On the Outside

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

No one believed Katherine Goodwin when she said her two sons who went missing so long ago still tried to come see her.

They had not aged a day, or so she claimed.

They appeared as if they would have, had they come home that very night thirty years before when she prayed for their return.

No one had ever found them.

Katherine's older daughters listened to their mother's accounts of the visitors patiently, as if to calm an inconsolable child.

She was a woman sick with grief.

Katherine insisted that she lost her husband to a heart attack because he opened their front door and insisted they come in. At that time, it had been about 10 years since their sons had disappeared. But he lost all reason when he saw what appeared to be his missing children, still in the appearance of the children from 20 years prior.

Katherine saw them at the door for a moment before her husband collapsed. The children disappeared after Mr. Goodwin's collapse.

She remembered their voices as static and monotone. She was not quite able to make out what they were saying and never made eye contact. These were not the voices of her lost sons, who at that time would have taken on the stature and appearance of grown men. No amount of reason crushed her hopes of recovering the young sons she still cherished.

The few times anyone encountered them, it seemed that someone would fall ill. The children brought with them a heavy sadness that seemed contagious.

The two older daughters, Agnes and Maron, were finally shaken by these tales of mythical encounters when their mother had taken ill.
Katherine was raving about her lost sons, their brothers, returning. She even pointed out her bedroom window on the second floor, too high for anyone on the outside to reach, Katherine swore they were trying to ...get... her. It seemed like a fever dream.

However, if they were her children, why was she afraid of them? But they couldn't be. On the particular night a fevered and raving Katherine pointed at her window, Maron had seen the shadowy silhouettes of two small boys pass by the upstairs window in the moonlight. She knew that if she told her sister Agnes, what she had seen, she would think she was going crazy too.

Another reported dangerous encounter, involved a new neighbor who did not know Mrs. Goodwin and her family personally or their story of past tragedy. The man tried to scare these unknown kids away when he saw them lurking around late at night outside Mrs. Goodwin's home. The man's wife retold the tale of her husband's creepy encounter with the two young kids and how they never looked at him directly. They insisted they gain entry into the Goodwin's home. He physically attempted to push them away as the older boy invaded his personal space in an attempt to approach the front door. There was a loud screaming sound and the man lost consciousness,only to wake up in the hospital to try to piece together the story. He was dead within the year.
Mrs. Goodwin made a habit of clutching old family photographs that included the boys. The were in frames around her section of the house. It was obsessive. Maron had hidden most of the families old photographs in the attic in what was now Samantha's rented room.
Katherine was getting old, but was afraid to leave the house. It was the house where she hoped her some would return, in human form. Her rationality had been diminished by age and grief. Contact with the boys was dangerous but their very existence seemed to be a thing of her imagination if it were not for her husbands experience, the neighbor's, and the pale quiet terror in Maron's face the night Katherine pointed to the two boys outside the second story window.
But Mrs Goodwin was lucid enough to have a healthy fear of these paranormal beings parading as her sons. She had waited so many years to see them again. Grief took away all reason when she finally accepted a visit from them one last time.