dimmed, and an outline of a small child’s silhouette, looking about my age, appeared within it. They were standing still. I didn’t know whether to be relaxed or scared. There was simply too much unknown hitting my five-year-old brain at once. The light intensified, and my vision was too blurred to see the child clearly. Still unable to blink, my eyes reddened and welled up until tears rolled down my face. Suddenly, my body was shaken, aggressively.

It was my mother, concerned after a few minutes of me standing there frozen, unresponsive in a tear-soaked shirt. A violent, windy vacuum pulled me away from the light by my feet, and everything went dark again. The light of reality faded back into my pupils, and I reentered my body, regaining my senses. I could hear my mother. “Michael! Michael!” she cried as I fell out of my trance and into her arms. My stomach burned and became nauseous. She held me and checked for a fever that wasn’t there. Instead, my skin was ice-cold against hers; she gasped at the touch. She looked at me as if she had seen a ghost. I wondered if I may have had the same look on my face. The house was back to the way it was: old, dingy and most importantly, absent of that awful underwater darkness.

My mother reacted like I was sick, which was more of a logical explanation than anything else. She prepared us both some tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I soon warmed back up, and the acidic nausea subsided after I had choked down some food. I figured my mother knew better than me, and I was only getting sick.

I attempted to shrug it off like, “Yeah, it was just a combination of getting sick and being tired from yet another move, that’s all,” but part of me didn’t think it was that simple. I knew I never could’ve told my mother about how I thought I saw my brother; she wouldn't have believed me, and it would've upset her to hear about him again after the last few years of me not bringing it up.

“Well, since my old pediatrician from when I was a kid isn’t around anymore, we’ll have to find a new one for you to visit, a really good one we can follow up with since we finally have a permanent home.” she told me, blowing on a spoonful of hot soup.

I just nodded and took a bite of my sandwich, sitting there bewildered by everything I had witnessed in my trance. I wondered when, where and how I would experience something like that again, if I ever would. Whatever that was, it called my name—it wanted me.

That night, to no shock of my own, I couldn’t seem to find any sleep no matter how hard I tried. Everything came flooding back to that cold, watery darkness. However, this time, the light never came to alleviate the disconcerting effects. Only that ominous whispering voice could be heard, “Michael… Michael…” The lurking ache in its voice taunted me, made me cower underneath my blankets until I heard something other than my name. “I can keep you safe… protect you from harm… relax and trust me…” Those words fell into my ears and transformed into a potent dose of angelic peace pumping through my veins. I was lowered into a purely serene high and soon fell into a deep sleep, deeper than any sleep I had ever had or ever will have again.

In the morning, I woke up rested, but my mind still reeled over the day before. I was eager to figure out this mystery. I knew I had to do it all on my own, since I was the only one having encounters with these unknown…things. If any normal adult heard about stuff like this from a five-year-old boy, they would think the kid came straight from the loony bin. Maybe it was my imagination playing tricks on me? But it was all too real.

After a week in the new home, my mother and I had properly moved in with our belongings. Everything was now where it should be. The towels in the bathroom instead of the foyer, our clothes in our closets and...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	6.5.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-5706-8 / 9798350957068

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