The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Cahoots 
by Elaine Pascale 

“You know what Henry said today?” Ginny asked as she gazed at the window while sipping her tea. The winter trees were skeletons; all the better to see the dark silhouette that perched amongst the branches.

“Henry doesn’t talk,” Sam replied, as he often did when Ginny translated for Henry.

“Henry told me to check the wires on the light by the garage. Sure enough, they were nearly frayed. Could have started a fire.”

Sam chewed his roast slowly, seeking the correct response. He was torn between wanting to address what seemed to be an increasing psychosis in his wife and avoiding the inevitable verbal lashing for confronting her. “Maybe Henry chewed through the wires himself.”

Ginny put her cup down forcibly. “He would never do that.”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Henry might have been confessing.”

Sam knew full well that Ginny would never go for this line of reasoning. She considered Henry a support and confident. Sam often remarked that the two were in cahoots, but the relationship was more devious than that. Henry acted as a harbinger of doom, as a figurehead of fears. It was Henry who noticed strangers near their home, it was Henry who smelled smoke, or heard strange noises. It was Henry who elevated Ginny’s anxiety and paranoia.

At times, Henry even seemed to be the root of violent behavior.

Sam became relieved when Ginny eventually stopped relaying the bird’s messages. So relieved that he failed to notice her watching him, smiling slyly. If Sam had been paying any type of attention, he would have taken into account the cold air that followed his wife into a room. He would have recognized that her voice sounded different when she spoke and that her normally agitated energy had become lethally calm.

One day, Sam awoke when he felt a sharp prick in his neck. Ginny was standing beside the bed holding an empty syringe. Sam couldn’t move. He saw knives and his electric chain saw in the room.

“Henry and I are leaving,” Ginny announced. Her face was expressionless, her eyes dark and blank. “He said it would be better if you stayed here, in the woods.”

As he fought the strong urge to succumb to unconsciousness, Sam heard the sharp crack of a tarp, and he knew what that meant.

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Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com

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